More than a few have altered me to Eric Cartman’s soulful, white-nationalist plaint.
Regarding my conclusion that “sisterhood” is overrated, a reader reports,
Decades past a weathered criminal trial lawyer told me that he always tried to load a jury with middle aged or older mothers in rape cases rather than men. Two reasons: One, they would look at the accuser and say, “I was never like that,” and, Two, they would worry that their son(s) might get ensnared by such a creature. His summation: The only thing that exceeds man’s inhumanity to man is woman’s inhumanity to woman. This cynicism was the result of 50+ years in the courts of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods.
SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS—It’s good to be in Texas. To a European like me, Texas is why we came to America. It’s a huge state, but more important, it’s a state of mind. It is a fount of freedom and imagination. For most of the inhabitants of America’s two coasts, Texas is worse than flyover country. Texas represents everything they hate about America: Texas is big, loud, white, Republican, Christian; it produces fossil fuel, its citizens drive big cars that use up a lot of fuel, they eat a lot—starchy, fatty foods—they carry guns. The so-called elites in the Bagel, inside the Beltway, and in El Lay turn Orlando Furioso whenever the word “Texas” comes up. They see it as a stronghold of religious fundamentalism, homophobia, racism, sexism, and mindless patriotism. And now Texas is tainted through its association with George W. Bush and the neocons who conned him, two disastrous unnecessary wars, bank bailouts, and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Mind you, I loved the place the moment I set foot on its soil. It was my first time. And I walked straight to the Alamo.
Here’s a bit of historical background from Professor Taki of the University of Texas: In 1846, ten years after the Alamo, President James Polk took office with the intention of seizing all Mexican territory between Texas and the Pacific, including California. He sent General Zachary Tailor to grab land north of the Rio Grande, provoking a shoot-out with Mexican troops. War was declared by Jimmy Polk (I call him Jimmy because I once slept in his family bed in Virginia, hence the familiarity) and he invaded Mexico. A bit like looking for WMD’s in Iraq 157 years later, but what the heck. Although the Mexicans fought bravely the Gringos prevailed, and in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Mexico gave up—get this—all claims to Texas and what is today California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Wyoming, and New Mexico. No wonder Mexicans are known to mug Gringo drunks and steal their wallets. They feel entitled. And now to the Alamo. It’s the American Thermopylae and San Antonio’s prime attraction. Texas being Texas, there are two of them. The real one and that of John Wayne. The real one and its walled-in, landscaped grounds are a green oasis in the heart of busy downtown San Antonio. The city of 1.2 million was built around the old Spanish mission known as the Alamo. All that remains of the original fort are the church and part of the walls of the convent. The guns used to repel Santa Ana are there, the same guns which were turned against the gallant defendants once the Federales had overrun the outer walls. When John Wayne came down to shoot his film, he realized the original mission was no good. You couldn’t very well have Mexican troops in plumes charging up through skyscrapers and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, which surround the real thing. So he went out to the desert some fifteen miles and threw up the Hollywood version. It outdraws the original by three to one I am told.
I loved the Duke’s movie, but then I love all lost causes. President Monroe had given up any claim to Texas during Mexico’s war of independence from Spain, the latter giving permission for some 300 Americans to settle there. The new Mexican government went along with it and the new Texans swore allegiance to Mexico. Which in a way is like swearing allegiance to Brussels. The Gringos were too pro-U.S. and General Santa Anna marched on San Antonio with 2,500 troops to teach them a lesson. 189 Americans, most of them recently arrived, decided to fight in the Alamo. Santa Anna’s troops were tired and had obsolete weapons. The Gringos were sharpshooters and had better cannons and arms. After a 13-day siege, the Mexicans breached the north wall of the fort and in a 90-minute fierce hand-to-hand battle every defender was killed. William Travis, of South Carolina, died early on from a bullet to the head. James Bowie of Tennessee died in his sickbed, fighting to the last with his famous Bowie knife, no one knows how the great David Crockett fell, but fall he did. 600 Mexicans died, one, Jose Maria Torres, while raising the Mexican flag after tearing down the Texan banner. His hand was still on the flagpole when Santa Anna came in to review the massacre. One slave, one Mexican, and a few women were allowed to go free and spread the word. Remember the Alamo became the slogan for the Mexican-American war that followed ten years later. Santa Anna died a pauper, and not a billionaire, probably the only Mexican president (as he became later) to do so, .
The names of Bowie, Travis, Crockett and the rest are all carved on the monument in front of the mission. They are all Anglo-Saxon and German names, with two Hispanic ones. In the speech I gave to the Rockford Institute, I mentioned the fact that they died in vain, because they were fighting for Texan independence, not for the Union. If Texas was independent today it would be an even greater state and far richer than it is. In fact I would move there tomorrow and even wear a ten gallon hat and date a cheerleader. But it was not to be. Like Britain in the EU, Texas is being slowly strangled by the socialist monster of DC.
Apparently not in the twin capitals of liberalism, D.C. and New York.
In a ranking of 50 states and D.C. by how much each spent per pupil in public schools in 2005, New York ranked first; D.C. third. The state spent $14,100, and New York City just a tad less.
And the bountiful fruits of this massive transfer of taxpayers’ wealth?
In D.C., nearly half of all black and Latino students drop out. Of those who graduate, nearly half are reading and doing math at seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade levels. D.C. academic achievement ranks 51st, last in the U.S.
Yet last week came a report from New York that makes D.C look like M.I.T. Some 200 students, in their first math class at City University of New York, were tested on their basic math skills.
Ninety percent could not do basic algebra. One-third could not convert a decimal into a fraction.
If this was a representative sampling, nine in 10 CUNY students not only do not belong in college, they do not qualify for their high school diplomas. As for that third who can’t do decimals and fractions, they should not have been allowed into high school until they could do sixth-grade math.
As 70 percent of all CUNY students are graduates of city schools, a question arises: What are the taxpayers of New York getting for the highest tax rates in the nation?
If a private business annually turned out products that were of inferior quality than the year before, management would be thrown out by the board. Yet, the education racket has been shaking us down for four decades, and turning out graduates that know less and less.
Scholastic Aptitude Test scores peaked around 1964. Ever since, the national average has been in an almost unbroken descent.
So embarrassing did it get that, a few years ago, the SAT folks retooled the test to produce higher scores. Now there are more 1600s. But the national average continues its decline, and the gap between blacks and Hispanics, and Asians and whites, endures.
Is it not a time for truth?
Just as there are many kids who do not have the athletic ability to play high school sports, or the musical ability to play in a high school band, or the verbal ability to recite poetry well or star in debate, not every kid has the academic ability to do high school work.
By the end of the first two months in first grade, an alert kid can tell you who are the smart ones and who are the athletes.
No two kids were ever created equal—not even identical twins. The family is the incubator of inequality, and God is its author. As the parable teaches, each of us is given different and unequal talents.
Given equality of opportunity, the brightest will inexorably rise, and the less talented—athletically, artistically, academically—will fall behind. All things being equal, the fastest kid will always win the race.
This campaign to equalize test scores among unequal students is utopian and unattainable, and amounts to a scam by the education industry.
How many times have they promised progress? And how many times have they delivered?
It is time to look not only skeptically, but cynically, on further demands for billions for education.
Rather, follow the money. Look for who is getting the jobs, the TV appearances, the consulting contracts, the grants, the titles, the limo drivers. Because, at bottom, that is what it is all about—the transfer of wealth and power from those who earn it and those who produce it, to those who produce little or nothing.
The city colleges, now the City University of New York, were once municipal jewels. They nourished an intellectual elite from the ethnic groups that came in the great immigration wave before 1924. As open admissions—letting in every high school graduate in the city who applied—was being debated, Vice President Spiro T. Agnew weighed in against.
“If these quality colleges are degraded, it would be a permanent and tragic loss to the poor and middle class of New York, who cannot afford to establish their sons and daughters on the Charles River or Cayuga Lake. New York will have traded away one of the intellectual assets of the Western world for a four-year community college and a hundred thousand devalued diplomas.”
Agnew quoted historian Dan Boorstin:
“In the university, all men are not equal. Those better endowed or better equipped intellectually must be preferred in admission, and preferred in recognition. ... If we give in to the ... demands of militants to admit persons to the university because of their race, their poverty, their illiteracy or any other nonintellectual distinction, our universities can no longer serve all of us or any of us.”
The limousine liberals knew better.
Now, they have CUNY students who can’t handle fractions.
No one can accuse Mandolyna Theodoracopulos of not being provocative, and I read her recent post “Jon and Kate Plus Hate” with interest. I entirely agree with her criticisms of in vitro fertilization, and indeed would go well beyond them: Just because science allows us to do something does not mean that we should, and one does not have to accept (as I do) the Catholic Church’s teaching on sexual morality to recognize that there are sound reasons for believing that procreation should not be separated from the sexual act itself.
Of course, we should note that, unlike the “Octomom” whom Mandolyna rightly excoriates, the Gosselins did not engage in in vitro fertilization but in fertility treatments, which resulted in the release of multiple eggs, with their subsequent fertilization through entirely natural means. The only way to “select” a single embryo, then, would have been through the abortion of the other five.
Whatever I may think of the Gosselins’ later actions—and I agree with Mandolyna that “They sold their souls, and their children’s souls” in going on TV—I find it hard to criticize a woman for not being able to bring herself to end five tiny lives growing in her womb. Her doctors advised “selective reduction,” but she chose to carry all of the children to term at great risk to herself. If only she and her husband had continued to put their children’s welfare ahead of their own, their story might well have turned out differently.
Yet despite the situation in which their parents have placed them, Jon and Kate’s eight will always have one another. Which is why I must disagree with Mandolyna when she writes, “No child could possibly get what he or she needs in a two parent family with seven other siblings.”
Let me admit to having a certain interest in that statement. My wife, Amy, and I are the parents of seven beautiful, happy, and healthy children, and we have an eighth on the way. (I’ll let the reader pause and recall his favorite Catholic joke here.)
As hard as it may be for some readers to believe, every last one of those children was expected and welcomed—not just by Amy and myself, but by their older siblings. As late as ten years ago, when our third child was born, we would have laughed if someone had told us that we would one day be expecting our eighth. But our willingness to have more children has as much to do with our children’s openness to life as with our own.
This is the point at which the reader might expect me to insert some words about how, of course, we go without certain things, or how the quality of our time with each child makes up for any lack of quantity. In our case, though, that would be pure rubbish. Though I work for a nonprofit and Amy stays at home (and homeschools), our children have all that they need and probably too much that they don’t. Yes, it may be hard at times for them to find a little quiet time for themselves, but that was true in my own home, and I had only two sisters.
And our children have certain things that those in smaller families lack, such as the constant presence of friends and companions. Perhaps more importantly, they have a sense of hope for the future, an optimism that I remember having as a child (though there were only three of us in my immediate family, I had many cousins, most of them close by) but that I find missing in too many children today. In the desire to provide children with everything that they “need,” too many parents today schedule every last moment of their children’s lives, unintentionally smothering the sparks of spontaneity and creativity and individuality. No parents of eight could have enough control over their children’s lives to do the same.
There is something more, too, something deeper and more lasting. Amy and I believe in our Catholic Faith, but our children simply naturally live it. Hope is a theological virtue, infused by grace, but such grace flows through our home in abundance. It is the duty of Christian parents to pass the Faith on to their children, and particularly of the father to model Christ for them. But seeing the love of our children for their brothers and sisters and the sacrifices that they make for one another sometimes puts me to shame.
I am no sentimental lover of childhood for childhood’s sake, but I love children (especially my own). The size of our family is no accident, nor is it a reflection of some selfish desire, but rather of faith, and of hope, and of love.
When I look at my children gathered around the table at night, I cannot help but think that God knew what He was doing when He told Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth, and subdue it.” If there is hope for our civilization, it lies in those who take His words to heart.
A commentator at Sailer’s blog writes of a recent episode of The Late Show that “9 out of 10 of the Marines on Letterman’s Top 10 were minorities, and half were women.”
I went out and found the video:
Although school prayer became illegal in the early 1960s, by 1990, 92 percent of Americans still identified with a major religion. Ten years later, only 86 percet did, making secularists the fastest growing group in America. According to a 2007 poll cited in the Washington Post, among those 18-22 one in four is atheist/agnostic/secular.
Among the opinion making class, the percentage of nonbelievers is most certainly at least a few times higher than it is in the general population. Nature abhors a vacuum, and we’ve seen that the diversity cult has grown at about the rate the traditional belief has been sinking. There was never an exact date when the Christian era ended and the diversity one began, but historians may use Obama’s election as the convenient dividing point between the two.
I was on a college campus during the Obama campaign, and something had changed. Supporting him and thus showing your openness to the other went from being one marker of social status among many to being the main thing dividing the enlightened and ignorant. To test my theory, I dug up another Letterman Top Ten list involving military personnel from before Obama’s victory so I could see the demographic composition.
In this video posted in April of 08, whites are 40 percent of the personnel instead of 10.
A white male still reads number one in both segments, for whatever it’s worth.
Although I was unable to find any videos to verify this, I would bet that ten members of the armed forces picked for a Letterman Top Ten list in the 1990s would’ve been majority white while such a skit from the 1980s would have had no more than one or two token blacks, if any.
Why couldn’t society have kept its Christian character while descending into ant-white insanity? I propose that it’s because adherence to one set of beliefs will often temper keeping up with the practices of another. Evangelical Christians don’t avoid being obsessed with diversity because their creed is incompatible with it, but because their minds are too focused on other measures of status and morality. After all, it takes a lot of thought and effort to find blacks, Hispanics and women in suitable numbers for every single public display an organization partakes in. Only people who have been stripped of all racial pride, sense of traditional morality and faith are desperate enough for some kind of meaning in life to bother with it.
Despite my best efforts to embrace all God’s creatures with my loving spirit, Jon and Kate Gosselin are impossible to esteem. I simply cannot understand why two people would ever contemplate having sextuplets. They say they were unable to select one embryo from the six their doctor created for them through in vitro fertilization. But why not? Did they actually want six babies at the same time? Did they imagine they were being unfair to the discarded embryos? Was it for some sort of guilt or religious fear? Were they hoping to use these children for shekels, and dare I say, stardom?
Whatever the reasons, they had eight kids, and decided to go on television. They sold their souls, and their children’s souls, in the process. We all know what happens to people who sell their souls now don’t we. But I wonder, have they figured it out yet? Or are they too stupid?
That these people have been shamelessly promoted by demonic trash hounds, who ought to rot in hell for their sins against humanity, is not entirely their fault (though, I am certain, they do little to curb the publicity the demonic trash hounds provide them with on TV and in print.) The Gosselins have become the most popular freak show around, and everyone has something to say about them. I recently read on Page Six that the Suzie Wong Sake Lounge is planning an “Anti-Gosselin” fundraiser for Planned Parenthood to make “a point of thinking of the victims, the children of their loveless marriage.”
Every day, there’s more news about that bloated bum calling himself a father, and his bank balance. When will it stop? The situation is totally egregious. The Gosselins should be out of the spotlight immediately. Someone must have the sense to help them out of this atrocious mess. Where is Dr Phil when he is needed?
Why isn’t there some sort of legislation limiting the number of babies one woman can have via in vitro fertilization? People concerned with the rights of unborn fetuses should be more concerned with the needs of children. No child could possibly get what he or she needs in a two parent family with seven other siblings. Oh yes, did I forget to mention the Gosselins already had twins. Since we’re on the subject, lets talk about that other monster, Octomom. She should have an orphanage instead of a womb. I wonder how Octomom and the Gosselins justify their actions simply because science allows them to. There are so many children waiting to be adopted. And,what kind of a world makes it impossible for homosexuals to adopt children when the alternative for these children is so much worse than the Birdcage? Furthermore, when did the ability to screw, or buy an embryo, make anyone fit to parent? I just don’t understand people sometimes. Fuck you I say to those righteous simpletons who haven’t the slightest clue when it come to being a good Christian.
Last Sunday evening, while I was watching the final minutes of the now famous Indianapolis Colts - New England Patriots football game, I experienced a moment of middle-aged serenity. I realized that I didn’t actually need to have an opinion on perhaps the leading topic of office water cooler debate in this decade: Which quarterback is better—the Colt’s Peyton Manning or the Patriot’s Tom Brady?
I could just sit back and enjoy the show.
You can, too, with these highlights.
The everlasting Brady-Manning controversy reminded me of an epistemological insight that Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker suggested when I interviewed him in 2002 during his book tour for his bestseller The Blank Slate
To put it another way, the things that we most like to argue about are those that are most inherently arguable, such as: Who would win in a fight, Tom Brady or Peyton Manning?
Sunday’s final score, 35-34, is symbolic of how comparable the two men’s achievements have been. Yet, their records are different enough to give each side strong arguments. Thus, we find fascinating each round of their ongoing duel.
The game’s outcome hinged upon the fingertips of each quarterback’s receivers. Manning beat Brady because on fourth down and two yards to go with 2:08 left on the clock, the Patriot’s Kevin Faulk momentarily bobbled Brady’s pass, costing the crucial first down. In contrast, with 13 seconds left, Reggie Wayne made a superb grab of Manning’s bullet pass for the Colt’s winning touchdown.
The next day, Wayne’s fingertip snag was forgotten in the hullabaloo over Patriot coach Bill Belichick’s decision not to punt on fourth down. As Vox Day sagely pointed out in Belichick’s defense, however, “I’d much rather bet on Brady than against Manning.”
As Pinker observed, this notion of the most evenly matched being the most interesting “seems to explain a number of paradoxes, such as why the pleasure of sports comes from your team winning, but there would be no pleasure in it at all if your team was guaranteed to win every time like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals.”
On the other hand, scientific knowledge is that which tends to become increasingly less arguable (which might help explain why Nielsen ratings are higher for football games than for chemistry documentaries).
Despite the intensive efforts that the two quarterbacks’ partisans have invested in arguing their respective cases over the years, it’s not clear that there are all that many larger lessons to be drawn from the Manning-Brady debate. If some disputant were to conclusively prove that one player is better, what would that teach us about, say, the optimum size for an NFL quarterback? Brady is listed at 6’4” and 225 pounds, while Manning is 6’5” and 230.
This doesn’t mean that these interminable debates are all sound and fury signifying nothing. Just because Brady and Manning have been (more or less) similarly excellent in the past doesn’t mean they will continue to be. Both could become free agents after next season. Tens of millions of dollars ride on forecasts of their future performance.
The most famous quarterbacking example of the importance of this kind of imponderable decision stems from 1998, when Manning entered the NFL draft out of the U. of Tennessee.
That year at work, I was on a task force choosing a new email system for our corporation. We quickly narrowed the plausible candidates down to the industry leading products from Microsoft and Lotus. At that point, though, decision-making bogged down for weeks. Years of competition had made the systems quite similar, except that one appeared to offer more upside while the other promised less downside. We indulged in many long Microsoft v. Lotus debates, but we couldn’t reach a consensus over which would prove better for our specific needs.
After awhile, I noticed that the newspaper debates over who should be picked first in the upcoming NFL draft were eerily similar to my corporate concerns. The consensus was that Manning was less risky, but that strong-armed Ryan Leaf of Washington State had more potential.
That there didn’t seem to be any terribly objective way to choose between the two quarterbacks afforded me a certain philosophical tranquility over our email travails: we had eliminated all the obvious bad decisions. Yet the football analogy offered no practical consolation because history suggested that though Manning and Leaf projected out as roughly equal, they probably wouldn’t turn out that way. Drafting pro quarterbacks is a troublesome business, with a wide variance in outcome. One of the players would likely become a star and the other a disappointment.
But which?
To move up merely from the third draft pick to the second in order to be assured of getting Leaf, the San Diego Chargers traded “two first-round picks, a second-round pick, reserve linebacker Patrick Sapp and three-time Pro Bowler Eric Metcalf.” Leaf’s career proved a debacle, as he finished with only 14 touchdown passes versus 36 interceptions. (Manning now has 353 touchdowns and 172 interceptions.)
Does that mean that quarterback performance in the NFL “can’t be predicted” as Malcolm Gladwell flatly asserted in The New Yorker? Blessed with the first pick, the Indianapolis management calmly settled on Peyton Manning, and—at least as of last report—remains satisfied with their decision. Not surprisingly, the data support Pinker’s statement in his New York Times review of Gladwell’s latest book, “It is simply not true that a quarter¬back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros.”
(In response to Pinker’s review, Gladwell wrote a letter to the Times pointing out that I engage in crimethink.)
Yet, if I were in charge of player personnel for all the NFL teams, Gladwell would no doubt be right about the futility of the draft in forecasting quarterback outcomes: I, personally, would have chosen Leaf over Manning.
As you may have noticed by now, I’m like that: clueless about most subjects that most people are most desperate to discuss. Who will win the Super Bowl? Will the stock market go up or down tomorrow? Will the health bill pass? Which party will win the next election?
Don’t ask me.
Those questions concern competitive institutions that are structured in ways that make their outcomes hard to foresee … and therefore captivating.
The NFL has become the top spectator sport in America in part by contriving its affairs so that the winner of the next Super Bowl is very much in doubt. (No NFL team is allowed to dominate financially, as the Yankees and Red Sox do in baseball; last year’s best teams get this year’s hardest schedules; and the worst draft first.)
Paradoxically, that means that my being profoundly ignorant about these concerns wouldn’t keep me from making quick predictions that would be almost as accurate as if I did nothing else but study the subject.
Who will win the Super Bowl? Well, two minutes on Google leads me to a betting site that says the New Orleans Saints are +360, while the Indianapolis Colts are +385. (I don’t even know what those numbers are supposed to mean.) Here’s another site that has the Colts at 3:1 and the Saints at 4:1, which at least I understand.
So, there you have my fearless forecast: the Saints will meet the Colts in the 2010 Super Bowl, and one of them will win.
You heard it here first.
If you want political predictions, I can check the Intrade market to see that … hey, what do you know? Sarah Palin, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty are neck and neck for the 2012 GOP nomination.
So, that’s my 2012 conjecture: taking a page from the late Roman Republic, the GOP will nominate Palin, Romney, and Pawlenty to run against Obama as a triumvirate.
Do you have a better guess?
I suppose I could obsessively study the political tealeaves to learn the minutia of upcoming elections (such as who this Pawlenty person might be). But how much would I be adding to the sum total of human wisdom?
Not much, I suspect. One thing the press does well is cover political horse races.
Instead, I’ve spent time studying other fields, such as the social science behind educational and economic achievement. That way I can generate a higher return on my investment by being able to make more accurate predictions than the conventional wisdom about the effects of crucial public policies such as immigration. (That’s my metaphorical ROI I’m talking about. My financial ROI? Eh …)
In contrast to more popular subjects, in which what you learn is as ephemeral as the mood of the Tennessee Titans, what I’ve learned about school test scores over the last 37 years doesn’t become quickly obsolete. For instance, Chinese students are still averaging higher math scores.
Moreover, it’s not a terribly competitive market niche I’ve selected, since many people don’t ever want to think about it, and get angry at those few of us who do. Others just find these huge swathes of the social sciences as boring and depressing as if I specialized in being a bookmaker on Globetrotter v. Generals games. (Krusty the Klown explained after losing his fortune on an imprudent bet, “I thought the Generals were due!”)
Still, as Pinker told me in 2002:
Q: Aren’t we all better off if people believe that we are not constrained by our biology and so can achieve any future we choose?
A: People are surely better off with the truth. Oddly enough, everyone agrees with this when it comes to the arts. Sophisticated people sneer at feel-good comedies and saccharine romances in which everyone lives happily ever after. But when it comes to science, these same people say, “Give us schmaltz!” They expect the science of human beings to be a source of emotional uplift and inspirational sermonizing.
Well, sure, but … Who do you think is better, Manning or Brady?
Another of the media’s enforcers of Acceptable Opinion was unleashed the other day, this one at the Huffington Post. There Sam Stein exposed the terrible extremists—including Tom Woods, Charles Goyette, and Thomas Naylor, the three I focus on here—who have been featured on the Glenn Beck television program. I’m not a big fan of Beck myself, but the people HuffPo chooses to single out for its Two Minutes Hate tell us all we need to know about approved (and disapproved) opinion in America.
First, Stein introduces us to Thomas Naylor, a man of the Left who learns that even leftists are dangerous “extremists” so long as they support political decentralization. Naylor, a 72-year-old professor emeritus of economics at Duke University, runs the Second Vermont Republic, which takes the position that the United States has grown so large as to be politically and socially dysfunctional. Politics needs to be returned to a human scale, he argues, and in his mind that includes an independent Vermont.
To a normal person, that’s a debatable, if infrequently considered, question. To an automaton who enforces Acceptable Opinion, it’s grounds for burning the heretic.
Now how about actually letting Naylor speak for himself? He recently wrote:
We have slept through the annihilation of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, a war with Islam, the rendition of terrorist suspects, prisoner abuse and torture, the suppression of civil liberties, citizen surveillance, corporate greed, pandering to the rich and powerful, global warming, full spectrum dominance, imperial overstretch, and a culture of deceit. Massive military spending, multi-trillion dollar deficits and Wall Street bailouts, mounting trade deficits, and a precipitous decline in the value of the dollar have gone virtually unnoticed.
During our long period of slumber the United States government has lost its moral authority. It is owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street and Corporate America. The United States has become ungovernable, unfixable, and, therefore, unsustainable economically, politically, militarily, and environmentally. It has evolved into the wealthiest, most powerful, most materialistic, most racist, most militaristic, most violent empire of all times.
Sammy, just so we can all be sure we’re saying precisely the things you and the other Enforcers would like us to say, can you explain to us exactly why this opinion is to be forbidden?
We will never receive an answer to that question. It is not the job of the Enforcer to answer questions. It is only his job to enforce. And according to the bloggers who have picked up on Sammy’s story, the exceedingly kind and gentlemanly Thomas Naylor, whom they do not know the first thing about, is hateful for refusing to believe we live in the best of all political worlds.
Not Sam Stein, though. Stein, who smears a 72-year-old retired college professor who never uttered a hateful word in his life, is full of nothing but love, baby.
Then it’s on to Tom Woods, who is normally attacked in this kind of context on the grounds that he once went to an event at which some guy in the bathroom was on the phone with his cousin who said something offensive. It’s crazy and “radical” for Woods to claim there really wasn’t a “Civil War,” says Stein, and to argue that more inflammatory names for that war are, strictly speaking, more historically accurate.
Naturally, Stein makes no attempt to explain what Woods means. Enforcers don’t explain. They enforce.
Woods’ simple point is that if a Civil War involves two or more parties engaged in a contest over control of the same government, then the American Civil War was no such thing. Even Sam should be able to understand that.
The other, related problem with Woods—and yes, his entire career is indeed summed up in a couple of unexplained, out-of-context sentences—is that the conclusions he draws about that war are not of the customary angels-and-devils variety. There is, I trust I need not remind the reader, but one acceptable interpretation of American history, in which the learned experts at the Huffington Post will instruct us until the end of time.
The Internet is the great equalizer, though, and any fair-minded person can find out about Tom Woods for himself. This bio doesn’t really sound like the person being described at HuffPo, does it? Lots of “extremists” (whatever that means) getting reviews like these? How about the antiwar anthology
How about Woods’s treatment of Lysander Spooner’s antislavery interpretation of the Constitution? How does that square with Stein’s absurd version of things? Or how about this essay?
Then there’s the slight problem with Stein’s smear of Woods—who, it is insinuated but not directly stated, is probably racially insensitive—that most white supremacists don’t have black godchildren.
But the Enforcer doesn’t like complicating factors. Woods bad.
My favorite attack is the one on radio host and author
Um, Sam, no one (and I include here the majority of the American people who, like me, do not describe themselves as “truthers”) thinks the government has told us the whole 9/11 story. But good for you—how refreshing to encounter a progressive with such confidence in George W. Bush and our elected leaders! Why, they’d never withhold information from the people. I mean, Dick Cheney, withhold information?
So those four words are why we should never, ever listen to a word that radio veteran Goyette says. Here, on the other hand, is what a normal person would have noticed and reported about Charles Goyette: five years ago he was dumped from the Clear Channel radio network for his opposition to the war in Iraq. They expected their right-of-center hosts to toe the so-called right-wing line. He refused, and lost his job.
That’s kind of interesting, isn’t it? To a normal person, yes. But we’re talking about Sam Stein the Automaton here. What you find interesting, he just finds distracting. To him, one phrase Goyette uttered on one program—surely you haven’t already forgotten those awful, unforgivable four words!—over the course of years in radio is pretty much all you need to know. Disclosing Goyette’s antiwar stand that cost him his job would only confuse Sammy’s delicate readers at the Huffington Post, who need their character assassination in the simplest comic-book style—Goyette bad.
Here’s Stein’s problem, and motivation. The decentralist ideas, including state nullification of federal laws, that these people promote are on the march. There is no doubt about that. State nullification of federal laws, in the Jeffersonian tradition, is being openly discussed—and carried out—once again. Right now it is the job of the Sam Steins of the world, who do not want us entertaining such unauthorized thoughts, to start throwing things. His stupid and libelous article is an example.
But mark my words: within five years nullification will be a regular feature of American life. We’ve already seen dozens of states nullifying federal legislation pertaining to various aspects of civil liberties. That’s only going to grow, what with increasing frustration among Americans regarding the one-party regime that rules them: no matter who gets elected, it’s the same bailouts, the same police state, the same spending, and the same wars. Add to that the growing realization that nothing else has worked, and you will start to see Americans looking to other methods.
This is absolutely forbidden, from Sam Stein’s point of view. Sam Stein wants us to carry on with all the ineffectual things we’ve tried for decades now. That’s the way he likes it. Anyone proposing anything different can expect the Enforcer routine: He’s an extremist! Avert your eyes, citizens!
Sam, it isn’t going to work. No one cares about your opinion. If HuffPo dismisses someone as an extremist, normal Americans consider it a badge of honor.
Note that no neoconservatives are attacked in the Stein piece. So it’s all right, or at least within the range of acceptable opinion, to favor (as many neocons do, some quite vocally) preemptive war, the deliberate targeting of civilian areas, lying to the population to win their support for war, and the killing of at least hundreds of thousands of innocents while displacing millions more. That’s all right.
On the other hand, people who oppose all these things on moral grounds, but who believe that a system in which the perpetrators of these atrocities enjoy monopolistic control of all political decisions for 300 million people might not be the most humane form of social organization—now these people need to be smeared.
Surprise us, Sammy, and write us a column someday whose every thought we couldn’t predict in advance. I bet you can’t, and I’m sure you won’t. What would an Enforcer of Acceptable Opinion be without exquisitely conventional opinions?
As usual, peel a so-called progressive and what do you find? Another dime-a-dozen automaton shilling for the regime.
This past weekend, a friend of mine recounted a visit he paid to his wife’s family in Arkansas around the time McCain had scheduled his much-awaited announcement of who his running-mate would be. Watching the coverage on TV, my friend was struck by just how quickly his Southern in-laws empathized with the then-unknown governor of Alaska. She was their gal, even though they weren’t yet sure how to pronounce her last name.
Sarah Palin is, put simply, the goddess of implicit whiteness. She represents the “Real America” as it’s understood, most often tacitly, by the founding stock of the country from Juno, Alaska, to Jasper, Texas. This is, of course, a dangerous thing in many ways, for so far her powers have been used to mobilize white Christian support for John McCain. But even the man who think he’s Palin’s handler and eminence grise must realize that the woman represents a force he cannot totally control, and that someday she might really “go rogue,” as it were.
Or maybe not. No one as of yet has been able to capture her inner personality. And I certainly haven’t learned anything watching her recent television interviews, in which Oprah and Barbara have been fishing for headline quotes about how mad she was at McCain for not letting her make a concession speech yadayadayada... My guess is that Sarah is probably a profound narcissist, most beauty pageant contestants are, but then she also has a flexibility and openness of mind that allows her to embrace, at one time or another, Buchananism, Zionism, Kenyan anti-witchcraft, and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle.
I should read her book
From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.
“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.
Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”
I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?
Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”
Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.
“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.”
