An American film-maker funded by abortionists traipses around Latin America with a camera, pretending she’s doing a neutral documentary—but in fact making a partisan film designed to help restore U.S. taxpayer funding for abortion and sterilization. She tries to catch bishops and pro-lifers saying politically incorrect things that wouldn’t play well in the U.S. But one pro-lifer catches on, and confronts her on camera. (YouTube took down this video, until a whirlwind of protest brought it back.)
Courtesy of InsideCatholic.com (where I now have a biweekly gig as a columnist).

Via Drudge, this just in from the British National Children’s Bureau: 

LONDON, July 7 (UPI)—Toddlers who say “yuck” when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior, a British government-sponsored organization says.

The London-based National Children’s Bureau released a 366-page guide counseling adults on recognizing racist behavior in young children, The Telegraph reported Monday.

The guide, titled Young Children and Racial Justice, warns adults that babies must also be included in the effort to eliminate racism because they have the ability to ‘recognize different people in their lives.’

The bureau says to be aware of children who “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuck’.”

“Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships,” the guide says.

Staff members are advised not to ignore racist actions and to condemn them when they occur.

My favorite line has to be, “…babies must also be included in the effort to eliminate racism because they have the ability to “recognize different people in their lives.” We seem to have moved from a point at which sociologist we’re screaming, “Intervene before society teaches them to be racist!” to “Intervene before they reach basic cognition!” Any kind of rational differentiation or evaluation is deemed “harmful to society” and the individual must be engineered, psychologically now perhaps biologically later on, in order to prevent this. 

The movement of rhetoric from global warming to “climate change” is the most salient evidence that fraud is afoot. I can think of no greater example in recent times of the “big lie” than the nonsense that is “man-made global climate change.” It used to be global warming, but the atmosphere hasn’t warmed in the last ten years so now the preferred nomenclature is “climate change.” If it gets warmer, colder, drier, or wetter, all will be attributed to ill-defined and non-testable theories of man-made climate change.

Last night on National Geographic Channel I watched a moderately interesting show on what would happen if the human race disappeared. In geological terms, the return to a globe without much of a human impact would be pretty swift, ten or twenty thousand years at the most. But most distressing was the description of C02 as if it were some deadly poison and not an “essential trace gas” that forms a tiny portion of the atmosphere. Worse still, there was little mention that this trace gas is something that plants need much the way humans need oxygen.

Hopes for mass extinction and sentimental regard for climate change’s “victims” oscillate among the propagandsists.  Today CNN takes the sentimental route, reporting to its credulous readers that kids in the Third World have stunted growth and other health problems because of “climate change.” Since when are starving kids in the Third World something new?  It’s been this way forever.

Who can forget the unlucky Ethiopian children paraded before cameras by the likes of Suzanne Summers and the “We Are the World” crew back in the 80s? Starvation in the Third World has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with the Third World’s primitive economies, kleptocratic leadership, and lack of public health infrastructure. It’s a tough way to live, and these poor people have my sympathies, but their kids’ ill health has nothing to do with climate change. The First World by contrast handles periodic and cyclical droughts with ease. Just by way of illustration, obesity is a problem with our “poor” people. Think about that.

It’s sad that the mainstream right and the K-Street Libertarians are falling over themselves to condemn Jesse Helms for things he said back in the 50s, because his opposition to the UN in the early 90s was heroic and prescient. His political achievements certainly did more for the cause of limited government than the behemonth infrastructure of federal government-dependent libertarian “think tanks” in DC.  After embracing the failed programs of a “nuclear freeze” and “global economic justice,” the socialist and internationalist left has turned to climate change as the Trojan Horse with which to strangle free markets and (western) national sovereignty. Worse, the natural forces of resistance are weaker and less coherent than ever. Vanity-motivated John McCain and half-educated evangelicals are getting in on the act and assisting with the destruction of their inherited way of life.  A false sense of stewardship and naivite are leading them to abandon caution in the face of their sworn enemies:  internationalists, socialists, and pro-abortion population-control fanatics.

