A Tale of Two Normans: Podhoretz and Finklestein
Unlike some of my respondents, I am not surprised that Norman Podhoretz in his latest book goes after the isolationist Right. For years Norman has been looking frenetically over his right shoulder, e.g., denouncing Taftites and representatives of the pre-neocon Right, a practice going back to Commentary’s spats with the Buchananites at the end of the Cold War and to its swipes at right-wingers who were perceived as being insufficiently supportive of the Israeli government. But even more interesting than the fact that the older generation of neoconservatives have always believed they were in a dogfight with the hated “paleoconservatives” is the way the liberal establishment and the reconstructed conservative movement have kept us out of the public debate. The reviewers of Podhoretz’s most recent book did not want to mention our guys, even if Podhoretz did; just as the antiwar leftist media continue to treat paleo opponents of the Iraqi War as non-existent or beneath contempt. If it were our partisans against theirs, that is, the neocons and their hacks, we might be able to hold our own.
Unfortunately it is the liberal side that helps to preserve the reputation of the neoconservatives as the only intelligent and relatively humane opposition to the Left. For those who seek more proof, look at the commentary “Saying the Unsayable” by British left-of-center journalist Andrew Stephen in the New Statesman (September 13, 2007). Although this commentary pretends to be about the Walt-Mearsheimer exposé of the American Jewish lobby, it quickly turns into a rant against the “far-right, libertarian congressman” Ron Paul. Supposedly, when Paul noted that the “neoconservatives” played a major role in getting the US to invade Iraq, he was “saying the unsayable,” by “resorting to coded language.” Paul, who is apparently a bigot playing to “far-rightists” was telling his audience that all of our problems in the Mid-East have been “cooked up by the Jews.” Walt and Mearsheimer, who say much more daring things in their book than Paul did in his debate response, are treated respectfully for obvious reasons. They are politically on the left and identified with prestigious leftist academic institutions.
The reason I was struck by all of the errors and oversights in The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism that reviewers did not disclose is the inflated reputation that the media has created for the neoconservatives as the “brainy, cultured” Right. Although there is much I didn’t like about the neoconservative sources that I consulted for my latest monograph on the conservative movement, the quotations from liberals about the high intelligence and learning of neoconservative journalists and fund-raisers are not at all fabricated. I first learned about Podhoretz and his friends from reading the New York Times in the 1970s, and everything I saw there about him and his movement made me adore the neoconservatives. As late as the 1990s, the Times Sunday Magazine featured glossy pictures of Bill Kristol, Mr. and Mrs. David Frum and other second-generation neocon dignitaries, with flattering commentaries typically prepared by neocon scribblers. The Times and Washington Post give massive and usually favorable coverage to books published by such neoconservative authors as Gertrude Himmelfarb, David Brooks, and Dinesh D’Souza, and both of these national newspapers, as well as Time and Newsweek magazines, feature neocon columnists.
And well they might. It is they who helped manufacture this alternative opposition to a more genuine Right. Their exuberant support got others to buy into the kinder, gentler “Right” that the Left bestowed on this country. Opportunistic movement conservatives later ran to join those whom Clyde Wilson in the 1980s recognized as “interlopers.” And certainly Zionist New Dealers and big-government corporate executives have thrown largesse in the direction of these “moderate conservatives.”
But we got the neocons mostly because the Left wanted that kind of bogus opposition. My late friend Sam Francis knew whereof he spoke when he scorned the neocons as the “harmless persuasion.” Sam meant that this group was innocuous to establishment liberals, who laid it on with a trowel when they described their “brilliant” neocon adversaries. But both groups were pure fury when it came to beating up on us.
Another related point is that Sam and I both became interested in studying certain Frankfurt School concepts, although neither of us was a “cultural Marxist,” because they cast light on how the neocons took and exercised power. There is—it seemed to the two of us—a “hegemonic” leftist ideology, which among its defining traits is anti-anti-Semitic, anti-racist, anti-German and generally anti-Southern white. This ideology also favors government social engineering and a welfare state but not necessarily a socialist economy. Most of the adherents of this ideology are not in fact Jews, although Jews may be disproportionately represented among its carriers. Indeed if its success depended on a two-percent Jewish minority in the US, this hegemonic ideology could not have spread as well as it did. Its numerically preponderant supporters have been liberal Christians, who in recent years have been significantly supplemented by such Evangelicals as Michael Gerson, Cal Thomas, and George W. Bush.
There is a second layer to this hegemonic ideology—and here differences may be allowed in the U.S. but not in Western Europe, where the core ideology has progressed farther because of an extremely controlling public administration. The second layer centers on multiculturalism and special group rights for designated victims, such as gays and Muslims. In the face of an evolving core ideology, a mild opposition is allowed to function, as long as it challenges only certain implications of the belief or attitude system. And these “conservative” attacks are encouraged insofar as what is being attacked is only an advanced version of the core ideology but not the underlying sentiments and values. The “moderate conservative” critics of certain excrescences of the core ideology stress the “legacy of the civil rights movement, as embodied by Martin Luther King, and the need to fight anti-Semitism with special zeal, a task that now apparently requires a new world war against “Islamofascism.”
But the criticism here, to use another Frankfurt School term, remains “immanentist.” It proceeds out of the same post-Christian, post-bourgeois hegemonic ideology as the Left that it pretends to resist. Since “democratic politics” requires some kind of organized debate, the neoconservatives and the liberals stage discussions within their own broad consensus—which obviously excludes “fascists” and “extremists,” who challenge their shared understanding of progress and government-promoted equality or the need to exert force internationally in order to end gender disparities, homophobia, etc. Sam and I adopted another Frankfurt School term, “artificial negativity,” to describe what went on when the hegemons blow off steam, mostly for show. Anyone who is looking for an illustration of “artificial negativity” should turn on Hannity and Colmes or listen to the discussions held between the two national parties that clog our TV and radio networks. Such spectacles typically combine utter triviality with the grunting and screaming that one might easily associate with professional wrestling.
A final point about the functioning of this mostly bogus opposition is that it reaches rightward in a way that affects the behavior of the Old Right. Earlier this week, I read on FRONTPAGE, a neoconservative-financed website, a scathing article by the spirited Heather McDonald on the Jena race-hustle, and the scapegoating in the national press of the whites in this Louisiana hamlet, for insisting that severe charges be brought against local blacks who had nearly killed a white high school student. I defy my paleo colleagues to publish anything as critical about American blacks as this lady did on a neocon website. The Old Right is terrified of the subject of race, and it is impossible even while reading its endless hymns to the antebellum South to learn that what is being described is a slave society. Lest it be called racist, the Old Right tries to stay clear of pressing social issues that have to do with race. But neocons do not feel as constrained about the subject, perhaps because they are less likely to get attacked from the Left as racists. Nor are they as frightened of raising the question of significant behavioral differences among the races.
On the other hand, there is no philosophic consistency in how the neocons take on hot moral issues. Although sometimes, when it is useful, they may deplore gay marriage, they are also quite happy to back candidates who favor it. And when it helps their bellicose plans, they will bow and scrape before the gay lobby. For days now, I have been noticing the way neoconservative commentators are trying to enlist the gay movement against the government of Ahmadjinedad. Apparently the failure of the Iranian regime to recognize gay rights now goes against conservative “values.” Since these values, as I argue in my book, are whatever neocons say they are, neocons may be acting consistently on their own Hobbesian principle that power determines meanings as well as justice.
Someone who has dared to go beyond “decent” debate is former DePaul political science assistant professor Norman Finkelstein. This now unemployed figure resigned from his post at De Paul University in September after having been denied tenure last spring. Although a self-described leftist and the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, 53 year old Finkelstein leaned on the third rail once too often. By now, as I note in an article for the German weekly Junge Freiheit, this hapless truth-teller may have no other professional prospects left but to work in a shoe store. After all, he has published entire tomes exposing the pap of PC celebrities. Among Finkelstein’s targets have been Alan Dershowitz’s The Case for Israel, a screed that Finkelstein shows was at least partly lifted from Joan Peterson’s even longer botched work on how there were hardly any Palestinians in Palestine when the European Jews arrived, and Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners. With incredible diligence, Norman has dissected neocon-liberal fixations, about German history, the abuses of the Holocaust for propagandistic purposes, and the bullying tactics of AIPAC. Although never entirely in agreement with the solutions of this zealous pro-Palestinian advocate, I was astonished by his research and transparent courage. Two of the flawed books he focused on, by Goldhagen and Dershowitz, were so fetid and malicious, that I thought he may have been actually too kind to their factual errors and gratuitous gracelessness.