Don’t you love how Palinese translates to the page! What I also find interesting is that while the media would depict the McCain camp as a mean old gathering of cantankerous blackshirts, in reality it was staffed by third-wave feminists who made Oprah-style evocations of female solidarity and you-go-girl spirit. According to Wallace, it was a good idea to be interviewed by Katie because “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom”; “She just has such low self-esteem”; “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.” All that was lacking was my favorite therapy cliché, “Katie’s in a bad place right now.”
As we know, the interview turned into a catastrophe, with Katie questioning Sarah in a cold, contemptuous, almost sarcastic manner that made the governor produce responses that were even more convoluted than usual. Working-mom solidarity was easily trumped by Katie’s snootiness towards a non-east coast, pro-life Christian. In many ways, Wallace reminds me a lot of Marcia Clark, the prosecuting attorney in the OJ Simpson trial who worked hard to select a mostly female jury, hoping that women would empathize with Nicole Brown Simpson and lock up the abusive OJ. The sly Jonny Cochrian went along with the scheme, but made sure that they were all black women. The final composition was 10 women, 2 men; 9 blacks, 1 hispanic, and 2 whites. As it turns out, the battle between “sisterhood” and black racial ideology is no contest.
And as Katie’s interview with Sarah shows, women are meaner, pettier, more jealous and unfair around other women than they are around men.
But then, this isn’t exactly a shocking revelation for anyone who’s ever attended high school.
One easily forgets how innocent those pretty young things really are… They are so good at having us believe they are experienced. Most men manage to resist the temptation of going after a ingénue, of course, but others, like the decadent and indecent Humbert Humbert and Roman Polanski, simply can’t. An Education, Lynn Barber’s memoir about growing up in 1960s London, is a classic story of innocence lost. A coquettish girl. A broken man. A lesson for all young women and would-be second-handers. Part of the journalist’s memoir was adapted for the screen by the illustrious Nick Hornby, and the BBC film is directed by Lone Sherfig, a Danish woman with only one other English language flick to her credit and experience outside the mainstream.
The lecher is played to skin-crawling perfection by Peter Sarsgaard, a young American actor with an eerie resemblance to John Malkovich. His character, David, spots wide-eyed Jenny waiting for the bus in the rain. Immediately, he does his best to assure her he is trustworthy: he shows off his wealth. For any young girls reading out there, this is the first sign of a cheat. If he’s rich, he must be decent. Au contraire ma cher, pas du tout! Jenny dazzles David with her knowledge of music, art, and her good French, and he, in turn, draws her out of her boring life in Twickenham, showing her a spot of fun and adventure.
Carey Mulligan is absolutely irresistible as 16-year-old Jenny, a star pupil. Her father, played by Alfred Molina, is a fearful man who does his best to protect her. But, he, too, falls victim to David’s lies and manipulations, as well as to his own bourgeois mentality. (Molina’s Jack is always launching into moralizing tirades, which are amusing at first but go on much too long; thankfully, piety is trumped and Molina’s relents after a while.) Alongside her dad, Jenny struggles against the patriarchal paradigm that somehow, even now, stunts so many men and women.
We all know that education is important, but the “education” of the movie’s title isn’t academic and cultural but one that, unfortunately for most, can only be acquired from humbling and painful experiences.
Jenny’s best ally in the film is her teacher, played by Olivia Williams, who also played the teacher and object of desire in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore. Though in this film, she is not the love object, but the one who lives an enviably independent life. Her character is so very English, but Williams’s performance is too severe. And why would the director choose to down play her good looks? On the other hand, Emma Thompson, who appears in a few short scenes, is excellent portraying the elegant but humorless headmistress.
Jenny is exceptionally clever and quick to question her teachers. But in reality, no quick-witted teenager could ever dream of challenging a grown up so articulately. Perhaps Hornby is too eager here to write what many of us would liked to have said to our own teachers. Nevertheless, the scenes between Jenny and her instructors don’t cease to be engaging. On the contrary, they are the most accurate and interesting moments in the film because they show how a young woman, with the sweet taste of freedom in her mouth, acts to take charge of herself.
By the time David is exposed as a lying cheat, Jenny is forced to reckon with the consequences of her naiveté. She goes to see David’s partners in crime, played by Matthew Beard and Rosamund Pike. Beard’s character, Graham, points out that Jenny chose to ignore the signs that David was no good—forcing Jenny to be as critical with herself as she is with her teachers. Graham is tortured by his own complicity and complexity. And Pike’s performance as the dumb blonde girlfriend is absolutely brilliant, glamorous, and, ironically, witty. With such good writing, it would be tough not to be.
The picture itself is visually enticing. The styles and mores of 1960s London compliment the story well. The production designer, Andrew McAlpine, who won a BAFTA for his work on The Piano, has what the principal characters in the film have: a cultivated sense of taste. Indeed, the costumes and props make one long for another time. It seems that even the poor of the mid-20th century were more distinguished than the average person today. It’s too bad a typical movie-goer probably won’t get much of an education in style from their 10 buck movie ticket. Nevertheless, Barber and Hornby get it right in this well-presented and upbeat coming-of-age romp.
Are we at war—or not?
For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?
Is it possible we have done an injustice to this man by keeping him locked up all these years without trial? For that is what this trial implies—that he may not be guilty.
And if we must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that KSM was complicit in mass murder, by what right do we send Predators and Special Forces to kill his al-Qaida comrades wherever we find them? For none of them has been granted a fair trial.
When the Justice Department sets up a task force to wage war on a crime organization like the Mafia or MS-13, no U.S. official has a right to shoot Mafia or gang members on sight. No one has a right to bomb their homes. No one has a right to regard the possible death of their wives and children in an attack as acceptable collateral damage.
Yet that is what we do to al-Qaida, to which KSM belongs.
We conduct those strikes in good conscience because we believe we are at war. But if we are at war, what is KSM doing in a U.S. court?
Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.
When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.
Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.
When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?
When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Ft. McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?
Is the Obama administration aware of what it is risking by not turning KSM over to a military tribunal in Guantanamo?
How does Justice handle a defense demand for a change of venue, far from lower Manhattan, where the jury pool was most deeply traumatized by Sept. 11? Would not KSM and his co-defendants, if a change of venue is denied, have a powerful argument for overturning any conviction on appeal?
Were not KSM’s Miranda rights impinged when he was not only not told he could have a lawyer on capture, but that his family would be killed and he would be water-boarded if he refused to talk?
And if all the evidence against the five defendants comes from other than their own testimony under duress, do not their lawyers have a right to know when, where, how and from whom Justice got the evidence to prosecute them? Does KSM have the right to confront all witnesses against him, even if they are al-Qaida turncoats or U.S. spies still transmitting information to U.S. intelligence?
There have been reports that in the trials of those convicted in the first World Trade Center bombing, sources and methods were compromised, weakening our security for the second attack on Sept. 11.
If the trial is held in lower Manhattan, how much security will be needed to protect against a car bomber who wants the world to see a mighty blow struck against the Great Satan? And if, as some suggest, the trial should be held on Governor’s Island, would that not make the United States look like a nation under siege?
What do we do if the case against KSM is thrown out because the government refuses to reveal sources or methods, or if he gets a hung jury, or is acquitted, or has his conviction overturned?
In America, trials often become games, where the prosecution, though it has truth on its side, loses because it inadvertently breaks one of the rules.
The Obamaites had best pray that does not happen, for they may be betting his presidency on the outcome of the game about to begin.
Following years of wilting revenue and waning stature, Playboy is rumored to be on the chopping block. Known for its centerfolds, its on-again, off-again status as both public menace and free speech icon, and the well-worn joke about it being popular for its articles (which have often exceeded the quality of supposedly respectable publications. Remember that Playboy once published folks like Wodehouse, Nabokov, and Lenny Bruce), the magazine has been in the news following discussions about it potentially passing into new hands.
Deal or no deal, one has to marvel that the magazine even remains in existence. With all the free, easily accessed Internet naughtiness out there, I can’t understand how Playboy is still drawing breath. The days of centerfolds transitioning into greater fame seem quaint and yellowed, and the last time the magazine snagged a buzzworthy celeb, she was a literal blue hair.
Perhaps cultural conservatives should take solace from the fact that there are still fuddy-duddies who need their smut classed up a bit. Maybe it is a good sign that Playboy didn’t immediately fold amidst the onslaught of gratis, more hardcore fare. The survival of a guilty pleasure that actually does have articles and emphasizes frivolity over creepiness may even be a harbinger of tradition making a comeback. Besides, attending a party at the Barely Legal Mansion just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
In today’s peeping tom media maelstrom, even Hef himself comes off a tad old-fashioned. In the end, his real legacy might not be his bathrobe, but his pipe.
When alleged killer Nidal Malik Hasan went on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood Texas last week, the Muslim Army psychiatrist reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” which means “god is great” as he shot his victims. Speaking about the shootings on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Gen. George Casey said “What happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even-greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.” Casey is not only wrong, but the Fort Hood tragedy was a direct result of our egregious commitment to the concept of diversity.
The United States has many bizarre policies, but perhaps the two worst are what some have dubbed “invade the world, invite the world.” We invade and occupy countries to impose American values on people who do not want them and then we invite these people into our country via mass immigration. We bomb people and expect them to love us, and when they arrive on our shores we are often shocked to learn they don’t.
The Washington Post reports that “The Hasan family was large and had deep roots in Roanoke Valley.” Hasan might be a religious military man born and bred in Virginia, but Robert E. Lee he is not. Writes Chronicles Magazine editor Thomas Fleming, “So in the world of The Washington Post, immigrants to the US have ‘deep roots’ wherever they choose to settle. Hassan’s family had deep roots in Palestine…” Fleming is right, and not surprisingly it has been reported that Hasan often told others that his first allegiance was to his Islamic faith, not his American identity.
Mainstream conservatives who believe there exists a religious dimension to Islamic terrorism are correct, but are fools when they ignore the glaringly obvious motivating factor of US foreign interventionism. Does anyone really believe that if the US was not in Iraq and Afghanistan-something Nadal complained about constantly-he would have gone on his rampage? Like Osama Bin Laden, Al-Quada and the 9/11 hijackers, without massive US presence in Muslim nations, Nadal the Islamist would have had much less inspiration to commit murder.
Liberals who believe Islamic terrorism is mostly due to US occupation of Muslim nations are correct, but foolish to believe there does not exist a religious dimension. As Great Britain, France, the Netherlands and other European nations are now learning the hard way; Islam en masse is simply incompatible with the West in so many uniquely frustrating ways that is not true of other cultures and religions.
All cultures or religions are not equal, and while it should be none of America’s business how the rest of the world conducts its business, we should be the sole arbiters of how we conduct our own. That the US did not drastically cut back on immigration from Muslim nations in the weeks and months after 9/11 was indicative of just how deeply multicultural philosophy has corrupted our better senses. Even worse, that a follower of Islam could remain in the US Army while telling anyone who would listen that he had effectively joined the other side, shows that political correctness has pretty much erased our common sense altogether.
When Gen. Casey says, with a straight face, that “it would be an even-greater tragedy” than Fort Hood “if our diversity becomes a casualty” his stubborn multicultural outlook reflects a prevailing, establishment PC orthodoxy that virtually insures future tragedies. Rightly notes Taki’s Magazine editor Richard Spencer: “That Hasan acted according to his faith… must be obvious to everyone whose brains haven’t yet been rotted out by PC.”
Saying Islamic terrorists just “hate our freedom,” is a childish and dangerous fantasy that has already led to thousands of deaths, both American and foreign. Saying Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam is a fantasy that is just as childish and just as dangerous, which led to the deaths of 13 innocent victims in Fort Hood last week. Nidal Malik Hasan may have been a soldier for the US, but in a sane world, his outspoken, admitted preference to be a soldier for Allah would have gotten him immediately thrown out of the Army. Unfortunately, “diversity” prevailed, and according to Gen. Casey, will continue to prevail, as the “war on terror” continues to create more terrorists, and multicultural ideology promises to harbor them—both domestic and abroad.
NEW YORK—At an outdoor luncheon party in Sussex celebrating Willy Shawcross’s birthday some years ago, I asked his then 95-year-old father whom did he find the most interesting man at Nuremberg. “Goring,” was the monosyllabic reply. “I mean from both sides,” I said. “Goring,” said Lord Shawcross. He later told me how the Nazi would catch the American prosecutor Jackson in some howler, correct him, then smile at Shawcross who had trouble not smiling back. I saw a lot of William last week here in the Bagel, as he is over for his book on the Queen Mother
What fools Americans are. Almost as foolish as the Brits, that is. Immigration will bring both countries down, and for proof all one has to do is look at the reaction of Obama and of Beltway insiders to the massacre down in Texas. Unwilling to use the words Islamic terrorist, the Afro-American via Hawaii warned us not to rush to judgment. Here’s a Muslim fanatic known as a fan of suicide bombers and as an opponent to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the bum in the White House asks us not to call a spade a spade, pun intended. But imagine if the massacre at Fort Hood had taken place at a mosque in Detroit, or in Londonistan for that matter, carried out by some harassed Christian. The country would shut down in mourning and make the post-Diana death period seem like a jamboree. Instead, we’ll now hear and read a lot about the harassment Hasan suffered as the media toe the line laid down by the vile New York Times: The mass murderer had been made fun of and he snapped. The Times does not differ greatly from Youssef al-Khattab, a revolutionary imam from Queens, right across the bridge from me, who declared, “An officer and a gentleman was injured while partaking in a preemptive attack. Get well soon, Major Hasan.”
Let’s get real on this. Radical Muslims believe that killing infidels—us—is honky dory, and many black prisoners in American jails have converted to radical Islam. Mosques in Britain do not exactly preach turning the other cheek, yet our leaders are pussyfooting and refuse to pass Draconian laws against these vermin. I once wrote here that the only man I know of that entered Parliament with true intentions was Guy Fawkes, and that still goes. Maggie was the only woman. I’m thinking of that shortstop Cameron. A shortstop is a baseball position between third and second base, but in Brooklynese it means someone you can’t count on, a man who will welsch on a debt, a Tony Blair. Yet here we are about to elect Cameron, a man who shirks his duty to protect Britain’s rights by accepting the transfer of power to Brussels. Blair did us in for profit. Cameron’s jib is cut from the same cloth. These people take us for fools because we are fools. I once had an interesting discussion with some Belgian diplomats while dining at my friend Baron Lambert’s house. Philippe Lambert is a gent of the old school as were his diplomat friends. When I praised King Leopold for not playing Britain’s game and remaining in Belgium under German occupation, they poo-pooed my argument in the manner a grandfather ignores the pleas of a five-year-old for more candy. Now, now, young Taki, don’t speak about things you know so little about. In 1984 a book written by an English admiral justified Leopold’s conduct and exposed Churchill’s vindictiveness toward someone who had dared put his people first by disobeying him.
Today’s bunch in Brussels has nothing in common with the polite people I argued with, except the attitude is the same. British people have to be shown the right way because we know better. The fact that the Belgians, Dutch, French and Germans are about to lose their countries to Islamists is immaterial. Follow the leader is the name of the game, and Cameron is playing along. We need a Guy or a Maggie. The last thing we need is a Dave.
As America debates whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, in the ninth year of a war for ends we cannot discern, a riveting new history recalls times when Americans fought for vital national interests.
A Country of Vast Designs: James K. Polk, the Mexican War and the Conquest of the American Continent
As Merry relates, the problem is not with “Young Hickory,” the protege of Andrew Jackson, but with historians who ever allow political correctness to blind them to true greatness.
The Mexican War was as just a war as we have ever fought.
In 1836 at San Jacinto, Sam Houston had won the independence of Texas with his defeat of Santa Anna, butcher of the Alamo and Goliad. In eight years, Mexico had not tried to recapture Texas. For eight years, Houston and Texas had sought admission to the Union.
In 1844, Polk, twice defeated for governor of Tennessee, was seeking the Democratic vice presidential nomination on a ticket with ex-President Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s vice president.
But when the issue of annexation of Texas caught fire in the country, Van Buren opposed it, losing his patron Jackson. Polk rode the Texas issue to victory in Baltimore as the “dark horse” in the most dramatic convention in history. His opponent that November, the Whig Henry Clay, running a third time, was also fatally wrong on Texas.
Lame-duck president John Tyler, however, stole a march on Polk by annexing Texas by joint resolution of Congress.
But where was the southern border of Texas?
Santa Anna had signed Texas away to the Rio Grande. Mexico said the border was the Nueces River, far to the north. In dispute were thousands of square miles. To enforce America’s claim, Polk sent Gen. Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande.
A Mexican army arrived on the south bank, and an American patrol, north of the Rio Grande, was ambushed and cut to pieces by Mexican troops. When word reached Washington, Polk sent Congress a message: “The cup of forbearance” has “been exhausted.”
Congress voted a near-unanimous declaration of war.
And as ever in wartime, bold men rise to immortality.
Col. Stephen Kearny set out from Kansas with 1,500 troops, marched to Santa Fe, claimed New Mexico for the Union and, with 300 dragoons, rode on to Los Angeles, into a clash with Capt. John C. Fremont, son-in-law of Polk’s mighty Senate ally, Thomas Hart Benton.
Zachary Taylor, “Old Rough and Ready,” routed Santa Anna at Buena Vista in a victory that would make this Whig general Polk’s successor as president. Bayoneted to death at Buena Vista had been the young hero Henry Clay Jr. His father had bitterly opposed the war.
To Gen. Winfield Scott, Polk gave command of an army that was to land at Veracruz and take the path of Cortez to the capital to dictate terms if Mexican diehards rejected a negotiated peace.
Leading an invasion force half the size of the defending army, Scott never lost a battle on his six-month march to Mexico City. The Duke of Wellington called Scott the world’s “greatest living soldier” and said his campaign “was unsurpassed in military annals.”
Riding with Scott’s army was Polk’s agent, Nicholas Trist, who would bring home a triumph rivaled only by the Louisiana Purchase. Trist was the chief clerk of the State Department under that devious secretary of state and future president James Buchanan, who ever had his eyes on the prize.
Given specific instructions by Polk on what he could offer Mexico, the cantankerous Trist ran afoul first of Scott, then of Polk, who ordered him recalled.
But Trist rode on to Mexico City, reconciled with Scott, seized the opportunity of a peace party in power, negotiated the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, came home and was sacked.
But under Trist’s treaty, Mexico had agreed to the Rio Grande as the Texas border, ceded all of New Mexico, which included half a dozen future American states, and signed away California, for $15 million and forgiveness of Mexico’s debts.
The renegade envoy had come home with half of Mexico. They ought to rename the State Department for this great American.
Some urged Polk to break his pledge and run again. He refused. He had done what he came to do: annex all of Texas, acquire California and settle the Oregon Territory dispute with Great Britain on terms favorable to the United States.
Polk went home to Tennessee and, in 100 days, was dead.
He lacked the character of Washington, the brilliance of Jefferson, the charisma of Jackson, but James K. Polk belongs with the immortals. None gave more or did more for America. Bob Merry has made a major contribution to historical truth and written one splendid book.
Alright, you win. Reading all these blogs, I can’t avoid the subject of fist-pumping Heavy Metal any longer. A metaller since the tender age of 13 (coincidence?), I’ve been worshipping the gods of rock’n’roll even longer. But, don’t worry, that doesn’t stop me from being a proud Orthodox Christian.
I’ll use my seasoned veteran status in an attempt to explain why this seemingly unorthodox subject keeps returning to Takimag. In fact, I’ll use it shamelessly, because I don’t believe that these recent pieces did a particularly good job justifying the importance of Heavy Metal to an uninformed audience.
Love it or hate it, Metal has been contributing to a European cultural revival of sorts. This focus on the West, including (gasp!) the classics, makes this genre’s youthful demographic—the largest constituent group of fans is, indeed, in their late teens and 20s—an asset. You and I both know what kind of culture, or lack thereof, youth is normally subjected to at academic institutions and through popular media.
Speaking of which, it is the North American media that largely bears the responsibility for your negative perception of heavy metal. Individual exceptions notwithstanding, metal is depicted in the States as a sex-drugs-and-rock’n’roll genre that peaked during the exuberant 1980s and then pretty much died. The only scholars of the genre are Wayne Campbell and Garth Algar of Aurora, Illinois.
By contrast, European popular culture acknowledges that metal, with its multivalent genres and intellectual themes, is alive and well (and not necessarily in hell, either, officially.) Take Dimmu Borgir’s and Enslaved’s wins at Norwegian Grammys, for example. This broad cultural acceptance is the reason why dozens of European, particularly German, metal festivals offer something for everyone: middle-of-nowhere underground events with a couple a hundred people, the ones I prefer, like United Metal Maniacs, and mainstream ones like Wacken, with tens of thousands in attendance.
What attracts all these people to heavy metal? The beer? The rocking out? The girls dressed in black leather? All of the above. But recently sociologists have revealed a few surprising facts about metalheads, at least with regard to the European scene. In Hard rock, heavy metal, metal. Histoire, cultures et pratiquants, for example, Fabien Hein writes that a significant percentage of metal fans are not the “Beavis and Butthead” types, but rather successful people who pursues post-secondary education and beyond. Of course, I don’t need a professional researcher to tell me how many of my friends and acquaintances all over the world manage to combine day jobs and/or college with bands, sometimes fairly well known ones.
In addition to the social aspects of heavy metal, its fans are, of course, consuming the product of creative autonomy. There are certainly well known bands like Nuclear Blast (though it would be a stretch to compare them to popular music giants.) However, self-produced, self-distributed works have always comprised a significant component of this subculture, which largely functions on the word of mouth. More importantly, this autonomy lets metal bands—the worthy ones—delve into a variety of forbidden subjects both lyrically and musically, whatever their dark hearts desire!
And what they desire often happens to be European cultural survivalism. For example, Norway’s Kampfar, the Iceland’s and Germany’s Falkenbach, and Russia’s Temnozor write about ancient pagan pride, Nordic and Slavic, respectively. You may be turned off by the fact that many of such bands are either anti-Christian or, at least, pagan. However, this direction is always and necessarily linked to indigenous European traditions. “It’s been more than a thousand years, but still I am proud, still I am Norse,” in Kampfar’s case. There are certain exceptions, like the Christian band Horde. More important, these musicians inspire a general interest in the Death of the West. Canada’s Thesyre, for example, advocates against the “welfare state protect[ing] the weak” in order to “save our culture and heritage.”
What I find more worthwhile and an intellectual step above local European mythologies is the fact that certain bands “cover” literary classics: Britain’s Iron Maiden has done Tennyson’s and Coleridge’s poetry, Norway’s Ulver, Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Australia’s Destroyer 666, various Nietzsche works, and Russia’s Aria, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, to name just a few. Have you ever stood in a large concert crowd which chanted direct quotations from such works? It’s a powerful experience. Many fans, particularly younger ones, admitted to me that they would not have shown an active interest in pursuing literature if it were not for their favorite band.
Is it really a surprise that heavy metal is popular gateway to classical music as well? Finland’s Alexi Laiho shreds Vivaldi, while his mentor of sorts, Sweden’s Yngwie Malmsteen, “does his thing” with a bouquet of Classics. Good American boys aren’t exempt from this phenomenon either: how about Jason Becker and Paganini? And neither are girls: Beethoven meets jaw-dropping Great Kat.
Metal is so Eurocentric that even Japanese bands pride themselves on emulating old-school German thrash. And others like to sing about Russians and Germans in World War II. In fact, when I was in Japan this year, I wanted to hear all about “German power!...Russian power!” so much that I caught Sex Machineguns’ performance in Morioka, Japan. And just like the band’s leader Anchang, “I believe heavy metal power”!
With all this talk of Black Metal, I hope we don’t lose sight of another truly conservative popular art form.
Note that Steve Sailer’s new book
When I was growing up, there was a grave perception that Japan was going to conquer the world. Not with bombs, but with its thought to be unstoppable economy. Then the Nikkei popped, Japanese property values curtsied to the ground, and the country entered its Lost Decade(s). Suddenly, Japan didn’t seem so formidable, and the idea of a Mothra-like economic threat from the East subsided.
Then came the noughties and China’s real leap forward. Now the Middle Kingdom is probably more feared than Japan ever was, not only due to its manufacturing muscle and huge population; but also thanks to its massive holdings of U.S. debt.
Last week Ambrose Evans-Pritchard made the case that Japan may actually be a bigger global risk right now than Uncle Sam. The problem is Japan’s ability to keep managing its preternatural debt levels. The fear is that it would only take a modest rise in Japanese bond yields to incapacitate Japan’s debt servicing and send the nation over the brink.
How might Japan raise funds to fight this off? If they try raising taxes, the horror film scenario is that their aging citizens would then sell their JGBs, forcing bond yields even higher and making Japan’s debt problem all the more calamitous. This could affect Japan’s ability to keep giving America loans to nowhere and leave us in our own debt service abyss.
All decade long we’ve been hearing that China was about to “foreclose on America.” How many times has the specter of China pulling the plug on our debt and sending us back to the Stone Age been invoked? Who would have guessed that Japan might be the U.S. creditor to blink first, not because of some maniacal strategy, but because of, well, a lack of strategy. How perverse would it be if the long forgotten fear of a Japanese takeover of the global economy finally did come to pass, only in the absolute wrong direction. There is a lesson here that America has refused to learn for itself, so it may be up to the Japanese to learn it for us. Deficits do matter.
The recent discussion of the intellectual depth (or lack thereof) of heavy metal music gives me the excuse to do something I always enjoy doing, referring to the great Canadian comedy troop of SCTV. In 1983, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, and the late John Candy took on another genre of popular music that has garnered academic attention, British punk music. The result was the Queenhaters performing “I Hate the Bloody Queen,” a song which the editors of Reason magazine could sing with relish, since it both decries taxes and praises marijuana. Those who are interested in watching this fine example of satire may do so here.
Can I milk another column out of Mad Men?
Why not?
Matthew Weiner’s show about Madison Avenue in the early 1960s is so meticulously detailed that it’s worth using it as a spur to consider what has and hasn’t changed in the Zeitgeist over the last half century.
• The overall impression Mad Men gives of 1960 is that of a less crowded, less expensive world before we swarming hordes of Baby Boomers escaped our playpens and ruined everything.
• In a fecund era, when most families had heirs and spares to spare (the Total Fertility Rate peaked in 1957 at 3.77 children per woman per lifetime), kids could have more fun and parents weren’t as obsessive about safety. Thus, they didn’t bother to lock their kids down into car seats.
Don Draper’s small daughter happily plays astronaut by wearing a transparent dry-cleaning bag over her head, and her mother merely admonishes her for knocking her garments on the floor. (The dry-cleaning bag joke, however, is a slight anachronism: In the late 1950s the plastics industry has already started its public service campaign to terrify kids about the plastic bag peril, a fear that forms one of my wife’s most vivid memories of her childhood.)
• Don Draper, we learn, is 36-years-old. The male protagonists of movies and TV shows are usually described as being about 35. Indeed, 36 is more common than 34, which audiences evidently find rather callow for a leading man.
• In 1960, however, there weren’t actually a lot of 20something babes throwing themselves at guys born in the 1920s, even ones as handsome as Don Draper, because there just weren’t that many babies born in the 1930s. There were 2.95 million live births in America in 1925, but only 2.38 million in 1935. Because supply and demand favored younger women, they were picky.
The real sex mismatch happened with the sexual revolution in the later 1960s, when a flood of Baby Boom babes born from 1946 onward came on the mating market and immediately set about stealing prosperous husbands away from their wives.
• People had deeper voices in 1960 from smoking so much. And not just the men. In a mid-1960s article, Tom Wolfe describes the voices of The Ladies Who Lunch as:
the dah-ling voice, a languid weak baritone, not a man’s voice, you understand, but a woman’s, The New York Social Baritone, like that of a forty-eight-year-old male dwarf who just woke up after smoking three packs of Camels the day before…
• Another theme of the show is the luxury—the privacy, the irresponsibility—of not being expected to carry a cell phone everywhere. In one episode, Don Draper sneaks out to a foreign movie during business hours (hey, his job as Creative Director requires him to stay hep). When he gets in trouble for missing a meeting, he dismisses his new secretary back to the switchboard for failing to artfully cover for him while he was at the art film.
• Something that Mad Men misses is that in the mid-20th Century the consensus of the most artistic and insightful souls was that American life was plagued by gender oppression. Men, in the view of social commentators such as James Thurber, Robert Benchley, Groucho Marx, and W.C. Fields, were relentlessly oppressed by women, who refused to sleep with them without a legally binding promise of lifetime support and fidelity.
The contemporary notion that women rose up as one to wrest from men the privilege of bringing home the bacon is one of the more curious myths in folklore.
• Transportation hasn’t sped up at all. The cruising speed of today’s Boeing 777 is no faster than that of the 707 that entered domestic service in 1959, and it probably took Dan Draper less time to get to La Guardia Airport from his home in Westchester Co. than it would take his son driving from the same house today.
• People dressed more formally then. The popularity of the expensive clothes on Mad Men reminds me that, like a lot of viewers, I unthinkingly approve of people in the past spending a lot of money on how they dressed, while I’m generally annoyed by people in the present who do the same. Logically, it would make more sense to resent our ancestors wasting so much money on clothes, wealth that they could have left to, say, us. But that’s not how we feel. We don’t feel competitive with the dead, but we do with the living.
For example, my wife enjoys historical novels about the Tudor era, in which Queen Elizabeth I’s elaborate attire is elaborately described. Yet, when, at a weekend conference in the 1990s, my wife met one of Elizabeth I’s two closest living equivalents, Margaret Thatcher, she was pleased that the Right Honorable Baroness wore the same discreetly patched dress two days in a row. The other ladies at the symposium appreciated that this world-historical figure didn’t feel it necessary to compete with them over couture.
Of course, the decline of formal clothing has not reduced competition within each sex, just refocused it upon the underlying body. Sure, Don Draper looks great in a suit, but, then, most guys look better in business attire than in whatever they choose for themselves nowadays.
• The depiction of advertising in Mad Men is underdeveloped. One reason is that Baby Boomers can’t remember it accurately. Sure, the television commercials that ran on Gilligan’s Island were lame, but that’s because A) nobody knew much about how to make TV spots then, and B) they were aimed at Gilligan’s Island fans.
In contrast, the magazine advertising of 1960 was a mature art form, probably more readable and certainly more legible than today’s overly art-directed print ads. It doesn’t make for exciting television, however. Thus, the competition between the reigning style of detailed text perfected by the most celebrated Madison Avenue guru of that era, the Brit David Ogilvy, and the soon to be dominant high-concept imagery exemplified by the Marlboro Man icon dreamed up by Chicago’s Leo Burnett and his creative director Draper Daniels, is only vaguely delineated in Mad Men, which emphasizes adultery over advertising.
Weiner likes to depict 1960 WASP advertising men as indolent but decorative as they elegantly lounge about in their offices, cigarette in one hand, whiskey glass in the other, waiting patiently for an idea to finally pop into their well-shaped but largely empty goyishe kopfs.
In reality, advertising was created then, as now, through hard work. Ogilvy advised aspiring account executives,
Set yourself to becoming the best-informed person in the agency on the account to which you are assigned. If, for example, it is a gasoline account, read books on oil geology and the production of petroleum products.
The magazine advertising of the day exuded intense study of the product. Ogilvy defined advertising as “salesmanship in print,” and magazine ads of the day were stuffed with laboriously researched reasons for buying the gizmo.
In that pre-ironic age, when ads featured headlines such as “The amazing story of a Zippo that worked after being taken from the belly of a fish,” ad men felt comfortable making long, fact-filled pitches. For example, Ogilvy’s renowned headline for his Rolls-Royce ad, “At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock,” is only one of 13 sales pitches in the 607 words of copy. Ogilvy found his famous factoid while doing three weeks of reading about the car.
Similarly, Bill Bernbach’s “Lemon” ad for Volkswagen (which the Sterling Cooper boys debate for 15 minutes in one early episode) includes lines like, “There are 3,389 men at our Wolfsburg factory with only one job: to inspect Volkswagens at each stage of production.”
Sadly, nobody has yet figured out how to do on the Web what the Ogilvys and Bernbachs were doing in the pages of Life fifty years ago: making advertising noticeable, interesting, and persuasive without being irritating.
Yesterday morning, I was scheduled for a 40-minute-ish appearance on Sirius/XM’s The Mike Church Show. Once the conversation began and the calls started to roll in, however, Mike asked me to stay through an hour, and then through two. You can find the transcript of much of our discussion here, here, and here.
