All good things must come to end, and so will my tenure as editor of Taki’s Magazine.

From the beginning, I thought of my role at Takimag as that of an impresario, my task being to surround myself with as many people who are smarter than I am as possible. (Whenever I’d mention this to my buddies, one would usually chime in with, “Well, Richard, that’s not too hard!” Hardy har har…)

Takimag was churning out great stuff before I arrived (with Paul Gottfried, Justin Raimondo, and John Zmirak leading the way), but I’m particularly grateful to those new contributors who helped me appear like an intelligent and well connected editor. These include, among others:   

Doug Bandow, Thomas Bertonneau, Austin Bramwell, Gary Brecher, Peter Brimelow, Patrick J. Buchanan, Lee Congdon, Karen De Coster, Martin van Creveld, John Derbyshire, Marcus Epstein, Daniel Flynn, David Gordon, Nikolas Gvosdev, Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Leon Hadar, Jeffrey Hart, Grant Havers, James Kalb, S.T. Karnic, Bill Kauffman, Razib Khan, E. Christian Kopff, Mark Krikorian, Alex Kurtagic, Robert Stacy McCain, Gavin McInnes, Ilana Mercer, Charles Murray, Brendan O’Neill, Michael Scheuer, Peter Schiff, “Spengler” (David P. Goldman), Caleb Stegel, Jared Taylor, Derek Turner, Laurence Vance, Thomas E. Woods Jr., Tim Worstall, and Elizabeth Wright.

I’m even prouder of the younger writers I brought on board over the past two years, most of whom got their start blogging at Takimag: 

Kevin DeAnna, Patrick Ford, Mark Hackard, Dylan Hales, Richard Hoste, Jack Hunter, Nina Kouprianova, Scott Locklin, Evan McLaren, Mike Payne, Keith Preston, Helen Rittelmeyer, and Devin Saucier. 

And then there’s Steve Sailer, who began writing a weekly “Zeitgeist” column in the spring of 2009 and who’s done some of his most memorable, and hilarious, work at Takimag. Paul Gottfried deserves special recognition, too, not simply as a frequent contributor but as an advisor and éminence grise. Thanks go out as well to Angelo Matera, who ran Takimag’s finances during 2008, and Lew Rockwell and Peter Brimelow, who have been highly supportive of me and who have introduced tens of thousands to the website through generous linking. 

And most of all, I’d like to thank Taki. My boss allowed me not to worry about finances for two years—quite a luxury among the blogging set!—and from the beginning, he gave me more editorial freedom than any 29-year could dream of. Taki has been an indispensable patron of and contributor to right-wing causes in America, Britain, and Europe, and I’m proud to call him a friend.

But never fear, loyal readers, Takimag won’t be going away—nor will I be severing my ties with the webzine.

Taki’s talented daughter, Mandolyna, who became a regular contributor, will be stepping in to fill my shoes and, no doubt, she’ll bring her own perspective to the webzine. Over the past month, Mandolyna has already taken on many of the tasks of editor, finding new voices and commissioning new pieces. And I’ll be sticking around, too, offering economic and political commentary on a regular basis. 

And what else will I be up to? Well, I’m currently hard at work creating a new web project. Many of the themes that predominated at Takimag over the past two years will be taken up again at the new site, but I also hope to cut some new paths, particularly in the discussion of Human Biological Diversity and also in terms of the format and look of a right-wing webzine. 

In order to fuel more speculation around the blogosphere, I won’t say anymore… But expect a launch by early February. And if you’re interested in supporting this project, then I encourage you to (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), as I’d love to discuss the details with you.

Crises are opportunities, and I hope that 2010 will be the year when the Alternative Right comes into its own. 

In closing, I’ve had a great time at Takimag over the past two years, and its been an honor to work with such intelligent contributors and readers.

Best wishes,
Richard

A reader goes after Paul Craig Roberts:

I think Paul Craig Roberts needs in education what we call a “time out.” His assertions that Obama is being over run by lobbyists, Military Industrial
complex figures, and his gross misunderstanding of social security lead me to believe that he isn’t paying attention, or he really wants some attention.