Any change in climate, a naturally dynamic phenomenon, will continue to be marshaled as evidence that massive numbers of human beings must disappear and that our competitive advantages over the Third World must be hobbled by UN intervention. Once the winners and losers become apparent from this scheme, how will the greedy Third Worlders stop themselves?  Global Warming is becoming more and more obvious as a crack-pot idea little different than the “ice age” hysteria of the 70s. It would ordinarily be comic that this hysteria is taking place just as concrete evidence is emerging that global warming—man-made or otherwise—has not even happened during the very period when it was predicted to skyrocket. 

It may take some time, but I have little doubt that the environmentalist rhetoric won’t skip a beat whether the earth warms, cools, or stays the same.  Lord knows there will always be Third World cripples activists can point to as evidence that something is amiss in the environment and, by implication, proof of the evil indifference at the heart of the Western World.

My mom became a fan of Rush when he first got syndicated in Dallas in the early 90s, and I can remember catching the tail end of the show when she’d drive me home from school. The recent profile in the New York Times Magazine reminded me why I liked him so much. I certainly had fun echoing some Rush one-liners during “current events”: “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society” and “using federal dollars as a measure, our cities have not been neglected but poisoned with welfare-dependency funds.”

It was also nice to learn that his “presidential agenda” for ‘08, which he’s e-mailed out to his fans, includes no mention of “Islamofascism”:

1. Open the continental shelf to drilling. Ditto the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

2. Establish a 17 percent flat tax.

3. Privatize Social Security.

4. Give parents school vouchers to break the monopoly of public education.

5. Revoke Jimmy Carter’s passport while he is out of the country.

6. Abandon all government policies based on the hoax of man-made global warming.

Lately, the news from Canada has been a tad grim.  Human rights censors show no signs of slowing down their tireless attempts to rid the country of orthodox Christian believers who dare to criticize the gay rights movement.  The country’s highest honor, the Order of Canada, has been awarded to a much maligned and divisive practitioner of abortion, Henry Morgentaler.  And the governing Tories, the only party dedicated to property rights, individual freedom, and plain old common sense, are falling in the polls.

Amidst this darkness visible, there is a ray of lighthearted humor.  A group of Canadians has set up a contest to decide on who is the “most mediocre” Canadian.  On July 1 (Canada Day), the first vote went to none other than David Frum, an ex-speechwriter for a certain American president.  As we know, Frum coined the memorable phrase “axis of evil” and pushed for the Iraq war as the first battle in a war to “end evil” in the world and save civilization as we know it.  If there’s ever a contest for mediocre intellects with a penchant for over-the-top rhetoric, we know whom to nominate. 

Secular millenarianism aside,  Frum will have to compete with various state-supported leftist collectivists in Canada, whose list of names would be so long that it would contribute to serious deforestation.  That said, this influential global democrat reminds Canadians that Americans sometimes suffer as much from unwanted ideological imports as we do from theirs.   

Jared Taylor has responded to Paul Gottfried and John Zmirak regarding their critiques of White Nationalism.   

A Takimag reader, Kevin Michael Derby, has submitted this report on the goings on in Catholic cyberspace: 

Earlier this month, the Faith and Reason Institute set up The Catholic Thing, a webzine created, as Robert Royal states in the inaugural column, to “cast a steady and invigorating Catholic light on what is otherwise a superficial and dull world.”

Royal assures us that “the Catholic thing - the concrete historical reality of Catholicism - is the richest cultural tradition in the world.” One only wishes that Royal would back up those words at the new site. While The Catholic Thing provides a forum for a number of Catholic writers to touch upon various subjects, the site also includes many non-Catholic writers touching on distinctly non-Catholic matters. For example, in the “Commentary” section, The Catholic Thing links to the works of a number of distinctly non-Catholic writers including Victor Davis Hanson and Ben Stein on topics ranging from why America needs to drill for oil to Tony Blankley’s assuring us that Barack Obama is a radical getting a free ride from the media and, of course, the standard article once again letting us know that we have turned the corner in Iraq.