Even as Mike Church, his callers, and I conversed, I received an e-mail from Fox News TV’s The Glenn Beck Program. Judge Andrew Napolitano was to be the guest host, and he would like for me to join him in a conversation about the ways that the Federal Government trashes the Constitution. In the event, we also talked about the idea of a constitutional convention. You can find our exchange, in which we were joined by my Who Killed the Constitution? co-author Tom Woods, here (transcript). (There’s also video of that TV segment on YouTube.)
I read with interest R. J. Stove’s recent blog about new a book by Gerd Bayer, Heavy Metal Music in Britain, and I would like to add my own remarks to Mr. Devin Reid Saucier’s apposite reply.
As I pointed in my previous article on Black Metal, and as Devin iterated a few days ago, much has changed in the world of Metal since its inception in the 1970s. Not only did Heavy Metal beget a variety of more extreme music genres during the 1980s, including Black Metal, Death Metal, Thrash Metal, and Doom Metal; but those genres, in turn, begot even more extreme—and this time much more serious—variants during the 1990s, and became greatly refined during the 2000s. It’s a shame that Mr. Stove saw no need to update his knowledge on the topic of Metal music before commenting on it, because I am sure that if he had, he would have discovered that, irrespective of personal preferences, some of the best modern popular music being recorded and released today is coming from extreme Metal musicians.
I rate this music highly not only because it is technically accomplished, artistically honest, and multifarious in style, but also because both in form and content, it is as European as Beethoven, Berlioz, Holst, and Wagner. I would even go as far as to say that many musicians who would have become Beethovens, Berliozes, Holsts, and Wagners in the past, are today opting to follow their muses within contemporary musical forms, where they feel they can break new ground using novel sounds and technologies—just like what we nowadays call “Classical” composers did in their time. I am certainly not the only one to make this claim—this argument was rehearsed some years ago by none other than Charles Murray in Human Accomplishment
Because it is sonically extreme, the uninitiated tend to assume that Metal music is the province of youth, and that defection to more middle-aged forms of music will almost inevitably accompany a fan’s transition into adulthood. In Keith Dunstan’s words, “Something very strange happens to the eardrums at the age of about 30.” But as the owner of an extreme Metal record label, I have found this assumption to be incorrect. Never mind that I am 39 and neither apologetic nor about to tire of this type of music: some of our customers are well into their middle age—three years ago I met one of them, an avid and very knowledgeable female collector, who at the time was 53; another, who began ordering from us at 67, is now 73. While it is true that defections occur, this is not a phenomenon exclusive to Metal music, and neither is it one that is necessarily linked to age: people change, choose new identities, or find themselves. Those who choose new identities often do so out of weakness, buckling under the social pressure to conform, and become virulently contemptuous of Metal music while harboring a guilty, secret, suppressed passion for it. Those who find themselves are typically individuals who, as conformist teenagers, followed their peers into a music scene, simply to belong, while never genuinely being interested in the artform per se.
This lack of age correlation results perhaps from the fact that the themes of contemporary extreme Metal have little to do with those that are commonly associated with traditional Heavy Metal. While the latter is largely defined by a youthful preoccupation with rebelling against parents, the former is largely defined by a young generation’s yearning for the values of their grandparents—or, perhaps more accurately, the values of their great-great-great-grandparents. On a symbolic level, Heavy Metal fans think that their parents are too conservative; Black Metal fans think that their parents are nowhere near conservative enough. The parents of Heavy Metal fans feel betrayed by their sons, whom they regard as embarrassing hooligans; fans of Black Metal feel betrayed by their parents, whom they regard as embarrassing liberals. Heavy Metal fans want to drink beer, have sex, and smash hotel rooms.
Black Metal fans want to smash the system—but not out of a brainless, juvenile impulse. They believe the system is rotten; they have an elitist contempt for mass society; and they desire a new order, one founded on radically traditional, heroic, spiritual, or mystical values. This is not uniformly evident across the whole spectrum of Black Metal, of course, for in some cases artists adopt Satanic or occult imagery and lyrical themes, while in others, they cultivate an image of complete nihilism and suicidal depression. Even these strands of Black Metal, however, can (and, in my opinion, should) be interpreted from a neo-Romantic perspective, from which they emerge as metaphors for, again, a rejection of mass society. This is because, in common with critics of modernity, liberalism, and industrialism, mass society is perceived by Black Metallers as superficial, banal, self-deluded, soulless, mechanistic, hedonistic, and materialistic. Hence, the cultivation of intense—and especially dark—emotion, and the search for transcendent, authentic, ancient spiritual meaning, serves as a negation of that mass society. (We must not forget that the Romantics cultivated similar sentiments, with a similarly Gothic sensibility.) Without a doubt, such negation is more explicitly and intelligibly found in some of the genres closely linked to Black Metal, such as Folk Metal and Viking Metal.
Maybe Mr. Stove is correct in that Heavy Metal seeks to shut down frontal lobe cognition, but he would be wrong to assume the same about Black Metal and its derivations, for Black Metal seeks to shut down a system that has resulted from the absence of frontal lobe cognition.
As to the socio-economic status of Metal fans, this needs to be discussed as well, for IQ pre-determines socio-economic status (not, as Leftists argue, the other way around), and Mr. Stove seems to believe that all Metal (and by extension its fan base) is “as dumb as three boxes of rocks.” The socio-economic status of the average Metal fan has varied over time. As Deena Weinstein has pointed out, Heavy Metal was originally a male, White, working class phenomenon. Later on, however, it acquired a middle class, and more gender-balanced audience. Subsequent offshoots of Heavy Metal, and particularly the extreme Metal forms of the 1990s and beyond, have been the domain of a mainly White, middle class constituency, living quiet lives and holding respectable jobs in provincial towns.
In my travels I have encountered not only magazine editors and leaders of university political organizations, but also authors, rare booksellers, computer scientists, accountants, graphic designers, academics, and civil servants, often working for large organizations. Of course, there are also decorators, police officers, bakers, deliverymen, and farmers—the latter (at least the ones I have met) all very pleasant and thoughtful people with comfortable lives. Fans on the upper echelons of the social pyramid, however, are also either present in our mailing list or among my personal friends (or both). Of the two that come immediately to mind, one is a scholar of material culture and the other a surgeon.
I’m certainly not saying that Black Metal is the musical equivalent of Ezra Pound’s Cantos
For these reasons, I believe that Mr. Stove is right to call for further research on the overlap between Metal fans and readers of Taki’s Magazine.
Reading the fulsome praise for diversity by General Casey, one is left wondering how such men as the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc and the Marines at Iwo Jima managed to do what they did without its many benefits, and how those men would have reacted if they had been told that safeguarding diversity was more important than safeguarding the lives of American fighting men.
As one might surmise, one doesn’t get rich by serving the HL Mencken Club. Unlike other organizations, which have claimed the “conservative” label, belonging to our club is not a ladder to social acceptability or a means of increasing one’s income or deferred annuity allowance. Investing time and energy in an organization like ours is not a wise career move but something reminiscent of the fate that Mustafa Kemal thought would await Turkish troops as they prepared for the British attack at Gallipoli in 1915: “I am not asking you to stand and fight here; I am asking you to die in your tracks.” I doubt that even my favorite American military commander, the grim Stonewall Jackson, would have given his cavalry troops orders that were as bleak as this. But this is what the future founder of the Turkish republic said to his soldiers. I mention this not because I intend to order anyone to his death, but because I’m underlining the extraordinary dedication shown by those who have joined our ranks.
I’m especially impressed by those young people who are here. To say they have embraced the non-authorized Right indicates more than simply an ideological address. It betokens their willingness to become non-authorized dissenters, that is, to turn their backs on the characteristically stale conversations of media debates and the allowable differences of opinion within the Beltway.
Turning one’s back on this prescribed discourse means forfeiting the perks that flow from those in power. It also means being labeled as a troublemaker or extremist—and for those who persist in their orneriness, this choice may also mean being pushed out of magazines for which one previously wrote and having one’s books snubbed by the arbiters of acceptable political concerns.
A question I sometimes hear from my Republican son is this: Why do we believe that what we discuss here could not be discussed at conservative foundations or, say, on FOX-News? Presumably our conversation would be welcome in such outlets, unless we did something as shocking as badmouthing ethnic minorities. But there are two problems with this contention. One, the fact that we, or at least most of us, are kept from these outlets would suggest that whatever we discuss most definitely does not suit Republican- or neoconservative-sponsored forums or publications. This is the case even though we do not seek to insult any ethnic or religious group.
Two, we are obviously raising issues that for ideological or social reasons movement conservative organizations do not engage. A few illustrations might help make this point. Arguing that democracy and freedom are on a collision course, that modern liberal democracies, which combine universal rights with massive welfare states, necessarily undermine communal and family authorities, and that character and intelligence are largely fixed by heredity are not positions that neoconservative Beltway foundations would be eager to take on.
And if one considers the tight connection between movement-conservatives and the Republican Party, having authorized conservative organizations think outside the two-party box becomes even more problematic. After all, GOP partisans and clients do not want to hamper Michael Steele and the Republican National Committee from reaching out. And “reaching out” in this context means frantically trying to raid the other party’s base. Although GOP operators don’t hesitate to put down Democrats, what this amounts to is railing against the high costs of Democratic programs, while ignoring those incurred by the GOP in power.
Movement conservatives have assumed the task of airbrushing positions that GOP politicians are taking or would like some people to think they’re taking. Movement conservative publicists, for example, tried to convince us that Republican presidential candidates Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney had shifted their social views, shortly before the presidential primaries in 2008. These supposedly genuine conversions had occurred on such delicate issues as late-term abortion, gay marriage, and the treatment of illegal immigrants. Nonetheless we were urged to take these timely shifts seriously, because someone at National Review or Weekly Standard has a thing for Rudy or struck up a friendship with Mitt. We were assured that Rudy was solid on the war and that he had once stiffed some Arab leader who came to New York. I would also call attention to a law prepared by Heritage, and introduced in 2005 by Governor Romney in Massachusetts, making sure that every Massachusetts resident had health insurance. Although this measure has contributed to towering state deficits, former Governor Romney, we are told, had nothing to do with this folly. It was supposedly altered by a Democratic legislation beyond recognition. Thus movement conservatives proclaimed, after they had tried to explain away Romney’s earlier support for gay marriage and other positions identified with the social Left.
Conservative journalists have done the GOP establishment other noteworthy favors. They scolded black civil rights leaders and more recently, former President Carter for suggesting that opponents of Obama’s health care plan are driven by racism. But this torrential indignation was almost entirely absent from GOP congressional leaders. Republican whip in the House, Eric Cantor of Virginia, pointedly refused to respond to the charge against his party. Cantor side-stepped the question when it came up in a press interview. Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell became equally taciturn when confronted by the same charge.
What speaks volumes about how the GOP is handling Carter’s reproach is what GOP National Chairman Michael Steele said at a black institution Philander Smith College, in Little Rock, on September 22. Steele stressed his party’s urgent need to win over the black vote, and he denounced “the subtle forms of racism” that blacks encounter in both employment and college admissions. The GOP would take steps to deal with these subterranean forms of prejudice, and this audience should have no trouble figuring out what these countermeasures are. At last we can see the real value of movement conservative outcries against Democratic accusations of Republican racism. The apparent outrage is a mere diversionary noise for Republican politicians who are trying to make nice to the civil rights lobby. Some movement conservatives may have noticed this but are too ambitious or too comfortable to point out what is taking place.
Also illustrating the difference between us and movement conservatives, especially those who are joined at the hip with the GOP, are the differing ways in which we and they would react to something that recently happened at my college, which was the introduction of an elaborate plan for diversity training among students and faculty. This is something movement conservatives and the alternative Right may conceivably agree about, but here first impressions can be deceiving. Of course, we and they might scoff with equal disdain at our “Five-Year Plan for Strengthening Campus Diversity”—entitled “Embracing Inclusive Excellence”—which talks about the malice being vented against the handful of Jews, Muslims, and Hindus on campus. There is no evidence of these malicious outbursts, and the only evidence for discrimination cited is a methodologically dubious survey answered by 5 students, who were asked if they noticed white Christian students “glancing” suspiciously at them.
We and the neoconservative establishment would recognize (I hope) that these reports were invalid; and even if they were not, the solution offered, recruiting inner-city populations and providing them with scholarships, would not likely end the marginalization of Hindus. We might also have objected with equal annoyance to the plan for sending our faculty to affirmative-action training sessions; finally our two sides might have ridiculed the lop-sided 5 to1 majority by which the diversity plan passed the faculty—without any expectation that this document would be amended to conform to reality.
But having noted this conceivable area of agreement, I would also stress the divergence between our sides when it comes to extricating ourselves from the multicultural fever swamp. Possible neoconservative alternatives to what I’ve described, by such characteristic advocates as Lynne Cheney, David Horowitz and Bill Bennett, might include a compulsory course on the American heritage. This course would showcase our country as a self-perfecting global democracy; and it would take students on an inspirational journey from the Declaration of Independence’s proclamation that “All men are created equal” through FDR’s Four Freedoms down to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. This and other similar measures would be used to teach students of all races and creeds “democratic values,” the spread of which, we would be told, is the high moral end for which the U.S. was brought into existence.
We might also hear a recommendation from neoconservative social commentator Dinesh D’Souza, calling for extraordinary efforts to integrate college students of all different ethnic backgrounds. D’Souza would accuse our administration of not going far enough to commit students and faculty to a universally exportable democratic way of life. We would also likely be told that recruiting minorities for the wrong reasons would create islands of separateness on our campus instead of making everyone into a member of the world’s first global nation. Finally we might be warned, perhaps by Cal Thomas or David Horowitz, that lurking behind calls for diversity is a hidden plea for anti-Zionism or a defeatist response to the War On Terror. Such hidden agendas characterize the advocates of diversity; who in any case are deviating from the goal of the saintly Martin Luther King, a firm opponent of all forms of quotas, even for black Americans.
Needless to say, I couldn’t think of anyone on the Alternative Right who would take any of these stands. Our side would stress that not every adolescent can do college work. Colleges that are serious about traditional disciplines might appeal to, at most, 20 percent of the young, which is the percentage of those who have the cognitive skills for doing college-level study. Given the fraudulent product that now passes for college education, it is not surprising that most students and faculty can neither learn nor teach what was once deemed appropriate as college subjects.
One could easily point to speakers at this conference who have taken the positions outlined. These fearless critics have questioned the transformation of American higher education into a devalued consumer product, made available to those who are incapable of real learning. Small wonder that colleges are turned into centers of multicultural social experiments and diversitarian gibberish! What better use could one find for a falsely advertised institution that is trying to entertain young social work, communication and primary education majors while taking their parents’ money!
Neoconservative educationists, we might also hear from the Alternative Right, have their own fish to fry. They are seeking to defend their version of the democratic welfare state as the best of all governments. They also have another far-reaching goal that is explicit or implicit in their college outreach. Neoconservatives, to speak about them specifically, wish to limit any disagreement on campuses generated by their aggressively internationalist foreign policy. In pursuit of this end, they happily falsify or obscure certain embarrassing historical facts, e.g., the massive deceit applied to pushing the U.S. into past foreign wars, and the published views of such neocon heroes as Churchill and Wilson dealing with racial and ethnic differences.
Neoconservatives and their defenders would accuse our side of taking positions that have no chance of being accepted. And they might be right on this last point. Our positions would infuriate the educational establishment and much of the public administration apparatus. Many of us, moreover, are strict constitutionalists, who would argue, to the consternation of the political class, that the federal government is excessively entangled in state and local education. It should be of no concern to public administrators whether a private college has or has not been recruiting designated minorities. Academic education should not be an occasion for government social planners to impose their vision on the private sector. Indeed private colleges, if they were truly concerned about being independent, would reject federal and state aid, and they would do all in their power to keep our managerial government from interfering with their institutions.
Note I am not defending “our side” in these debates. I am only making clear that we and they do not hold the same views about American education or about how its problems are to be engaged. I would also concede the obvious here, namely, that some people on our side of the divide may occasionally work for those on the other side and that the GOP out of power will occasionally get behind books and authors presenting arguments that would not please Republican administrations. Not all who make the arguments of the alternative Right have been subject to equally oppressive sanctions or have been uniformly denied a place in the sun. There are disparities in the ways that the GOP-movement conservative establishment has treated individual critics on the right. What seems beyond dispute however is that we and they disagree fundamentally on a wide range of questions, far more than we in this room would disagree with each other. The conventional conservative movement is therefore justified in recognizing that we are more different from their movement than establishment conservatives are from those on the center left. Movement conservatives and neoconservatives dialogue openly with the liberal Left while ignoring or ridiculing us—and this happens for a very good reason. The authorized version of the conservative movement understands that we and they are not of the same spirit. Unlike them, we do not serve the GOP; nor are we obliged to go along with neoconservative whims and fixations lest we lose our jobs or media outlets.
Most of us have already been confined to outer darkness; and there is no way we can change this unless we force our way, screaming and kicking, into the neoconservative-liberal conversation. The reason we must exist is that we dare to raise the questions that are anathema to the conventional media. And this is the reason that we lack corporate money and that our devotees are not writing for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or Washington Post. We stand outside the egalitarian, managerial-state consensus, a consensus that in the end moves in only in one direction, which is leftward.
Those who opposed this trend were long an isolated minority, but now dissenters can be heard on talk radio, some of whom are even gaining a widespread popular appeal. This for me is a heartening development, despite the sad fact that most of us remain excluded from this turn of events, and although what is being described lacks any deep intellectual content. Note that nothing in these remarks would question the shallowness and histrionics of what I’m characterizing as the conservative talk-show phenomenon. As anyone who knows me can testify, it is hard for me to listen to Limbaugh or Beck for a protracted length of time without suffering an upset stomach. But what I’m noting here are long-range trends. There are forces on the American Right which have attracted mass-democratic attention, forces that the neoconservative media do not entirely own and which they can only provisionally preempt. This may bedevil our adversaries, especially if such populist heroes as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Mike Savage strike out on their own, that is, decide to go after the GOP and the neoconservatives with the same fury that they’ve vented on the Democrats.
As the onetime isolated Right continues to gain adherents and visibility, what increases apace is the possibility for a breakthrough. And as one observes the sudden rise of our group, it seems to me that those who were once marginalized have become like lilies in a junkyard. Let us hope this junkyard, which is the conservative movement of programmed party-liners and GOP hacks, will eventually become something else. Perhaps the lilies that have sprung up amid the trash and debris will come to replace the present movement conservative wasteland—together with its FOX-News contributors.
Judge Andrew Napolitano will guest host Fox News’s Glenn Beck Program tonight. I’ll be on right at the top of the show. The topic will be the Federal Government’s trashing of the US Constitution. I understand that Tom Woods will be on the show tonight as well, but I’m not sure when or about what.
Today on Sirius/XM’s The Mike Church Show, I was a guest for two hours. The topic was the idea, floating around among state legislators in several states, of having a federal constitutional convention. I favor it, strongly, and Mike gave me plenty of time to develop my reasoning. My appearance was originally to be for one hour, but he asked me to stay for a second hour, and I happily obliged. Callers asked all of the most common questions, which I flatter myself that I answered persuasively. At least, I am persuaded.
Last weekend, I wrote,
Whenever a terrible televised tragedy takes place (the Virginia Tech shootings, the Knoxville murders, last week’s bloodbath) many of the harder-edged neocons, paleos, and immigration restrictionists hope that this will be the last straw—finally people will “wake up” and the establishment will seal the borders and/or halt Muslim immigration and/or cease with the multiculti dreaming.
In a few days from now, all these activists will invariably be chagrined to discover that nothing has changed and that most have instead reached the conclusion “We need Muslims in the military—now more than ever!”
It didn’t take too long for this to come true. Here, for instance, is Gen. George Casey, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff:
Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.
General Casey is exactly the kind of gray-haired, square-jawed, always frowning general that many conservatives imagine to be among the last representatives of Duty, Honor, & Valor left in the country. What those well intentioned conservative admirers of people like this don’t understand is that the Top Brass has imbibed a “patriotic” version of the multiculti creed to the point that they believe not having Muslims serve in the military is far worse than mass murder. Think as well of how many average soldiers failed to turn Hasan in after hearing him lecture on the need to cut infidel throats because they thought this might rock the great global-democratic boat that is the U.S. military. The multiculti religion has believers everywhere, even in places thought to be conservative bastions.
[Hat tip: Auster]
Nidal Malik Hasan was two men.
One was the proud Army major who wore battle fatigues to mosque; the other, the proud Arab who wore Muslim garb in civilian life.
What brought Hasan’s identities into fatal conflict was his belief that Iraq and Afghanistan were unjust wars, and his shock that he, a Muslim, was to be sent to serve in one of those wars, against fellow Muslims—a sin against Allah meriting damnation.
Hasan was conflicted by a dual loyalty—to the country he had sworn to protect, and to his perceived duty as a Muslim. When Hasan told his neighbor that morning, “I am going to do good work for God,” the call of jihad overrode his oath of loyalty as an American soldier.
Hasan proceeded to shoot, wound or kill 44 U.S. soldiers, and die on what he saw as the side of right, the side of Islam, against America. “Allahu Akbar!”—“God is great!”—Hasan shouted as he began firing.
An Internet posting by “Nidal Hasan” compared suicide bombers to medal-of-honor winners who throw themselves on grenades to save fellow soldiers. Hasan had decided to become a suicider for Allah.
Though this was an act of treachery against his fellow soldiers, of treason in wartime, of terrorism and mass murder, Hasan must have seen himself as a hero and martyr.
Few ever commit atrocities like this. But conflicts in identities and loyalties are common in the cauldrons of war.
“Let none but Americans stand guard tonight,” said Washington at Valley Forge. Irish Catholics deserted the Union army to fight beside Mexican Catholics in the San Patricio battalion against what they thought was American aggression. Honored today by Mexico, the San Patricios were hanged when captured by Winfield Scott’s army.
In Scott’s march to Mexico City was Robert E. Lee. The hero of Buena Vista was Col. Jefferson Davis, who had married the daughter of his commanding officer, future President Zachary Taylor. Davis went on to serve in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce and the U.S. Senate.
Yet, in 1861, Davis and Lee would depart the service of their country to wage war against the United States on behalf of their new nation and the kinfolk to whom they belonged and whom they believed had a right to be free of the Union. Were they traitors—or patriots?
This is not to compare the deeds of the San Patricios, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, all of whom declared themselves openly and fought heroically and honorably, with the crimes of Maj. Hasan.
But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal.
Whence came this idea? No previous generation believed this.
In World War I, Wilson feared that if he went to war, German-Americans might march on Washington. FDR was so fearful that the blood ties of Japanese citizens and residents would trump their loyalty to the United States he ordered 110,000 transferred from California to detention camps for the duration of the war.
In Arkansas last year, a Muslim opposed to the U.S. wars shot two soldiers at a recruitment center, killing one. In Kuwait, before the invasion of Iraq, a Muslim soldier threw a grenade into the tent of his commanding officer, killing two and wounding 14.
This is not to suggest that all American Muslims or Arabs should be citizens under suspicion. Muslims have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, as German-Americans died fighting against Germany in two world wars. But it is to say this:
America is unraveling. No longer are we one nation and one people. Tens of millions have come and tens of millions are coming whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind, and to the faith they carry in their hearts. And if, in our long war against “Islamofascism,” we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.
There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth, the Universal Nation of Ben Wattenberg’s warblings.
And, yet, we are surprised by ethnic espionage in our midst, the cursing of America from mosques in our cities, the news that Somali immigrants are going home to fight our Somali allies, and that illegal aliens march under Mexican flags to demand American citizenship.
Eisenhower’s America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?
The U.S. government is now so totally under the thumbs of organized interest groups that “our” government can no longer respond to the concerns of the American people who elect the president and the members of the House and Senate. Voters will vent their frustrations over their impotence on the president, which implies a future of one-term presidents. Soon our presidents will be as ineffective as Roman emperors in the final days of that empire.
Obama is already set on the course to a one-term presidency. He promised change but has delivered none. His health care bill is held hostage by the private insurance companies seeking greater profits. The most likely outcome will be cuts in Medicare and Medicaid in order to help fund wars that enrich the military-security complex and the many companies created by privatizing services that the military once provided for itself at far lower costs.
It would be interesting to know the percentage of the $700-plus billion “defense” spending that goes to private companies. In American “capitalism,” an amazing amount of taxpayers’ earnings go to private firms via the government. Yet, Republicans scream about “socializing” health care.
Republicans and Democrats saw opportunities to create new sources of campaign contributions by privatizing as many military functions as possible. There are now a large number of private companies that have never made a dollar in the market, feeding instead at the public trough that drains taxpayers of dollars while loading Americans with debt service obligations.
Obama inherited an excellent opportunity to bring U.S. soldiers home from the George W. Bush regime’s illegal wars of aggression. In its final days, the Bush regime realized that it could “win” in Iraq by putting the Sunni insurgents on the U.S. military payroll. Once Bush had 80,000 insurgents collecting U.S. military pay, violence, although still high, dropped in half. All Obama had to do was to declare victory and bring our boys home, thanking Bush for winning the war. It would have shut up the Republicans.
But this sensible course would have impaired the profits and share prices of those firms that comprise the military-security complex. So instead of doing what Obama said he would do and what the voters elected him to do, Obama restarted the war in Afghanistan and launched a new one in Pakistan. Soon, Obama was echoing Bush and Dick Cheney’s threats to attack Iran.
In place of health care for Americans, there will be more profits for private insurance companies.
In place of peace, there will be more war.
Voters are already recognizing the writing on the wall and are falling away from Obama and the Democrats. Independents who gave Obama his comfortable victory have now swung against him, recently electing Republican governors in New Jersey and Virginia to succeed Democrats. This is a protest vote, not a confidence vote in Republicans.
Obama’s credibility is shot. And so is Congress’, assuming it ever had any. The U.S. House of Representatives has just voted to show the entire world that the U.S. House of Representatives is nothing but the servile, venal puppet of the Israel lobby. The House of Representatives of the American “superpower” did the bidding of its master, AIPAC, and voted 344 to 36 to condemn the Goldstone Report.
In case you don’t know, the Goldstone Report is the Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. The “Gaza Conflict” is the Israeli military attack on the Gaza ghetto, where 1.5 million dispossessed Palestinians, whose lands, villages and homes were stolen by Israel, are housed. The attack was on civilians and civilian infrastructure. It was without any doubt a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the U.S. established in order to execute Nazis.
Goldstone is not only a very distinguished Jewish jurist who has given his life to bringing people to accountability for their crimes against humanity, but also a Zionist. However, the Israelis have demonized him as a “self-hating Jew” because he wrote the truth instead of Israeli propaganda.
U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich, who is now without a doubt a marked man on AIPAC’s political extermination list, asked the House if the members had any realization of the shame that the vote condemning Goldstone would bring on the House and the U.S. government. The entire rest of the world accepts the Goldstone report.
The House answered with its lopsided vote that the rest of the world doesn’t count, as it doesn’t give campaign contributions to members of Congress.
This shameful, servile act of “the world’s greatest democracy” occurred the very week that a court in Italy convicted 23 U.S. CIA officers for kidnapping a person in Italy. The CIA agents are now considered “fugitives from justice” in Italy, and indeed they are.
The kidnapped person was renditioned to the American puppet state of Egypt, where the victim was held for years and repeatedly tortured. The case against him was so absurd that even an Egyptian judge order his release.
One of the convicted CIA operatives, Sabrina deSousa, an attractive young woman, says that the U.S. broke the law by kidnapping a person and sending him to another country to be tortured in order to manufacture another “terrorist” in order to keep the terrorist hoax going at home. Without the terrorist hoax, America’s wars for special interest reasons would become transparent even to Fox “News” junkies.
DeSousa says that “everything I did was approved back in Washington,” yet the government, which continually berates us to “support the troops,” did nothing to protect her when she carried out the Bush regime’s illegal orders.
Clearly, this means that the crime that Bush, Cheney, the Pentagon and the CIA ordered is too heinous and beyond the pale to be justified, even by memos from the despicable John Yoo and the Republican Federalist Society.
DeSousa is clearly worried about herself. But where is her concern for the innocent person that she sent into an Egyptian hell to be tortured until death or admission of being a terrorist? The remorse deSousa expresses is only for herself. She did her evil government’s bidding, and her evil government that she so faithfully served turned its back on her. She has no remorse for the evil she committed against an innocent person.
Perhaps deSousa and her 22 colleagues grew up on video games. It was great fun to plot to kidnap a real person and fly him on a CIA plane to Egypt. Was it like a fisherman catching a fish or a deer hunter killing a beautiful 8-point buck? Clearly, they got their jollies at the expense of their renditioned victim.
The finding of the Italian court, and keep in mind that Italy is a bought-and-paid-for U.S. puppet state, indicates that even our bought puppets are finding the U.S. too much to stomach.
Moving from the tip of the iceberg down, we have Ambassador Craig Murray, rector of the University of Dundee and until 2004 the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, which he describes as a Stalinist totalitarian state courted and supported by the Americans.
As ambassador, Murray saw the MI5 intelligence reports from the CIA that described the most horrible torture procedures. “People were raped with broken bottles, children were tortured in front of their parents until they (the parents) signed a confession, people were boiled alive.”
“Intelligence” from these torture sessions was passed on by the CIA to MI5 and to Washington as proof of the vast al-Qaida conspiracy.
Murray reports that the people delivered by CIA flights to Uzbekistan’s torture prisons “were told to confess to membership in al-Qaida. They were told to confess they’d been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes.”
“I was absolutely stunned,” says the British ambassador, who thought that he served a moral country that, along with its American ally, had moral integrity. The great Anglo-American bastion of democracy and human rights, the homes of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, the great moral democracies that defeated Nazism and stood up to Joseph Stalin’s gulags, were prepared to commit any crime in order to maximize profits.
Murray learned too much and was fired when he vomited it all up. He saw the documents that proved that the motivation for U.S. and British military aggression in Afghanistan had to do with the natural gas deposits in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. The Americans wanted a pipeline that bypassed Russia and Iran and went through Afghanistan. To ensure this, an invasion was necessary. The idiot American public could be told that the invasion was necessary because of 9-11 and to save them from “terrorism,” and the utter fools would believe the lie.
“If you look at the deployment of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, as against other NATO country forces in Afghanistan, you’ll see that undoubtedly the U.S. forces are positioned to guard the pipeline route. It’s what it’s about. It’s about money, its about energy, it’s not about democracy.”
Guess who the consultant was who arranged with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush the agreements that would give to Enron the rights to Uzbekistan’s and Turkmenistan’s natural gas deposits and to Unocal to develop the trans-Afghanistan pipeline. It was Hamad Karzai, the U.S.-imposed “president” of Afghanistan, who has no support in the country except for American bayonets.
Murray was dismissed from the British Foreign Service for his revelations. No doubt on orders from Washington to our British puppet.
Well, Stacy, if I’m able to dissuade but one Takimag reader from taking part in Republican politics, then I think I will have performed a great service to my country, the Right, and Western Civilization.
Sam Francis was surely correct when he noted a certain asymmetry between the Right and Left in America (and, in many European countries as well.) Among Democrats, the party leadership is to the left of its voters (think “Hillary Democrats” (mostly Midwest Catholics) who voted for Obama and Biden because they thought they were two decent guys who’d stick up for the folks.) With the GOP, it’s the opposite: the rank-and-file is to right, often far to the right, of the people in charge. Most everyday Republicans view mass immigration as an outright invasion of their country that must be halted immediately and Obama’s expansion of government as not only an attempt to run their lives but a massive wealth redistribution from the productive savers towards the underclass and well connected financial elite. They are certainly justified in feeling this way.
The problem is, of course, that the Tea Party people, as Kevin has pointed out, have no place to go but into the arms of the GOP and Newt (who, of course, sparked this whole controversy with his endorsement of Mrs. Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd.) The fact that Señor Hoffman took typically milk toast positions on major issues even though he essentially had nothing to lose—six weeks ago he was polling in the single digits—proves just how widely the Newt-cancer has metastasized within the GOP establishment: even unknown long-shots running as “conservative” outsiders are completely worthless wimps.