I was therefore not at all surprised that Dershowitz pressed the tenure committee and the president at DePaul to get rid of his critic. Nor was I appalled that he boasted of his accomplishment after Finkelstein was turned down for tenure—despite his voluminous accomplishments and advanced age. Nor was I horrified that the former president and current dean of the law school at Harvard took Dershowitz’s side as a maligned scholar who had fallen into the hands of a bully. Note that the same institution had produced a plethora of endorsements for Goldhagen’s sweeping indictment of the Germans as an “eliminationist anti-Semitic nation.” As far as I know, no one at Harvard has bothered to acknowledge the fraudulent history which riddles Goldhagen’s book. In passing I would note that Norman’s fate at a Catholic university paralleled my own at CUA in the late 1980s. Once some professional victimologist brings up the charge of nurturing “anti-Semitism,” the timid administrators of such schools, often associated with easily intimidated Princes of the Church, cave in. Needless to say, it makes no difference if the would-be disseminator of “prejudice” happens to be Jewish. It serves me (and Finklestein) right for challenging “enlightened” opinion in this most tolerant and caring-and-sharing of liberal democracies.
Comments
Thank you for this article. Now I have something to show my liberal and neo-conservative friends that will better explain what I have been telling them for a long time, that it is all staged. You couldn’t have come up witha a begger metaphor than professional wrestling. The current political debate in this country is only allowed to take place between a far radical left and a middle radical left.
The far lefties argue against the war, but accept as a given that homosexuals and women in Islamic countries are in dire need of our help. In this way they can argue all they want against their opponent without undermining completely their position. I have to believe though that there are at least a few far left liberals who adhere to a liberalism that both rejects war and also respects other cultures much the same way the paleo right does.
Of course as much as such a group does in fact exist, they are ridiculed ain much the same way the paleos are for the crime of arguing outside the accepted rules of the debate which are more or less simply put thus; the one thing that cannot be questioned by any side of the debate is the moral imperative that the U.S. and her allies have to spread democracy to the rest of the world.
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that was supposed to read, better metaphor, not begger. Can’t seewhat I am writing.
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Things that are non-issues to me like gay marriage and Islamofacism are trumpeted as the potential end of western society while real issues like abortion are ignored.
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“The Old Right is terrified of the subject of race, and it is impossible even while reading its endless hymns to the antebellum South to learn that what is being described is a slave society.”
I submit that these people are as confused as the neocons. They dislike the idea of a fixed human nature that cannot be molded by a managerial state. Realism resembles Cavinism and offends traditional Roman Catholic notions of human equality, distributive justice and the Universal Fatherhood of God. In this they resemble mainline protestants—and the neocons they constantly whine about.
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Things that are non-issues to me like gay marriage and Islamofacism are trumpeted as the potential end of western society while real issues like abortion are ignored.
Because gay Islamists don’t get pregnant and can’t have abortions?
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neocons do not feel as constrained about the subject
Well, FrontPage sacked Crazy Larry Auster for merely quoting government statistics on race and crime. It also insults Christians and pushes gay rights. In addition, David Horowitz says he is independent of the east coast neocons, even though he has similar views.
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Islamofacism is a made up word and doesn’t describe anything that even exists and is therefore unworthy of fear.
Gay marriage is a mutually exclusive event that cannot occurr regardless of how many laws say otherwise.
Abortion on the other hand is the very real killing of a living child.
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Something is going on in the Neocon world right now. Various Neocon websites are attacking European right of center parties because those parties are opposed to Islamic immigration. The Neocons attack the European parties, such as the Flemish party (the VB) in Belgium by claiming that the usual suspects support those parties (skin heads, neo-nazis etc.)
Note that at the same time, Neocons have begun attacking Ron Paul with the same more than dubious logic. Mike Medved, of movie review fame, attacked Ron Paul claiming that neo-nazis and those who doubt the accepted or official line on the causes of 911 support Paul.
My guess is that a group of Neocons agreed on using this line of argument against Ron Paul first and then decided to attack the European parties in order to claim that the imputation of guilt by a thin number of fringe supporters discredits the mainstream support for right of center movements.
This is another example of what Gottfried was noting in his essay. The Neocons are here appealing to the left by invoking leftist ideology as the basis and moral authority for the rejection of European anti-Islamists and in the USA in rejecting a Republican opposed to the Iraq war, and future Neocon wars in the Middle East.
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What the author calls paleoconservatives is in the main media and discussions instead often described as “extreme right” or even “nazi”, with or without the neo- prefix. It is often described as something that would turn the clock back. To injustice, to racial segregation, to slavery.
Conservatism is among younger generations generally viewed as something that, if implemented, would deny them the pleasures of sex, drugs and rocknroll. And those things are what interests them most.
If you really want to make a useful contribution to the conservative cause, present a theory, or ideal, that includes and positively defines all citizens and groups in the society. Even those most us would deem “worthless”. A system that can find a place for everyone will also find unexpected allies in tough times.
The conservatives of today are pretty much repeating the political mistakes of Adolf Hitler when he invaded the Soviet Union. At the time of the German invasion many Russians and other nationalities in fact welcomed the Germans as liberators from the Stalin regime. But once they learned that the nazis had prepared a role as untermenschen (subhumans), or slaves, or corpses, for them, they had no choice, they had to side with Stalin and communism. Lesser of two evils.
Norman Finkelstein is a brave and brilliant man and should immediately be picked up by either a university or some other similar institution, so that his talent isn’t wasted in a shoe store. I wish he was one of us. Brainier guy is hard to find.
Let us learn from his experience, and from the experiences of other people like him, that it isn’t enough to be right or to be better read than your opposition, you must have strong social support too. Did anyone draw his sword (or rather pen) for Finkelstein? Did he get any encouragement and support? Not that I’m aware of.
The other day I was watching a movie, Transporter 2, and the hero in it constantly got into fights with various groups of crooks. They were 2, 5, 8, 20 and he was always alone. He always won the fights. I spontaneously commented: “These crooks must be real idiots, they attack him one at the time, get beat, then get replaced by another idiot, who gets beat too”. Now, this seems to be the tacticts of the conservatives too. One by one they charche the Leviathan, get fried, and then get replaced by another fool.
No wonder nothing happens.
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@Peter,
True, a lot of Catholics have, certainly since Vatican
II (and even before), accepted egalitarian ideas and various
theories of “natural rights"---but not all of us. While
God is the Lord of us all, that does not make us all
equal, physically, mentally, or in our status in society.
Just as popes such as the Blessed Pius IX, St. Pius X,
and others rejected human equality (man compared to man),
so do I. True enough, Our Lord desires every soul to
receive His truth, and in that sense we all have the
opportunity to partake of His Grace. But, in the mystery
of grace, we are not equal as men, even there. Grace offered
is sufficient for every man, but some receive special
graces and God’s predilection.
I would agree with you that this is one of the biggest
errors that modern Christians (not just Catholics),
make.
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Gottfried is one of the few conservative intellectuals whoi has put his finger on what is going on with the “left” and their infatuation with cultural Marxism, identity politics, and their acceptance of corporate capitalism as a legit tool of state power. So I’m glad that he’s turning his guns on the neo-cons, the “politically correct” rightwing acceptable to Wall Street and Multi-national corporations.
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A fine article that hits the right notes. It is Germanophile (and maybe Habsburg-phile), and correctly assaults the repugnant Goldhagen. It is magnanimous to the Neocons of the 70s, who were indeed leading the charge against Cultural Marxism, and to Heather McDonald, writing in a Neocon source, who has written the truth. It offers a short but good analysis of The Frankfurter School, and begins a long overdue attack on Cultural Marxism. Let’s have more such attacks. We Real Conservatives can attack Cultural Marxism better than the Neocons.
1. Real Conservatives or “The Old Right is terrified of the subject of race”, or of Judeophobia? Well might we be, for we have yet to purge ourselves of racialists and Judeophobes, and we know it, and thus are open to the (false) charge of “racism” and “Antisemitism”? I grant to those who say I harp on this too much that Neo-Fascists, Clerical Fascists, and Neo-Nazis are of a number that would fit in a telephone booth. Rather I strees this as a practical matter: had we been more thoroughgoing in so purging, we could have taken the lead against the Cultural Marxist exploitation of Jena. Now we’re caught short. Truth be told, the “Leftist” race exploiters in Jena are really racialist nationalist themselves (Though the Cultural Marxists don’t know it). I suspect they’ve taken much of their propaganda from the National Alliance, and just changed the color. Ditto Susan Sontag, Leonard Jeffries, and Frances Cress Welsing.
