The recent discussion of the intellectual depth (or lack thereof) of heavy metal music gives me the excuse to do something I always enjoy doing, referring to the great Canadian comedy troop of SCTV.  In 1983, Eugene Levy, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, Martin Short, and the late John Candy took on another genre of popular music that has garnered academic attention, British punk music.  The result was the Queenhaters performing “I Hate the Bloody Queen,” a song which the editors of Reason magazine could sing with relish, since it both decries taxes and praises marijuana.  Those who are interested in watching this fine example of satire may do so here.

Yesterday morning, I was scheduled for a 40-minute-ish appearance on Sirius/XM’s The Mike Church Show.  Once the conversation began and the calls started to roll in, however, Mike asked me to stay through an hour, and then through two.  You can find the transcript of much of our discussion here, here, and here.

Even as Mike Church, his callers, and I conversed, I received an e-mail from Fox News TV’s The Glenn Beck Program.  Judge Andrew Napolitano was to be the guest host, and he would like for me to join him in a conversation about the ways that the Federal Government trashes the Constitution.  In the event, we also talked about the idea of a constitutional convention.  You can find our exchange, in which we were joined by my Who Killed the Constitution? co-author Tom Woods, here (transcript).  (There’s also video of that TV segment on YouTube.)

Reading the fulsome praise for diversity by General Casey, one is left wondering how such men as the Rangers at Pointe du Hoc and the Marines at Iwo Jima managed to do what they did without its many benefits, and how those men would have reacted if they had been told that safeguarding diversity was more important than safeguarding the lives of American fighting men.

Judge Andrew Napolitano will guest host Fox News’s Glenn Beck Program tonight.  I’ll be on right at the top of the show.  The topic will be the Federal Government’s trashing of the US Constitution.  I understand that Tom Woods will be on the show tonight as well, but I’m not sure when or about what.

Today on Sirius/XM’s The Mike Church Show, I was a guest for two hours.  The topic was the idea, floating around among state legislators in several states, of having a federal constitutional convention.  I favor it, strongly, and Mike gave me plenty of time to develop my reasoning.  My appearance was originally to be for one hour, but he asked me to stay for a second hour, and I happily obliged.  Callers asked all of the most common questions, which I flatter myself that I answered persuasively.  At least, I am persuaded.

Last weekend, I wrote,

Whenever a terrible televised tragedy takes place (the Virginia Tech shootings, the Knoxville murders, last week’s bloodbath) many of the harder-edged neocons, paleos, and immigration restrictionists hope that this will be the last straw—finally people will “wake up” and the establishment will seal the borders and/or halt Muslim immigration and/or cease with the multiculti dreaming.

In a few days from now, all these activists will invariably be chagrined to discover that nothing has changed and that most have instead reached the conclusion “We need Muslims in the military—now more than ever!”

It didn’t take too long for this to come true. Here, for instance, is Gen. George Casey, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff:

Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.

General Casey is exactly the kind of gray-haired, square-jawed, always frowning general that many conservatives imagine to be among the last representatives of Duty, Honor, & Valor left in the country. What those well intentioned conservative admirers of people like this don’t understand is that the Top Brass has imbibed a “patriotic” version of the multiculti creed to the point that they believe not having Muslims serve in the military is far worse than mass murder. Think as well of how many average soldiers failed to turn Hasan in after hearing him lecture on the need to cut infidel throats because they thought this might rock the great global-democratic boat that is the U.S. military. The multiculti religion has believers everywhere, even in places thought to be conservative bastions. 

[Hat tip: Auster]

Well, Stacy, if I’m able to dissuade but one Takimag reader from taking part in Republican politics, then I think I will have performed a great service to my country, the Right, and Western Civilization. 

Sam Francis was surely correct when he noted a certain asymmetry between the Right and Left in America (and, in many European countries as well.) Among Democrats, the party leadership is to the left of its voters (think “Hillary Democrats” (mostly Midwest Catholics) who voted for Obama and Biden because they thought they were two decent guys who’d stick up for the folks.) With the GOP, it’s the opposite: the rank-and-file is to right, often far to the right, of the people in charge. Most everyday Republicans view mass immigration as an outright invasion of their country that must be halted immediately and Obama’s expansion of government as not only an attempt to run their lives but a massive wealth redistribution from the productive savers towards the underclass and well connected financial elite. They are certainly justified in feeling this way.