It’s also worth pointing out that in his response, Stacy describes well how the base essentially sells itself out to the Republicans year in, year out: Activists thump their chests over thwarting wicked, unpatriotic liberals like Scozzafava and New York Times editorialists—never mind that the politicians who benefit, whether it be Hoffman, Bush, or McCain, have no interest whatsoever in countering the therapeutic managerial state or the gradual displacement of the traditional American nation by Third World migrants.
And it’s gone on like this for years!
If one were to measure “conservatism” by the amount of bestselling books published in support of the cause, by the amount of functionaries making a living working in a movement that bears this name, and by self-identification, then surely one would conclude that America must be some über-traditionalist, authoritarian order that puts Franco’s Spain to shame or perhaps rivals Galt’s Gulch in laissez-faire. “Conservatism” is, without question, the biggest ideological business out there.
But is America actually a “center-right nation,” as so many people tell me it is? Who knows? Who cares? What’s important is that the Constitution has been rendered irrelevant, every citizen is burdened with tens of trillions in debt and liabilities, our cultural and artistic productions are vulgar and risible to the extreme, a quarter of the population is obese, and national demographics are pointing towards Brazil, if not something worse. “Conservatism” has failed utterly and conspicuously on all these fronts and more; and before a real alternative can arise, the “conservative” movement, and the lesser-of-two-evils logic the undergirds it, must be brought to an end.
But it’d, of course, be unfair of me if I didn’t mention that one area in which “conservatism” has been wildly successful—making sure America never stops invading the world. If one would like a glimpse of how the movement has been brought on board this agenda, look no further than this photo, which I found displayed proudly on the blog of a one Robert Stacy McCain: it’s of the “conservative” activist embracing the great William Kristol on the occasion of some old WASPy foundation’s bestowing on him a quarter million for services rendered to democracy and the Republican Party.
Keep fighting the good fight, Stacy!
A reader in the Army offers an interesting perspective:
I enjoyed your latest offering at Takimag. I was stationed at Ft. Hood and the shootings happened a couple blocks from where I used to live. The cop who brought him down had to be a woman, didn’t it? I love that detail: its like liberalism rolled what D&D geeks call a “saving throw”. Regrettably, Im afraid the case against diversity will get no easier even as the problems become more acute: indeed, the deeper its claws sink into our vital national institutions, the harder it gets to argue for their extraction, as both the heroes and the villians of every drama will be of the socially favored backgrounds. We’re doomed.
Though I’ve never played D & D, I think this characterization of Hasan’s female vanquisher is quite apt.
I also wasn’t surprised to see that the neocons’ fancy lady blogger, Pamela Geller, is rejoicing at feminism’s triumph over Islamo-fascism:
This is poetic justice. The jihadi mass slaughterer was taken down by a ... woman! Think about that. Let’s blast that shiz through the caves of Tora Bora.
That’s the real story. It should be wall to wall on Al Jizz.
Yes! The West’s willingness to enlist women in the military and police forces and put them in harm’s way. Isn’t that really what separates us from terrorists?
Was his platform mushy? OK, so why did Frank Rich write not just one, but two columns telling us that Hoffman was a dangerous right-wing extremist?
You have talked, Richard, about the tendency of the Official Conservative Movement to drift leftward by the process of successively purging its right wing. In NY23, the GOP nominated Dede Scozzafava—almost certainly the most liberal Republican in the New York state assembly—and then threatened to purge anyone who did not support her. Instead, because of the success of Hoffman’s candidacy, Scozzafava essentially purged herself, pulling the plug on her campaign and then endorsing the Democrat, Bill Owens.
Whatever else results from this, it is at least certain that Scozzafava’s career as a Republican is over. Furthermore, the campaign exposed the political bankruptcy of the New York GOP establishment and the cluelessness of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Even such a mainstream Republican as Erick Erickson is demanding that heads roll at the NRCC.
The Hoffman campaign was the vehicle by which these things were accomplished, and drew into its ranks many who had been disillusioned and alienated by the leftward tendency—the “me-too-ism” of moderate Republicans—that you describe. That Hoffman didn’t run as your kind of conservative is admitted. Yet his thumb-in-the-eye posture toward the GOP establishment attracted support from many such people. What develops going forward remains to be seen. To denounce it all as unworthy is to discourage your readers from involvement in politics, a course that would seem to guarantee the triumph of the Left.
The Republican drift toward meaningless has been arrested, and there is hope that this drift might actually be reversed. You are free to stand aside and declare that everything is hopeless, that such efforts are irrelevant. Ah, but you should have heard the glee in the voice of that fellow when he yelled into his cell-phone Tuesday night: “Guess who will not be representing the 23rd District? Dede Scozzafava!”
A small victory, perhaps, but let us hope not the last of its kind.
It’s difficult to make out exactly what happened in Texas last Thursday in a grisly incident that’s coming to be known as “the Fort Hood massacre.” As things stand, three men besides Nidal Malik Hasan are in custody. The ultimate cause of the shooting, however, should not be in doubt. As Tom Fleming wrote on the morning after, “By his own lights and according to his own religious traditions ... Hasan is not mentally disturbed, only a man who has done his religious duty.” That Hasan acted according to his faith—and not because some mean old corporal called him a “raghead” or because he was a principled non-interventionist who just took things too far—must be obvious to everyone whose brains haven’t yet been rotted out by PC.
Which means this fact will go mostly unmentioned in the mainstream media.
Whenever a terrible televised tragedy takes place (the Virginia Tech shootings, the Knoxville murders, last week’s bloodbath) many of the harder-edged neocons, paleos, and immigration restrictionists hope that this will be the last straw—finally people will “wake up” and the establishment will seal the borders and/or halt Muslim immigration and/or cease with the multiculti dreaming.
In a few days from now, all these activists will invariably be chagrined to discover that nothing has changed and that most have instead reached the conclusion “We need Muslims in the military—now more than ever!” It would probably take the hijacking of a nuclear weapon by a enlisted North African Muslim to lead America’s national leaders to surmise that we should probably restrict whom we allow into our country and institutions and that, No, more “diversity training” won’t help the matter. But I’m not sure even this would do it.
It’s being reported that someone named “Nidal Malik Hasan” frequently made webposts praising Islamic suicide bombers; the FBI had picked up on them and certainly the Army should have investigated Hasan more thoroughly. But even damning evidence such this doesn’t really get at a much larger problem with the U.S. military, one that, in my mind, will lead to countless other Nidal Malik Hasan-like disasters in the near future.
Just last month, the U.S. Navy’s released a new recruitment commercial that’s loaded with the kind Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan images and John Williams-y music you’d expect. It also depicts its current force as mostly non-white and close to half-female. These multiculti midshipmen, the Navy promises, will fight on “until the anguish of those less fortunate has been soothed.”
The Navy’s new slogan, “A Global Force For Good,” is, on one level, a holdover from the evangelical Bush-speak that made us cringe for most of the last decade. It also bespeaks a military complex on the forefront of multiculturalism—in which “defense” has given way to the more expansive “national security” and finally “helping people in need.”
This is the kind of military in which someone named Nidal Malik Hasan could hope to find work as a “Psychiatrist Major.”
The next financial sucker punch is expected to come from the commercial real estate market. Given how leveraged this sector is, the consequences of its collapse are bound to splatter all over the economy. And while the securitization part of the commercial bubble was largely handled by Wall Street, much of the liability for this pending catastrophe is actually nestled in the smaller (and so far “healthier”) regional banks. Now the 64 trillion dollar question: Does anyone really believe this market is going to be allowed to collapse without Geithner and friends leaving their cloven footprints all over it?
We just learned that Fannie Mae will now be moonlighting as rent collectors on foreclosed residential properties. With that precedent in place, it is likely that once the government begins commandeering the commercial realm, it will become at least the partial owner of many retail/office buildings and the securities tethered to them. We have already witnessed the government’s unwillingness to let house prices plop to realistic levels. So what will they do to prop up commercial property and protect the firms (big and small) exposed to them? Rent control. All in the name of “stabilization,” of course.
It is well known what small scale rent control does to residential property, so just imagine what will unfold when commercial rent control is enacted en masse. America’s already dog-eared cities are about to start looking a lot shabbier. Office workers and mall shoppers might want to brace themselves for the hot new architecture trend: Detroit-Deco.
In response to Mr. Stove’s call for research into the overlap of metal-heads and Takimag-addicts, I think he would be quite surprised to find at least three such instances right under his nose. Indeed, Takimag’s own editor, Richard Spencer, and contributor Kevin DeAnna are such types, and I include myself in this category as well. As a matter of fact, Kevin and I are president and vice president, respectively, of the nation’s only (to my knowledge) Alternative Right collegiate movement, and a majority of the more intellectually-oriented Alternative Right youth of my acquaintance are similar metal aficionados.
Admittedly, in the 70’s and 80’s, heavy metal music was, to a large extent, mind-numbingly proletarian and simple. As Mr. Kurtagic aptly pointed out, the themes of this era and the likes of Ozzy Osbourne were primarily “related to youth and demonstrated an almost single-minded preoccupation with sex, crapulent excess, and low-brow posturing, with its frontmen displaying few commitments beyond contempt for authority.” To an extent, these themes still abound in certain realms of the broad genre “metal”, but they bare sharp contrast to the often surreal, mythical, and intellectually rigorous genres of metal which Mr. Kurtagic was referencing.
To my knowledge, no other genre of music in production lyrically encompasses classical themes like The Odyssey or Greek Gods, much less any aspect of Indo-European heritage.
Aside from generally healthy, intellectually serious themes, some aspects of the genre are overtly political on issues dear to us. I first got into metal when my friend dragged me to a show in Atlanta. Being the fraternity gentleman that I am, I initially didn’t quite fit in with the mostly long-haired, tattooed audience at the show. I couldn’t help join in, though, when one of the opening bands announced that they were going to perform a piece conveying their feelings about illegal immigration. It wasn’t a great song, but without exception, every member of the audience began shouting with the singer “Illegals 1, Citizens 0!” and I knew I was amidst persons of a like-minded political persuasion.
Much of the genre is a rebellion against the overly-consumerist, spiritually bankrupt, and egalitarian nature of our social and political culture in favor of a return to a more folkish society that values the spiritual and heroic in man.
As a college student who is the only attendee under 60 at productions of my local opera company or at live screenings of the Metropolitan Opera at the local movie theatre (I just saw Puccini’s Turandot today), I like to think my tastes of music aren’t quite as mind-numbingly simple as Mr. Stove suggests.
I could go on describing the merits of certain sects of heavy metal, but the true value can only be perceived by attending a show, which I would describe as a higher Dionysian experience, in the Nietzschean sense. In fact, reading Mr. Stove’s post, I was reminded of Nietzsche’s comment in the Birth of Tragedy about Dionysian phenomena (my apologies in advance for the inflamed rhetoric):
“There are some who, from obtuseness or lack of experience, turn away from such phenomena [Bacchic choruses of the Greeks, et cetera] as from ‘folk-diseases,’ with contempt or pity born of the consciousness of their own ‘healthy mindedness.’ But of course such poor wretches have no idea how corpselike and ghostly their so-called ‘healthy-mindedness’ looks when the glowing life of the Dionysian revelers roars past them.”
Metal concerts in my experience achieve the higher Dionysian state in a way that the primal grind dancing and rap music so prevalent at clubs and fraternity parties could never hope to reach.
Given, metal is not everyone’s cup of mead, and what Mr. Stove references might be true: that something strange happens to the eardrums after 30; but for those of us still durable enough to get knocked around is a mosh pit, or simply looking for artists and songs that relate life-affirming myths and values, no music in production today could be more fitting.
Bonking in shantytown? Feeling sexy and slumming it? No one blames you, life is rough, and there isn’t much else to do but get wasted.
But no more babies! Says Mayor Michael Laws of Wanganui, wherever that may be, who seems to think drug-addicted child abusers shouldn’t be having children. Laws thinks the cost to the state (New Zealand), and the children, is too high. He is saying that everybody would benefit from the government paying degenerate souls not to have children. The obvious criticism here is one would still be throwing money at the problem. It is uncertain whether or not he suggested they receive free sterilization if they so desire. Laws targets liberal campaigns to end violence, as ineffective. Rightly so. He goes after welfare beneficiaries who abuse the system. Now there is much ado, and some journalist for the Dominion-Post was incensed by Laws’ suggestions.
No doubt, there are many arguments to be made against eugenics, especially because of the perversion of Francis Galton’s doctrines by Adolf Hitler. Picking and choosing which races or individuals should be chosen to refine humanity is impossible in this day and age. Though, I simply don’t see why the debate is taboo. And, why people cannot separate their ability to be empathetic with their ability to reason. Is there really anybody out there who thinks child abuse and neglect is inconsequential?
Basically, it comes down to how capable an individual is to serve a community and achieve his or her personal goals. We know that uneducated children born into poverty and drug addiction are likely to remain ignorant, poor, and miserable. Therefore, it seems logical to stigmatize ghetto breeding and provide an incentive for abstinence in those milieus. Clearly, the logistics of Laws’s idea are too complicated for any bureaucracy to manage. Especially if sterilization is not mandatory. Anyway, I doubt this will ever come to pass. The threat of penalty or incarceration is not really viable either. Furthermore, the program would provide little in the way of triumph for the degenerate individual, as well as removing the possibility of a normal life for those who manage to get out of their situation.
Instead of incarceration or genocide, a good way to manage the miscreants of this world might be to enforce some sort of rigorous community service program with mandatory group therapy. A long term boot camp for violent people who have trouble obeying the law. It might be based on a three strikes rule, and could apply to anyone over the age of 11. How and whether or not this program would be effective would depend on the individual communities that choose to adopt and enforce such a program for themselves. The solution would be for the long-term, and would require heavy participation from the middle and upper classes. Apart from the many logistical issues that would need to be addressed by each community willing to take on this task, there might still be people like the Jon Gosselins and Octomoms of this world who do not break the law, and who unfortunately, do not live in China. But whatever the solution to the crimes against innocent life might be, two things are for sure: there is absolutely nothing wrong with talking about it and minimizing irresponsible procreations is essential.
It’s been a while since any of us Russell Kirk types could work up much interest in the heavy metal genre’s subtler nuances. (Admittedly, a Google search for “Russell Kirk + heavy metal” does reveal 191 web pages.) As Australian journalist Keith Dunstan once observed, “Something very strange happens to the eardrums at the age of about 30.” Moreover, we still need more research into how much, if at all, the Takimag-addicted demographic overlaps the metal-head demographic.
Nevertheless, any readers who might belong to both these groups—and who continue cherishing the old adolescent thrill of having been able to blast into eternity the speaker cones of their parents’ stereo systems with repeated Sunday morning renditions of “Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers”—may now utter a heartfelt nunc dimittis. Because Ashgate Publishing, of Aldershot, Hampshire, England, has catered for their nostalgic yearnings with a learned tome called Heavy Metal Music in Britain.
How many would have thought, when AC/DC reinterpreted Robert Frost’s “road less traveled” as a “highway to hell,” and when Black Sabbath imperiously demanded medical attention unavailable on England’s National Health Service (“Gotta see my rock’n’roll doctor”), that there was an academic, from Germany no less, taking notes? But it’s true. Step forward, Dr. Gerd Bayer, from the Department of English at the University of Erlangen in Bavaria.
With an analytical relentlessness that might seem a tad excessive even if applied to Johannes Ockeghem’s counterpoint or Anton Webern’s dodecaphony—never mind Finnegans Wake—Dr. Beyer and his contributors are at pains to assure us that:
heavy metal tried from the beginning to locate itself in a liminal space between pedestrian mass culture and a rather elitist adherence to complexity and musical craftsmanship, speaking from a subaltern position against the hegemonic discourse.
Who knew? Who would even have guessed, except perhaps the occasional Onion devotee suspecting a hoax?
Here the rest of us were, thinking (circa 1975) that heavy metal’s whole purpose lay in its being loud, repetitive, foot-stomping, fascist, racist, macho, free from Girl Germs, able to shut down frontal-lobe cognition faster than a bottle of Stoly, and generally as dumb as three boxes of rocks. Turns out that according to Dr. Beyer’s think-tank, heavy metal was actually … loud, repetitive, foot-stomping, fascist, racist, macho, free from Girl Germs, able to shut down frontal-lobe cognition faster than a bottle of Stoly, generally as dumb as three boxes of rocks, and at the same time a valid subject for musicological discourse. As respectable as, say, Schoenberg.
Not that I’ve read the book yet, you understand—my hands keep trembling too much every time I try to get it off the local library’s bookshelf—but I am already in a position to announce that its essays include, “The brutal truth: grindcore as the extreme realism of British heavy metal”; “From Achilles to Alexander: the classical world and the world of metal”; and “No class?: Class in Motorhead lyrics”. There is also extended treatment of demons, Gothic literature, “reification” (presumably the purveyor of that noun had overdosed on the celebrated Hungarian Marxist thrash-artiste Georg Lukacs) and “empowering masculinity”. All of which should keep Ph.D. candidates going for a few decades more, at least.
Oh yes, in case you wondered, that roaring noise in the background isn’t bass guitar feedback. It’s T. W. Adorno spinning in his grave.
Of Herr Doktor Beyer’s achievement in this regard, we mere dilettantes can only echo the words of Ozzy Osbourne: “He gonna blow me away.” What will his next scholarly feat be entitled? The Cambridge Companion to Britney? Metanarratives of Miley Cyrus? As they say in Bavaria, warum nichts?
Blanket charges of racism have become the stock-in-trade of the liberal media in reporting on Town-Hall protesters. For converging to petition their representatives about the administration’s profligate policies, independent-minded, patriotic constitutionalists have been savaged by rabid reporters who see signs of the divine in Obama and the devil in his detractors.
One apropos sign at a tea party captured this state of affairs: “It doesn’t matter what my sign says, the press will call it racist.”
In fairness, members of the media are more inclusive in their reprimands about racial exclusion. The general, (alleged) racial backwardness of the American people is a repeated refrain in the popular press. This non-stop, relentless propaganda, enforced by the tyranny of political correctness, helps explain why most Americans─who themselves harbor no racial animus, and, if anything, are remarkably naïve about human differences, cultural or racial─believe racism saturates their society.
It is one thing for a starlet like Janeane Garofalo to defame tea party attendees as “a bunch of teabagging rednecks,” and accuse men and women she knows nothing about of “hating a black man in the White House” and harboring unadulterated racism. It’s quite another for cable-network anchors to parrot the loopy lady’s lines.
Nevertheless, ape they did.
So it was that thought-crime investigator Keith Olbermann broke news on his MSNBC nightly show. With his most solemn, commissar-like countenance, Keith informed his viewers, matter-of-fact, that the intensity of the animosity toward Barack Obama is based on his being a black man.
Instead of arguing their “case” with reference to facts and reason, Keith and Company chose to impugn their disputants based on assumptions about their motives. Still worse: this balderdash, framed as breaking-news, was bolstered by another logical fallacy: an argument from authority.
The feeble-minded Jimmy Carter had seconded Garofalo the histrion. By Keith’s journalistic standards, this was all the proof he needed to pronounce the libel true, and apply the pejorative liberally.
Olbermann proceeded to “debate” this ad hominem with the effeminate, bug-eyed blogger Markos Moulitsas, and before him with politician-turned-pundit, Lawrence O’Donnell.
The shifty and shameless O’Donnell asserted in all seriousness that because Carter had claimed that conservative and independent tea-party goers were guilty of harboring and acting on racially impure thoughts, this was indeed so. After all, the former president was from the dreaded South! He ought to know!
At the time Obama ascended to the throne his approval ratings ran to 70 percent. Carter, Keith, Chris (Matthews), and Contessa (Brewer) were asking their viewers to believe that between March and September of 2009, the aforementioned Americans had developed a bad case of racism rather than buyer’s remorse.
No wonder, then, that the malign men and women of MSNBC pointedly failed to report conclusive findings to the contrary.
A progressive research group ─ among whose stars is Democratic political consultant and prominent clintonista (now Obamaniac) James Carville ─ discovered that when it comes to their assumptions about older, white, Southern Republicans, the cable quislings had been wrong all along.
As the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner research group recently, and reluctantly, reported, the Americans whom the liberal media had been righteously denouncing were not racists.
Although the research group had done its darnedest to disparage the conservative base of the Republican Party, its racism spotters were forced to exempt this “mocked minority” from the media’s charges for lack of evidence.
The Group’s Key Findings leap off the pixelated page:
Instead of focusing on [the] intense ideological divisions, the press and elites continue to look for a racial element that drives these voters’ beliefs – but they need to get over it. Conducted on the heels of Joe Wilson’s incendiary comments at the president’s joint session address, we gave these groups of older, white Republican base voters in Georgia full opportunity to bring race into their discussion – but it did not ever become a central element, and indeed, was almost beside the point.
The “rubes” were given a clean bill of racial health by an organ of the rulers. But the fraudulent zealots at the intellectual hinterland that is MSNBC have yet to come clean.
In these uncertain times perhaps you have considered going back to school.
How about Iceland’s Elf School?
With a syllabus, classrooms, textbooks, diplomas, and ongoing research, Álfaskólinn (Elf School) teaches about elves, hidden people, light-fairies, dwarfs, gnomes, and mountain spirits. There are many variations: 13 types of elves, 3 kinds of hidden people (including the Blue People), 4 varieties of gnomes, 2 forms of trolls, and 3 types of fairies. You will also learn how to discern one from another.
For example, Icelandic elves have chicken-thin legs, floppy ears, and shaggy hair. Contrary to mythology they don’t wear pointed hats or shoes.
Icelandic dwarves, on the other hand, have a penchant for pointy hats and shoes as well as long cloaks, and sometimes even a beard.
Magnus Skarphedinsson is the head of The Icelandic Elf School. Despite Magnus never having a personal encounter with an elf, hidden person, or fairy, he has spent years recording the statements of others who have.
According to Magnus, while only 4% of Americans believe in hidden people, 54% of Icelanders do. And 90% of the population “takes notice” of this community, which is said to number anywhere from 7000 to 20,000.
Not long ago there was an incident between the Public Roads Administration and a rock on the side of the road outside Reykjavik, a locale said to be owned by dwarfs. A multi-lane highway construction was delayed while the rock was moved out of the construction zone.
No doubt the move saved significant expense as other road projects that have threatened hidden people’s homes have met with baffling equipment breakdowns and even illness and injuries to workers. Soon-to-be-homeless hidden folk have been known to resort to sabotage.
Could a diploma from Elf School secure you employment as a lobbyist for the wee furies?
Financial advisor Suze Orman says unless you have abundant disposable income, Elf School should not be thought of as a good investment.
Patriotic immigration reformers didn’t have a dog in the NY-23 Congressional special election fight—Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman toed the Club For Growth line, so the issue didn’t surface—but you have to be amazed at the gloating over-interpretation of his very narrow loss (46%-49%).
Particularly when you know from bitter experience that a Hoffman win would immediately have been spun down the memory hole, like the great patriotic immigration reform victories of California’s Proposition 187 and Arizona’s Proposition 200.
The numbers make it perfectly obvious that Hoffman or any other conservative candidate would have won this race if GOP insiders hadn’t tried to impose a liberal, who rewarded them by endorsing the Democrat after her expensive campaign collapsed. The real loser: the GOP Establishment and Michael Steele’s RNC.
It’s also amazing how little consciousness there is anywhere that this GOP civil war is simply a replay of the earlier Goldwater-Reagan insurgency.
Maybe it’s a generational thing. Many Gen X commentators apparently imprinted at an impressionable age on Reagan as the avuncular President, but in fact he won power as a fierce and divisive partisan. During that insurgency, too, the liberal Republicans (I don’t see what’s “moderate” about them) were more than willing to ruin when they could not rule—to sabotage conservative candidates with the help of the elite media. The conservatives simply had to develop equivalent ruthlessness. Which, in NY-23, they have just shown.
And this historical amnesia is particularly amazing to me, as a Baby Boomer. I thought the Goldwater-Reagan experience had finally resolved the long intra-GOP debate about whether the way to win elections was by moving left (“me-tooism”) or moving right (actually, giving voters something distinctive to vote for). I definitely remember that Reagan won, twice—didn’t he?—and paved the way for the worthless, undeserving Bushes.
But still the conventional wisdom, internalized by many Republicans, particularly inside the Beltway, is that the GOP mustn’t go too far “right.”
At this point, it is clear that no amount of evidence or argument can refute this conviction—as I wrote when reflecting on the distressing results at this year’s CPAC convention, it’s obviously a psychological quirk, a political version of Tourette’s Syndrome.)
As it happens, the Democratic pollster has just provided additional evidence of the irrationality of the “moderation” mirage. Stanley Greenberg does interesting work—for example, he identified Affirmative Action as a key issue in the 1980s, something that both Democratic and Republican Establishments absolutely did not wish to hear. A recent Greenberg report, The Very Separate World of Conservative Republicans, got some publicity because he found that “the self-identifying conservative Republicans who make up the base of the Republican Party” and who drive current unrest are not “racist.“ (He also found that immigration, that’s I-M-M-I-G-R-T-I-O-N, was one of the top issues for these conservatives, although rarely explicitly mentioned even at Tea Parties).
Greenberg’s polling shows that the ideological structure of the two major parties is quite different:
The conservative Republican base represents almost one-in-five voters in the electorate, and nearly two out of every three self-identified Republicans … But liberal Democrats are outnumbered by moderate Democrats (36 to 61 percent of all Democrats).
What this means is that Democratic primary candidates do indeed have to worry about securing“moderates” as well as liberals. This is no doubt one reason the average MSM journalist is so fixated on the maneuver. But Republican primary candidates do not. They have to worry about conservatives.
To put this in perspective, look at the Gallup Poll released October 26. It found:
39%-41% of Americans identify as “conservative” or “very conservative”.
35%-37% of Americans identify as “moderate”.
20%-21% of Americans identify as “very liberal” or “liberal”—in Gallup’s words,“making liberals the smallest of the groups.” (But the noisiest!)
Gallup adds that 35% of independents now identify as “conservative.”
What this means is really astonishing: you could virtually win the U.S. Presidency with conservative support alone.
It doesn’t take that much to win the White House. Barack Obama, for example, was elected in 2008 with just 52.9% of the vote. George W. Bush won with 50.7% in 2004 and actually lost the popular vote (with 47.9%) in 2000. And Ronald Reagan won with just 50.7% in 1980.
At VDARE.COM, we’ve been saying this in a somewhat different way: What we call the “Sailer Strategy”—that the GOP should concentrate, not on outreach to unappeasable minorities, but on inreach to its own base, which it has simply failed to mobilize. That base is white. Greenberg and Gallup’s “conservatives” are certainly white, too.
(The inability of the Beltway Right to discuss race frankly is becoming comic. For example, David Frum’s newly eponymous FrumForum, an avid booster of the “moderation” mirage, has an item attributing Republican successes in New York’s Westchester Country to the Democratic incumbents’ high-tax policies blah blah. But City Journal’s Walter Olson, an unimpeachably libertarian non-member of the Religious Right, explains that it’s because of the backlash against a federally-imposed low-income housing a.k.a. forced integration scheme, which the Democrats defended by accusing opponents of, guess what, “racism.” This coyly sanitized sentence is FrumForum’s only reference to the issue: “When [County Executive Andy] Spano rammed a $50 million settlement of a federal lawsuit against his administration through the County legislature without debate, [challenger Rob] Astorino pounced extra hard on his disregard for the taxpayer.”)
There are issues to hand that would mobilize that “conservative”/ white base and reach beyond it as well. Immigration, of course—Gallup reports that 50% of Americans say immigration should be decreased, up from 39% a year ago; only 14% want an increase (which, needless to say, is what George W. Bush tried to force through). Language—Rasmussen reported this spring that an incredible 84% of Americans want English to be the official language of the U.S. And Affirmative Action.
For that matter, gay marriage is now 0-31, having lost in every single state where it has been put to a popular vote, most recently in Maine, despite the GOP’s almost total elimination from New England. VDARE.COM does not take a position on gay marriage, but there’s no doubt that opposing it could be a devastating tactic for a party brave enough to speak up. (Needless to say, Dede Scozzafava, the GOP Establishment choice in NY-23, supported gay marriage).
There is, however, one big difference between the Goldwater-Reagan insurgency and the situation today: the institutionalized Beltway Right, solidly entrenched after some thirty years with their snouts in the Washington D.C. trough.
One measure of this: TheStupidParty.Com, a recent hilarious article in Takimag by Ellison Lodge, analyzing the Republican National Committee’s new website GOP.com. Lodge found a ridiculous Potemkin Village of diversity:
The ‘O’ in GOP [the home page logo] gives way to a picture of a smiling Republican face that changes every time you refresh the site. Sometimes the surfacing visages are ‘heroes’ [eighteen are featured elsewhere on the site, only five white males] and other times they are just random under-35 Republicans who are the New Face of the GOP. Get it? There is even a GOP “faces” application on the site in addition to a RNC Facebook page.
In an unofficial study, I refreshed the site over and over to see what the hue of the face of GOP might be. There were not a large variety of faces, as many showed up four or even five times before I made it to 15 (excluding heroes.) According to my count, there were three black males, three black females, one Hispanic female, one Hispanic male, five white females (who, to their credit, were generally attractive), and a grand total of two white males.
In contrast, when I went to the “GOP faces” section of the website, there were only four blacks, two people who may have been Hispanic, and 54 whites in the one page I looked at. But these faces were handpicked, of course. Continuing my next unscientific test, I went to the official RNC Facebook page and looked at the first sixty people who signed up as “fans” of the Republican National Committee: 58 were white, one was Hispanic, and one was Asian. None were black!
That’s the young Republican Party base of 2009.
No doubt these Beltway Rightists are responding to some sort of perceived imperative. But who do they think they’re fooling?
Not the GOP’s conservative base. As Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg wrote of them in the study cited above, with obvious amazement:
Conservative Republicans in our groups could not have been more negative in discussing their own party. They see the Republican Party as ineffective and rudderless, controlled by a class of political professionals who have lost touch with not only the people but the conservative values that should guide them.
This collision between the GOP’s “class of political professionals” and its base has a seismic inevitability. But until and unless these “professionals” are overthrown, patriotic immigration reform—and much else besides—will continue to be suppressed.
Sounds like a recipe for a new party to me.
Originally published in VDARE.com
MISH has picked up on an important aspect of the recent job numbers that shouldn’t be overlooked. Not all sectors are shrinking…
190,000 jobs were lost in total vs. 263,000 jobs last month.
62,000 construction jobs were lost vs. 64,000 last month.
61,000 manufacturing jobs were lost vs. 51,000 last month.
Whereas,
45,000 education and health services jobs were added vs. 3,000 added last month.
Government jobs stayed steady, but, as MISH notes, “this trend is likely to reverse in a major way with as of yet unannounced son-of-stimulus and grandson-of-stimulus jobs packages.” Making stuff is out, working in hospitals and public schools is in. If the U.S. economy ever does recover, it will be changed utterly—and socialized to the hilt.
The European Court of Human Rights ruled against hanging crucifixes in Italian state classrooms, guided by considerations of “confessional neutrality”. There has been considerable protest in Italy against the decision, and in itself the uproar is somewhat encouraging. It’s important, however, to examine what was said against the ruling.
Minister of Education Maria Stella Gelmini stated rather defiantly, “No one, not even some ideologically motivated European court, will succeed in rubbing out our identity.” That’s a decent start. But another Berlusconi colleague by the name of Claudio Scajola had this to say:
“Preventing [the crucifix] from being displayed is an act of violence against the deep-seated feelings of the Italian people and all persons of goodwill.”
Scajola is correct that the ECHR decision is a willful act that can at least theoretically be enforced by the coercive machinery of the state. Yet his statement, representative of much of Italy, is based mainly on sentimentalism. Many Italians rightly take issue with the removal of symbols of their religion and culture from public life, a phenomenon accompanied by mass immigration from the Third World and the imposition of multiculturalism. Feelings, though, do not provide us with a coherent orientation for counteraction.
We who look to uphold, or more accurately, restore tradition in the beleaguered West must seek out the source of its value. Crosses in classrooms are only its most external form. A symbol can be emptied of meaning or perverted in the absence of its spiritual context. Any lasting success in the defense of Christianity in our lands will necessitate a rejuvenation of faith and its intellectual framework. The integrity of a culture and a people’s place in the universe all stem from their relation to the transcendent.