2. The Cultural Marxists will never forgive the US leading the Cold War against Marxism. The Neo-Fascists and Racialists will never forgive the US for participating in World War II, in the European Theater. Fair enough: I’ll not forgive the Sam Franciscans for opposing the League of the South – at least not until they stop their opposition and stop an idolatry of Lincoln that might as well be taken from the Neocon page. And the Neocons are called “inconsistent”! (which they are). Tu quoque to the Sam Franciscans!
Real Conservatives supported both the World War II (in time) and also The Cold War – both in principle, though they may have decided reservations about how these wars were executed (e.g. the crimes of Air Marshall Harris or Vietnam, respectively). Real Conservatives opposed Iraq, Vietnam, World War I especially, The Spanish American War, and most definitely Lincoln’s War.
I ask writebackers to respond to Dr. Gottfried’s article not to me. “Highjacking” is a false metaphor. Highjacking is coercive. No one coerced to read what I write, or to respond to it.
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All that exists is atoms and empty space; the rest is just opinions. -Democritus of Abdera
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Readers of this article may enjoy a piece over at The Brussels Journal that covers similar material and also discusses the despicable attacks on Europeans generally and traditionalists in particular by the neoconservative organs in America.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2599
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Dr. Boyd Cathey again complains against what he calls
egaliarianims, saying that it goes against the natural
order, which dictates that there shall be those who
rule and those who are ruled.
Of course, he thinks that in such a society, he would
be the ones who make the rules, and who tells other how
things should be, ordering things for his beneift, while
telling those he rules that they should be content that
he does not treat them as badly as he is entitled to.
Of course, that is a big if. Since most societies are
pyramidal in nature (few on top, most on bottom), he
might find out that there are no openings for being
a feudal lord, but plenty for serfs. I hope would take
it in good grace when the natural order decreed that he
should labor and hope that his lord would not take too
much of what he produced.
It is because of those odds that a lot of people prefer
the egalitarian dream, and prefer to forego the chance
of being a lord if that means also foregoing the almost
certainty of ending up a serf.
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No one nails the neocons like you, Prof. Gottfried.
No one.
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Ron Paul’s treatment by the Main Stream Media brings to mind an observation a friend credited to Gandhi: “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they attack you. And after that you have won.”
How about hiring Dr. Finklestein as a columnist for TakiMag? That would certainly raise TakiMag to the “attack you” level on the Gandhi scale.
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Adriana, you seem to think that anyone who favors a hierarchical society imagines that he will be running it. In fact, I would rather know my place in a hierarchy than be subject to either mob rule or (what usually happens) the rule of hidden manipulators in an egalitarian society. The Catholic Church is the most important society that I belong to and I am at the bottom of the hierarchy of that society with no voice whatsoever in choosing the rulers. But I am far happier with even the worst Catholic rulers I have experienced than with any of the rulers of the US or sub-divisions thereof in whose selection I had a vote.
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“Real Conservatives or The Old Right is terrified of the subject of race, or of Judeophobia?”
Hey Sid, that’s why its called the Old Right. Liberals and “respectable conservatives” represent the past and your purges, much like the Surge, have been fought to a standstill. Your ideologies are too bankrupt to re-supply the front.
The future will be ruled by simple Truths, not complex chicanery designed to cloud the water and produce no conclusion. Your vision holds no appeal to what’s left of Western Mankind. The Future Right vision just won big-time in Switzerland. Fault lines are appearing.
The marketplace of ideas is a tough sell Sid and the only way your kind knows how to compete is to have the other guy’s store “purged” from the market. Better get busy Sid, lots of stores popping up these days.
Or maybe you’ll follow the neo-con template and simply change sides. We all know what happened once the neo-cons conned their way into the conservative trench 30 years ago. Let’s not be so naïve this time. There’s literally too much at stake.
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Hey paging the Sidster. Here is your Simon pure libertarian leader linking to something you wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/10/what-is-a-racis.html
What Is a ‘Racist’?
Posted by Lew Rockwell at 06:28 PM
Andrew Sullivan likes what Selwyn Duke has to say about “the blank-slate left’s faith-based science.”
Reddit • Digg this • Stumble It • Share on Facebook • Save to del.icio.us • Discuss on Newsvine
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I’m disappointed every day I don’t see a new article from Professor Gottfried.
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A great refutation of leftist like Sid, who are legion. Read the whole thing.
Are We All Nazis Now?
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2592
From the desk of Paul Belien on Sat, 2007-10-27 00:35
One of the greatest injustices to the victims of racism, and in particular the holocaust, is the trivialization of it. One does not have to agree with the Dutch “Islamophobic” anti-immigration politicians Geert Wilders or Rita Verdonk, but what kind of person writes something like: “Whenever I see people such as Wilders and Verdonk I think of the Kristallnacht! The moment the Jews were rounded up...”?
People who write such things do not care about the suffering of the Jews. They merely abuse the Nazi crimes for their own petty political objectives. The example quoted above comes from the Dutch correspondent of the far-left Belgian blog Yelloman. This blogger is an intolerant, immoral Stalinist activist. The politicians in the European Parliament, however, are hardly any better.
As the British conservative philosopher and author Roger Scruton said in a speech in Antwerp last year, the charge of racism and xenophobia in the EU countries “has become the equivalent of a charge of heresy in medieval Europe, of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, or of ‘deviationism” in the Stalinist state.” However, as Mr. Scruton pointed out, “we have a duty to brave the charge of ‘racism and xenophobia’, and to discuss every aspect of immigration.”
Mr. Scruton made his remarks in a speech to the Vlaams Belang party – a party which has been accused of racism and xenophobia by the Belgian authorities. “There are many people in this country,”Mr. Scruton added, “who believe that I should not talk to you at all, and that by doing so I become tainted with the very charge that has been levelled at you: the charge of racism and xenophobia. By talking about this charge, I hope to deflect it. I am neither racist nor xenophobic; I am in the habit of assuming that the same is true of others, until they have shown evidence to the contrary; and I am glad that a Party exists that is willing to brave this charge, in order to discuss the problem that is in the minds of all ordinary Europeans today.”
Unfortunately, some Americans realize that Europe is in for a disaster but seem to think that it is only getting what it deserves. Europe has to be destroyed by the Muslims as a punishment for the Nazis’ crimes during WWII. Last year, I was invited to speak about the situation in Europe at one of America’s major universities. For two days my host subjected me to the most terrible accusations. He told me I would have to suffer for what my ancestors had done to his ancestors. “One cannot respect the Europeans,” he said. “America should have nuked Europe during WWII instead of Japan. If ever things turn nasty in Europe I will make sure that neither you nor any white European will be allowed to seek shelter in the US. I would rather invite the Muslims in than you and your lot, because one can respect Muslims but not Europeans.” Since my host was Jewish and had lost his family in the war I could understand his anger, but not his short-sightedness. I think he did not mean all he said, though it was an upsetting experience and one of the most unpleasant moments in my life.
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I am far happier with even the worst Catholic rulers I have experienced than with any of the rulers of the US… in whose selection I had a vote.
Ted Kennedy. Tom Hayden. Rudolph Giuliani. I’d rather be led by a Shriner’s convention than by these men.
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Well might we be, for we have yet to purge ourselves of racialists and Judeophobes… Neo-Fascists, Clerical Fascists, and Neo-Nazis...
Who is “we” and why should “we” purge anybody? Ritual denunciations are for ideologues, not conservatives. Since the kooks you complain about are easily defeated in the free market of ideas, why get your panties in a ruffle about them?
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<<Catholic rulers...Ted Kennedy. Tom Hayden. Rudolph Giuliani.>>
That’s not who Kirt Higdon meant.
He was referring to various bishops, cardinals, and popes.
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@KIrt
I am glad that you are happy inside a hyerarchy. it is
a very comforting feeling knowing where you belong in
the scheme of things.
That is, when those on top are not corrupted.
Like what happened those children, and their parents,
who were molested by priests, their superior in the
hyerarchy, and then got to see how the bishops, the
superiors of the priests, instead of doing justice,
hushed it up, enjoining them to keep silence.
The problem with a hyerarchy, if you are in the bottom
rungs, is that it is those on the upper rungs who
define what is right and wrong,and lo and behold, it
somehow works out that those in the bottom rungs are the
ones at fault. Basically it is like dealing with only
one buyer and seller, and when you buy, it is the person
who sells to you who appraises the goods, and when you
sell, it is the buyer again who appraises.
It is because of corruptions like this that rape victims
are said to have “seduced” their rapists, who are themselves
thus free of blame.
