http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/ The Online Magazine for Independent Conservatives, edited by Taki Theodoracopulos en rbs6@duke.edu Copyright 2009 2009-11-07T04:00:13+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_new_economy/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_new_economy/#When:04:00:13Z 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.    2009-11-07T04:00:13+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_crux_of_europes_problem/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_crux_of_europes_problem/#When:23:12:28Z 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! 2009-11-06T23:12:28+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/george_w._obama/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/george_w._obama/#When:20:27:06Z 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. National Bankruptcy 2009-11-06T20:27:06+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/poor_little_patriotic_jihadist/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/poor_little_patriotic_jihadist/#When:14:32:40Z 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. 2009-11-06T14:32:40+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/south_of_the_border/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/south_of_the_border/#When:23:55:51Z 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? High Life 2009-11-05T23:55:51+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/miss_sex_tape/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/miss_sex_tape/#When:22:51:21Z 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? Trash 2009-11-05T22:51:21+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_good_the_bad_and_the_ugly/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_good_the_bad_and_the_ugly/#When:21:32:06Z 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. High Life 2009-11-05T21:32:06+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/grand_new_pagan/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/grand_new_pagan/#When:17:13:20Z The neopagan takeover of the GOP has begun. Village Voice Steven Thrasher, Nov. 4 2009 Holy 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. 2009-11-05T17:13:20+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/re_whither_the_alternative_right/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/re_whither_the_alternative_right/#When:23:47:48Z 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. 2009-11-04T23:47:48+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/not_a_revolution/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/not_a_revolution/#When:21:16:57Z 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. 2009-11-04T21:16:57+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/scott_richert_on_richard_dawkins/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/scott_richert_on_richard_dawkins/#When:19:09:56Z 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. 2009-11-04T19:09:56+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/man_men/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/man_men/#When:15:55:43Z 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.” Zeitgeist 2009-11-04T15:55:43+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_forgotten_gop_hero/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_forgotten_gop_hero/#When:06:09:48Z In his StupidParty article, Ellison failed to mention that the GOP’s new webpage is also honoring a certain misunderstood captain of industry.  (ht: World-of-Crap) 2009-11-04T06:09:48+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/ford_defies_the_gods/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/ford_defies_the_gods/#When:05:38:28Z 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?  2009-11-04T05:38:28+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mixing_it_up/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/mixing_it_up/#When:04:51:03Z 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.) Watch CBS News Videos Online 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. Race 2009-11-04T04:51:03+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/twilight_of_the_godless/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/twilight_of_the_godless/#When:04:29:59Z 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. ~Katarina Runske It’s no secret that Western man has given up breeding. A society needs to have 2.1 births per women 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 carriers 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 that Jewish intelligence was a recent adaptation. The Jews have unusually high intelligence and a susceptibility to a group of similar diseases. The genes for disease may have not had time to be selected against. They are around because they are part of the package that includes traits which are adaptive and make up for the fact that the carrier is more likely to die from a particular group of illnesses. Had Jewish intelligence been around for much longer—Harpending and Cochran say it reached its abnormal level in the Middle Ages—then evolution would’ve had time to create a healthier high-IQ race. If man’s spiritual side goes back tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years, it’s unlikely that he couldn’t have evolved to both obey elders as a child and as an adult only believe things that he has empirical evidence for, if such a thing was adaptive. After all, evolution does produce secular, empirical-minded men (Dawkins and I among them). We simply haven’t been able to outbreed believers. 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. Evolution 2009-11-04T04:29:59+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/whither_the_alternative_right/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/whither_the_alternative_right/#When:14:14:25Z 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. Ideology 2009-11-03T14:14:25+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/abandonment_issues/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/abandonment_issues/#When:14:03:15Z 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. World 2009-11-03T14:03:15+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_tale_of_two_wheels/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/a_tale_of_two_wheels/#When:21:22:48Z 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. 2009-11-02T21:22:48+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/stupidparty.com/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/stupidparty.com/#When:15:25:42Z 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 Day Republicans 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 Politics 2009-11-02T15:25:42+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hair_of_the_dog/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/hair_of_the_dog/#When:05:57:09Z 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. National Bankruptcy 2009-11-02T05:57:09+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_pith_and_the_pendulum/ http://www.takimag.com/sniperstower/article/the_pith_and_the_pendulum/#When:18:40:03Z 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. 2009-11-01T18:40:03+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/consensus_for_failure/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/consensus_for_failure/#When:04:55:53Z 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. Af-Pak 2009-10-31T04:55:53+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/forever_war/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/forever_war/#When:03:27:24Z 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. Foreign Policy 2009-10-30T03:27:24+00:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/capitol_hill_hos/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/capitol_hill_hos/#When:03:12:41Z 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. District of Corruption 2009-10-30T03:12:41+00:00