Remaining corralled within the modern pluralist mindset simply won’t do. Invoking “rights” guaranteed by a political document is a futile gesture in a rigged game. Appeals to religious freedom, as administered by the human rights regime, form a trap into which too many of the well-meaning fall. An editorial piece from L’Osservatore Romano demonstrates this quite well:
“The political world has almost unanimously testified to the lack of common sense in this ruling, reiterating that the secularization of institutions is a value quite distinct from the denial of the role of Christianity…”
In actuality the ECHR ruling shows that secularization of institutions and denial of the role of Christianity are but two closely related facets of the same campaign. The overriding goal of the Enlightenment project is to tear us away from God, to glorify man and man alone, subject only to his reason, will and passions. More specifically, the secular agenda advanced for the past few centuries has been premised upon the liquidation of Christianity and its transformation into a private matter worthy only of public ridicule.
The ultimate objective of all this is not simply to rid courtrooms and schools of the crucifix, but to erase Christ’s image in the hearts of men. Any truly effective strategy of counteraction will be rooted in spiritual resistance. No stranger to modern totalitarianism, the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin succinctly expressed the nature of this battle:
“Да будет ваш меч молитвою, и молитва ваша да будет мечом!”
- Let your sword be prayer, and your prayer be a sword!
During last year’s Republican National Convention, South Carolina GOP leaders were regularly calling in to WTMA talk radio in Charleston to provide event coverage. On the day they were supposed to talk to me, I was informed that Republican Party officials did not wish to speak to Jack Hunter. In denouncing big government and all its works, I never saw any reason to make special exceptions for Republicans and for my anti-GOP sins I had become persona non grata.
Today, everyone is denouncing big government. Since Obama’s election, tea party protests have sprung up across the country and conservatives are now rallying loud and clear against Washington spending. But liberal politicians and pundits who are calling conservative activists “crazy,” or to borrow MSNBC host Chris Matthew’s phrase “wingnuts,” have it exactly backwards. It was crazy that anyone who might claim the label “conservative” would also claim the Republican Party of George W. Bush. Conservatives haven’t lost their sanity—they’ve regained it.
In the meantime, the Left has gone completely nuts. Worshipping a president who promised “change,” liberals continue to ignore that little has. On foreign policy - the Left’s primary gripe against Bush—Obama’s war mentality is remarkably similar to his predecessor. In drawing down in Iraq, Obama has simply transferred massive US presence to Afghanistan. Controversial war on terror-era measures like the PATRIOT Act, extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping remain intact. Notes observant liberal Noam Chomsky “As Obama came into office, (former Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice predicted he would follow the policies of Bush’s second term, and that is pretty much what happened, apart from a different rhetorical style.”
During the Bush years, conservatives loved to portray outspoken war protesters “Code Pink” as a perfect example of liberal wackiness. It turns out conservatives were right, but for reasons even they couldn’t have imagined, as the same Code Pink that so vehemently denounced Bush’s war in Iraq now supports Obama’s war in Afghanistan. Writes Antiwar.com’s Justin Raimondo:
Right on time for the somber eighth anniversary of the Afghanistan war and occupation, Code Pink founder and primary spokeswoman Medea Benjamin has announced that her organization—which made so many headlines and newscasts protesting “Bush’s war”—is now ‘rethinking’ their position on Afghanistan. A piece in the Christian Science Monitor, which Code Pink is now strenuously trying to spin, reports that the famous antiwar group is seriously amending their position after listening to the views of Afghan women.
Bush administration officials and conservative talk radio made the case time and again that the US was simply “liberating” Iraqis from the oppressive hand of Saddam Hussein. At the time, I can’t recall antiwar groups ever considering this argument, yet in supporting Obama’s war in Afghanistan, Code Pink is now using the logic of Dick Cheney and Sean Hannity to justify American military intervention in the name of human rights.
But one need not look to the far Left to find liberal lunacy. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has quickly become the Left’s favorite Republican for both his willingness to compromise with the Democrats and his attacks on conservatives. Liberals constantly praise Graham as a “reasonable” Republican, in contrast to the rest of his party.
But if Dubya was enemy number for one for the Left, Bush Republicanism had no better proponent than Graham. Under Bush, Graham was a big government Republican in all the ways liberals admire—expanding Medicare, No Child Left Behind, TARP—but also in the one way they allegedly despise, with his unqualified support for an explicitly neoconservative foreign policy. When possible Bush successor John McCain was saying that the US might remain in Iraq for “100 years,” or after the brief skirmish between Russia and Georgia, immediately injecting the US into the situation by proclaiming that Americans “were all Georgians now,” there was Graham, always nodding his head approvingly and enthusiastically. The Left loved to portray Bush as a “warmonger.” If someone can tell me how Graham’s politics differ in the slightest from Bush and Cheney, I’d love to hear it.
Liberals who note the hypocrisy of tea partiers who now protest Obama, yet remained silent when Bush was expanding government, have a valid point. But on the one year anniversary of the last election, Obama Democrats have proven themselves no less hypocritical than Bush Republicans, particularly on the issue that most defined the Left during the last administration-foreign policy. Though few will admit it, liberals who voted for a “change” from Bush have not got it. And like the Republicans before them, Democrats’ faith in their president will likely continue to blind them to the fact that they may never get it.
Larry Auster offers a helpful digest version of the New York Times‘s coverage of the Fort Hood massacre:
A proud first generation American, born in Virginia, Nidal Hasan wanted nothing other than to serve his country. But the bigotry against Muslims that he encountered in the Army, plus the American occupation of Iraq, plus, finally, his anguish at being ordered to deploy to Iraq as part of the U.S. forces there, drove this deeply patriotic son of the Old Dominion to the point where he felt he had no choice but to launch a martydom operation against the U.S. Army and shoot down scores of his fellow soldiers.
Viva Mexico! Never mind the H1N1 or La Familia Michoacana. There’s more to Mexico than swine flu and drug trafficking, though I never realized it until I traveled to Mexico City for my cousin’s wedding last weekend. Obviously it is hard to ignore the poverty and corruption, especially when cops jack your wallet on the way down to Baja. On the other hand, people have been raving about Tulum for years, but I never much wanted to get Montezuma’s revenge twice. The first time was bad enough. Nor did I wish to end up naked on a stage in front of a thousand people like I did on spring break in 1994. Even though I won a free trip back. I guess they have a lot of wet T-shirt contests south of the border. Ten years later, I found myself skinny-dipping on a beach in Acapulco, only this time I was at another wedding, and the groom had confiscated my dress.
For one reason or another, Mexican culture has long been in my psyche. Like any good American, I’ve eaten a taco and have a story to tell about the time I drank too much tequila. Actually, I have more than one story. I love tequila. It turns me into a loud mouth vandal. But my previous experiences in Cancun, Acapulco, and Tijuana only confirmed my image of a half-baked nation of paupers without enough salt in their baby food. After 10 years in California, I can say many Mexicans are gentle, humble, and hardworking. But hell, what’s wrong with their country? So many of them are risking their lives to cross the border. Could it have something to do with the fact that every time you brush your teeth you’re glued to the can for 48 hours? Whatever is wrong with Mexico, and there is a lot wrong with Mexico, I never understood the draw. Ever since the Spanish conquered the warrior tribes that previously inhabited the region, Mexico always seemed like the runner-up.
But therein lies the irony. They were once warriors. Now, for the most part, they are passive, head-to-the-ground laborers. These are not terribly bad qualities to have. They are generally good Catholics, and what I admire most in Mexicans is their passivity. Not one of the Mexicans I hired to drive me around or that served me ever got uppity—even when I gave them cause to. And believe me, I was a demanding gringa at times. You see, despite the fact that I live in England, where patience is paramount if one is to get anything done, I am not used to life in the Third World. We forget just how lucky we are here in the U.S of A where life is relatively easy. Sure, people are struggling, and unemployment is up, but compared to those who live on the streets of the Distrito Federal, Americans are a bunch of pansies. Furthermore, corruption is bad on both side of the Rio Grande—much worse in the States when you take Wall St. into account.
What impressed me most about Mexico is the architecture. For a country with more hovels than sombreros, they have a long and magnificent architectural history. Mexicans take their building seriously. And in Mexico City, it really shows. The Museum of Anthropology is a spectacular structure. Benito Juarez airport is, too. Dozens of modern skyscrapers in the commercial district are just as spectacular as any American skyline. The historic center is quite a sight, and buildings from almost every era dot the city. Famous architects like Luis Barragan have left an indelible mark on Mexico, and almost every house I visited had a pink wall, homage to the great Barragan. Many contemporary architects are either inspired by him, or blatantly rip him off. The sense of color and variety of styles makes Mexico a visually dynamic place and a good source of inspiration for any aesthete. Mexican textiles and crafts are among the finest in the world, the food is top quality, and so are the drugs. What’s not to love?
I do have to wonder why these young women do this to themselves—make sex tapes and then try to put themselves forward into the public eye. They must know by now that in this digital age such tapes are obviously going to become public. Don’t they? Well, you would have thought so, and I would have thought so, but perhaps the thought processes of a blonde Californian would-be beauty queen are somewhat different (umm, actually, I would hope that our thought processes are indeed different: I’m assuming for example that all of us are sentient while Miss Prejean…)
There is one caveat to this wonder of course: if you’re a minor starlet with a career to promote, a movie coming out that looks like it’s going to bomb for example, then the judiciously released tape, or set of pictures deshabille, can do wonders. There is, after all, in certain circles no such thing as bad publicity as long as they spell your name right. A series of (not very nude) Megan Fox photos drifted into the public consciousness just before the release of Transformers 2 (Ms. Fox being the only conceivable reason anyone would watch the movie), just as Vanessa Hudgens was revealed to us slyly just before the release of whatever that movie she was in after High School Musical XVII was.
But for a self proclaimed strictly Christian girl like Carrie Prejean this wouldn’t be a sound career move. So what on earth was she in fact thinking?
The story has it’s fun little twists and turns. Carrie Prejean was competing in the Miss California pageant and was looking the runaway winner until Perez Hilton asked her about her views on gay marriage. Given her Christian beliefs she was agin’ it and said so. This so horrified the pageant organizers that they immediately threw her out. You can see their point of view, of course: such pageants have as their main audiences teenage boys who haven’t worked out how to unwrap a Victoria’s Secret catalogue and a larger group of the musical males amongst us who wish to gasp and bicker over the frocks.
As is usual in American life, Ms. Prejean then sued the organisers for a million dollars, a nice round sum. In one of those little twists (and please, who does write these story lines? It’s not just B list movies, but A listers would be proud to star in a movie with these sorts of plot twists) the organisers then sued Carrie Prejean. No, not for being something of an airhead, that’s part of the job description of a successful applicant, but for the return of the money they had already paid out on her. For it was revealed that they had paid for her to have a boob job before the pageant, but she hadn’t as yet paid them back. So they were suing for two nice round sums, we might say.
At this point we’re in the usual modern American legal gridlock until one of the pageant’s organizers, in the midst of negotiations, unveils his secret weapon. The Carrie Prejean Sex Tape. The existence of such a thing does not really match well with the proclaimed strictly Christian beliefs of Ms. Prejean, meaning that her argument that she had to say what she did about gay marriage because of said beliefs a difficult negotiating stance to maintain. She thus folded (rumors are that it took somewhere between five and 15 seconds, so perhaps she’s not all that dumb after all), and she’ll get her legal fees paid—but nothing else. There’s no word as yet on the disputed ownership of the other two nice round assets.
All of which really brings us back to two important questions. The first being why do these young women make these tapes? Especially those whose public persona depends upon being seen as a “good girl”? The second one comes from something that the website TMZ has reported on. The pageant officials claim to have had a copy of this tape for months, but they’ve not released it because it is, indeed, highly graphic. But they also say that Carrie should have a successful “solo career” ahead of her. What on earth do they mean?
NEW YORK—One felt the backlash against the BNP–BBC fiasco all the way to the Big Bagel, with local papers commenting on the lynching of Nick Griffin by rent-a-crowd minorities. Even people who think England is in Canada heard about it and called the freak show unfair and stage-managed, confirming the perception that Britain is a nation that has totally lost its way. Personally, I wasn’t surprised in the least. Dimbleby is a pompous clown, Jack Straw a mincing shyster of a man posing as a leader of men, and Griffin is, well, Griffin: it is the unbearable picking on the unsuitable. I particularly liked the scenes outside the BBC, where wild, hairy ethnic types with bandanas screamed abuse at the police and at everyone and no one in particular. An English friend of mine who lives over here said that outrage seems to be a very English thing nowadays. “Or what passes for English.”
I was in London and living near the Danish embassy when the cartoon controversy almost shut down half the city, and the faces shouting abuse and exhorting people to burn and murder were the same ones that were outside the Beeb last week. It is now known that Blair, Brown, Straw and the rest of the gang that hijacked Britain planned the mass immigration that has made parts of the country uninhabitable. So I ask you, who deserves to be abused by the audience, Straw or Griffin? If the BBC had not stacked the deck with a rent-a-crowd, that is.
When I read that a Saudi court had sentenced a journalist to 60 lashes after she was charged with involvement in a TV show in which a Saudi man talked about sex, my first thought was to imagine the fat, pink Dimbleby being whipped for presiding over a hate show. In fact, if and when Sharia law comes to Britain, it’ll be fun to see all those ghastly people in reality programmes being whipped non-stop by the thought police. Not that it’s much better over here. During a car-racing promo, the rhetorical question “Where is Juan Pablo Montoya” was asked. Montoya is a racing driver. “He’s out getting a taco,” quipped the analyst Bob Griese, a once-famous football (American) hero. You’d think he had insulted Martin Luther King. All hell broke loose, despite the fact that Montoya is white, employed, very rich and able to speak English. Griese had to eat more humble pie than Griffin, from the chattering classes, of course, as the Latino ones were out getting tacos and missed it.
Mind you, what Blair, Brown and Straw did to Britain the grotesque Ted Kennedy did to America way back in 1965, when he passed South African apartheid immigration laws in reverse. Kennedy lived, like Dimbleby, in ritzy, secure houses among people of his own kind. Kennedy would never dream of living among those that the laws he helped pass had brought into the country. The BBC has recast many British people as dangerous forces of hate against blacks and Muslims, but all these people want is a fair shake where traditional British values are concerned. By stage-managing a hate show last week, Dimbleby and the BBC and the ghastly Straw shot themselves in the foot and then some. They should beware of “the angry white male” theory, if there are any white males left in a future UK, that is.
Otherwise everything’s hunky dory. I see that my old friend Marc Rich has come clean in a book and admitted that he traded with the enemy and made billions in return. He would, wouldn’t he? About ten years ago, the then Spectator proprietor, Lord Black, had a fit against the poor little Greek boy when I wrote that Mossad had tipped off Rich not to fly privately to Spain because the Feds were planning to force down his plane and bring him back to justice in the States. Among some of the epithets he called me was Goebbels. Boris Johnson, then practising a much nobler profession as editor of the Speccie, defended me as best he could and I survived. Not that Lord Black wanted me fired, more likely suspended, like a naughty schoolboy caught talking in chapel. Now Taki has been justified. Once the Swiss refused to extradite him—I wonder why?—the Americans planned a snatch job by helicopter, landing in Zug, where the bum lives, but they backed off. My source is as good as it gets, and the plane job was on until Mossad, listening in on the American base in Italy, got wind of it. Poor little Taki. I almost got canned for writing the facts.
Rich is, of course, unapologetic about a life in crime, but being pardoned by a scumbag like Bill Clinton makes one, I suppose, innocent and as good as the rest of us, except much richer. Laws, after all, are there only to be respected by those without access to power or Mossad. Some readers might remember that I ran into this rat in the garage of my chalet, of all places. He was staying with my next-door neighbour and that Marie Christine of Kent woman (a nice little groupetto). I shouted at him and told him he belonged in jail. It was water off you-know-who’s back. The bum’s skin is thicker than Blair’s.
The neopagan takeover of the GOP has begun.
Village Voice
Steven Thrasher, Nov. 4 2009Holy Tyr! Queens voters made American history tonight, when they chose Dan Halloran as the nation’s first openly heathen elected official.
Halloran will serve as the City Council member from the 19th district, representing Bayside, Auburndale and part of Flushing. He and Kevin Kim were involved in a bruising campaign to the finish, which included many religious and racial fights and allegations.
Trips to both campaigns’ offices on Election Night revealed how different the two were. Shortly before the polls closed at the Kim campaign office, there was not one white person working there. Beneath a Shepard Fairey poster, a couple dozen Mandarin speaking volunteers hustled up rides to the polls on cell phones.
At Halloran HQ, there was hardly one non-white person, and the walls were adorned with ads for Tea Party protests.
And then comes my favorite two lines from the piece:
Ironically, one of the first things Halloran said when addressing his supporters after Kim conceded was “I could never have believed in my wildest dreams of the coalition we have put together.” It didn’t look like much of a diverse ‘coalition’ to us, unless you count the mix of heathens and Roman Catholics.
It’s called the “Takimag Strategy,” and apparently it can win in Queens!
(Our recent discussion of paganism and Christianity can be read here, here, and here.)
It’s worth noting that Halloran is a “King” (that is, high priest) of a New York sect of Theodism, also known as Ásatrú. No postmodern New Ager, Halloran, a former Roman Catholic, appears genuinely dedicated to re-discovering the original spirituality of Europe, and not simply embracing one more religious metaphor for egalitarianism.
So reports the website Religious Dispatches:
He received his BA from the City University of New York in History and Anthropology, and conducted archaeological field research in Ireland on the Norman and Viking periods. Like many Neopagans, who tend to read more and have higher levels of education than the average American, Halloran was drawn to the mythology and lore of ancient cultures that exposed him to an entirely different religious world than the one in which he was raised. Halloran’s particular fascination with ancient Germanic culture led him to Heathenism, a branch of contemporary Paganism devoted to the beliefs and practices of Northern European cultures.
We should learn more about Halloran before deeming him some kind of AltRight champion; however, from the little I’ve learned so far, Halloran already strikes me as infinitely more interesting then this Doug Hoffman fellow, whom the conservative movement has fetishized in the most stupid and embarrassing of ways. As I wrote yesterday, Hoffman represents less of a “conservative insurgency” then a reminder of just how widespread mainstream Republican milk-toastology actually is. Embracing Third World immigrants, promoting consumerism, and practicing fiscal responsibility by doing something as meaningless as cutting earmarks isn’t just the platform of John McCain and George Bush, but also of independent candidates who claim to run to right of the GOP. In this mild-mannered accountant, Stacy McCain and friends have appeared to have found a new guru.
Though I was unable to attend the H.L. Mencken Club event this year, I am in agreement with Jack Hunter’s latest piece where he argues that the “Alternative Right” serves itself best by focusing its efforts on reducing the size and scope of the managerial state, rather than focusing its energies on a new culture war. From my vantage point, most of the grassroots energy is focused on the issues commonly defined as “libertarian,” and thus Jack’s point about “hunting where the ducks are” is a sound one. Of course, this does not mean that cultural issues should be ignored, but as Jack notes, a successful attack on the welfare/warfare state would yield many positive results for the cultural warriors. Sadly, I am not sure the same could be said in reverse.
Take the most popular cultural issue of the day for the Right—immigration. The reason I use the general term “immigration” and not the more specific “illegal immigration,” is because like most of the major cultural battlefields of the day, the depth of opposition is nuanced and varies from person to person. I’m of the opinion that all immigration is a problem and believe simply focusing on the legal status of those entering the country is needlessly myopic.
Given this point of view, most people would classify me as a “restrictionist.” The only problem is—I don’t agree with the vast majority of proposals peddled by most self-described restrictionists. I oppose a border fence. I oppose a militarized border. I oppose a new “Operation Wetback.” I simply don’t believe any of these policies would put a serious dent in the immigration problem, nor do I believe the consequences of implementing them would be worth the minor successes they might bring.
If I say I want to “End the Fed” or “bring our troops home,” most Americans understand what I mean. If I say I want to end immigration, it isn’t exactly clear what kind of immigration I’m referring to, let alone what specific proposals I’m advocating. This general lack of clarity about many of the cultural issues of the day is yet another reason why cultural vanguardism is doomed to fail as a political strategy.
Since the sixties, conservatives and critics of the ever-emerging multicultural society have noted that politics follows culture. Some have taken this as evidence that cultural issues must be pushed to the forefront of political campaigns. I take this as evidence that the culture must be changed and politics are largely a fraud. This doesn’t mean we should abandon politics wholesale, but rather that we should do everything we can to reduce the power of the State, so that culture can become a reflection of real communities, instead of a series of multicultural edicts dictated from above by the PC police.
In the meantime encouraging irreverent attitudes toward the managerial regime is as good a strategy as any to ensure that the future is less dominated by egalitarian myths and mantras.
One of the great benefits of living in a city full of vibrant cultural diversity and hyper liberal white people is being relieved of the feeling of a civic responsibility to vote. When primaries were held here in my New York City enclave of Park Slope back in September, I took a glance at the slate of candidates and what they supposedly stood for, mostly out of curiosity, and came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to be governed by any of those damn people. I vowed never to take part in the New York electoral process. I momentarily considered voting against Bloomberg yesterday in the mayoral, just to teach that arrogant killjoy a lesson, but the race was too close, and I was afraid Bloomberg’s black liberal, Sharpton-endorsed opponent, Bill Thompson, might actually win. I surmised that abstinence was still the best policy. (Unfortunately the Constitution Party, or a similar type outfit, hasn’t made any inroads up here, which would have allowed me to have at least lodged a principled protest vote of some kind.)*
My frustration aside, it’s hard for me to summon even one cheer for the supposed nation-wide “conservative revival” I’ve been reading about perusing the right-of-center blogosphere. Robert Stacy McCain, for instance, has annoucned, “the [Doug] Hoffman congressional campaign has ignited a revolution within the Republican Party, the results of which are already being felt.” A “revolution”? Really? Let’s look at where this accountant from New York’s 23rd stands on the issues:
Health care reform
Although universal health care sounds great in theory, we can’t afford to do everything at once… especially when it means adding an additional trillion dollars to the deficit we are handing to our children and grandchildren. I believe our first step should be to bring the spiraling costs of healthcare under control so the cost of healthcare does not destroy the budgets of hardworking families and retirees. Then, as the economy picks up we can work to insure everyone.
Socialism, just not all at once.
Immigration:
There is no question that our immigration policies are flawed. The answer, though, is not to put up a wall and stop all immigration. The answer is to create an easier path for immigrants to enter the United States—and to work here—while at the same time getting tough on illegal immigrants who commit crimes.
This is a typical Republican pose in which the illegality of mass immigration is opposed, and yet the candidate expresses his desire to make it even easier for Third World migrants to enter the country.
Spending
I would cut the pork and wasteful earmarks.
Oh yes, we wouldn’t want to touch anything else. And clearly, cutting earmarks for bike trails and pet projects would make a big dint in the $70-100 trillion in unfunded liabilities that will be coming due in the next few years.
Stacy also quotes Erick Erickson of RedState.com, who claims that the Hoffman campaign “demonstrated to the GOP that it must not take conservatives for granted. … The GOP had better pay attention.” Ooh! Taken for granted no more! Well, perhaps Newt can’t count on the Tea Parties to follow his every order, as I feared might be the case. But to me, this recent episode proves just how few politicians—even ones like Hoffman, who, one would think, have absolutely nothing to lose—and professional conservatives understand the crisis we’re in, or are willing to talk about it.
Perhaps Obama has “lost the middle class” with his spending programs and inept comments about his good friend at Harvard, HL Gates (though I think it’s far too early to date the end of the white middle-class’s willingness to vote for someone like our Multiculti Messiah.) But if the Middle American Radicals have no alternative force to turn to, then their incipient rebellion at the Tea Parties and Obamacare town halls is nothing but noise.
*Why someone with my views would ever live in this city remains a mystery to many. Not too long ago, the Times did a special report on the one family in my neighborhood that dared display a McCain-Palin yard sign—the estate seemingly “as lonely an outpost as the Alamo.” And the Observer has investigated the disquieting rumor that an active Republican was a member of the renowned Food Co-op on Union St. Without question, I’m the only ones in Park Slope who’s ever made a tax-deductible donation to VDARE.com.
Scott Richert has continued the discussion about Richard Dawkins’ recent attack on the Catholic Church for its outreach to disaffected Anglicans. Of particular importance is Scott’s second piece, which argues that Dawkins’ target is Aristotle as well as Christ. For those who are interested, Scott’s first piece may be found here and his second piece may be found here.
Mad Men, the upscale drama about an early 1960s Madison Avenue advertising agency, is a sort of Brideshead Revisited for heterosexual American grown-ups. For Baby Boomers, it’s hard to watch Mad Men without enviously exclaiming: Our parents had it better!
Like the eleven-hour 1981 British adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s novel about the elegance and indolence of post-Great War Oxford undergrads, Mad Men’s languorous 13-hours per year pace affords viewers the time to wallow in the visual details and manners of a more adult age than our own.
Matthew Weiner, the 44-year-old creator of Mad Men, describes the root of his fascination with the post-WWII/pre-Beatles New York City that he never experienced firsthand:
Catcher in the Rye has got to be at the bottom of the entire show. It’s the first book I ever completed reading. I read it many times. I fantasized about living in New York. I loved the WASP-iness of it even though it’s got these Jewish undertones to it.
When first reading J.D. Salinger’s novel in the 1970s, I was surprised by 16-year-old Holden Caulfield’s assumption, shared by his culture in general, that it was more fun to be old than young. In contrast, as far back as I could remember—the historic hinge years of the later 1960s—the media had marketed the opposite message.
Mad Men’s cinematography is suitably mature, using a dolly-mounted camera instead of the jitter-cam of today. The serial resembles a Ralph Lauren catalog with plot twists … more plot twists than I, personally, care to follow, but there can certainly be worse things in a storyteller than a fecundity of invention.
The main plotline about a handsome fellow (played by Jon Hamm) who went off to war as Dick Whitman and returns as Don Draper is particularly old-fashioned. I suspect Weiner was inspired, ironically, by Random Harvest, the movie Holden Caulfield grumbles through at Radio City Music Hall, the one in which Ronald Colman gets amnesia from being knocked on the head on the Western Front and then starts a new life with Greer Garson under a new name.
Mad Men’s music isn’t as good as it could be if the show had a bigger budget (rights to the Sinatra catalog and Broadway standards don’t come cheap), but it’s easy to remember while watching that this was the last era when more than a few of the hit songs on the radio were composed for the over-25 demographic.
While Waugh wore his reactionary heart on his sleeve in Brideshead, Weiner maintains plausible deniability in Mad Men by methodically depicting how unenlightened the upper-middle class WASPs of a half century ago were. We in the audience are scandalized to note, for example, that even the most respectable parents in 1960 devoted more time to socializing with other adults than to obsessively overseeing their offspring’s next leap up the steep slope of the meritocratic pyramid.
Moreover, many families in 1960 can afford a home on just one income. As Betty Friedan noted, housewives are imprisoned in their suburban homes, escaping in Mad Men only, well … any time they feel like it.
Worse, firms pay married workers more than equally productive single ones, in violation of all the tenets of Friedan and Friedman. Employers back then felt they had a “duty to society,” a concept with which our advanced cultures are no longer familiar.
Even more shockingly, the employees at the Sterling Cooper ad agency knock off work right at 5:15 PM each day. They appear to have some weird Depression-era relic of a notion of solidarity among American workers: that if the bosses want more work done, they should hire more workers.
Didn’t they understand back then that cheap wages and expensive land are what made America great?
And, in contrast to today, everybody in New York wants to move to (pre-diverse) Los Angeles. Weiner, who grew up in LA (attending Harvard-Westlake, the rich kid’s high school that was my school’s archrival in debate), depicts Los Angeles in 1962 as the Paradise for the Common Man. During the second season, rich Don goes AWOL from Madison Avenue to see what it would be like to be poor Dick in LA. He discovers a low-rent utopia next to the beach where blue-collar artistes exquisitely customize cars straight out of Tom Wolfe’s famous first article. Weiner told blogger Alan Sepinwall:
… part of the point of the 60s is the focus is going to change from New York, and by 1972, New York is going to be a disaster. At this point, it’s on its way down and California is on its way up. That hot rod, read Tom Wolfe. It’s “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby.
While watching Mad Men, Weiner affords us ample opportunity to congratulate ourselves on how much progress we’ve made. For example, most of the black characters in Mad Men have servile jobs. Today, of course, things are infinitely better. Black men are seldom seen in servile jobs (unless they are African immigrants or gay). In fact, black men aren’t seen in any jobs as much anymore: ten percent of black men were out of the work force in Don Draper’s 1960 versus 24 percent in booming 2000. Indeed, black men aren’t even seen at all as much anymore because a million are now locked away in prison. (The incarceration rate of black male high school dropouts was one percent in the Bad Old Days of Dwight Eisenhower’s last year in office versus 25 percent in Bill Clinton’s glorious finale.)
The kicker to the joke is that Mad Men, despite being set in New York, is filmed in LA, where Latinos have been imported in vast numbers to fill the servant jobs that today’s upper-middle class whites no longer trust blacks with. Yet Hispanics are even more invisible to the Hollywood elite today than blacks were.
Is Mad Men a satire on the old WASP-run America? Or is it, more daringly, a satire on the new America watching the old America?
Neither, really.
In setting and characters, Mad Men is a de-satirized, minor key riff on the musical comedy How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. (Indeed, Robert Morse, who won a Tony in 1962 for his role as the social-climbing young VP of Advertising in How to Succeed, plays senior partner Bertram Cooper in Mad Men).
Weiner has the fetishistic, obsessive-compulsive observational skills to be a great satirist, but his heart’s just not in it. He’s a nostalgist.
Satire, from Swift onward, has been a Tory art form. In contrast, Weiner, at least consciously, identifies with the triumph of progressive liberalism. He is the loyal son of the kind of hard-working, left-leaning Jewish family (his father is a prominent neurologist, his mother a housewife and attorney) whose conventional wisdom has come to dominate our culture so thoroughly that, at least in his copious interviews, neither Weiner nor his interviewers appear to notice many of the ironies of Mad Men.
As a social commentator, Weiner is on the winning side in the culture war. Yet, as an artist, he senses a void in the brave new America. While he may lack the vocabulary to articulate it, this longing helps give Mad Men its romantic aura that lifts it above its own soap operaish and soft porn tendencies.
Weiner, who has a wife and four sons, is at least aware, however, that he finds feminism a hoax. (This same heresy added interest to the 1980s television serial about the advertising business, thirtysomething, which was created by two otherwise liberal Jewish family men, Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz.)
Consider the interview in Variety in which Weiner is asked a standard question: “How much of the show’s take on gender roles is rooted in your own upbringing as someone born in 1965?” In response, he wanders around for 867 words trying to explain, without being so lucid that gets himself Larry Summersized, that he’s learned—the hard way—that feminism is flapdoodle. In his strained verbiage, though, there’s one cogent sentence that explains much of Mad Men’s appeal to contemporary women:
“What’s sexist in the office is fuel in the bedroom.”
In his StupidParty article, Ellison failed to mention that the GOP’s new webpage is also honoring a certain misunderstood captain of industry.
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(ht: World-of-Crap)
I got a kick out of yesterday’s front page story in the New York Times on the “unexpected” profits of Ford. In particular this paragraph made me chuckle:
Ford, which earned $997 million in the third quarter and made money in North America for the first time since 2005, has turned itself around largely by cutting costs and introducing cars that consumers want to buy, rather than resorting to deep discounts to lure shoppers into showrooms.
What?!? Cutting costs? Making a product consumers want? This is how business’ are supposed to succeed? What about asking for handouts from taxpayers?
When Ford chose not to ask for government loans, the company was freed to continue spending on new products like its Fusion and Taurus sedans.
G.M. and Chrysler, by comparison, had to rein in much of their product development programs to conserve cash while they awaited federal aid.
A report by the Government Accountability Office released on Monday said that the federal government was unlikely to recover much of the $81 billion that was invested in G.M. and Chrysler, their suppliers and related financing companies.