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It seems that Sid Cunduff is up to his old tricks again hijacking threads. I guess he can’t take subtle hints. I predict his harassment will continue until someone here or at Chronicles eventually has to file a formal complaint against him.
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Re ‘professional wrestling’ analogy - I had a very similar feeling recently watching Bill Kristol ‘argue’ with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. It was a lot like the last scene of Animal Farm.
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“The Old Right is terrified of the subject of race, and it is impossible even while reading its endless hymns to the antebellum South to learn that what is being described is a slave society.”
I don’t think this is completely true. You have a few left-wingers who (wrongly) claim to be a part of the Old Right, like Ramaindo, who are “race deniers,” but they are far and few in between.
The paleoconservatives by and large recognize the importance of race - and I’ve been going to paleoconservative events for years. You have some who are racialists. Some who are Christian racialists. Anti-egalitarians. You have those wanting to preserve genophilia (instinctive attachment to family and tribe). At the very minimum, everyone believes in the importance of primal loyalties to kith and kin.
If one cannot take pride in his ancestors and their traditions, then we aredoomed. It’s the way political correctness works. You tell white people “race doesn’t matter,” and most of them believe it. All the while, all other races organize around racial consciousness, working to undermine whites. It is a lose / lost situation for whites. Anyone who says “race doesn’t matter” is anti-white, plain and simple.
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Gottfried,
By the way, like always, excellent analysis!
I agree 100% Unless whites push for our racial interests, we are going the way of the dodo bird.
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Sid,
Stop hijacking threads! Please. Why must you turn every thread into your crusade of \"race doesn\’t matter\” political correctness?
Dr. Gottfried,
Love the article....
Everyone Else,
I agree with what you are saying. Left-wingers like Sid \"Herbert Marcuse\” Cunduff are here only to thumb contempt at Western man and his accomplishments.
Watch the documentary _A Frankfurt School Story_. NeoMarxists (Frankfurt School) largely popularized the accusation of \"racism\" as a way to undermine Western Civilization. And political correctness enforces like Cundiff do their dirty work for them.
Notice that left-wing shills tell whites \"race doesn\’t matter,\” but everyone goes away and protects their racial priorities.
Whites need to wake up before it is too late!
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i went to the norman finkelstein website and found this letter sent to him by oxford explaining why he wasnt allowed to speak there...of course its the powers of americas elite ruling class.
What really happened at Oxford
Finkelstein comments:
Insofar as the lies about what happened at the Oxford Union are getting more and more appalling, I have very reluctantly decided to post the email from the President of the Oxford Union disinviting me.
From: Luke.Tryl[at]magd.ox.ac.uk
To: normangf[at]hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Debate
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:38:31 +0100
Dear Dr Finkelstein,
I hope that you are well, I’m so sorry for the confusion about the debate. There was an organisational difficulty at my end and my secretary hadn’t seen your emails.
I would appreciate it if you could keep this bit between you and I. Many people expressed concern that the debate as it stood was imbalanced and people felt that as someone who had apparently expressed anti-zionist sentiments that you might not be appropriate for this debate. I tried to convince them otherwise but was accused of putting forward an imbalanced debate and various groups put pressure on me. I received numerous emails attacking the debate and Alan Dershowitz threatened to write an Oped attacking the Union. What is more he apparently attacked me personally in a televised lecture to Yale.
I hope that you understand my position, this is not ideal and I would be happy to welcome you as an individual speaker to the Union in a forthcoming term. I know that the President-Elect Emily Partington would be keen to host you in Hilary. I just did not want to see the debate compromised and given the Irving Griffin Controversy I couldn’t fight a battle on all fronts.
Best wishes
Luke.
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i second the motion…
bring Prof Norman Finkelstein aboard the takimag.com ship of her majestys world wide web.
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Proffessor Gottfried notes that the “antiwar leftist media continue to treat paleo opponents of the Iraqi War as non-existent or beneath contempt.”. In my own view, the “antiwar left” isn’t antiwar at all. As Murray Rothbard learned, they are worthless allies. The neocons are leftists, in my view. I have seen nothing to distinguish them from their so-called opposition on the left. Of course the leftist media prefers to have the neocons as their only opposition. They have never been able to do more than outshout the principled opposition they encounter from paleos. With the neocons, they can pretend to have spirited debates which end in both sides agreeing to agree after all their disagreement.
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To accuse me of hijacking means either that one don’t know what “hijacking” means, or that one did poorly on the analogy section of the SAT. To accuse me of bringing up the race topic would mean that one might not be able to read,—in which case, Would someone do a podcast and read aloud Paul Gottfried’s article above? Then an illiterate could hear who on this page brought up the race question first. (and it was also good that he did so.) And I, on topic, responded to Paul Gottfried’s remarks. So if one doesn’t like the topic of race, one’s “formal complaint” should be about him, not me.
Indeed, Paul Gottfried is decrying the reverse racism of Sharpton, Jackson, et al. and is agreeing with a woman who wrote in a Neocon journal. So, were one to follow the faulty logic offered by some, this agreement by Paul Gottfried would make Paul Gottfried a Neocon himself, or a clone of his old teacher Herb Marcuse!
More central to Paul Gottfried’s essay is the attempt by a Neocon to denigrate his opponent (Ron Paul) with a red herring and false identification so as to knock Ron Paul out of the discussion. (and Neocons aren’t the only people who practice such denigration.) Also central to Paul Gottfried’s remarks is how some Neocons “helped manufacture this alternative opposition [Neoconservatism] to a more genuine Right” I completely agree that Real Conservatism is the genuine conservatism. By my distinguishing genuine Real Conservatism from the other fake “conservatism”—i.e. Racialism and Nationalism --, I’m depriving Neocons, Lincoln Idolaters, and Hamiltonians of their ammo.
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By my distinguishing genuine Real Conservatism from the other fake “conservatism”—i.e. Racialism and Nationalism...
Racialism is a red herring, as paleos tend to talk in terns of kinship and cultural ties rather than mere genetic groups. Also, to the extent that paleocons wish to maintain the nation-state as a form of social organization, you can’t call Nationalism fake. What’s your point?
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Another way to maintain civilization is to write and spell
correctly and consistently. For example: hierarchy; not
“hyerarchy.” There is plenty of time to let the world know
what you think. Those of us who check in here regularly do
not belong (necessarily) to the booboisie and some of us
(obviously more than others) find these errors distracting
and annoying. ‘K?
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Another way to maintain civilization is to write and spell
correctly and consistently.
Thinking is not necessary. We are mere peasants who are not worthy enough to read the Bible in our own language. We must have implicit faith, follow the Bishop and support social justice. :-)
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OJ lawyer Dershowitz seems to be making a career stamping out free speech.
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Adriana, I am not saying that hierarchies are perfect, but even the alleged misdeeds, let alone the proven ones, of the Catholic pastors and bishops in the sex-abuse scandals pale in comparison to those of egalitarian liberal democratic governments.
And frankly many of the alleged rape victims were not victims at all, at least not in any provable way. Some may have been seducers, many after the fact opportunists. You have a bare handful of cases where criminal or even civil charges were proven against specific individuals. Most of the alleged cases amounted to mass class action settlements without trial, but with dioceses handing out millions to anyone claiming to be a victim. An acquaintance of mine from high school and college days “recovered” his memory of being molested by an unnamed priest and received a million dollars to compensate him for the “trauma” which he had forgotten about for 35 years or so. Of course he and other “victims” had to split their loot with their attorneys. I’d guess that about 90% of the “clerical sex abuse” cases are an attorney driven scam and media smear against the Catholic Church.
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Unlike the left-wing “race don’t matter” political correctness of Sid Cundiff, REAL CONSERVATIVES have always recognized the importance of kith and kin, blood and soil, and genophilia.
Sid Cundiff carries water for the SPLC, and like the NeoMarxists, he calls anyone a “racist” or “neonazi” who refuses to conform to the left-wing paradigms on race.
Sid, please go away, and please stop hijacking threads!
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Mr. Ramus is quite correct that genuine Conservatism talks in terms of culture and history, not genes. Culture and history can be and have been shared. For example, there is a Near Eastern religion, founded by a Semite, with its source in Judaism, that’s been shared with Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Celts, and Slavs—for starters. And, I being Anglo-Saxon-Celt, I was obliged to learn a respect for education from Greeks and Germans and to take cooking lessons from Frenchmen and Italians.