While the likes of Father Richard John Neuhaus and George Weigel are missing, the Faith and Reason Institute is only dressing up neoconservatism in Catholic garments. Apparently the efforts of First Things and the EPPC are not enough. Predictably, Michael Novak, the neocon theologian tapped by the Bush administration to sell the Vatican on the invasion of Iraq, was the second contributor to the new webzine.

Royal is certainly correct that a new webzine from a Catholic perspective would be invigorating. What his organization has produced though is just another neocon journal, God’s good servant perhaps but the Grand Old Party’s and the state’s first.

A recent radio interview of Jonathan Bydlak, Ron Paul’s former fundraising director, is an excellent source for understanding the behind-the-scenes operations of the Paul campaign, particularly with regard to the role played by Kent Synder, Paul’s campaign chairman, who passed away suddenly last week.

Ron was, of course, “the candidate from the Internet,” and much of “netroots” support existed prior to the campaign (and remained independent of it). Less well known is Kent Snyder’s work in building an informational architecture that helped integrate this enthusiasm in cyberspace into a viable political movement. Kent’s first hire was an “eCampaign Director” and he got the ball rolling with the Meet-Up groups that morphed into local “get-out-the-vote” chapters—as well as the Ron Paul platoons that have been raising hell at state Republican conventions. It was also Kent who, working with others at the campaign, decided to make all of the fundraising public knowledge—again, an informational structure that inspired supporters to create the famous “money bombs” that raised millions.

In the interview, we also learn that Kent wanted to turn the official website into a full-functioning website, with blogs, tons of updates, breaking news, commentary, and campaign-made videos. If Kent’s plan had been implemented, Paul’s online success would have been even greater. 

It’s also worth noting that Kent had nothing to do with the disastrously ambiguous “we’re winding down” announcement in March, which generally confused everyone and made the Ron Paul movement lose its momentum. In early 2008, Synder was ready for the campaign to morph into an organization. And while the latest RP venture, “The Campaign for Liberty,” looks promising, certainly more ground could have been gained if it were begun in February when Paul was still close to his peak of media attention.

There is a serious need for the movement for Constitutionalism, limited government, and an America First foreign policy to move beyond Ron Paul the man. This was Kent’s task, and he will be sorely missed. 

At the tail end of the campaign, Kent became very ill and has accrued some large medical expenses. A collection fund has been established at www.kentsnyder.com, I urge you to chip in. 

I have always been fond of our neighbor to the north, in part perhaps because my favorite TV show in high school was the incomparable SCTV, still, to my mind, the best and most intelligent comedy program ever on television.  But today’s Canada is a far more sinister place than the one gently lampooned by the alter egos of Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, Bob and Doug McKenzie. 

Today I came across a story in the Catholic press reporting that Canada has bestowed its highest honor, the Order of Canada, on Henry Morgentaler, a man who has made his living by personally killing tens of thousands of innocent unborn human beings.  Morgentaler was responsible for the legal challenge that resulted in the overturning of Canada’s abortion law, leading to perhaps the most liberal abortion law in the West.  All this butchery has made Morgentaler a rich man:  Morgentaler earns millions of dollars from his abortion clinics.

In addition to the fame he has garnered by killing unborn children, Morgentaler is also famous in Canada for being a strident atheist.  Indeed, Morgentaler was awarded the Order of Canada “for his commitment to increased health care options for women, his determined efforts to influence Canadian public policy and his leadership in humanist [read “atheist”] and civil liberties organizations.”  Any country that would give its highest honor to a man such as Morgentaler truly deserves to be known as Soviet Canuckistan.

This afternoon, I attended an AIE forum on Mark Krikorian’s excellent new book, The New Case Against Immiagration: Both Legal and Illegal.