Amazing. It turns out socializing failed companies doesn’t always pay off. Who’d have thunk it?
I see Keith Bardwell has resigned his position as Justice of the Peace down in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana. This is the fellow who, back on October 6, refused to marry a mixed-race couple (white lady, black gent).
As a defiant serial miscegenator myself, I was naturally attentive to this story. What’s one to make of it?
So far as I can judge, Mr. Bardwell was within his rights. He recused himself on conscientious grounds from performing the ceremony, as a judge is surely entitled to do. He believes that interracial marriage is harmful to the children of the union, because they will not be fully accepted by either white or black citizens. I don’t agree with that myself, and it seems to be contradicted by some rather glaring evidence; but that’s Mr. Bardwell’s opinion. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be entitled to hold it, nor indeed to act on it, so long as he harms no one. Plenty of my friends have nutty opinions (though my own are of course all rock-solid…) and I don’t hold that against them.
No harm was done here. Mr. Bradwell didn’t prevent the couple from getting married, and had no power to do so, and knew he had none. The early reporting on this was very misleading — really a disgrace to the journalistic profession. Google-News “keith bardwell license,” and you will find dozens of news stories from mid-October telling you that Mr. Bardwell had "refused to issue a marriage license" to the couple. It took me less than five minutes at the keyboard to find out that justices of the peace do not issue marriage licenses in Lousiana. That is done by clerks of the local courts. The justice only performs a ceremony and signs the license, as a priest would. Offenders here included some hig names like Associated Press, Newsweek, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and, of course, the ever-dubious Wikipedia. They have now mostly cleaned up their act, and are reporting that Mr. Bardwell merely refused to marry the couple.
(The fatuous Bobby Jindal contributed to the cloud of ignorance here, declaring that Mr. Bardwell’s license be withdrawn. Louisiana justices of the peace don’t have licenses. They are elected officials. Would it be too much to expect the governor of the state to know that? In Jindal’s case, yes.)
In a free society, there should be the widest possible room for the exercise of freedom of conscience. Mr. Bardwell’s conscience told him that he’d be doing a wrong thing if he married this couple, so he recused himself, as judges do all the time, and ought to be entitled to do. He seems to me, to judge from his TV appearances, to be a nice old geezer of—well, obviously—strong principles.
The poor guy was, of course, made the subject of a Two Minutes Hate by all the muckety-mucks of political correctness, with much shrieking and wailing about "injustice," the persistence of "racism," the "ongoing struggle," and all the rest of the threadbare clichés of the self-righteous prigs who want to tell us how to live and what to think. Senator Mary Landrieu got quite breathless with indignation, hyperventilating about how “deeply disturbed” she was by Mr. Bardwell’s “ugly bigotry.” Hands up anybody who believes Sen. Landrieu’s deep disturbedness cost her so much as a picosecond of sleep … Anybody? … Nobody? … Thank you, that’s what I thought.
Now Mr. Bardwell will likely spend the rest of his life watching his assets being transferred into the pockets of crook lawyers from legal-terrorism outfits like the ACLU and SPLC. I don’t imagine those assets amount to much. Median house price in Tangipahoa Parish is less than $200,000, though houses seem to go a tad higher in Robert, where Mr. Bardwell lives. The parish is, by the way, a Whitopia, with 1,294 whites in residence, 25 blacks, and 20 other. Now that the unfortunate inhabitants have drawn attention to themselves, and are known to have elected Mr. Bardwell to local office, any day now they should expect notification of a massive HUD lawsuit demanding they build "affordable housing."
It’s not as if opposition to miscegenenation is such an unusual thing. Without trying hard, I can think of three groups among whom quite visceral opposition is widespread: (1) East Asian men, (2) black women, (3) Orthodox Jews.
And what about our president, the sainted Barack Obama? In his autobiography he tells us about the white girlfriend he had in his New York days. At last he broke up with her.
She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and that wasn’t enough.
Dreams from My Father (p. 211)
Apparently it wasn’t enough for Obama. He left the unidentified girl to her regrettable whiteness and married Michelle. Does he perhaps nurse negative feelings about interracial marriage? Someone should ask him.
Furthermore, what we saw in this little drama was a harbinger of what we have to look forward to as homosexual marriage gradually spreads around the country. If a justice of the peace decides, on strict principle, that he cannot in conscience marry two men, or two women, will he endure the same storm of denunciation from pompous, self-righteous nitwits as Mr. Bardwell has? And what of priests, who are carrying out essentially the same function? Shall priests be permitted to recuse themselves from their duties on conscientious grounds? Not, I suspect, in Eric Holder’s America. Now just read that last question again. Priests? On conscientious grounds? Have we gone stark staring mad?
In any case, though I obviously disagree with Keith Bardwell on the miscegenation business, I cherish him as a little remnant of the old, weird America not yet hammered down flat by the forces of orthodoxy, conformity, preening priggishness, bogus indignation, and totalitarian bullying. He’s welcome to drop in to my multiracial household for a drink and a chat any day that suits him … Though by the time the guardian schoolmarms of our public morality have dragged him behind their chariots round the borders of Tangipahoa Parish with all the shyster "civil rights" lawyers of America in howling pursuit, briefcases a-flapping, I doubt he’ll be able to afford the bus fare up here.
Feminism is a Darwinian blind alley. In biological terms, there is nothing that identifies a maladaptive pattern so quickly as a below-replacement level of reproduction; an immediate consequence of feminism is what appears to be an irreversible decline in the birth rate. Nations pursue feminist policies at their peril.
It’s no secret that Western man has given up breeding. A society needs to have 2.1 births per woman in a lifetime if it’s going to maintain a steady population. Besides the U.S. and Iceland, no western nation is even close.
Putting the problem in chart form may help to illustrate its enormity. Here are some of the fertility rates for western countries and their projected white populations by 2050, not counting migration. I estimated 4.9 million nonwhites for the UK and knocked that out of the population, 6.4 in France, 1.7 in the Netherlands, 2.5 in Germany, and 10 million for all other EU countries. The total EU white population is 491.5 million- 25.5 million nonwhites = 466 million. Also, the TFR was adjusted from the official number of 1.51 to 1.45 due to the higher nonwhite birth rate. Canada has around 2.7 million nonwhites. Their overall TFR is 1.58; I estimated the white number at 1.5. Russia is about 20 percent nonwhite.
^EU member
*ex Soviet state, non EU member
It can be projected that the total number of white people lost from the EU, Canada, Switzerland, the Balkans, Norway and the ex-Soviet states including Russia will be around 279,000,000. To put that in perspective, that’s more than the losses due to World War I, World War II, the Nazi regime and all communist governments in history combined. Of course, deciding against having children is not equivalent to starving people in gulags. Still, whatever the causes of the birth slump, the result is hundreds of millions of lives not existing that otherwise would have.
Perhaps low birth rates are not a cultural phenomenon and the number of children people have is based more on economic considerations. Looking at birth rates for the world as a whole casts doubt on that possibility. The top five countries are Congo, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Niger and Afghanistan. Not exactly places known for their prosperous middle-classes. Even within first-world countries, if there’s a correlation between wealth and fertility, it’s negative. In the U.S., black and Hispanic households are worth about one tenth of what white household are. But according to estimates, Hispanic women have 3.0 children each, blacks 2.2, and whites 2.0. Ukraine’s nominal GDP per capita is less than $4,000 a year while its TFR is indistinguishable from that of Italy ($39,000), Spain ($35,000) or the Czech Republic ($21,000).
We must conclude that there is something besides economics that is going on here. If you find a white population somewhere, it’s almost certain that it’s not going to be reproducing itself enough to survive.
There is one major exception.
After the 2004 presidential election, Steve Sailer famously analyzed Caucasian fertility rates in Red (those that voted for the Republican candidate) and Blue (those that voted Democratic) states. He found that the top 19 states in fertility (and 25 out of the top 26) voted for George W. Bush. Amongst the 50 states and Washington, DC, the correlation between white fertility rate and the Republican share of the white vote was 0.86 (0.84 in 2000).
Sailer hypothesizes that the lower cost of living in Red States makes child bearing more feasible.
In a tempting contrast, the cost-of-living calculator provided by Realtor.com says that a $100,000 salary in liberal Manhattan buys only as much as a $38,000 salary in conservative Pinehurst, North Carolina. Likewise, a San Francisco couple earning $100,000 between them can afford just as much in Cedar City, Utah, if the husband can find a $44,000-a-year job—and then the wife can stay home with their children. Moreover, the culture of Cedar City is more conducive to child rearing than San Francisco.
While this kind of thinking is on the right track, it doesn’t address why some women choose cariers and others families as much as it does why those with particular characteristics end up in one place rather than another. After all, those from New York are free to move to Idaho and vice versa. But it does show that we’re dealing with a cultural issue—one of the soul, not the pocketbook. Utah, the only majority Mormon state in the Union, has a 2.45 TFR. That’s pretty impressive, especially considering Utahans watch the same TV and listen to the same music (both of which encourage libertinism and nihilism) as the rest of America. While cost of living considerations may explain some of the difference in TFR between New York and Utah, they do less to shed light on the disparity between Utah and the rest on the socially conservative and sparsely populated heartland.
Taking an international perspective, there seems to be two ways to have a replacement fertility rate in the modern world.
A) Be really religious.
B) Be really r-selected.
Since Europeans aren’t Africans, that leaves option (A) as the only proven method for replacement Caucasian fertility. The potential success in this area of any secular philosophical system is speculative. Remember that next time you see Bill Maher on TV foaming at the mouth about those stupid Christians who won’t bow before the god of evolution. The ultimate irony is that championing Darwinism has, as Katarina Runske wrote of feminism, been a Darwinian dead end.
Put bluntly, liberal secular humanists are on the verge of extinction.
To get an idea of the cluelessness of the evangelical Darwinians, look not further than Richard Dawkins’s recent article “What Use is Religion?” The author begins by distinguishing between proximate and ultimate causes. To get an idea of what he’s talking about, think of a moth that flies into a lamp and kills itself. The proximate cause is that the physiology of the insect and physical properties of light cause the moth to behave in a suicidal way. An ultimate cause is evolutionary: in the conditions in which the insect evolved, the only light in the night sky was the moon, which the moth was able to use as a compass without ever running into it.
Saying we believe in religion because it feels good is a proximate explanation, the same way that saying we eat sugary foods because they taste good is. The evolutionary “why” just isn’t there.
Dawkins’ answer to “what use is religion?” has something to do with children, but nothing to do with the likelihood of having them.
My specific hypothesis of the necessity of religion is all about children.
More than any other species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous generations. Theoretically, children might learn from experience not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But to say the least, the child whose brain includes this rule of thumb will be at a selective advantage: Believe whatever the grown-ups tell you. Natural selection builds child brains just this way.
In addition, this very quality automatically makes them vulnerable to infection by mind viruses. For excellent survival reasons, child brains trusts parents and elders whom their parents tell them to trust. An automatic consequence is that the “truster” has no way of distinguishing good advice from bad. The child cannot tell that “If you swim in the river, you’ll be eaten by crocodiles” is good advice but “If you don’t sacrifice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad (or at least, unnecessary) advice.
Dawkins compares religion to an Internet virus in this way. A good computer does what you tell it. That makes it a wonderful machine capable of doing spreadsheets, but also likely to follow harmful instructions. To Dawkins, religion is a late arriver like the artificial light which kills the moth that is behaving in ways that in other conditions were evolutionarily adaptive.
The problem with using that explanation for religion is that spirituality has been around for too long. There has been plenty of time for evolution to preserve the positive results of blind obedience and do away with what’s harmful and wasteful. For similar reasons, Harpending and Cochran theorize in The 10,000 Year Explosion
Since man’s been talking a lot longer than he’s been writing, it’s hard to date the birth spirituality or belief in life after death. As good a guess as any for the start of religion is when humans started taking the trouble to ceremoniously bury their dead. That’s been happening for at least 100,000 years. We may trace spirituality even further. OriginsNet.org has put together the evidence for religiosity in the great apes in their “Appendices for Chimp Spirituality.” As the article recounts, after a 10-year old female bonobo was killed by a leopard, the tribal elders encircled the body almost immediately, some making loud displays and calls, others sitting in solemn silence. The body was eventually groomed and cared for, and the high-status apes wouldn’t allow any other apes access to the body. Surely if these alpha apes could talk, they would’ve declared themselves a priesthood and said they were praying for the poor child’s soul!
There’s also evidence that animism and a certain reverence for nature has a very long lineage. Jane Goodall observered that at the onset of thunderstorms, chimpanzee males would often perform spectacular aggression displays, charging, swaying back and forth, and brandishing and shaking branches. Goodall sensed that the Chimpanzees were expressing something like the emotion of awe.
Religion may have evolved to protect us from slipping into hedonism, or to instill a sense of duty in order to go bear the difficulties of childbearing. It may simply be that those who thought God was on their side exterminated the prissy atheist cavemen (who probably also believed their women should be “liberated” and hunt for themselves.) The issues of the evolution of religion and exactly why it’s good for the fertility rate in the modern world are outside the scope of the article. There isn’t even an established theory on the evolution of the brain yet. (I’m partial to Geoffrey Miller’s belief that it has something to do with sexual selection, but I wouldn’t bet a week’s salary on it.)
What we can say with certainty is that Dawkins’s idea that religion brings nothing to man, or, indeed, harms him, is patently false, whether we see things from the perspective of how long faith has been around or what’s happening today to people without it. A quick look at the CIA Factbook proves that Dawkins is very wrong when he claims, “religion has no survival value for individual human beings, or for the benefit of their genes.” If, in the end, all evolution cares about is survival, it’s liberalism that must be considered the virus. Our ancestors who had religion survived while those of us without it might not.
The two most evolutionarily successful men in written history were probably Genghis Khan and the Prophet Muhammad. But only the latter invented a religious justification for his conquests. Now his ethny (loosely defined) continues to claim land while the Mongolians are a measly five million and dwindling. Among whites, the two most fertile groups are by far the mentioned Mormons and the Anabaptists. Though the Old Testament ignores the afterlife, the Hebrews’ great reward for pleasing God was that the they could spread their genes. Millennia later, God’s chosen are still around, while the Canaanites exist only in word.
There may be nothing we can do to stop the current trends. Whites may simply not be fit for the world they created. Perhaps the few that are have already become religious fanatics and simply need time to expand their numbers. We won’t know until there’s a white elite that doesn’t declare war on the traditional beliefs of their people. Russia may be providing a test case (albeit not a perfect one. The government may have started to encourage nationalism and religion, but there’s still the poisonous effects of the Western-American media).
Even if it was granted that the modern world, with its feminism and secularism, produced all the happiness one can imagine, it cannot last. A baby born today may live to see the extinction of the Lithuanians (projected to be a population of 760,000 by 2100, possibly all assimilated into other ethnicities). Any philosophy that guarantees that those that adopt it will be gone within a few generations can only be embraced by nihilists. The patriarchal and god-fearing will inherit the earth, one way or another.
Long before I supported Ron Paul for president and in general, I was a staunch Pat Buchanan conservative. I still am. Giving my opinion on the radio and in print, at least twice a week for over a decade, I’ve been called a libertarian or a conservative depending on the issue being discussed, but more importantly, the political figures associated with those discussions. If arguing my opposition to NAFTA, illegal immigration and American empire in 2000, I was derided as a Buchananite-nationalist-isolationist. If arguing against NAFTA, illegal immigration and American empire in 2008, I was derided as a Paulite-libertarian-isolationist. I plead guilty on all counts.
Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending the 2nd annual HL Mencken Club conference where a host of conservative and libertarian thinkers came together for a rousing exchange of ideas on what might—and what should—animate the American Right. One, surely ongoing, debate seemed to be whether right-wingers could make more progress by focusing on cultural issues like illegal immigration, multiculturalism and affirmative action or libertarian issues like government size, spending and perhaps, civil liberties. Would a more culture-minded Buchananite approach work best? Or perhaps a more libertarian-minded Paulite approach?
What many are now calling, appropriately and accurately enough, the “Alternative Right” encompasses both the Buchanan and Paul camps, and whatever differences each have are miniscule compared to their shared, stark differences with the liberal Left and mainstream neoconservative Right. Before discussing what should be done to advance Alternative Right causes—why not look at what has already been done?
The two most successful, right-wing grassroots uprisings in recent years have been the backlash to amnesty for illegal aliens in 2007 and the ongoing “tea party” protests against government spending. Buchanan’s position on illegal immigration in 1996—something only he talked about back then and the GOP viciously attacked him for—is now conventional conservative consensus.
Whether born of partisanship or principle, the thousands of Americans protesting government spending at tea party rallies has radicalized the Republican Party’s natural base. When criticizing talk radio, liberals tend to believe the small, “angry” percentage who actually call-in, unquestionably represent the millions who listen—yet contradictorily assure respectable folks that these crazy “teabaggers” are but a small, vocal few. Sensing their influence and power, the GOP establishment pays anti-government protesters lip service, but to their credit, the tea partiers are not necessarily paying anything back. Notes the Wall Street Journal “the tea-party movement appears aggressively nonpartisan, much like Ross Perot’s supporters in 1992.”
So what happened to all those crazy Ron Paul kids during the election, waving protest signs and screaming about big government? Many of their parents have joined them.
If Paul had been elected president and carried through on campaign promises to secure the border, end “anchor baby” citizenship,” dismantle government programs like affirmative action, welfare, race-based housing loans and the like, the Texas Congressman would be portrayed by the Left as one of the most racist presidents in modern history. Just for following the Constitution.
But while the Left—including most of the GOP leadership—would shriek, the real Right, the Alternative Right, would applaud. While the GOP keeps scratching its head wondering how to attract more minorities and young people, ironically the only Republican who has attracted both is Paul, and his anti-statist message is feasibly more acceptable to the wider, mostly white, tea partying GOP base, primarily because it is anti-state, not anti-minority. Simply put, the libertarian approach—per Paul’s example—is the model that could build the broadest coalitions and bear the most fruit in advancing Alt Right policies.
In 1996, I thought libertarians who abandoned Buchanan—the only presidential candidate serious about rolling back American empire—were damned fools. A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll published this week shows that Americans’ trust in government is at a 12-year-low and over half the country supports the formation of a third party. Fed up with George W. Bush-style “compassionate conservatism” and already souring on Obama’s “change,” what organized, anti-government, anti-establishment philosophy exists that might attract disenchanted voters who could challenge the status quo of both parties? In 1996, it was unquestionably the Buchanan Brigades.
In 2009, it is Ron Paul libertarianism. The reason I talk about Paul so much is because Paul has accomplished so much, creating an intellectually serious grassroots fervor that I hadn’t seen since Buchanan in 96, only younger, more enduring and with broader appeal. And today, and in any era, the cultural and constitutional wings of the Alternative Right would gain far more by hunting where the ducks are than trying to invent a brand new bird.
When America is about to throw an ally to the wolves, we follow an established ritual. We discover that the man we supported was never really morally fit to be a friend or partner of the United States.
When Chiang Kai-shek, who fought the Japanese for four years before Pearl Harbor, began losing to Mao’s Communists, we did not blame ourselves for being a faithless ally, we blamed him. He was incompetent; he was corrupt.
We did not lose China. He did.
When Buddhist monks began immolating themselves in South Vietnam, the cry went up: President Diem, once hailed as the “George Washington of his country,” was a dictator, a Catholic autocrat in a Buddhist nation, who had lost touch with his people.
And so, word went out from the White House to the generals. Get rid of Diem, and you get his power and U.S. support. Three weeks before JFK was assassinated, Diem and his brother met the same fate.
When the establishment wished to be rid of a war into which it had plunged this country, suddenly it was “the corrupt and dictatorial Thieu-Ky regime” in Saigon that was simply not worth defending.
Lon Nol, our man in Phnom Penh, got the same treatment.
“In this world it is often dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but to be a friend is fatal,” said Henry Kissinger.
The army of South Vietnam and the Saigon government, the boat people of the South China Sea and the million victims of Pol Pot’s genocide can testify to that before the judgment seat of history
Thus the daily attacks on Afghan President Hamid Karzai—who sat beside Laura Bush as guest of honor at the 2002 State of the Union and got a standing ovation—as the corrupt ruler of a corrupt regime, whose brother, a narcotics trafficker, has been on the CIA’s payroll, seems a signal that the ritual is about to begin. The Karzai brothers should probably read up on the fate of the Diem brothers.
Yet never has an ally been more egregiously insulted in wartime than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s insulting of the Pakistanis on her “fence-mending” trip last week. In a meeting with editors, Hillary was asked why the United States was focusing its Predator strikes in the war on terror so heavily upon Pakistan.
Said Hillary, “Al-Qaida has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002. ... I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to.”
This is charging the Pakistani government, army and intelligence services with cowardice or collusion with bin Laden and al-Qaida in the war on terror. That it was made within hours of the bloodiest in a long series of terror attacks that have killed hundreds of Pakistanis only magnifies the insult.
So, too, does the fact that the Pakistani army, after cleansing the Swat Valley of the Taliban, is now fighting in South Waziristan in the most critical battle of the war.
But, if this is what the Obama administration and the Congress believe, why are they sending $7.5 billion in new aid to such a regime?
Moreover, the charge is, on its face, demonstrably false.
If Pakistan’s intelligence services, army and government all knew the exact location of bin Laden, we would know it. For we have people inside sympathetic to us, just as some are sympathetic to al-Qaida.
And if people inside discovered the exact location of bin Laden or al-Qaida, they would leak it to us, if only because the money on the table for such intelligence is irresistible.
Is Secretary Clinton suggesting there are people throughout the Pakistani government who have information that could make them rich for life, but refuse to reveal it out of purest loyalty to a gang of terrorists who are massacring their countrymen as well as Americans?
That there are warlords who are war criminals, allied with the Afghan regime and us, that drug-traffickers are abetted by high officials, that Karzai stole the election, no one denies.
That the Pakistani intelligence services are shot through with elements loyal to a Taliban they helped bring to power in Kabul, that there are Pakistani army officers who believe they should be defending their country against India, not fighting America’s war in Waziristan, is also undeniable.
But what does it avail us to insult these people who have cast their lot with us, many of whom will, with famines and friends, pay a far more terrible price than we if we lose these wars.
And if we are going to abandon these people, as we have so many others in the past, let us at least tell them, and ourselves, the truth. We didn’t know what we were getting into. We don’t have the stomach for a long war. We’re sorry we got you into this. Your big mistake was in trusting us. You folks should have known better.
Friday’s New York Times had a report on the rent-a-bike system the city of Paris has been operating since 2007. For about $1.50, a Parisian can pick up a bicycle for half an hour from any of hundreds of unmanned rental stations and return it to any other station. Like other cities with similar systems—Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, Luxembourg, Milan—Paris is preening itself on having gotten people out of cars and onto bikes.
Alas, the people who set up what’s known as the Vélib’ system forgot that Paris is not all yuppies and tourists. Certain Parisians, for example, burn cars for sport. July 14th, Bastille Day, is a favorite day for it, and this year, despite stepped-up patrols and 240 arrests, immigrant “youths” reduced 317 cars to cinders—a new record. New Year’s Eve is another time for burnt offerings, and the national total in January was 1,147—a few percent off the all-time record but still up by eight percent.
With even just a few of these “youth” about, you can be sure that sturdy, $3,500 bicycles that you can rent with the swipe of a stolen credit card are not always going to come back. About 40 percent of the initial fleet of 20,600 bikes have been stolen and another 40 percent have been burned or busted beyond repair. Bikes are showing up in Eastern Europe and even back home in North Africa, and the company that operates Vélib’ has to fix 1,500 smashed up bikes every day.
No one even pretends not to know who is doing the smashing. Bruno Marzloff, reported to be a sociologist of transportation, concedes that most of the thieves and vandals are angry African immigrants. “It is an outcry, a form of rebellion; this violence is not gratuitous,” he says. It’s no doubt all in the spirit of that favorite graffito of the immigrant suburbs, Nique la France (Fuck France).
The Times story especially struck me because just the night before, I had been talking about bicycles with a charming lady who spends half the year in northern Montana. She told me that outside town she finds collections of unlocked bicycles at school bus stops. Children drop them off in the morning after they have ridden from home to take the bus, and their bikes will still be there when the children get off the bus to ride home in the afternoon.
Why does what works in Montana not work in Paris? Aren’t all people everywhere the same? No doubt Mr. Marzloff, sociologist of transportation, could explain it to me.
In my last piece at Taki’s Magazine, I discussed the unprecedented phenomenon of a few Republican Party pollsters and strategists admitting, most times begrudgingly, that winning more White votes might be more effective than pandering to minorities (That is, they’ve awaken to what VDARE.com has called “The Sailer Strategy.”)
The backlash of White voters against Gatesgate put Obama’s approval ratings into a freefall. A few Republicans realized this, and it looked like the Stupid Party’s IQ might breach room temperature. Obama & Co. gave Whites even more reasons to oppose him with the Van Jones and ACORN scandals.
The President’s ratings are down 25% since April—the biggest drop in over fifty years. Even White Democrats are jumping ship. Healthcare, the economy, and the War are the main factors behind Obama’s plummeting ratings, but no one denies that Gatesgate spurred the decline and that many white who voted for Obama might be suspecting that their candidate might not be so “post-racial” after all. (The faltering economy and Afghanistan is not hurting Obama among blacks.)
Republicans are expected to reap the benefits of his unpopularity in the coming days. Democrats have all but given up on retaining the Governorship in Virginia and they are likely to lose in Blue New Jersey. This is in large part due to projected low black turnout. According to the Washington Times,
Voter doldrums—especially among blacks far less energized than they were for Barack Obama’s historic presidential bid last year—pose problems for Democrats struggling in the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey.
Pollsters and election analysts expect a steep drop-off of black voters—who historically back Democrats—in the nation’s two gubernatorial contests and in congressional races Nov. 3, and they predict it is likely to cast a shadow in 2010 over at least 10 House Democrats with large black constituencies.
So with the increased White anger towards Obama and low Black turnout turning blue and purple states red, what is the Republican Party’s new strategy?
It’s decided to return to the tried-and-true strategy of pandering to minorities!
Well, at least things are back to normal with the Stupid Party.
The most craven and humorous example f this can be found is the redesigned GOP.com, the official website for the Republican National Committee. The Republicans’ uncool stationwagon of a website has gotten a “Hip Hop Makeover” and been transformed into the pimped-out ride the party needs to achieve victory. Originally, Michael Steele had a blog on the site called “What Up?” (but apparently this title became too embarrassing, even to groveling Republicans, and was replaced with the less jiggy “change the game.”)
The “O” in GOP has given way to a picture of a smiling Republican face that changes everytime you refresh the site. Sometimes the surfacing visages are “heroes” and other times they are just random under-35 Republicans who are the New Face of the GOP. Get it? There is even a GOP “faces” application on the site in addition to a RNC Facebook page.
In an unofficial study, I refreshed the site over and over to see what the hue of the face of GOP might be. There were not a large variety of faces, as many showed up four or even five times before I made it to 15 (excluding heroes.) According to my count, there were three black males, three black females, one hispanic female, one hispanic male, five white females (who, to their credit, were generally attractive), and a grand total of two white males.
In contrast, when I went to the “GOP faces” section of the website, there were only four blacks, two people who may have been Hispanic, and 54 whites in the one page I looked at. But these faces were handpicked, of course. Continuing my next unscientific test, I went to the official RNC Facebook page and looked at the first sixty people who signed up as “fans” of the Republican National Committee: 58 were white, one was Hispanic, and one was Asian. None were black!
That’s the young Republican Party base of 2009.
According to GOP.com’s version of GOP history, this is a departure from the GOP of yesteryear, which was dominated by women and minorities.
GOP.com prominently features s a Patriots: American Heroes and Famous Republicans section to showcase the fact the “the Republican Party has a rich history of men and women who fought for freedom and equality.
This is just a sample of the many historical heroes who have long since gone but left a lasting impression on the Party, the country, and the world. The current leadership is committed to continuing these traditions and making sure that today’s Republicans know their past so they can draw from it for future success. Who will be the next member of the Republican Party to achieve greatness?
Who are these Heroes and Famous Persons? Of the 18 people currently listed, we can divide them into three categories. Four are well known women and minorities: Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Jackie Robinson, and Clara Barton. Nine are not so famous women and minorities—usually Reconstruction politicians who were only elected by disenfranchising Whites: Pinckney Pinchback, Jose Celso Barbosa, Joseph Rainey, Octavius Catto, Hiram Revels, Edward Brooke (maybe a few people know who he is), John Langston, Ellen Foster, and Mary Terrell. Only five are White males: Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower, Everett Dirksen, Frank Johnson, and Ronald Reagan. Compare this to, I don’t know, the Founding Fathers who were all white males.
Of these various minorities and women, there are a few fun facts:
John Langston is supposedly a great Republican because the Communist Langston Hughes was named after him.
Edward Brooke—the only African American or Female Politician they mention from the last 80 years, co-sponsored a number of Great Society bills and fought against attempts to defund much of the Great Society.
José_Celso_Barbosa is known as “The father of the Statehood for Puerto Rico movement.” Presumably if Puerto Ricans knew this and we gave them statehood, they would all vote Republican.
Jackie Robinson, it turns out, wasn’t a Republican, but a self-described independent who supported Nixon in 1960 and Rockerfeller in 1964. However, when Barry Godwater received the presidential nomination over Rockerfeller, Robinson wrote in his autobiography:
That convention was one of the most unforgettable and frightening experiences of my life. The hatred I saw was unique to me because it was hatred directed against a white man. It embodied a revulsion for all he stood for, including his enlightened attitude towards black people. A new breed of Republicans had taken over the GOP. As I watched this steamroller operation in San Francisco, I had a better understanding of how it must have felt to be a Jew in Hitler’s Germany.
Barry Goldwater—who integrated his own department store and the Phoenix Air National Guard, in addition to building the modern Republican Party by bringing all those terrible Southern Democrats into the GOP—is not listed as hero. Other Republicans unmentionables include Robert Taft, Teddy Roosevelt, Jesse Helms, and Calvin Coolidge.
What about those five white Males? Lincoln, Eisenhower, and Reagan are all obvious choices, but who is Frank Johnson? He was a liberal Judge who ruled in NAACP vs. Gotthard that Alabama hire one black state trooper for every white they hired until the percentage of black troopers matched the black population of a state. This precedent was used to impose quotas across the country. Though a Republican, Jimmy Carter nominated him as head of the FBI and Bill Clinton gave him a Medal of Freedom.
More insultingly, GOP.com reduces the careers to Dirksen and Eisenhower to their record on civil rights. The only highlights in Dirksen’s career they list are his support of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act—which led to quotas and gerrymandering respectively.
The site does not even mention that Eisenhower commanded the Allied forces in World War II, but merely states, “His administration opposed the Democrats’ segregationist policies.
President Eisenhower appointed to the federal bench southern Republicans such as Frank Johnson, John Wisdom, and Elbert Tuttle, who would become civil rights champions. The day after the Brown v. Board of Education decision, President Eisenhower ordered public schools in Washington, D.C. desegregated immediately, not waiting for judges to make “all deliberate speed.” He sent troops to Little Rock to force the Democrat governor in Arkansas to obey a federal court order to racially integrate the public schools.
For some reason it does not say that Eisenhower said that his appointment of liberal justices Warren and Brennan were his “two biggest mistakes.” According to Warren, Eisenhower told him prior to Brown, “These [Southerners] are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit alongside some big overgrown Negroes.”
Opposing activist judges like the ones Eisenhower regrettably nominated continues to elect Republicans to this day. In fact “Courts”—unlike immigration or affirmative action—are one of the six defining issues for the Party on GOP.com.
How about Lincoln? Nowhere does GOP.com even mention that he saved the Union and won the Civil War—or for that matter that he believed he had, “no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races.” Instead, his accomplishments are reduced to his support for the abolition of Slavery.
Save Ronald Reagan, the only heroic Republicans are ones who base their career solely on uplifting African Americans.