As for the rest of Mr. Ramus’ argument, with respect to the “nation-state”, I urge him to reflect that his argument is the same as that of Richelieu, Cromwell, Cavour, Bismarck, the Pan-Slavist Czar, the advocates of the Anschluß, and Dishonest Abe. This is not good company for Mr. Ramus to keep. Truth be told, “nation” is a fiction what was invented by The State Leviathan to grant him the same legitimacy as was once held by Kings asserting divine right. Nation-state is a Jacobin invention, one that an Italian gent, Buonaparte by name, loved. More bad company to keep.
Take the arguments of “White Christian PaleoConservative” and “Edmund Burke IV” and change the color. You’ll then have to life the race Jena race-hustlers that McDonald and Gottfried rightly decry. “White Christian” and “Burke” to Sharpton, Jackson, Jeffries, and Welsing are (so to speak) brothers under the skin. Tu quoque.
“teachem2think” plays the school ma’rm, a game two can play. He could start by learning to spell, capitalize, and space correctly his own name rather than mimic the orthography of Rap musicians. “[B]ooboisie” should be followed by a comma, because he is joining two independent clauses with “and”. “K” is not a complete sentence, or even a word, and needs no apostrophe before it. If he means “O.K.”—the chief offense of American English—he mimics Rappers even more. So, Tu quoque again. Not that I don’t make enough errors of my own when writing in haste. Of course, it isn’t Adriana’s , punctuation and orthography that he dislikes.
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Here for those who didn’t see it are the comments Alan Dershowitz made about the late Chief Justice Rehnquist right after the Chief Justice died. Note that Dershowitz lies about a great and good man (Rehnquist) in the most vile manner but that Dershowitz is still OK with the Neocons because of his support for torture and violence in the Middle East. If Dershowitz’s smears sound familiar, that means you’ve been reading Sidster posts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/telling-the-truth-about-c_b_6844.html?view=print
Telling the Truth About Chief Justice Rehnquist by Alan Dershowitz| BIO
Posted September 4, 2005 | 09:07 PM (EST)
My mother always told me that when a person dies, one should not say anything bad about him. My mother was wrong. History requires truth, not puffery or silence, especially about powerful governmental figures. And obituaries are a first draft of history. So here’s the truth about Chief Justice Rehnquist you won’t hear on Fox News or from politicians. Chief Justice William Rehnquist set back liberty, equality, and human rights perhaps more than any American judge of this generation. His rise to power speaks volumes about the current state of American values.
Let’s begin at the beginning. Rehnquist bragged about being first in his class at Stanford Law School. Today Stanford is a great law school with a diverse student body, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, it discriminated against Jews and other minorities, both in the admission of students and in the selection of faculty. Justice Stephen Breyer recalled an earlier period of Stanford’s history: “When my father was at Stanford, he could not join any of the social organizations because he was Jewish, and those organizations, at that time, did not accept Jews.” Rehnquist not only benefited in his class ranking from this discrimination; he was also part of that bigotry. When he was nominated to be an associate justice in 1971, I learned from several sources who had known him as a student that he had outraged Jewish classmates by goose-stepping and heil-Hitlering with brown-shirted friends in front of a dormitory that housed the school’s few Jewish students. He also was infamous for telling racist and anti-Semitic jokes.
As a law clerk, Rehnquist wrote a memorandum for Justice Jackson while the court was considering several school desegregation cases, including Brown v. Board of Education. Rehnquist’s memo, entitled “A Random Thought on the Segregation Cases,” defended the separate-but-equal doctrine embodied in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Rehnquist concluded the Plessy “was right and should be reaffirmed.” When questioned about the memos by the Senate Judiciary Committee in both 1971 and 1986, Rehnquist blamed his defense of segregation on the dead Justice, stating – under oath – that his memo was meant to reflect the views of Justice Jackson. But Justice Jackson voted in Brown, along with a unanimous Court, to strike down school segregation. According to historian Mark Tushnet, Justice Jackson’s longtime legal secretary called Rehnquist’s Senate testimony an attempt to “smear[] the reputation of a great justice.” Rehnquist later admitted to defending Plessy in arguments with fellow law clerks. He did not acknowledge that he committed perjury in front of the Judiciary Committee to get his job.
The young Rehnquist began his legal career as a Republican functionary by obstructing African-American and Hispanic voting at Phoenix polling locations (“Operation Eagle Eye”). As Richard Cohen of The Washington Post wrote, “[H]e helped challenge the voting qualifications of Arizona blacks and Hispanics. He was entitled to do so. But even if he did not personally harass potential voters, as witnesses allege, he clearly was a brass-knuckle partisan, someone who would deny the ballot to fellow citizens for trivial political reasons—and who made his selection on the basis of race or ethnicity.” In a word, he started out his political career as a Republican thug.
Rehnquist later bought a home in Vermont with a restrictive covenant that barred sale of the property to ‘’any member of the Hebrew race.”
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The problem with heresies and heresiarchs is that
they not only drag their own souls to perdition,
they also drag down innocents with them. Particularly
problematic with protestants and their 30,000 +
variant cults is that, like the good neocons that they
are, spiritually if not politically, they are their
own popes in all things. Since that constipated monk
decided non serviam, everyone from monks to snakehandlers
believes that he can read the Bible in “his own language”
and understand it. Perhaps that’s why there’s a new church
with a new pastor and a new congregation every week. And
if somebody doesn’t like Pastor X’s rendition, well then he
can just mosey over to Priestess Y. She will know the truth.
The truth, however, requires humility. And my humility --
about which I am quite proud [;)]—tells me that Our
Lord would not and did not create or commission a
visible church with 30,000+ variants, which, in another
parallel universe, you claim are “not protestants...[but]
liberals or Anabaptists.” Even George Wallace would have
difficluty finding a dime’s worth of difference. That’s
like trying to differentiate between Scottish Rite Freemasons;
what the Mexicans called the “Yorkinos”; and your friendly
local politico-Shriner. Whether it’s Rabbi Hagee or Kennedy
or Pelosi, and others like them, they all have one thing in
common: they have all removed themselves from the one, true
Faith. Kerry and Neuhaus and Curran may be nominal Catholics
but the Curia claims Vatican2 is “Catholic.” Those of us who
try to remain faithful to the deposit of Faith (aka the
Magisterium) know that such claims are spurious and, in fact,
quite protestant and, most deplorably, masonic.
At least Rabbi Hagee and others like him (regardless
of their whimsical denominations) can claim with absolute
candor and integrity: invincible ignorance!
So, while I appreciate your humor, I must advise you that the
bishops you disparage bear no resemblance to Cardinal Newman
or even Bishop Sheen. As far as I am concerned, the modernists
and pedophiles may own the buildings but, as you have noted,
their politics are anything and everything but Catholic. And
that leaves few other choices in the spectrum.
When you have a chance, would you inform Mr. “I am not
Spartacus” that the correct spelling of protestant is not
“protastant.” I was quite ready to discipline him as St.
Joan of Arc ould be quite ready to discipline you.
Cheers indeed :)
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Sid,
You are completely wrong.
Nationalism may be a product of the 19th Century, but the concept of a ‘nation’ certainly is not. Coming from the Latin ‘natio’, it is ancient, and as the root ‘nascere’ suggests, it implies link by blood.
The classical definition of ‘natio’ (according to the Oxford Lewis and Short Latin Dictionary) is: “a race of people, nation, breed, stock, species, kind.”
Likewise, the classical concept of ‘patriotism’, from the Latin ‘pater’, also implies link by blood.
I must say, your dogmatic defenses of political correctness become very tiresome.
Bede
http://www.conservativetimes.org
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Call me a horrible left-o-fascist (lets all jump on the Neocon Nomenclature Train!), but I must side with Sid, at least to say that conservatism is about culture and history, more than geneticis or familial relationships.
Not to say that race isn’t a valid term and we must ignore or dance around it, but there are more important things that define individual and societal character.
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William,
No one is denying the importance of history, etc. It’s just that Sid wants to turn every thread into a “race doesn’t matter” tirade.
Paleoconservatives (i.e. real conservatives) have always recognized the importance of blood and soil, kith and kin, and genophilia, which isn’t to say that other things aren’t important as well.
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@Bede et all
Not every view with which you disagree is “political correctness”.
I wish (certain) paleos would stop dishing out that damn term, like they were neos saying “anti-Semite”.
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Those of us who try to remain faithful… know that such claims are… quite protestant and, most deplorably, masonic.
I am no defender of secret societies, but Masons did better running this country than the Catholic ethnic political machines that replaced them.
At least Rabbi Hagee and others like him...
I hate the Anabaptists too. So did Luther.