Krikorian’s argument is summed up in the first two sentences of the volume: “It’s not the immigrants—it’s us. What’s different about immigration today as opposed to a century ago is not the characteristics of the newcomers but the characteristics of our society.”

That is, immigrants into America are still mostly unskilled, mostly undereducated, and coming from under-developed parts of the world, as they were in the past. And Krikorian believes that they are just as assimilable as the Irish and Italians of the 19th century. What’s changed is modern society. And here Krikorian paints a picture of a perfect storm of factors that make mass immigration—both legal and illegal—a very bad thing.

• There’s the welfare state and its programs, which close to half of Mexicans immigrants are drawing from.
• There’s our modern economy, with growing technology and cerebral sectors on top and a glut of cheap labor on the bottom, which more immigrants are only making worse.
• There’s our educational system, with its emphasis on multi-lingualism, multiculturalism, and group rights.
• There’s healthcare, there’s… well, everything. 

In Krikorian’s mind, mass immigration is much like the settling of the frontier—a historical phase which we’ve now outgrown.

On an emotional issue, Krikorian remains level-headed and, thankfully, reality-based. There was one thing about his presentation that did bother me, however: in choosing this line of argumentation, Krikorian seems to be implying, “We shouldn’t let too many immigrants into the country because they’ll overtax the welfare state and perhaps even push it towards collapse.”

One can certainly say this and still be an advocate of limited government (after all, no one wants political breakdown and chaos.) The problem is that this argument presumes that the welfare state operates with a fixed amount of resources that it can doll out, and if, say, too many goodies are given to too many illegals, then there won’t be enough for the rest of us. But this is obviously false. The government can’t afford the new immigrants, you say? Well, when as not being able to afford something stopped Washington in the past!?!

I think that Peter Brimelow is on the right track with his concept of immigration as the “Viagra of the State”:

[Immigration] has reinvigorated the state, when it was otherwise losing its powers because of collapse of socialism and the triumph of classical liberalism. It’s an aspect of what should be called neosocialism—the statists’ argument for government control of society, not in the interests of efficiency—not because government can prevent another Great Depression etc.—but in the interests of equity, rooting out discrimination, racism and so on.

Milton Friedman might actually have been wrong when he said “It’s just obvious that you can’t have free immigration and a welfare state.” To the contrary, the two might actually re-enforce one another.

Instead of claiming to be protecting the welfare state, we should be arguing that we’ll only be able to limit government once we’ve gotten immigration under control.

This criticism aside, The New Case Against Immigration is a must-read. 

* * *

One pleasant surprise this afternoon was the inclusion of Harvard doctoral candidate and AEI visting fellow Jason Richwine on the panel. This young scholar was actually brave enough to broach the topic of the intersection of race, genetic differences in intelligence (IQ), and immigration. Richwine generally agreed with Krikorian’s conclusions but took him to task over the idea that “it’s not the immigrants—it’s us” and that there are no fundamental differences between the immigrants of yesteryear and those of today. 

One DC-based immigration reformer (ahem, Marcus Epstein) asked Richwine to comment on one of Pat Buchanan’s more provocative moments, when in 1991 he asked whether 1 million Zulus or 1 million Englishmen would more quickly and easily assimilate into American culture if each group washed up onto our shores. Richwine turned this into a counterfactual, asking whether if millions of Zulus immigrated to America in lieu of the Irish, they’d be as indistinguishable from the native population as your average McGregor or McCarthy.

Measurements of cognitive ability can be integrated into policy in surprising ways. For instance, when another questioner brought up the issue of the “brain drain” (that is, the most well-educated and highly skilled of the Third World leaving for America), Richwine suggested that American immigration policy focus on bringing in younger, more cognitively talented immigrants, regardless of their skill or education levels, and allowing trained doctors, lawyers, and scientists remain in their home countries where they’re needed.