The problem is, of course, that the Tea Party people, as Kevin has pointed out, have no place to go but into the arms of the GOP and Newt (who, of course, sparked this whole controversy with his endorsement of Mrs. Scozzafava in New York’s 23rd.) The fact that Señor Hoffman took typically milk toast positions on major issues even though he essentially had nothing to lose—six weeks ago he was polling in the single digits—proves just how widely the Newt-cancer has metastasized within the GOP establishment: even unknown long-shots running as “conservative” outsiders are completely worthless wimps.

It’s also worth pointing out that in his response, Stacy describes well how the base essentially sells itself out to the Republicans year in, year out: Activists thump their chests over thwarting wicked, unpatriotic liberals like Scozzafava and New York Times editorialists—never mind that the politicians who benefit, whether it be Hoffman, Bush, or McCain, have no interest whatsoever in countering the therapeutic managerial state or the gradual displacement of the traditional American nation by Third World migrants.

And it’s gone on like this for years!

If one were to measure “conservatism” by the amount of bestselling books published in support of the cause, by the amount of functionaries making a living working in a movement that bears this name, and by self-identification, then surely one would conclude that America must be some über-traditionalist, authoritarian order that puts Franco’s Spain to shame or perhaps rivals Galt’s Gulch in laissez-faire. “Conservatism” is, without question, the biggest ideological business out there. 

But is America actually a “center-right nation,” as so many people tell me it is? Who knows? Who cares? What’s important is that the Constitution has been rendered irrelevant, every citizen is burdened with tens of trillions in debt and liabilities, our cultural and artistic productions are vulgar and risible to the extreme, a quarter of the population is obese, and national demographics are pointing towards Brazil, if not something worse. “Conservatism” has failed utterly and conspicuously on all these fronts and more; and before a real alternative can arise, the “conservative” movement, and the lesser-of-two-evils logic the undergirds it, must be brought to an end.

But it’d, of course, be unfair of me if I didn’t mention that one area in which “conservatism” has been wildly successful—making sure America never stops invading the world. If one would like a glimpse of how the movement has been brought on board this agenda, look no further than this photo, which I found displayed proudly on the blog of a one Robert Stacy McCain: it’s of the “conservative” activist embracing the great William Kristol on the occasion of some old WASPy foundation’s bestowing on him a quarter million for services rendered to democracy and the Republican Party. 

Keep fighting the good fight, Stacy! 

A reader in the Army offers an interesting perspective: 

I enjoyed your latest offering at Takimag. I was stationed at Ft. Hood and the shootings happened a couple blocks from where I used to live. The cop who brought him down had to be a woman, didn’t it? I love that detail: its like liberalism rolled what D&D geeks call a “saving throw”. Regrettably, Im afraid the case against diversity will get no easier even as the problems become more acute: indeed, the deeper its claws sink into our vital national institutions, the harder it gets to argue for their extraction, as both the heroes and the villians of every drama will be of the socially favored backgrounds. We’re doomed.

Though I’ve never played D & D, I think this characterization of Hasan’s female vanquisher is quite apt.

I also wasn’t surprised to see that the neocons’ fancy lady blogger, Pamela Geller, is rejoicing at feminism’s triumph over Islamo-fascism: 

This is poetic justice. The jihadi mass slaughterer was taken down by a ... woman! Think about that. Let’s blast that shiz through the caves of Tora Bora. 

That’s the real story. It should be wall to wall on Al Jizz.

Yes! The West’s willingness to enlist women in the military and police forces and put them in harm’s way. Isn’t that really what separates us from terrorists?

Was his platform mushy? OK, so why did Frank Rich write not just one, but two columns telling us that Hoffman was a dangerous right-wing extremist?

You have talked, Richard, about the tendency of the Official Conservative Movement to drift leftward by the process of successively purging its right wing. In NY23, the GOP nominated Dede Scozzafava—almost certainly the most liberal Republican in the New York state assembly—and then threatened to purge anyone who did not support her. Instead, because of the success of Hoffman’s candidacy, Scozzafava essentially purged herself, pulling the plug on her campaign and then endorsing the Democrat, Bill Owens.

Whatever else results from this, it is at least certain that Scozzafava’s career as a Republican is over. Furthermore, the campaign exposed the political bankruptcy of the New York GOP establishment and the cluelessness of the National Republican Congressional Committee. Even such a mainstream Republican as Erick Erickson is demanding that heads roll at the NRCC.