The new GOP.com also provides an extended timeline of the Republican Party’s greatest accomplishments. Below are every single of one of the Party’s pre-1960 actions:
Republicans Established the Transcontinental Railroad
Republicans Passed the Land-Grant College Act
The Highest Point in Washington, DC [This refers to the addition of the Freedom Statue atop the Capital, however, they somehow made this entry about the Emancipation of Slavery in DC]
The First Hispanic Governor was a Republican Republicans Freed the Slaves
Republicans Passed the 14th Amendment
Republicans Established the Buffalo Soldiers
Republicans Established Howard University
Memorial DayRepublicans Passed the 15th Amendment
Republican Opposition to Plessy v. Ferguson
The First African-American Senator was a Republican
Republicans Outlawed the Ku Klux Klan
Yellowstone National Park
Republicans Passed the 1875 Civil Rights Act
A Republican Wrote the 19th Amendment
A Former Slave Chaired the 1884 Republican National Convention
First Women Mayors in the United States
A Republican President Appointed the First Jewish Cabinet Secretary [Only true, if you exclude Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin]
Republicans Passed the Indian Citizenship Act
The First Hispanic U.S. Senator was a Republican
The First Asian-American U.S. Senator was a Republican
The Republican Party First Called for Ending Racial Segregation in the Military
A Republican Integrated the University of Mississippi
A Republican Wrote the Brown v. Board of Education decision [Again, Earl Warren, the first Judicial Activist]
Republicans Established the Federal Highway System
Republicans Passed the 1957 Civil Rights Act
Republicans Ended Racial Segregation in Little Rock.
So, of the Republicans 28 greatest accomplishments during its first 100 years, only five do not involve helping women or minorities.
Trust Busting? Peaceful resolution of the Korean War? The Taft-Hartley Act—or for that matter, the 1924 Immigration Act? All are deemed unimportant.
Interestingly enough, just as none of the post-1960 Republican heroes are minorities, none of the nine post-1957 accomplishments of the GOP involved uplifting blacks?
What happened? Those evil Southern Democrats, whom the GOP.com derides, started voting for the GOP because they were fed up with the increasingly liberal Democrats. Beginning with the Dixiecrat walk out to support Strom Thurmond—who later became a Republican—in 1948, the South slowly left the Democrats and eventually voted en bloc for Goldwater, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush.
In fact, many major Southern Democratic politicians—starting with Thurmond but continuing on through Mills E. Godwin, Jesse Helms, Phil Graham, Richard Shelby, and Virgil Goode—switched parties.
If someone attended the Five Minutes University on postwar electoral politics, the lesson would be: “Southerners voted Democratic. Blacks voted Republican. They switched parties.”
If they spent a few more minutes, they’d learn that because Southerners and then working class ethnic whites who were upset with the left wing racial, feminist, and cultural policies left the Democratic Party, the New Deal Coalition that kept the GOP out of power for nearly forty years collapsed and the Republicans dominated politics from 1968 until the election of Obama.
In the process, the GOP became less attractive to minorities, while the Democrats became the party of Willie Horton and Jeremiah Wright.
It’s doubtful many African-Americans and liberals will react to GOP.com’s shocking revelation that the Democrats used to support segregation by bemoaning how racist their party used to be, nor are they likely to switch parties due to just how enlightened the GOP’s racial policies of 1872 were.
Instead, they’ll respond quite sensibly by pointing out that none of these black and liberal Republicans would be Republicans today. Besides, all of America was evil and racist until it was redeemed by in the 1960s. Why should anyone care if the Democrats were politically incorrect before then?
This whole GOP.com exercise proves nothing except how desperately the GOP is trying to avoid being tagged the White Male Party—that is the party of the people who founded and built this country. Through his sheer incompetence and less-and-less-subtle anti-white agenda, Barack Obama presents the GOP with a chance, mostly likely its last one, to establish itself as the opposition to the multicultural disease that is slowly killing America—instead, GOP.com proves, once again, that the Stupid Party isn’t the cure but just another symptom.
There are a lot more White Southerners and Midwesterner than Blacks in this country, and the electoral re-alignment of the parties that’s been developing over the past four decades might have actually delivered the GOP the “permanent majority” Karl Rove dreamed about. In fact, if the White share of the U.S. population and electorate was not rapidly declining due to the GOP’s failure to do anything about immigration, then Barack Obama wouldn’t be president.
With GOP.com one gets the sense that even if Republicans could add, they wouldn’t care.
The GDP numbers out yesterday, which showed economic growth at 3.5% in the third quarter, brought a deafening chorus from public and private economists who all agreed that the recession is officially over. With such a strong report, they are happy to tell us that not only has the Fat Lady finished her aria, but she has left the building and is sipping champagne in the bath. As usual, it falls on me to rain on the parade.
Even the giddiest commentators admit that the upside GDP surprise resulted almost entirely from government interventions. But, by pushing up public and private debt, expanding government, deepening trade deficits, and pushing down savings rates, these interventions have succeeded only in putting our economy back on an unsustainable path of borrowing and spending. Accordingly, they have prevented the rebalancing necessary for long-term health. Could there be a simpler illustration of trading long-term pain for short-term gain?
Rather than asking these pre-K economists to make such a three dimensional leap, it may be easier just to give them a brief history lesson.
During the decade that corresponds to the Great Depression, annual GNP expanded for six years and contracted for four. After nose-diving in the early years of the decade, GNP turned positive in 1934 and then logged three more years of solid growth (the four year average annual growth rate was 8.5%). But does anyone really believe the Great Depression ended in 1934, when the economy first stopped contracting? Unemployment reached 19% in 1938, nearly the peak of the entire Depression, almost a full decade after the stock market crashed! Why will we be so much luckier this time around?
The unpopular truth is that rather than curing the economy, government stimulus has made it sicker. The Bush Administration and the Greenspan Fed pursued this policy recipe in the 2002-2003 recession. The result was four years of phony growth, greater global imbalances, and the development of unsupportable asset bubbles. Clearly we have learned nothing from those mistakes.
Third quarter “growth” was largely driven by a 23% increase in residential construction (the largest quarterly increase since 1986) and a 3.1% increase in consumer spending, which included a 22% jump in durable goods purchases—mostly automobiles—and 2.3% gain in government spending. Since the increase in consumption outpaced the increase in production, the trade deficit expanded, reversing the positive trend for most of 2008 and 2009. Because the increase in spending outpaced the increase in incomes, the savings rate plunged from 4.9% in the prior quarter to 3.3%.
The sizzling numbers for housing and autos resulted from heady cocktail of policy stimulants: near-zero interest rates, government-guaranteed mortgages, Federal Reserve purchases of mortgaged-backed securities, tax credits for homebuyers, bailouts for auto finance companies and “cash for clunkers” for car buyers.
But the last thing our economy needs is for scarce resources to be wasted through uneconomical incentives.
If the government were not “stimulating the economy,” higher interest rates and falling home prices would have hamstrung residential construction. That would have been the right move. Instead, based on the false economic signals of the “stimulus,” we continue to build houses for which no legitimate demand exists.
The same is true for cars. Because of stimulus money, Americans are buying cars that they otherwise would not have. In a free market, the money would have been used for a more constructive purpose. Perhaps it would have been saved, used to pay off existing debt, or spent on a less expensive mode of transport, like a used motorcycle.
The economy ran into a wall in 2008 because consumers bought houses and cars that they really could not afford. That is why the institutions that provided the loans, such as banks, Fannie & Freddie, and GMAC, went bankrupt. It should be obvious that the solution to our economic problems will not be found by redoubling these efforts. This is akin to a drunk having a few more drinks in order to get sober!
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal detailed the myriad ways in which Senators and Congressman are now compelling General Motors to make business decisions that are solely driven by the legislators’ own political considerations, not the best interest of the taxpayers who now own the company. Such a dynamic is now underway in nearly every facet of our economy. An efficient allocation of resources—the only path to economic growth—is only possible when market forces, not Beltway bureaucrats, call the shots.
In the end, this stimulus, just like prior doses, will only worsen the condition it is meant to cure. When it wears off, the resulting recession will be even bigger than the one that everyone assumes has just ended. Until the impulse to fight recessions with government stimulus is quashed, genuine economic growth will never return. A string of ever-worsening recessions will eventually lead to what will be the next Great (Inflationary) Depression. But for now, enjoy the bubbly.
Here’s a truly scary Halloween tale told to me by a long suffering resident of America’s leading hipster landfill; Williamsburg, Brooklyn. For those unacquainted with this Mecca of pretense, let’s just say the folks there don’t wait for Halloween to act like brain-dead zombies.
So yesterday my friend was in a video store, and a little girl waltzed in dressed as an axe murderer. She was covered in fake blood, and was wearing an apron with something hanging from it. The predictably bearded hipster at the counter took a break from mentally undressing Obama to ask what was on her apron. The girl told him it was a severed hand.
The hipster’s apparently earnest reply?
“Ugh, in a vegan neighborhood?”
Is there any way we can get these emotional invalids to just secede already? How about a Civil War that forces them OUT of the Union? I say give them Long Island. They can call their new country Indignation.
Unfortunately, my friend lacked the presence of mind to chop off the hipster’s hand and give it to the young lady. Nothing says Brooklyn like a little authenticity.
A Kabul–based United Nations’s guesthouse is the latest target to be hit by Afghani insurgents. Eight people, including an American, were killed.
Three days prior, capital-city Kabul was the scene of a helicopter crash that claimed 14 American lives, in what the Associated Press characterized as “the deadliest day for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan in more than four years.”
A day later, eight more American troops were taken out in two separate insurgent attacks, this time in southern Afghanistan.
So far, the Left’s Prince of Peace has beefed-up Bush-era troop levels to 68,000, and is giving a good deal of thought to further deepening American involvement in the Afghan theater. The recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (now that provided some comedic relief) has managed to also sustain his predecessor’s efforts in Baghdad, where streets are slick with fresh blood.
As Dr. Johnson said, “There is no settling the point of precedency between a louse and a flea.” Neoconservative (Bush) or Progressive (Barack); louse or flea—a pest is still a pest.
It’s hard to tell whether B.O. believes his own the blather. Nevertheless, the president has expressed a talismanic faith that if he solves Afghanistan, he’ll solve terrorism: “This is not a war of choice, this is a war of necessity,” he roared. “Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaida would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”
Bush all over again.
Still earlier in October, 300 Taliban warriors stormed an isolated American-cum-NATO outpost in the same Podunk. They swarmed from out of a village and mosque. Curiously, the Afghani soldiers “fighting” alongside our men suffered few casualties. Americans paid the price.
The Taliban were said to have captured 35 of the policemen Americans are fighting to the death to train. My guess is that the “imprisoned” Pashtun (or perhaps they are Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, or Turkmen) are breaking bread with their Taliban “captors.”
Naturally, Afghans (who’re mostly Muslim) have more of an affinity for the Taliban than for the Wilsonians who’re attempting to westernize them. Thus, it is not uncommon to hear of an Afghan policeman opening fire on his American “colleagues” during a joint operation. Just the other day, as Times Online tells it, one battalion lost two soldiers—three were wounded—“when an Afghan policeman opened fire on his American colleagues during a joint operation to clear the Taliban from villages around the Nerkh valley.”
The studied ignorance of their leaders can’t inspire much confidence in the army. Thus we learn that “US and Afghan investigators are trying to determine whether the policeman was a covert member of the Taliban or made a mistake. Either way”—Times again—“the attack fuelled the distrust that many NATO soldiers feel towards the Afghan security forces they are training as part of the coalition’s eventual exit strategy”:
‘You don’t trust anybody, especially after an incident like this,’ said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose close friend died in the attack.”
All told, 55 American soldiers died during the month of October.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the 100,000-strong US and NATO force in Afghanistan, knows as much about America’s decades-long, dismal history of nation-building in Afghanistan as he does about discipline, the military chain of command and code of conduct. In an attempt to fortify his fiefdom, this politician in fatigues sojourned to London to lobby for more soldiers. There, McChrystal demanded that his wishes become Obama’s commands—and quick, before public support wanes.
One brave and bright soldier served it straight up. Wrote Jim Sauer, a “retired Marine Corps Sergeant Major and combat veteran with over thirty years of service,” turned blognoscente:
“The real Afghan warriors still have the spirit of the Mongol Horde in their blood. By contrast, the bulk of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police (ANP) are not fighters, nor are they ‘true believers.’ They are simply cowards—frauds—corrupt to the core by any standard and apostates to their own faith. They are slovenly, drug-addicted, dimwitted, and totally unreliable at any level… They thrive on their petty powers and refuse to shoulder any burden or responsibility. Does this sound too harsh? Not for the Marines and Soldiers who have been killed by the treachery of ANA and ANP who have purposely led them into ambush.”
It has been said that Afghanistan is where empires go to die. True enough. But it is men in the flesh who pay so very dearly.
If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation?
Would we invade Iraq?
While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won?
Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or we risk “mission failure” in Afghanistan. At present casualty rates—October was the worst month of the war—thousands more Americans will die before we see any light at the end of this tunnel, if ever we do.
Pakistan, which aided us in Afghanistan, now has a war of its own to fight. Its army is in a battle in South Waziristan, while the country is wracked by terror bombings, the latest in a Peshawar bazaar that specialized in women’s clothing and jewelry and toys for kids. So horrific was the toll even the Taliban and al-Qaida denied any role in it.
The 130,000 U.S. troops in Iraq are, after almost seven years, to begin pulling out two months after January’s election. But a hitch has developed. Iraq’s parliament missed the deadline for setting the rules. At issue: Will voters be allowed to choose individual candidates, or will they be allowed only to vote for slates of candidates?
Gen. Ray Odierno implies that postponement of the election may mean postponement of U.S. withdrawals.
Ominously, in August, terrorists bombed the foreign and finance ministries in Baghdad, and last week blew up the Justice Ministry and Baghdad Provincial Governorate. And the Kurds are now claiming their control of oil-rich Kirkuk is non-negotiable, which crosses a red line in Baghdad.
Next door, a terror attack by Jundallah (God’s Brigade) in Iran’s southern province of Sistan-Baluchistan killed 40, including two senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.
An enraged Tehran pointed the finger at the United States, as there have been charges the CIA has been in contact with Jundallah as part of President Bush’s destabilization program to effect “regime change.”
But Barack Obama has been in office for nine months—and he would never authorize such an attack on the eve of a critical meeting on Iran’s nuclear program. Moreover, the State Department condemned the Jundallah bombing as terrorism and offered public condolences to the families of the victims.
But if we didn’t authorize this, who did?
Was the timing of this attack coincidental? Were these just freelance secessionists on an operation unrelated to the U.S.-Iran talks? Or is someone trying to torpedo the talks and push Iran and the United States into military collision?
For this was a provocation. And whoever carried it out and whoever authorized or abetted it wishes to dynamite the U.S.-Iran negotiations, abort a rapprochement and put us on a road to war.
Speculation is focusing on the Saudis, the Gulf Arabs and the Israelis, who have been accused, as has the United States, of aiding PJAK, a Kurdish faction that has conducted raids in northern Iran.
If we have any control of these organizations, we should shut them down. With U.S. armies tied up in Iraq and Afghanistan, and America conducting Predator and cross-border attacks in Pakistan, provoking a war with Iran would be an act of madness.
Looking back, how has all this fighting advanced U.S. national interests? We have a “democratic” Iraq that is Shia-dominated and tilting to Iran. We have an open-ended war in Afghanistan that will likely do for Obama what Iraq did for Bush. But we can’t pull out, it is said, for if we do, Kabul falls and Afghanistan becomes the sanctuary for an Islamist war to take over Pakistan and its nuclear weapons.
And if that should happen, it would indeed be a crisis.
And so, how has all this intervention availed us?
We ran Saddam out of Kuwait and put U.S. troops into Saudi Arabia. And we got Osama bin Laden’s 9-11. We responded by taking down the Taliban and taking over Afghanistan. And we got an eight-year war with no victory and no end in sight. Now Pakistan is burning. We took down Saddam and got a seven-year war and an ungrateful Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Turks, who shared a border with Saddam, have done no fighting. Iran has watched as we destroyed its two greatest enemies, the Taliban and Saddam. China, which has a border with both Pakistan and Afghanistan, has sat back. India, which has a border with Pakistan and fought three wars with that country, has stayed aloof.
The United States, on the other side of the world, plunged in. And now we face an elongated military presence in Iraq, an escalating war in Afghanistan and potential disaster in Pakistan, and are being pushed from behind into a war with Iran.
“America rejects the false comfort of isolationism,” said George W. Bush in his 2006 State of the Union. And we did reject that false comfort. And now we can enjoy the fruits of interventionism.
I don’t know much about economics. What I do know is that so many so-called “experts,” including politicians and economists, are wrong far more often than they are right. They’re wrong about virtually everything, and yet shamelessly keep selling the same old fairy tales. They are liars. They are cheats. They are whores.
As Congress plots government healthcare, Americans should remember how incredibly wrong Washington leaders were about the cost of programs like Medicare. Bush and Obama have already been proven irrevocably wrong about TARP and stimulus, and yet both claim it’s working. Months ago in South Carolina, Gov. Mark Sanford stood firm in refusing to sign off on extending unemployment benefits, demanding that that department be overhauled so that any future crisis might be averted. This week, a less aggressive, post-scandal Sanford signed off on allowing federal stimulus dollars to keep SC’s unemployed propped up for a few more weeks. Problem not solved, just prolonged. Sanford was right the first time.
And despite his apology, so was Democratic Congressman Alan Grayson when he called Federal Reserve adviser Linda Robertson a “K Street Whore.” During an appearance on the Alex Jones radio show, Grayson said “this lobbyist, this K street whore, is trying to teach me about economics.” Robertson had attacked Grayson for his efforts, along with Republicans like Congressman Ron Paul, Sen. Jim DeMint and others, to audit the Federal Reserve.
Probably most famous for saying Republicans who opposed Obama’s healthcare plan simply want Americans to “die quickly,” Grayson has quickly established himself as an outspoken congressman who pulls no punches.
When I heard conservative critics attacking Grayson this week for daring to call Robertson a “K Street Whore,” I had to laugh. Was the Right simply going after Grayson for his earlier attack on anti-government healthcare Republicans, or were they really upset that he would refer to a representative of the Federal Reserve as a whore? Is it not a primary function of conservatives, especially rightwing talk radio, to lambaste and lampoon the whoring politicians who run Capitol Hill? Hell, conservative humorist PJ O’Rourke’s 1991 take on the entire US government was a book entitled “Parliament of Whores.” If Robertson were a man, would there have been any controversy?
If anyone deserves to be called whores or worse it’s the criminals who run the Federal Reserve, a secretive institution that continues to steal from the American people by printing as much money as it sees fit. Before becoming a top lobbyist for the Fed, Robertson was, appropriately enough, a top lobbyist for Enron. Notes Grayson spokesman Todd Jurkowski, Robertson “attacked the Congressman and his efforts to promote a Republican bill to audit the Federal Reserve… She’s a career lobbyist who used to work for Enron and advocates for whatever she gets paid to promote.” What Robertson has been paid to promote during her lobbying career are institutions primarily in the business of theft, and the Fed adviser has long worked the K Street strip like no other.
Obama’s massive healthcare agenda, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, our vast domestic welfare state, “stimulus” packages - every bit of big government imaginable - could not be afforded if the Federal Reserve did not allow the United States to live far beyond its means. The US borrows from China and prints more money. That’s how we get by. That’s how we get debt. Our leaders on Capitol Hill, from men like Tim Geithner and Bernanke to women like Robertson and Nancy Pelosi are liars, cheats, and yes, whores - and then some.
And more people should say so. One need not agree with Grayson’s opinions on everything to admire his blunt language about one of the US’s most destructive institutions and those who run it. If Republican Congressman Joe Wilson shouting “you lie!” at President Obama was arguably this year’s best summation of our Washington rulers, Democrat Congressman Alan Grayson calling the Federal Reserve’s head lobbyist a “K Street Whore” was a close second. But like Wilson, Grayson’s greatest mistake was in limiting his criticism to just one bureaucrat.
Above, Steve Phillips, former ESPN analyst, is pictured with Brooke Hundley, the ESPN employee with whom he had a brief fling which resulted in her stalking him, going to his home, writing a letter to his wife, and Facebook-friending his son.
Phillips is now reportedly receiving treatment for sex addiction.
I’d always thought that “sex addiction” was mostly just a pseudo-psychological excuse for errant male behavior.
After seeing the picture above, I realized, it really must be a disease.
Disclaimer: I would never mock someone on the basis of their appearance alone. But once they’ve done something like rape a 13 year old girl (like Polanski), or stalk someone and his family, their looks become fair game.
Good news and bad news. First the bad, Tom Woods has been keeping an insane schedule for some time now. It was only a year ago that he gave me a call saying that he was going to be a bit late with a Takimag article because he was writing a book on the financial crisis. This book was, of course, Meltdown
We definitely plan to have Tom come speak to us next year. Stepping up to pinch hit will be Steve Sailer, who’ll lecture us on Jewish liberals and how they got that way. Though we’ll all miss Tom, I’m sure Sailerholics will be happy to learn that they can get a double dose of Sailer this weekend.
The good news is that the response to the Mencken Club has been tremendous. We broke triple digits in attendance last week, and I expect a surge in registration over the next two days.
Many Takimag types—people who “think like us,” so to speak—think that they’re all alone in a world gone mad. They are not alone. And I can’t imagine a better place to meet like-minded individuals and rub shoulders with the likes of John Derbyshire, Sailer, Kevin Gutzman et al. Get your last-minute tickets here.
The recent brouhaha between the White House and Fox News, and subsequent comparisons between Fox and MSNBC, spurred me to quantify an impression I’d had in the past: that primetime Fox News regularly has guests with opposing viewpoints, whereas MSNBC does not.
To that end I watched both Bill O’Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC from 8 to 9PM on Monday and Tuesday evenings. (Olbermann wasn’t on Wednesday night.) I flipped back and forth to make sure I didn’t miss any guests.
My impression was confirmed.
On Monday evening, most of O’Reilly’s guests had conservative views, but he did have Juan Williams, a liberal, and also Mary Ann Marsh, a Democratic strategist. Williams generally tones himself down when on Fox, so let’s count Monday night’s tally as one and a half Democrats. On Tuesday, O’Reilly interviewed Joe Sestak and Anthony Weiner, both Democratic Congressmen. He interviewed Alan Colmes, one of Fox’s two token in-house liberals. And he had on legal expert Jennifer Smetters, who argued vigorously with O’Reilly, although she didn’t seem a political animal—though all lawyers are liberal. We’ll call that three and a half Democrats for Tuesday night.
Keith Olbermann had on exactly zero Republicans Monday night. His guests included Chuck Schumer, Ariana Huffington, Chris Hayes (the Washington editor of The Nation), Richard Wolffe, an MSNBC analyst, and author Susie Essman. Tuesday night’s lineup also featured zero Republicans. Olbermann had on Senator Wyden, Rose Ann Demoro (from the National Nurses Organizing Committee), Howard Fineman, an MSNBC analyst, and Gene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist.
This trend tends to continue, by the way, for the next hour. Sean Hannity of Fox has Democrats on (though generally not as many as O’Reilly), whereas Rachel Maddow of MSNBC has no Republicans on her show.
What does it say about a talk show host that he won’t allow any opposing viewpoints? Is he afraid to get into an argument because he knows, or at least senses, that the facts won’t back him up? Is it intellectual laziness? Is he afraid that the brittleness of his personality will be exposed by having to face an actual opponent?
Is it all of the above?
Liberals are always forever congratulating themselves on their open-mindedness. Yet one would think true open-mindedness would require at least hearing the counter argument. But neither Olbermann nor Maddow is willing to do this. (So much for “diversity.”)
This is in keeping with attitude of liberals on campus, who will often shout down conservative speakers in an effort to prevent them from getting their message across. Part of the reason for this, of course, is their fear that an audience might be swayed by their opponents’ arguments. (Conservatives on campus simply don’t do this to liberal speakers.)
In election years, candidates will often try to make it appear that their opponent is the one unwilling to debate. Fox seems to have won this battle.
Watch O’Reilly, and after a while you get the feeling that his crocodile smile exudes smugness. His driving force seems to be egotism. Watch Olbermann, and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s driven by hate, the emotion liberals love to disparage yet themselves indulge in so frequently. With Olbermann, it’s his very lifeblood. You’ll never hear him say much positive about the left; he far prefers to spend his hour insulting Republicans.
There are also undercurrents of hysteria and compulsiveness that pervade Olbermann’s presentation. He doesn’t seem able to help himself: he absolutely must sneer at every Republican he mentions. On Tuesday night alone, Obermann referred to Rick “Mad Dog” Santorum,” “Failed presidential candidate Fred Thompson,” “Lead teabaggist Dick Armey,” “apparent Adirondack expert Newt Gingrich” (who had gotten into an argument with other Republicans over whether to support the Republican or Conservative candidate in a local race), “streetwalker for the insurance industry” (in reference to a Republican who didn’t support the health bill, I didn’t catch the name), and “the torture President” (Bush).
The reference to Armey, for those unfamiliar with it, was Olbermannn’s way of twisting the Republican term “tea parties,” named after the famous Boston one which preceded the Revolutionary War, into “teabagging,” a sexual practice among gay men. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other, making this a completely gratuitous and nonsensical reference on Olbermann’s part. Had a Republican said this, he would of course have been accused of being homophobic.
When O’Reilly and Sean Hannity have Democrats on their show, they are generally polite, if argumentative. One gets the sense that this would be beyond Olbermann’s capacity.
This isn’t even an indictment of all of MSNBC. Chris Matthews, a liberal who hosts an earlier show, exudes earnestness and good will. Pat Buchanan, of all people, is a regular commentator. Unfortunately, MSNBC has reserved prime time for their most extreme voices, both of whom, especially Olbermann, are rigid to the point of brittleness.
A reader informs me that it wasn’t as bad as it seemed:
I just wanted to alert you to the Snopblocks urban legends) explanation of this… the store manager may have been a kind of Muslim-Borat naif in his celebration of a particular Islamic moveable-feast, but he apparently wasn’t trying to celebrate 9/11 as such:
* Imam Ali was not a hijacker, but a 7th century religious figure… attacked by an assassin while praying in a mosque… and died two days later, so the 21st day of Ramadan is (among the Shi’a branch) a day of special significance, a day for honoring the martyrdom of the Imam Ali.”;
* The months of the Islamic [lunar] calendar move around from year to year with respect to the Gregorian calendar. In 2009… the 21st day of Ramadan… coincidentally fell on the date of September 11;
* Store manager Imran Chunawala was stunned [by the reaction] because the holiday had nothing to do with 9/11… ‘If people thought that that’s what this was about, I apologize,” Chunawala said. “That was not what this was about. I’m clarifying once again and I seriously am sorry for any misunderstanding that this caused.”
NEW YORK—Something’s bothering me about the Polanski business. No, unlike Harvey Weinstein and Bernard-Henri Lévy—not to mention that Mitterrand paedophile—I will not defend Roman’s actions with a 13-year-old, but I will say that, with friends like his making fools of themselves defending him, it will be a miracle if he gets off with a slap on the wrist. Although this may sound pompous, I doubt if any of his defenders have known Polanski as long as I have—40 years and counting—but let’s take it from the top.
What Hugo Rifkind wrote about him and his defenders in these pages on 3 October is spot-on. Hollywood has a lot to answer for, and mixing up global warming, Darfur, HIV and Roman’s case is not exactly kosher. I particularly liked what he said about Mel Gibson, who was nearly hounded out of Tinseltown for a drunken anti-Semitic outburst, one for which he has apologized more times than I’ve had hangovers. “But Polanski shags an actual child and they love him.” Ironically, the four people who failed to sign the petition for Roman were Woody Allen, Robert Blake, O.J. Simpson and Phil Spector, the last two being in the pokey as I write.
Yes, there are a lot of jokes about Polanski making the rounds, but in the meantime he is having a very bad time in a Swiss jail. Psychologically, that is. Let’s face it, it does smell a bit of Inspector Javert, 32 years on. I first met Roman when he walked into my bedroom in Gstaad uninvited and insisted on watching me punch and kick a tiny piece of paper hanging from a string. (It was to speed up one’s kicks and punches for an upcoming karate tournament.) We began hanging out together after that, and he even flew Bruce Lee over and I trained with him. Yes, we did have a falling-out after the events in Los Angeles, and I did write some mean things about him, but we have made up and only he knows the price he has paid for that one moment—or hour—of madness. Roman now has children, is happily married, and, as his good friend the wonderful Ronnie Harwood has said to me, no child, especially one as talented and as delightful as his boy Elvis, deserves this.
I will not try the line that phonies like Bernard-Henri Lévy have used, that artists are above the law and that then 13 was the new 18. Or that grotesque Whoopi Goldberg’s that it wasn’t ‘rape-rape’. The one I will try is this: what in Heaven’s name has happened to compassion? Polanski has been on the run for 32 years, has never come close to repeating his crime, and has rehabilitated himself in spades. What kind of society are we that in order to further the political career of an obscure California district attorney we use the full power of two states to punish a man who was born punished. First by the Nazis and then by the Manson gang. No wonder poor Roman feels hard done by.
And speaking of forgiveness, I don’t remember Menachem Begin, a ferocious terrorist, ever apologising for murdering 91 people when he blew up the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, 28 of whom were British. He didn’t even apologise for that while receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. Yet the world forgave and forgot once Israel became a big-time player thanks to Uncle Sam. The cold-blooded murderer Magee is received by those whose parents and families he killed, and he certainly hasn’t apologised. The only one who got it right on this was, of course, the magnificent Norman Tebbit, whose wife, the brave Margaret, is living proof that those Irish animals should rot in jail instead of hanging out with polite society. I don’t remember the egregious Ted Kennedy asking for Sirhan Sirhan to be set free after 41 years in a very tough jail.So where’s Catholic and Irish compassion where the Palestinian is concerned?
The world is just one big double standard. So before anyone accuses me of defending child molestation, what about Jeffrey Epstein, a man who was tried and convicted of paying underage women to give him sexual rubdowns, but who served less than 13 months of a ridiculously soft sentence of 18 months? Epstein had the following going for him. He is a billionaire, despite the fact that no one knows how he made his pile, as he trained and worked as a maths researcher. Epstein also had letters recommending his character to the judge in Palm Beach from Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Bill Clinton, whom Epstein flew all over the world in his private plane and who is a close friend of his.
So, a crime committed 32 years ago and paid for in full as far as I’m concerned by a man who has known more suffering than most of us is to be pursued to the bitter end, whereas Jeffrey Epstein, friend of the powerful and a billionaire, does only 12 months in a country-club jail in Palm Beach. If that’s true justice, then the law is an ass — but I always knew that. Why don’t we try compassion and forgiveness for a change, but not for truly bad guys, just for poor Roman Polanski.
A friend of Paul Gottfried sent Takimag this report from his last trip to the mall in Houston, Texas:
Today I went to the Harwin Central Mall to pick up some crystals. The very first store that you come to when you walk from the lobby of the building into the shopping area had this sign posted on their door. The shop is run by Muslims. I couldn’t stay in the building, it made me so sick.
The text reads, “We will be closed on Friday, September 11, 2009, to commemorate the martyrdom of Imam Ali (A.S.).” The message is repeated in Spanish.
In the latest issue of Quadrant, Peter Kocan complains about my “sourness” in depicting the paleoconservative persuasion in my autobiography, Encounters
This quotation from my Southern friend of many years has nothing to do with what Peter scolds me for not interpreting more charitably. Given its institutions and cultural-ethnic identity going back centuries, the American South has been far more of an historical reality than paleoconservatism, a fading movement of which I’m believed to be the most venerable living theorist.
Unlike Southerners, Frenchmen, English, Italians, Jews, etc., paleoconservatives do not constitute a long-standing community. They were a reaction to the rise of the neoconservatives as the dominant force in the American conservative movement. Spirited rebels who fought on against a more powerful enemy determined to crush them, the paleoconservatives reached the zenith of their influence in the late 1980s and early 1990s; thereafter they descended rapidly into becoming no more than an historical footnote. It is now hard to find even references to paleoconservatism in accounts of the postwar conservative movement. Recent historians of the movement have ceased to view paleos as even an interesting sideshow.