As far as I am concerned, the modernists and pedophiles may own the buildings but, as you have noted, their politics are anything and everything but Catholic.
No matter. You trust an institution which defends modernists and pedophiles, while marginalizing you. This boggles my mind.
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David,
I am the last person to deny the importance of strong family bonds and a strong connection to land, I do think that some conservatives can take these values too far.
There is a point where healthy genophilia can devolve into less admirable traits.
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The problem about race is that when we fix our attention
on it, we tend to look on man as just another animal.
Animals are divided into races, and the stock they
spring from is all important. They have strong ties
of kith and kin.
If man is to be more than an animal, more than a more
evolved chimp, then we have to think on the one thing
men have in common, our uniqueness, which we all share,
and no animal does.
Whatever our race may be, the one thing needful is to
know that it was for our unworthy selves that Christ
died. That no matter the differences between us, they
are small compared to the gulf between us and animals.
And the gulf between us and the angels.
So, let’s honor our kith and kin, but let’s keep them
into perspective, so we do not forget our spark of the
divine, and seek to become like dumb beasts.
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Jeffery,
We are in agreement. I think that some people take things too far. On one extreme, you have ideologues like Mr. Sid and Senorita Adriana who want to deny any importance whatsoever of race, kith and kin, genophilia, etc. On the other hand, you have some people who want race to be the end all, be all.
Normal people - like us - realize that many things matter, including history, tradition, race, kith and kin, genophilia, etc. In this respect, I am a moderate.
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As for the rest of Mr. Ramus’ argument, with respect to the “nation-state”, I urge him to reflect that his argument is the same as that of… Cromwell...
While I disgree with his Ireland policy, Cromwell was right on this one. As was the Treaty of Westphalia. Conservatives from Freidrich List to Pat Buchanan have defended the importance of the nation state. Good grief, why do you think the Right opposes a New World Order?
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@ Mr. Peter Ramus
1. There were never any “ethnic political machines” of
consequence beyond the municipal levels. There were just a
lot of Irish and Eyetalians putting more faith in the
Democrat Party than either party actually deserved.
2. I do not trust any institution which defends modernists
and pedophiles because any institution which defends these
satanists is not a Roman Catholic institution. Again, they
may be controlling the buildings but they cannot transubstantiate
truth into a personal judgment and remain faithful to the
Apostolic and Magisterial Traditions. We have had 42 anti-
popes, you know, but I am not sure if that includes the last
five.
In any event, traditionalists trust Tradition and, for
those without a compass, that would be pretty much everything
before 1958. The wheat had been sorted from the chaff and
most of the evils had been condemned as circumstances
required. Seems a number of the higher ups thought otherwise....
@ Mr. Sid Cundiff
1. I am more like a former editor than a schoolmarm—probably
because I am one. I make distinctions between errors which are
the obvious result of typing quickly, which I ignore, and the
more inexcusable errors which I pointed out earlier. <sniff>
2. My nom d’plume reflects the time we live in. I am a man of
my time; a man for all seasons; and a man not to be trifled with.
I shall retain my anonymity until the final judgment at which
time all shall be made clear, perhaps even the orthography of
“rap singers” who, one may suspect without being too
judgmental, will be hurtling into hell with modernists,
pedophiles, and likeminded politicos.
3. Finally, you are quite wrong about the comma but I will
not belabor the point. ‘K? ;)
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@DAvid
To what do you call an ideologue? Someone who has read
a bit more extensively on certain things and who can
apply historical thinking?
Someone who can recall that the great push to classify
race on scientific and biological terms happened in the
nineteenth century, and was conteporary with Darwinism?
Because if man is only an animal, then race can be
paramount to him. But if he is more than an animal, then
race is an incidental, one more element that will, provide
the souls with more opportunites to save or damn itself.
And the one important thing is to avoid damnation.
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Jesus said we cannot serve both God and Mammon.
Yet thats exactly what we have running this country today, Mammonites.
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Honestly, how many of those who keep harping the phrase “kith and kin” had the slightest idea what the word “kith” meant until they looked it up in a dictionary?
Advance Australia! Down here you’ll never heard about “kith and kin”; the national icons are “Kath and Kim”. (The character of “Kath” was modelled on the marginalised Australian nationalist whack-job Pauline Hanson, who when asked if she was “xenophobic”, didn’t know what the word meant; so much for White supremacy...)
Kath and Kim’s site:
http://www.kathandkim.com/
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Just a few simple comments on the subject of pedophilia. The incidence of pedophilia actually occurs more often in the general population than it does in Catholic Priests. To the extent that it was covered up as some have suggested I would respond that it is treated much the same as a public school that is also not obligated to report it to law enforcement authorities. The Church mistakenly hoped to reform many of the known pedophiles, others were defrocked, while others remained at large and their crimes unknown. The whole sad affair has suffered from a large media bias against the church. When the crime occurs in the general population it is not linked to a particular group as the supposed progenitor of the pedophilia. For example, Michael Jackson, by the way found not guilty, but let’s assume he was found otherwise, did not inspire outcries into investigations of pop singers. Other cases where pedphilia have been proven have similarly not inspired investigations of teachers, lawyers, doctors, or parents. No larger group has been assumed to be suffering a sex scandal because one of it’s members was found guilty.
@Sid,
I am not sure why you persist in trotting out your usual list of boogeymen. I don’t see where they are extant in conservative groups. It is surely the mentality hat we must always be on guard for these groups that gives the neo-cons the notion that can easilly slap these tags on someone like Ron Paul. You have to accept the fact that this tag will be applied to anyone who is doing the right thing. The only way to avoid having these tags applied to you is to join the neo-cons and accept their doctrine of unfairly marginalizing the competition. I wish you luck but warn you also that you will find only false friends there. Your first task for them will be to set upon decent people and slander them as nazis or some equivalent group. Sine you talk so much about neo-nazis you must be able to name for all of us the current leadership of this very dangerous group. I would be interested to hear who they are so that they can be more easily avoided. I anxiously await the revelation of these criminals.
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No larger group has been assumed to be suffering a sex scandal because one of it’s members was found guilty.
One? Try at least seventy, according to the Boston Globe, including one folk-mass hippie priest who openly promoted “man-boy” love.
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In any event, traditionalists trust Tradition and, for those without a compass, that would be pretty much everything before 1958.
Holy Mother Church says to support mass immigration, social justice and the universal brotherhood of man. If you do not support that, then you must support some other Church than Rome. Hey, I have no problem with it, because I think apostolic succession isn’t worth a bucket of warm spit.
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Sid Cundiff says:
“Highjacking” is a false metaphor
Nonsense on its face.
the other fake “conservatism”—i.e. Racialism and Nationalism
Yes, Commissar, let us conserve only ideas. And after we twist those ideas into unrecognizable form, we’ll “conserve” the new ideas too.
I urge him to reflect that his argument is the same as that of Richelieu, Cromwell, Cavour, Bismarck, the Pan-Slavist Czar
Cundiff, you are an insufferable pedant. Whether useful idiot or fellow traveler it does not matter. You’re too thick to recognize the irony of posting your phony shape-shifting crap on an article thread that denounces shape-shifting crap. But keep it up. You remind us that anyone who denies another person their racial identity or their national identity is pure enemy.
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Sid Cundiff does all the dirty work for the SPLC. Those who don’t conform to the norms of political correctness he condemns as “neonazis” or “racists,” something which no real conservative would do. He’s a left-wing ideologue.
I really wish he’d go somewhere else and stop hijacking the threads here and at Chronicles.
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Roger said to Sid, “You remind us that anyone who denies another person their racial identity or their national identity is pure enemy”
But may I ask, is it an either/or choice?
I wouldn’t “deny” another person his “racial or national (or other) identity”,
but I DO believe in prioritising identities according to spiritual qualities first, and physical/corporeal qualities last.
And actually, I DO believe there is an overlap between physical and spiritual qualities (and identities.) But I believe spirit is cardinal, and physical qualities are very mutable, fungible and ultimately SUBORDINATE TO the free will of the soul.
I don’t deny the reality of “racial” qualities. But let me repeat what I’ve said here before, about the proper hierarchy of identities. For example,
my identities are, in descending order of importance:
1. Christian
2. European/Western civilistion, Christendom
3. Anglophone; the English-speaking nations
4. Descended (not just by “blood”, but through family, through personal transmission of heritage) from thousands of years of denizens of the British Isles
(not all native Anglophones are, and I think the language is more important than the bloodline, although the two can overlap and maybe reinforce each other)
5. Australian (immigrant, but as an immigrant to Australia my first loyalty
must be to Australia)
6. Native-born American (this is important because the culture of my native country will always be a part of me, but it’s LESS important than my being, next:
7. US citizen (a very abstract identity these days, and anyway my home is now in Australia, so my first loyalty must be to Australia)
8. Personal peculiarities like loving cats and dogs and Indonesian clove cigarettes and Soviet movies and Scotch whisky;
9-99....many other personal peculiarities, and then near the VERY END of my “identities” would be “White”.