The Hoffman campaign was the vehicle by which these things were accomplished, and drew into its ranks many who had been disillusioned and alienated by the leftward tendency—the “me-too-ism” of moderate Republicans—that you describe. That Hoffman didn’t run as your kind of conservative is admitted. Yet his thumb-in-the-eye posture toward the GOP establishment attracted support from many such people. What develops going forward remains to be seen. To denounce it all as unworthy is to discourage your readers from involvement in politics, a course that would seem to guarantee the triumph of the Left.

The Republican drift toward meaningless has been arrested, and there is hope that this drift might actually be reversed. You are free to stand aside and declare that everything is hopeless, that such efforts are irrelevant. Ah, but you should have heard the glee in the voice of that fellow when he yelled into his cell-phone Tuesday night: “Guess who will not be representing the 23rd District? Dede Scozzafava!”

A small victory, perhaps, but let us hope not the last of its kind.

It’s difficult to make out exactly what happened in Texas last Thursday in a grisly incident that’s coming to be known as “the Fort Hood massacre.” As things stand, three men besides Nidal Malik Hasan are in custody. The ultimate cause of the shooting, however, should not be in doubt. As Tom Fleming wrote on the morning after, “By his own lights and according to his own religious traditions ... Hasan is not mentally disturbed, only a man who has done his religious duty.” That Hasan acted according to his faith—and not because some mean old corporal called him a “raghead” or because he was a principled non-interventionist who just took things too far—must be obvious to everyone whose brains haven’t yet been rotted out by PC.

Which means this fact will go mostly unmentioned in the mainstream media.

Whenever a terrible televised tragedy takes place (the Virginia Tech shootings, the Knoxville murders, last week’s bloodbath) many of the harder-edged neocons, paleos, and immigration restrictionists hope that this will be the last straw—finally people will “wake up” and the establishment will seal the borders and/or halt Muslim immigration and/or cease with the multiculti dreaming.

In a few days from now, all these activists will invariably be chagrined to discover that nothing has changed and that most have instead reached the conclusion “We need Muslims in the military—now more than ever!” It would probably take the hijacking of a nuclear weapon by a enlisted North African Muslim to lead America’s national leaders to surmise that we should probably restrict whom we allow into our country and institutions and that, No, more “diversity training” won’t help the matter. But I’m not sure even this would do it.

It’s being reported that someone named “Nidal Malik Hasan” frequently made webposts praising Islamic suicide bombers; the FBI had picked up on them and certainly the Army should have investigated Hasan more thoroughly. But even damning evidence such this doesn’t really get at a much larger problem with the U.S. military, one that, in my mind, will lead to countless other Nidal Malik Hasan-like disasters in the near future.   

Just last month, the U.S. Navy’s released a new recruitment commercial that’s loaded with the kind Top Gun and Saving Private Ryan images and John Williams-y music you’d expect. It also depicts its current force as mostly non-white and close to half-female. These multiculti midshipmen, the Navy promises, will fight on “until the anguish of those less fortunate has been soothed.”

The Navy’s new slogan, “A Global Force For Good,” is, on one level, a holdover from the evangelical Bush-speak that made us cringe for most of the last decade. It also bespeaks a military complex on the forefront of multiculturalism—in which “defense” has given way to the more expansive “national security” and finally “helping people in need.”

This is the kind of military in which someone named Nidal Malik Hasan could hope to find work as a “Psychiatrist Major.” 

The next financial sucker punch is expected to come from the commercial real estate market. Given how leveraged this sector is, the consequences of its collapse are bound to splatter all over the economy. And while the securitization part of the commercial bubble was largely handled by Wall Street, much of the liability for this pending catastrophe is actually nestled in the smaller (and so far “healthier”) regional banks. Now the 64 trillion dollar question: Does anyone really believe this market is going to be allowed to collapse without Geithner and friends leaving their cloven footprints all over it?

We just learned that Fannie Mae will now be moonlighting as rent collectors on foreclosed residential properties. With that precedent in place, it is likely that once the government begins commandeering the commercial realm, it will become at least the partial owner of many retail/office buildings and the securities tethered to them. We have already witnessed the government’s unwillingness to let house prices plop to realistic levels. So what will they do to prop up commercial property and protect the firms (big and small) exposed to them? Rent control. All in the name of “stabilization,” of course.

It is well known what small scale rent control does to residential property, so just imagine what will unfold when commercial rent control is enacted en masse. America’s already dog-eared cities are about to start looking a lot shabbier. Office workers and mall shoppers might want to brace themselves for the hot new architecture trend: Detroit-Deco.