In his recently published anthology Reappraising the Right
But this effort at sober assessment does not mean that I’ve thrown up my hands and left the battlefield to our enemies. What I’m suggesting is that whoever (God willing!) brings down the neoconservatives and their mercenary empire, it will not be my generation. The Soviet tyranny eventually fell, but the ones who accomplished this were not the Russian Whites who fought the Reds after the Bolshevik Revolution. The Soviet empire came down because of a generation of adversaries who were not around in 1919 and 1920. While I’m not declaring that the battle against our enemies is irreversibly lost, I’m definitely saying that paleoconservatives will not win the battle they began. It will be left to a younger generation to carry on that struggle.
I’m also not sure that the side to which Professor Wilson appeals has a brighter future than do the paleoconservatives. The black population of the South, to put it mildly, is hardly on Professor Wilson’s side; and those white people who voted for the outspokenly anti-Confederate McCain, whose revulsion for the white South except as a reliable voting base, could not have been more clear, are not about to rally to the Cause. I’ve no idea (speaking as a passionate admirer of Stonewall Jackson) how the onetime reverence for the South as a culture of gallantry and aristocratic virtues can ever be revived, after the multicultural Left and the neoconservatives have combined to slander anything resembling a white Southern heritage. It’s also not the case that the transformation of the Old South in the public imagination from the opening scenes of Gone With The Wind to something even more hideous than Ausschwitz took place over a long period of time. This government- and media-sponsored metamorphosis took place entirely within my adult lifetime.
Still it is much easier for me to feel sympathy for Professor Wilson’s neo-Confederates than it is to weep over the fate of paleoconservatism. The neo-Confederates are a pleasanter lot than most paleos of my acquaintance, and they can point to an intergenerational pedigree. But they also face insurmountable problems. After the damage that its embattled opponents and demographic trends have inflicted on the Southern heritage, it is doubtful this tradition can make a comeback, except as a theme park. But the war against the neoconservatives is in fact winnable. It will only take lots of time and the acquisition of resources; and more than one generation will be needed to make significant dents in the enemy’s fortifications.
Allow me to make one final point about Peter Kocan’s fond references to the Jacobites and to other lost reactionary causes. This doting is fine as an aesthetic diversion, but can do nothing to change the cultural Marxist power structure that has taken over through most of the Western world. The relevant response to this situation is “political
When I emigrated from newly post-Soviet Russia, I stayed in touch with some of my classmates. Years later, I began hearing about our mutual acquaintances, girls in their late teens and early twenties at that time, getting abortions in the half-a-dozen range. The very existence of these rumors was shocking.
The epidemic of terminating pregnancies as a form of birth control remains one of the biggest challenges to Russia’s demographic struggle. Arkady Mamontov’s new prolife film, simply called Abortion, is the latest attempt to raise awareness about this issue. Whether the film is independent is largely irrelevant, as it premiered on state channel Rossiya during last Sunday’s popular television talk show, Special Correspondent. The host, Maria Sittel, also seemed quite supportive of this filmmaker during the follow-up expert discussion panel.
This graphic documentary examines Russia’s private clinics, which illegally end unwanted pregnancies long after the first-trimester limit, including on-camera admissions to destroying just about fully formed babies at 22, or so, weeks. A particularly disturbing moment involves a medical staff lecturing an undercover correspondent, pretending to be 15-weeks pregnant, regarding the ethics of her decision “to murder her baby” all the while agreeing to perform the procedure.
Mamontov is no stranger to controversy, and this documentary fits the mould: not because of its shock value per se, but, rather, the filmmaker’s bold assertion regarding one major cause of this epidemic. He points his finger at the Western political establishment. Not only has the United States’ and, to a lesser extent, the European Union’s foreign policy been aimed at encircling Russia in the past twenty years, he argues, but the West has been attempting to depopulate this country from the inside.
His main culprit is organizations like Planned Parenthood. Instead of “leading a ‘brave and angry’ stance with regard to people’s right to access to good sexual and reproductive health care and services”, as the IPPF website claims, this institution has been responsible for dispensing irresponsible and potentially deadly advice to unsuspecting Russian women, whom the filmmaker interviews.
Why is his country a target? Mamontov tells his viewers to read Brzezinski: it is unfair for Russia alone to access all the rich natural resources within its immense territory. This geopolitical reasoning allows the documentary to avoid a preachy pro-life tone so typical of this genre.
However, Arkady Viktorovich never had the onus of proof that these insatiable Eurasian desires exist. Rather than emphasizing Russia’s uniqueness, he should have elaborated on the civilizational discontents, as Freud would say, that drive these institutions well beyond their intended raison d’être—and not only in Russia.
But, at least shock value gets the ratings!
Regarding Nina Kouprianova’s “Motherland” piece, it has long seemed to me that most thriving civilizations have been undergirded by two tenets:
1) A recognition of something greater than itself (i.e., a God or gods)
2) A recognition of something lower than itself (the animal kingdom and natural habitat).
Most Western nations have largely forsaken both premises. They have become much more secular (adios “something greater”) and now fret more about the environment and its suitability for the local frog population than they do about having progeny of their own. Some even recommend foregoing children to ensure greater frog comfort (effectively demoting themselves to the “something lower”).
What’s more, many Westerners see the spread of religious skepticism and the growth of environmentalism as signs of progress. What they do not seem to compute is that for all of their advances, what they are ultimately doing is progressing themselves out of existence. Naively, they appear confident that they’ve won the debate about whether one should still believe in the Divine and in man’s place atop the food chain.
Well, it all depends on how you define winning. Looking at the numbers, I wouldn’t even call these Pyrrhic victories. All that folks on Team Progress have to show for their triumph is their replacement by those sticking to the something greater/something lower model. The debates’ “winners” are simply being exchanged for people who didn’t hear the ref blow the whistle.
My instincts are to laugh at government sloganeering. Still, at the very least it is refreshing to see a campaign that equates patriotism with living for your country rather than dying for it.
I’ll grant Tom that Richard Dawkins (who’s made time between writing hysterical liberal op-eds to compose a 500-page tome
Just this afternoon (providence perhaps?), I received an email about a fascinating anti-Darwin conference that shall take place in Rome in November:
Scientific Conference Refuting Evolution Theory to be held in Rome, Italy
In Response to Pope Benedict XVI’s Call for Both Sides to be Heard
ROME, ITALY – The 150th anniversary of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” in November 2009 will be the occasion for a unique conference at Pope Pius V University in Rome presenting a scientific refutation of evolution theory.
The conference, “The Impossibility of Evolution” will be held on November 9 in the auditorium of St. Pius V University (Via Cristoforo Colombo, No. 200) beginning at 9:30 a.m.
I have nothing against the holding of this conference; indeed, many of the participants are impressively credentialed. But the existence of such an event makes me think that it’d be more intellectually consistent for Catholic trads to view eternal damnation-bound Dawkins as a mortal foe, and not expect him to address the pope with proper salutations and refrain from saying ugly things about the church.
In many ways, this discussion reminds me of some of the nostalgic reveries penned by prominent Catholic paleos about the Habsburgs and their empire, usually with Kaisers Franz Josef and Karl I depicted as saintly Christian rulers. There is, of course a great deal of truth to such portrayals, the later having made well-intentioned efforts to end the blood-letting of the Great War. But the House of Habsburg only became benign, warm, and fuzzy in its late, decadent period when the Old World was collapsing all around it. Three hundred years early, Habsburg rulers showed little compunction in ordering the slaughter of their Saxon Protestant enemies (my ancestors, by the way). I’m sure Genghis Khan, too, was a dear old chap on his death bed.
I don’t write any of this because I hold some excessively longstanding historical grudge—I don’t. To the contrary, I’ve always had a deep admiration for the glorious contributions to the arts the church patronized during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation. I guess I just respect and admire the church more when it’s in a bold, aggressive, “pagan” mood, and less when its leaders demand universal tolerance and cry victimization.
More news on the David Letterman and playing bouncy bouncy with the staff story. Nell Scovell, who worked as a writer for the show in the 90s, talks about the atmosphere that led her to quit in Vanity Fair.
Scovell’s point is not that she was sexually harassed directly, far from it. Letterman paid her a little attention (as men are wont to do with young women) but certainly nothing objectionable. Similarly, no other manager forced themselves upon her nor made lewd suggestions. However, she does say that she felt she had to quit because of the atmosphere of sexual harassment. The problem, as she saw it, was that managers were indeed conducting affairs with the younger female staff. Nothing particularly objectionable about that: wives might object but that’s a personal matter, not one for public policy. Similarly, as long as the affairs are between consulting adults not really anyone else’s business as long as no one tells the pastor.
No, her point is that those young women who were having affairs were privileged in the workplace. They got more leeway, more power, over those who were not doing the horizontal rhumba with the bosses. And that in itself is, in the modern formulation, sexual harassment.
Now I’m not all that in love with many elements of the modern world myself and I’m sure most here agree. But some rules about what is and is not allowable really rather do need to be worked out. It’s entirely clear and obvious that men and women working together is going to lead to at least some of them deciding to play Doctors and Nurses whether on a temporary or permanent basis, exclusively or in a rather more secret manner. It woiuld seem absurd to insist that no one can ever date a co-worker. But that is indeed the implication of this description of what constitutes sexual harassment.
In one way, the complaint is that if someone does attempt to sleep with me at work then that is harassment: and if they don’t attempt to do so this is also harassment.
Perhaps the way out is simply to ask that everyone behaves as an adult?
In response to Richard, I did not mean to suggest that England’s Anglican past makes the English particularly susceptible to atheism. I meant to suggest that such English atheists as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Philip Pullman exhibit more hostility to Catholicism than they do to other faiths in part because of their English background. This greater hostility is palpable, and is clearly shown by Dawkins’ latest outburst, which both condemns “Pope Ratzinger” and claims that the “Archbishop of Canterbury” exhibits a “saintly quality,” “a benignity of countenance,” and a “well-meaing sincerity.”
I also think that the rise of men like Dawkins is in part responsible for the decline of Britain, and I make that argument at length in the October 2009 issue of Chronicles. The reason I make that argument is not Anglophobia, but because “We Americans, who owe so much to Britain and are more like the British than any other people in Europe, ignore at our peril the problems Britain is encountering from effectively abandoning Christianity and the rest of her heritage.”
Yes, Dawkins is not a buffoon as a scientist, but he seems to be doing little science these days, preferring instead to sound like Lord George Gordon on the eve of London’s No Popery Riot. An analogue is Linus Pauling, a brilliant scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but who was also a moral and political cretin and a pro-Soviet agitator. National Review properly treated Pauling with disdain, because of his moral and political idiocy. As for me, I intend to give Dawkins the same level of respect he accords Pope Benedict XVI.
The cable period drama Mad Men attempts to answer the question: What would have Cary Grant’s stylish advertising executive in Hitchcock’s 1959 barnburner North by Northwest gotten up to if—instead of getting chased by spies all the way to Abraham Lincoln’s nose on Mt. Rushmore—he and his superb suits had simply stayed on Madison Avenue during the advertising industry’s storied golden age?
After the Tom Cruise generation of boyish, small, and energetic stars, it’s refreshing to see a Golden Age of Hollywoodish leading man like tall, dark, and handsome Jon Hamm, who plays creative director Don Draper as the strong, silent type. Granted, the concept of a reticent copywriter doesn’t make much sense, but the show has become a huge hit with media folks, more than a few of whom are married to people in the ad business.
Mad Men is the latest of this decade’s extended plotline dramas to rivet the attention of the higher end of the TV-viewing audience.
We constantly hear that long-form TV dramas are better than ever. That’s probably true, but few of today’s fans can remember how quickly we all tend to forget past serial dramas that once seemed indelibly memorable.
In contrast to serial shows like Mad Men, Lost, and 24, most television sit-coms and some dramas “reset” at the end of each episode: no matter what zany antics transpired during tonight’s episode, Homer Simpson will be right back at the nuclear power plant next week, unchanged except for the vaguest of memories.
An increasing number of prime-time dramas, however, tease audience interest by ramifying a single complicated plot over the life of the show. By not reaching a conclusion, they leave audiences asking each week, “And then what happens?” This gives fans plenty to chew over with each other until the next episode. (Here, for example, is Slate’s 59-part [!] discussion of the current third season of Mad Men.)
Fans like to call serials “novelistic” (although the unkind term “soap operaish” can also be apt).
Novelists have given up publishing their works in installments, even though that was hugely profitable for numerous 19th Century novelists, such as Charles Dickens. His books were typically serialized in 20 monthly installments of 32 pages of text and 16 pages of advertising. The protracted death of Little Nell in Dickens’ serialization of The Old Curiosity Shop
Tom Wolfe, who had long denounced 20th-century literary fiction for not showing us The Way We Live Now
Unfortunately, Bonfire didn’t make much of a splash in Rolling Stone … because it wasn’t very good. It was a first draft, and Wolfe’s first drafts turned out not to be as good as Dickens’s had been. Moreover, there are obvious problems inherent in going public with the beginning before you’ve written the ending. (This has been a particular conundrum for American TV serial dramas because the writers don’t even know how many years the show will run. Thus, they tend to start strong and peter out. In Britain, however, fixed durations serials are more common.)
Wolfe then rewrote Bonfire after doing the additional research necessary to change his protagonist’s career from Wolfe’s lazy initial choice—writer—to a much more timely and under-publicized one—bond-trader. Revised, Bonfire became a huge bestseller. A long string of subsequent real-life incidents all the way up through the Duke lacrosse rape hoax that seem like plot twists out of Wolfe’s tale of the hunt for “the Great White Defendant” has cemented its status as the Great American Novel of the 1980s.
Movies remain a troublesome format for Dickensian storytellers. Adapting big novels to fit within the limited length of a film remains difficult. Even at 238 minutes, Gone With The Wind’s screenplay had to be a miracle of concision. The 125-minute Brian De Palma version of Bonfire of the Vanities was a notorious flop.
With 1967’s Forsyte Saga (a 26-episode adaptation of five books by Nobel laureate John Galsworthy) and 1971’s Upstairs, Downstairs, the Brits pioneered high-class soap operas that galvanized audiences by artfully following an ensemble of characters through intersecting nested plots in a carefully detailed time and place.
The American equivalent came along in 1987, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herkovitz’s thirtysomething, which artfully portrayed an ensemble of old college friends centered around a yuppie advertising man, Michael Steadman, an undersexed Don Draper for the feminist era.
In its time, thirtysomething was probably the best written and certainly the most realistic show on television (my twentysomething new bride and I watched it wide-eyed as we learned what was in store for us). For a few years, it had a limited but lucrative yupscale demographic enthralled over whether Michael and Hope would be able to make their marriage work and other questions that seemed a lot more interesting at the time than they do now. (At this point, I can mostly just remember Miles Drentell, the ruthless Sun Tzu-quoting CEO of the trendy ad agency where Michael worked.)
The downside of “And then what happens?” is that the answer usually turns out to be “A whole bunch of stuff.” While satisfying at the time, serials tend to be consumable only once. For example, although thirtysomething was immediately influential within the entertainment industry, it was almost forgotten by the public once its run was over in 1991. (It wasn’t even released on DVD
On the other hand, Seinfeld (something of a comic version of thirtysomething, but also a classic reset show in which not even, say, the sudden death of a fiancé has any discernible emotional impact on a character) remains a money machine in syndication.
Another chronic problem with shows that don’t reset is creeping soap operaization. Female fascination with relationships tends to crowd out every other subject over time. Even House, with the wonderful Hugh Laurie as a Sherlock Holmes-like genius/misanthrope solving one medical mystery per week, has become more of a soap opera over the years.
Similarly, Mad Men underexploits its setting in the advertising industry, always a fun business to portray, in favor of emphasizing relationships. In the pilot episode set in 1960, for instance, Don Draper is proclaimed a genius by his clients and colleagues for dreaming up a new slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes: “It’s Toasted.” In reality, a lame phrase like that would have been laughed at in 1960. Lucky Strike’s “It’s Toasted” slogan actually dates to 1917.
Of course, the advertising business isn’t really what Mad Men is about.
So, what do I think the show is about?
Well, in the spirit of today’s serials, you’ll just have to wait until next Wednesday to find out.
I will mention one thing: the show relentlessly exposes the sexism of pre-feminism men like Don Draper, seemingly for today’s women to cluck over. Instead, they gasp and squeal. Why?
Because women find sexism sexy.
Evidence that the U.S. is a failed state is piling up faster than I can record it.
One conclusive hallmark of a failed state is that the crooks are inside the government, using government to protect and advance their private interests.
Another conclusive hallmark is rising income inequality, as the insiders manipulate economic policy for their enrichment at the expense of everyone else.
Income inequality in the U.S. is now the most extreme of all countries. The 2008 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report, “Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries,” concludes that the U.S. is the country with the highest inequality and poverty rate across the OECD and that, since 2000, nowhere has there been such a stark rise in income inequality as in the U.S.
The OECD finds that in the U.S. the distribution of wealth is even more unequal than the distribution of income.
On Oct. 21, 2009, BusinessWeek reported that a new report from the United Nations Development Program concluded that the U.S. ranked third among states with the worst income inequality. As number one and number two, Hong Kong and Singapore, are both essentially city-states, not countries, the U.S. actually has the shame of being the country with the most inequality in the distribution of income.
The stark increase in U.S. income inequality in the 21st century coincides with the offshoring of U.S. jobs, which enriched executives with “performance bonuses” while impoverishing the middle class, and with the rapid rise of unregulated over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives, which enriched Wall Street and the financial sector at the expense of everyone else.
Millions of Americans have lost their homes and half of their retirement savings while being loaded up with government debt to bail out the banksters who created the derivative crisis.
“Frontline’s” Oct. 21 broadcast, “The Warning,” documents how Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blocked Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), from performing her statutory duties and regulating OTC derivatives.
After the worst crisis in U.S. financial history struck, just as Brooksley Born said it would, a disgraced Greenspan was summoned out of retirement to explain to Congress his unequivocal assurances that no regulation of derivatives was necessary. Greenspan had even told Congress that regulation of derivatives would be harmful. A pathetic Greenspan had to admit that the free market ideology on which he had relied turned out to have a flaw.
Greenspan may have bet our country on his free market ideology, but does anyone believe that Rubin and Summers were doing anything other than protecting the enormous fraud-based profits that derivatives were bringing Wall Street? As Born stressed, OTC derivatives are a “dark market.” There is no transparency. Regulators have no information on them and neither do purchasers.
Even after Long Term Capital Management blew up in 1998 and had to be bailed out, Greenspan, Rubin and Summers stuck to their guns. Greenspan, Rubin and Summers, and a roped-in gullible Arthur Levitt who now regrets that he was the banksters’ dupe, succeeded in manipulating a totally ignorant Congress into blocking the CFTC from doing its mandated job.
Born, prevented by the public’s elected representatives from protecting the public, resigned. Wall Street money simply shoved facts and honest regulators aside, guaranteeing government inaction and the financial crisis that hit in 2008 and continues to plague our economy today.
The financial insiders running the Treasury, White House and Federal Reserve shifted to taxpayers the cost of the catastrophe that they had created. When the crisis hit, Henry Paulson, appointed by President Bush as Rubin’s replacement as the Goldman Sachs representative running the U.S. Treasury, hyped fear to obtain from “our” representatives in Congress with no questions asked hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars (TARP money) to bail out Goldman Sachs and the other malefactors of unregulated derivatives.
When Goldman Sachs recently announced that it was paying massive six and seven figure bonuses to every employee, public outrage erupted. In defense of banksters, saved with the public’s money, paying themselves bonuses in excess of most people’s lifetime earnings, Lord Griffiths, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, said that the public must learn to “tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all.”
In other words, “Let them eat cake.”
According to the U.N. report cited above, Great Britain has the seventh-most unequal income distribution in the world. After the Goldman Sachs bonuses, the British will move up in distinction, perhaps rivaling Israel for the fourth spot in the hierarchy.
Despite the total insanity of unregulated derivatives, the high level of public anger and Greenspan’s confession to Congress, still nothing has been done to regulate derivatives. One of Rubin’s assistant treasury secretaries, Gary Gensler, has replaced Born as head of the CFTC. Larry Summers is the head of President Obama’s National Economic Council. Former Federal Reserve official Timothy Geithner, a Paulson protege, runs the Obama Treasury. A Goldman Sachs vice president, Adam Storch, has been appointed the chief operating officer of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Banksters are still in charge.
Is there another country in which in full public view so few so blatantly use government for the enrichment of private interests, with a coterie of “free market” economists available to justify plunder on the grounds that “the market knows best”? A narco-state is bad enough. The U.S. surpasses this horror with its financo-state.
As Brooksley Born says, if nothing is done, “it’ll happen again.”
But nothing can be done. The crooks have the government.
Note: The OECD report shows that despite the Ronald Reagan tax rate reduction, the rate of increase in U.S. income inequality declined during the Reagan years. During the mid-1990s, the Gini coefficient (the measure of income inequality) actually fell. Beginning in 2000 with the New Economy (essentially financial fraud and offshoring of U.S. jobs), the Gini coefficient shot up sharply.
Tom: unfortunately, I don’t have time at the moment to go into this. (I’m preparing for the HL Mencken Club, and one minor personal emergency has followed another.) But I would just like to say that I don’t think the Anglican Church could have endured as long as she has if an irrational (groundless, do you think?) antipathy towards the Catholic Church were her foundation. It is true, of course, that Protestant identity has been intertwined with the development of modern national identity (and England is not alone in this regard.) But to suggest that a country’s independence from Rome makes its intellectuals more prone to atheism is a bit of a stretch. Moreover, Dawkins’s recent blog is embarrassing and conventionally leftist, to be sure, though the man is no buffoon as a scientist, nor I do think his work is a part of soccer hooliganism. I myself picked up the England-bashing paddle the other day, but in my mind, if Britain is worse than the rest of Europe, it’s only by a matter of degrees. And I’m not holding out hope that the West will be saved by Italy or Spain, or the Catholic Church, to be frank. Who knows what motivates the political Left? I am sure, however, that the contemporary Right is not well served by dwelling on ancient hatreds.
In a letter to one of his sons, J.R. R. Tolkien, a convert to Catholicism, wrote, “hatred of Our Church is after all the only real foundation of the C[hurch] of E[ngland]—so deep laid that it remains when all the superstructure seems removed.” So deep laid is the hatred detected by Tolkien that it remains even after all shreds of Anglican belief have vanished, as shown by the atheist Richard Dawkins’ anti-Catholic tirade occasioned by the recent effort by the Roman Catholic Church to create a structure within Catholicism for Anglicans disaffected by their church’s increasing liberalism. Dawkins also reveals himself to be a very pedestrian leftist in his thinking, railing against the Catholic Church and the disaffected Anglicans for their “misogyny” and “homophobic bigotry.” It tells you all you need to know about contemporary Britain, the land of soccer hooliganism and public drunkenness, of Sir Mick Jagger and Sir Elton John, that Dawkins is considered its leading thinker.
UPDATE: I have heard from an Anglican reader, who objected to my use of the Tolkien quote in the context of Dawkins who, after all, is no longer an Anglican. Upon reflection, I think it is a fair point. I would also note my own high regard for many Anglicans, including C S Lewis and John Mason Neale, who translated into English several of my favorite hymns. Indeed, the structure for disaffected Anglicans that Dawkins is objecting to recognizes the value in the Anglican tradition, since it envisions a liturgy based on Anglican tradition. Still, I find it striking that so many of the new atheists are both English and palpably more hostile to Catholicism than to other religions. Something atavistic is at work there, and Dawkins’ anti-Catholic tirade which both damns Pope Benedict XVI (“Pope Ratzinger” to Dawkins) and praises the Archbishop of Canterbury is a prime example of it.
When openly gay college student Matthew Shepard was targeted, tortured and murdered in 1998 the story made national headlines. Soon after, MTV sent a camera crew down to Charleston, South Carolina searching for a redneck or two who might offer some insensitive remarks about homosexuals for their “True Life” series. They found one. Me.
I was a student at the College of Charleston and as the lone conservative writer at the school paper, was asked to participate in the television tapings. I remember telling MTV I believed Shepard’s murderers should receive the death penalty. I also told them, when prodded, that I believed homosexuality was “against God.”
It’s a comment I’ve regretted ever since.
My first regret stems from the blasphemous assumption that I could know the mind of God and secondly, that I had portrayed gay men and women as somehow lesser children of that God. Despite my youthful ignorance, there is nothing more obvious to me today than the fact that the overwhelming majority of homosexuals are born gay. It is nature, not nurture and certainly no choice.
But in a free society what people choose to think about homosexuality should be their choice. The Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act currently being pushed through Congress, which seeks to expand the definition of federal hate crime laws to cover homosexuals, is the criminalization of thought, pure and simple. It’s bad enough that we already have federal laws that cover crimes motivated by racial, ethnic or religious prejudice, which are an affront to free speech that should be abolished. Battery, assault and murder are horrible enough crimes on their own without attaching some special significance to what the perpetrator might think about his victim. Rightly notes South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, there are “fundamental problems with any federal hate crimes legislation. The Rule of Law requires opposition to this idea that we treat crimes differently.”
Not that I don’t understand the rage of homosexuals or racial and religious minorities who sometimes feel like targets of violence. In 2002, my best friend was assaulted for verbally defending the honor of a woman. For his chivalrous deed, my friend, who was far too drunk to defend himself (everyone was intoxicated) had his head mercilessly pounded into the sharp corner of a steel toolbox, coming dangerously close to severely and permanently damaging his eye. The perpetrator was a perennial loser, mad at women, himself and god-knows-what-else, filled with enough “hate” to take on the whole world. At the time, if someone had put a bullet in his head I wouldn’t have lost much sleep over it.
One can only imagine the rage of Mathew Shepard’s family, his friends and particularly those in the gay community who knew him. A loved one was taken by two emotionally-dysfunctional men whose insecurities and personal shortcomings drove them to murder. No doubt, many would like to see Shepard’s killers put to death and it’s an injustice this never happened.
But not because Shepard was gay - because he was an innocent human being who had done nothing to deserve his fate. While murder is certainly worse than assault, is beating up a homosexual a worse crime than beating up my friend? If my friend were homosexual, should his assault take on an entirely new dimension? When violent crimes occur, each born of evil-intentions and producing gruesome results, are some crimes less equal than others? For hate crime law advocates, their answer is an unqualified “yes!” Their logic is repulsive.
Advocates of hate crime laws argue that homosexual and minority members’ particular identities make them especially vulnerable, requiring special legal protection. One could just as easily argue that the colossal disparity between black-on-white violent crime versus white-on-black violent crime makes white Americans especially vulnerable, and yet no one advocates for special legal protection for whites. Some might argue that existing hate crime laws allow for this, but the instances of anti-white hate crimes being prosecuted compared to anti-minority hate crimes, is beyond laughable and no one seems to be clamoring for it.
Most violent crime is born of some sort of hatred and examining motive is certainly crucial in any criminal investigation. But “hate” - for gays, minorities, women, chivalrous men - is still just a thought, and should not be itself, a criminal action. Criminalizing the thought behind a violent act sets dangerous precedent and gives special justice to special groups and lesser justice to victims of similar crimes who do not belong to those groups.
Stupid as it was, what I thought about homosexuality in 1998 should not have been a crime. A few weeks after the MTV special aired, I was standing in a King Street bar when a rather tough lesbian woman violently pushed me from behind, angry over my comments. Looking back, I’m surprised she didn’t punch my lights out. That would have unquestionably been a crime. But not her opinion of me.
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“Sometimes party loyalty asks too much,” said JFK.
For Sarah Palin, party loyalty in New York’s 23rd congressional district asks too much. Going rogue, Palin endorsed Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava.
On Oct. 1, Scozzafava was leading. Today, she trails Democrat Bill Owens and is only a few points ahead of Hoffman, as Empire State conservatives defect to vote their principles, not their party.
Newt Gingrich stayed on the reservation, endorsing Scozzafava, who is pro-choice and pro-gay rights, and hauls water for the unions.
Scourged by the right, Newt accused conservatives of going over the hill in the battle to save the republic, just to get a buzz on. “If we are in the business about feeling good about ourselves while our country gets crushed, then I probably made the wrong decision.” How Scozzafava would prevent America’s being “crushed” was unexplained.
The 23rd recalls a famous Senate race 40 years ago. Rep. Charles Goodell was picked by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller to fill the seat of Robert Kennedy in 1968. To hold onto it, Goodell swerved sharp left, emerging as an upstate Xerox copy of Jacob Javits, the most liberal Republican in the Senate.
In 1970, Goodell got both the GOP and Liberal Party nominations, and faced liberal Democrat Richard Ottinger. This left a huge vacuum into which Conservative Party candidate James Buckley, brother of William F., smartly moved.
Assessing the field, the Nixon White House concluded that, with liberals split, Goodell could not win. But Buckley might. Signals were flashed north that loyalty to the president was not inconsistent with voting for Buckley. To send the signal in the clear, Vice President Agnew described Charlie Goodell to a New Orleans newspaper as “the Christine Jorgensen of the Republican Party.”
The former George Jorgensen, Christine had undergone the most radical sex-change operation in recorded history.
Liberals went berserk, calling on New Yorkers to rally to Goodell, who began surging, at Ottinger’s expense. Buckley scooted between them both to win. Hoffman may also. But even if he does not, Palin, a conservative of the heart, did the right thing.
And the GOP has been sent a necessary message.
For, according to Gallup, 40 percent of Americans now identify as conservatives—only 20 percent as Republicans. If the GOP is not the conservative party, it will never be America’s Party.
But what does “conservative” mean in 2009? And where do conservatives come down on the great issues? For what the right is against—any repeal of the Bush tax cuts, the $787 billion stimulus, Obamacare—is much clearer than what the right stands for.
In 2010, this may not matter, as the Obamakins rule the roost and will be held accountable, and Republicans can unite around what they oppose. Year 2012, however, is problematic.
Then the party must declare itself. And the reality is that the GOP remains a house divided.
What, for example, is the conservative view of the war in Iraq and the Bush economic policies that cost the party both Houses of Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008?
Why did President Bush leave with 27 percent approval? Did Bush policies the GOP once applauded have anything to do with it?
Was Bush free trade responsible for the decline of the dollar and the loss of one in four manufacturing jobs? Is globalization still good for America and NAFTA the deal of the century?
What is the conservative position on reaching out to Russia, as BarackObama has done, on bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and on canceling that anti-missile system Bush planned in Poland?
“We’re all Georgians now!” John McCain declared. Are we?
What is the party position on a “long war” in Afghanistan?
For if America has soured on the war and opposes more troops today, will America be enthusiastic about soldiering on in 2012, after 1,000 or 2,000 more American dead have been shipped home?
Do Republicans support negotiating with Tehran, or cutting off gasoline and starting up the escalator to air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities that are today under U.N. inspection?
Will the GOP propose to stimulate the economy with tax cuts after four straight trillion-dollar deficits? Will the Bush line, “They’ll pay for themselves,” still be credible after Bush’s deficits?
If the largest federal outlays are for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, defense and interest on the debt, followed by education, housing, homeland security and transportation, where would the GOP use the knife to balance the budget?
According to Gallup, America is moving closer to the Republican position on regulations, abortion, guns and union power. But half of all Americans now favor cuts in legal immigration. Are Republicans willing to call for a moratorium on immigration to tighten the labor market and force wages up? Or does the Chamber of Commerce still call the tune?
Ronald Reagan arrived with new ideas that fit the needs of his time. Where are the Republican ideas that fit the needs of this time?
Fyodor Dostoevsky has rightly been called a prophet of the modern age. With a depth of vision unrivalled, he saw that cultural, political, and economic disorder have their main source in the crisis of the spirit.
Dostoevsky foresaw how man’s rebellion against the Transcendent would progressively accelerate into full-blown anarchy. In The Possessed, he was particularly attentive to show us the spiritual corruption of the ruling class, the so-called “conservative” elements of society. Dostoevsky wrote about Russia, but he was also deeply sensitive to the West’s descent into secularism.
Parties like the Republicans and the Tories have done nothing to arrest the decline of our societies because they ultimately share the same radical, anti-traditional principles of the Left. For evidence, look no further than Britain’s rapid transformation into a crime-ridden, multicultural surveillance state otherwise known as “Cool Britannia”, or at the mass of contradictions in the program of the new Edmund Burke Institute in Washington, DC (Richard just recently addressed both examples).
If one holds fast to the ideals of modernity, if one’s faith i