Bloody HILLARY CLINTON is “White”, and in spirit she sure as hell ain’t my “kith and kin”.... ;-)
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Adriana,
On another thread, you said you come from South America. Are you of pure European blood (i.e. do all your ancestors come from Europe over the past few centuries)? Or are you African? Amerindian? Mestizo?
I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just curious.
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“We remain a hunted people. Now you think you have a destiny to fulfill in the land that historically has been ours for forty thousand years. And we’re a new Mestizo nation.”
“Our devil has pale skin and blue eyes…”
“We have got to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”
– Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez, founder of La Raza
“Around the year 2040, whites will become a minority in the United States and, believe me, it will be ‘payback time’.”
- Pro-Immigration Activist, Jorge Sanchez
“And the one idea is, how we are going to exterminate white people because that in my estimation is the only conclusion I have come to. We have to exterminate white people off the face of the planet to solve this problem.”
- African Studies professor, Dr. Kamau Kambon
“Blond hair and blue eyes are a biological defect.”
“The white race is a disease, and the only cure is a bullet. The rule of whites is history. Soon they will be our serfs. It’s now the Age of the Brown Man.”
- Hindu nationalist, Ramesh Sharma
“The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. Make no mistake about it we intend to keep bashing the dead white males, and the live ones, and the females too, until the social construct known as ‘the white race’ is destroyed–not ‘deconstructed’ but destroyed.”
- Jewish studies professor, Dr Noel Ignatiev
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“One? Try at least seventy, according to the Boston Globe, . . .” - Peter Ramus
The operative phrase above is “according to the Boston Globe”. A good example of the media smear against the Catholic Church. About two or three priests in the Boston archdiocese were convicted of child molestation and not many more than that in the rest of the country put together. But who needs proof, who needs a trial, who needs prompt reporting when all you have to do is allege molestation at the hands of a priest, living or dead, named or unnamed, any time in the last 50 years and you and your attorney can collect a cool million or so?
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Andrew asked Adriana:
“Adriana,
On another thread, you said you come from South America. Are you of pure European blood (i.e. do all your ancestors come from Europe over the past few centuries)? Or are you African? Amerindian? Mestizo? I’m not being disrespectful. I’m just curious.”
I share your curiosity about Adriana’s ancestry, but perhaps for different reasons than yours. To me, the merit and/or truth (or untruth) in Adriana’s words have very little to do with her ancestry. But I AM interested in her ancestry, because ancestry makes us all more colourful, and much of our personal
peculiarities come from ancestry - and THAT is how “real” conservatives think!
On that note, I’ll go out on a limb and confess: I do not like hearing the Spanish language spoken. It usually sounds ugly to me. I think, that MIGHT ACTUALLY be a kind of “ancestral memory” of mine (written not only in my mind, but PERHAPS ALSO in my blood and body?),
as Spain was an enemy of my English ancestors for so long. (More so than France. France and England are like half-brothers who envy each other, but England and Spain are like distant cousins whose mutual hostility has much deeper roots than that between England and France. At any rate, I just can’t bear hearing Spanish spoken - it just grates on my nerves, and I DO think it has something to do with an inherited enmity between England versus Spain, perhaps even some quality in the inheritance of body and blood...)
But I think Adriana often speaks truthfully and wisely - and so did many Spaniards and Spanish-speakers over the centuries - and so I, too, would like to know more about Adriana’s ancestry, because I prefer kaleidescopes and multi-coloured stained-glass-windows over
monochrome “black-and-white”...;-) :-)
I mean, there is romance and beauty in EVERY country, even between the worst of enemies, such as today’s North Korea is a deadly enemy of all the West. (And so is South Korea, to an only SLIGHTLY lesser extent.) During my five years in China I came to hate hearing the (to me, ugly) Korean language almost as much as I hate hearing Spanish. (Korean sounds like a rat choking on arsenic.)
But still, the Koreans are all Children of Adam, brothers and sister of mine, especially the Christians among them.
So, Adriana - um, well now you know how your native Spanish language irritates me, and I don’t like 95 percent of Spaniards or 99.999 percent of “Latin Americans.” But YOU, Adriana, seem to me, to be a very truthful Lady. So, I would like to hear more about your ancestry, please?
“In the beginning was the Word”, and the word was God, who speaks NO mortal language of sinful men.........
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I prefer the sound of Spanish (or for that matter Portuguese, French or Italian) to my native English, but I also prefer them for their gender saturation. Of all the Western Aryan languages, English is the only one which is already practically neuter and the only one which it is possible to neuter almost completely. This makes it a convenient ideological tool for the feminists, particularly of the liturgical variety. You could not rip gender from Spanish (or for that matter even such non-Romance languages as German or Russian) without destroying the entire structure of the language and rendering it entirely unspeakable.
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For those who might wonder.
From my mother’s side, I descend from Russian Jews (actually
when my mother was born, they were Roumanian, then the
border moved again).
From my father’s side inmigrant Spanish - my grandfather
was a Socialist, and a devout atheist (when visting France
he refused to visit cathedrals, because it would mean
endorsing the church, until I gave him a good talking to
about if he wanted to see gothic art or not). There is
also a Norwegian on my paternal grandmother’s side.
European stock, of course, but none of it upper class.
That is, people who would have no problem intermarrying
with good looking natives if they crossed their path.
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@John,
sorry to hear that you cannot enjoy the Spanish language.
you will never have the joy of reading Don Quixotte in
the original, nor the plays of Lope de Vega. Nor Borges,
nor so many others who will only be available in translations
of varying degrees of felicity.
sniff sniff… so sad.
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@ Mr. Ramus
Well, of course you do not respect Apostolic Succession.
The true Church must be able to exhibit as an historical fact
that she possesses a lawful and uninterrupted succession of
Bishops from the Apostles; her faith, worship, and discipline
remaining the same in all essential things. Essential things.
This is another reason why protestantism is so poor: no
succession; no relationship to Christ; no saints; no
authority; no orthodoxy; nothing. A warm bucket of spit,
perhaps.
A self-made religion built upon personally approved selections
from the teaching of Christ does not give us the Christian
religion.
Christ promised that His Church would never go wrong; not that
individuals in the Church would never go wrong. So when you
hear about the support for mass immigration, that is not the
true Church. That is, more likely than not, a wolf in sheep’s
clothing: a masonic protestant leading many astray. Sorta
like the Two Normans (see above).
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Bede who fancies himself a classics scholar would do well to check his Pauly on “Natio”, “Pater familias”, and Roman adoption.
A warm welcome to Jeffrey Willoughby. With luck, Real Conservative writebackers will be the majority. The gaping fault line between Real Conservatism and Neoconism Paul Gottfried has exposed. Others are now joining in on exposing the other between Real Conservatism and Racialist Nationalism. Thanks to them!
Peter Ramus is to be welcomed also. He adds a nice Calvinist touch. We Catholics get complacent without solid competition.
“Teach” tells us that he trusts tradition and that he’s a man of his time. We call this a contradiction. And to teach contradiction ain’t “teaching them to think”. Still a Sedevacantist is also to be welcomed; he keeps Catholics in Full Union with Rome on their toes. I just pray “Teach” isn’t Boyd Cathey.
M.Nucci assures me that there’s no danger from Fascist and Racialist Nationalists in our circles. I wish he were correct. He is correct that this is the Neocon and Cultural Marxist method of attack. Let’s make sure they have no valid examples to offer.
The pedophile scandal is in fact a scandal of homosexual ephebophilia. The number of actual pedophiles in clergy is actually very small. Catholic clergy are prominent, among other reasons, because the Catholic church, a large organization, has enough money to make a tort profitable.
Spade’s long presentation on Dershowitz frees me from any guilt of being off-topic. I thank him.
Roger Thatchery (who needs to look up also “metaphor” in his dictionary), Oliver Tate, and “Real Conservative” [sic] practice the fallacies of name-calling and strawman. They are not alone. Indeed, so many strawmen are burning that I’m beginning to think that these folks are just practicing for the upcoming Guy Fawks’ Day.
And while the straw men burn, Paul Gottfried’s very well reasoned attack on Pod goes unappreciated—by some.
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@ Adriana, thanks for your half-tongue-in-cheek gesture of compassion for me and my problem with the Bloody Spaniards and their language. :-) God save, and God Bless, Queen Elizabeth (the first) who saved the English language and English laws and the true Protestant religion from the depredations of bloody Spaniards (aka, marginal Arabs, and so is the Spanish language!) and other Papists! ....;-) :-)
And, hm, Mr Higdon, you have admitted - with your typical honesty which is one of the reasons why I respect you so much - you have admitted:
“I prefer the sound of Spanish (or for that matter Portuguese, French or Italian) to my native English...”
Very honest of you, Mr Higdon. And that is why you can/will never be a real American in the way America’s founding fathers were, and mutatis mutandis, as TODAY’s America no longer bears any resemblance to the America of 1776, in TODAY’s terms I am not a “real American” either. I fit in much better in Australia, where no one needs to be TOO embarrassed about being essentially of British heritage and a believer in traditional Protestant ideals....like America used to be until too many Irish and German and Ukrainian and Slovak and Italian (etc) Catholics came around to turn America into an entirely different nation, the nation of Father Coughlin and Joe McCarthy..... ;-) :-)
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Sid,
No, I am not “Teach,” so you can take a sigh of relief!
But I find much of what he writes to be well put forward, even
if I have differences with some of what he says.
Really, the problem I have with your postings, Sid,
is the attempt to co-opt what you call “Real Conservatism,” and
basically excommunicate (and that is the right word here) anyone
who disagrees with you, writers for whom you have nicely cordoned
off “categories”: racial nationalists, clerical fascists, etc.
You seem to set up a litmus test for every thread you get on. I
really do find that highly objectionable.
Frankly, I have enjoyed discussing with Peter Ramus, M. Nucci,
Tom Buggeln, Kirt Higdon, and others. I don’t intend to get into “labeling”
with such folks. What they offer, their comments, are valuable.
You and I have gone round and round on some of these points, and
I really don’t intend to rehash the disagreements that we’ve
had in previous threads; it would be utterly useless.
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Radio commentator Michael Savage was probably Norman Finkelstein’s most vicious critic in all of the media.
Think about this the next time you buy an energy drink because in 2001 Savage and his son set the Rockstar Energy Drink company.The family controls the company.
From Wikipedia:Rockstar is an energy drink created in 2001 by Russell Weiner, son of controversial talk radio host Michael Savage [1]. It is sold in the U.S. and Canada and currently comes in six varieties [2]:
http://www.drlaniac.com/Articles/view.asp?file=fascismcola.htm
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In an essay by Paul Gottfried half of which involves Norman Finklestein (whose worst enemy happens to be the dishonest thug Alan Dershowitz), my exposure of yet more lies and racism by Alan Dershowitz is hardly off point.
Excpet of course for a lying Neocon blackguard such as the Sidster. You see for the Sidster, creatures like Dershowitz can do no wrong.
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Sammy Spade, reduced to weeping screams of sputtering rage, burns another straw man.
Some men are tolerant of every idea—as long as it agrees with their own, and assume all their clichés, prejudices, fallacies, and ranting emoting to be Holy Writ. Unable to form a argument themselves, they wish to be surrounded with yes-men, and rest in soft, undisturbed, pillowed and dulcet ease with like-thinkers (or “like-emoters"), when they are not engaged in “the principle pleasure of New England”: hate.
Other men know that one really doesn’t know one’s own ideas until one has to defend them, in vigorous and spirited debate. These men know that truth emerges only out of the clash of ideas. I thank Boyd Cathey—a fellow Catholic, fellow member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a fellow partisan of the League of the South, and fellow resident of God’s favorite state. He calls it as he sees it, with argument and erudition. So do I.
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Sid,
Your characterization of racialists lacks all nuance.
If you are criticizing “racial nationalists,” then you are only criticizing about 15% of racialists.
The vast majority of racialists are not nationalists. In a recent Yahoo Poll (on a major racialist group) only 15% identified as nationalists. In fact, the vast majority of racialists see nationalism as having done more harm than good to whites (just look at 1950s racial integration, largely a Cold War policy inspired by foreign policy). Jared Taylor, for example, has recently self-identified as a paleolibertarian, and (I was told) voted against the Iraq War at the most recent John Randolph Club meeting.
Furthermore, the majority of racialists are backing Ron Paul for president. If you go to any major racialist website that has a presidential poll, you will find that about 70 - 90% of racialists support Ron Paul for president.
And even more importantly, if one thinks that race is important, he doesn’t have to be a racialists to believe in the importance of genophilia, kith and kin, or the Burkean notion of primal ancestral loyalties. One, like most paleoconservatives, can just believe in the importance of helping his own. As Thomas Fleming points out in _The Morality of Everyday Life_, traditional Christianity does not require one to forsake kith and kin loyalties.
Sid, your position is essentially that of 1950s liberalism: “race doesn’t matter.” And anyone who disagrees with you, you, like a good leftist, brand as a “neonazi” or “racist.”
Regarding the League of the South, have you read Michael Hill’s essay “Kith and Kin”? He argues that in no way should one forsake his traditional racial loyalties.
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Sid Cundiff is Catholic? Truly, Rome is the mother of Bolsheviks!
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Peter Ramus,
Not being Catholic yourself you would probably know very little of a Catholic publication called the Wanderer. A publication that Taki contributer Scott Richert writes for regularly, as often as not has an article that is critical of the church’s leaders. The Catholic Church does not in it’s teaching address the border situation in America. It does however offer guidelines for how the unfortunate and poor are to be treated. The church has always been a sanctuary.
I am personally not sure where I stand in regards to the immigration question. It is only in recent years that it has gotten much attention from the media or from more learned outlets. I am far from having what would be considered a formed opinion on this matter and would welcome more commentary on this subject from the writers of this site. Whatever happens with the border situation, I know that I am obligated to comfort the poor, the homeless, and the suffering.
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Not being Catholic yourself you would probably know very little of a Catholic publication called the Wanderer.
I subscribed awhile back to get Sobran. I admire the guts of the Matt family standing like steel for 40+ years. They deserve respect, even from me. On the other hand, I feel that they are victimized by an institution that is selling them out. BTW, the Lutheran version of The Wanderer is Herman Otten’s Christian News.
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I fit in much better in Australia, where no one needs to be TOO embarrassed about being essentially of British heritage and a believer in traditional Protestant ideals...
I like this guy.
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When I listen to people like John Ball I dislike a little bit less neocons like Norman Podhoretz.
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I just don’t see what you’re talking about. The neocons are being blasted in the liberal media. Keith Olbermann sure doesn’t think that the neocons are a ‘kinder, gentler’ conservatism.
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Paul’s praise of Finkelstein is a bit self-serving. One makes one’s career in academia by debunking one’s predecessors and, occasionally, one’s contemporaries. Finkelstein set up the straw men whom he felt he could shoot down with impunity. He gambl;ed and lost. That’s all. Academia has become the province of opportunists of every stripe. Shoe stores are full of the losers.
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Hell Taki - stop speaking in metaphors.
The meat of the subject is JEWS. Say it again… JEWS.
..."administrators of such schools, often associated with easily intimidated Princes of the Church, cave in.”
I’m offended at the lengths we must go to identify the Jewish elephant in every aspect of our public lives.
Enough.
IT’s the JEWS you stupid people. And they are gonna get us killed.
the press tells us Schumer and Feinstein ‘bite the bullet’ and vote for fellow Jew Mulasky.
NEVER a peep that they are all JEWS>
Treason is always the reason. How much are Americans going to take before they revisit the words of famous anti semites?
America is Sobibor West - and there’s a Jew in every watchtower.
Heaven help us - if I’m the only person with the spine to say it out loud.
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Sorry, but the neo-cons aside, Islam is an enemy and always has been. Or was the battle of Leponto, or the battle of Vienna a neo-con trick? I think people need to be really careful here and seperate today’s Israel, and all that it entails, from the reality of Islam, which has been in bed with fascism as it’s natural ally. So why disparage the term ‘Islamofascism’? It is a proper way of describing the implaccable enemy.
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The same problem I have with the Walt-Mearsheimer report
is the one I have with your reporting. It’s not that there
aren’t influential Jews in this country, it’s that the Takis
of the world want to overdetermine everything in their name--
and in the name of Israel. W & M’s Harvard Report w/its
allegation that the Iraq War was highly contingent on the
overexuberance of the American-Israel lobby is pure unadulterated
monocausal crap.
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21gdv7qxob http://www.312191.com/673664.html 6gmzjhle9t42w
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