Israeli complexes? Not illegal by most recent readings of the various treaties.

Can’t close Gitmo? You know, a big problem just might be no one wants to live next door to them, and he can’t convince other countries or any of his supporters to take them.

Lest we forget, at least defense is one of the enumerated powers, unlike social security or health care.

For a Reagan appointee, he certainly does not understand that while we the people pay into the SS system; we don’t get our money back, determine the
payout, nor have any control over it. And let’s talk about SSI, the great supporter of millions of people who never have paid into the SS system.

Utterly disgusting article by someone who should know better.

The perfect gift for the holidayz:

More than a few have alerted me to Eric Cartman’s soulful, white-nationalist plaint. 

Regarding my conclusion that “sisterhood” is overrated, a reader reports,

Decades past a weathered criminal trial lawyer told me that he always tried to load a jury with middle aged or older mothers in rape cases rather than men. Two reasons: One, they would look at the accuser and say, “I was never like that,” and, Two, they would worry that their son(s) might get ensnared by such a creature. His summation: The only thing that exceeds man’s inhumanity to man is woman’s inhumanity to woman. This cynicism was the result of 50+ years in the courts of Boston’s toughest neighborhoods.

This past weekend, a friend of mine recounted a visit he paid to his wife’s family in Arkansas around the time McCain had scheduled his much-awaited announcement of who his running-mate would be. Watching the coverage on TV, my friend was struck by just how quickly his Southern in-laws empathized with the then-unknown governor of Alaska. She was their gal, even though they weren’t yet sure how to pronounce her last name. 

Sarah Palin is, put simply, the goddess of implicit whiteness. She represents the “Real America” as it’s understood, most often tacitly, by the founding stock of the country from Juno, Alaska, to Jasper, Texas. This is, of course, a dangerous thing in many ways, for so far her powers have been used to mobilize white Christian support for John McCain. But even the man who think he’s Palin’s handler and eminence grise must realize that the woman represents a force he cannot totally control, and that someday she might really “go rogue,” as it were.       

Or maybe not. No one as of yet has been able to capture her inner personality. And I certainly haven’t learned anything watching her recent television interviews, in which Oprah and Barbara have been fishing for headline quotes about how mad she was at McCain for not letting her make a concession speech yadayadayada... My guess is that Sarah is probably a profound narcissist, most beauty pageant contestants are, but then she also has a flexibility and openness of mind that allows her to embrace, at one time or another, Buchananism, Zionism, Kenyan anti-witchcraft, and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle. 

I should read her book and write something about it. At the very least, one can make do with its many tales from the campaign trail, like this one about GOP operative Nicolle Wallace‘s ingenious idea of booking Sarah for an interview with Katie Couric, Wallace’s one-time colleague at CBS News. 

From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News. The campaign’s general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn’t have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon.

“Katie really likes you,” she said to me one day. “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughter like you. She just relates to you,” Nicolle said. “believe me, I know her very well. I’ve worked with her.” Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general. Whenever I wanted to give a shout-out to the White House’s homeland security efforts after 9/11, we were told we couldn’t do it. I didn’t know if that was Nicolle’s call.

Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. “She just has such low self-esteem,” Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time. “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.”

I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?

Nicolle said. “She wants you to like her.”

Hearing all that, I almost started to feel sorry for her. Katie had tried to make a bold move from lively morning gal to serious anchor, but the new assignment wasn’t going very well.

“You know what? We’ll schedule a segment with her,” Nicolle said. “If it doesn’t go well, if there’s no chemistry, we won’t do any others.”

Don’t you love how Palinese translates to the page!  What I also find interesting is that while the media would depict the McCain camp as a mean old gathering of cantankerous blackshirts, in reality it was staffed by third-wave feminists who made Oprah-style evocations of female solidarity and you-go-girl spirit.  According to Wallace, it was a good idea to be interviewed by Katie because “she’s a working mom and admires you as a working mom”; “She just has such low self-esteem”; “She just feels she can’t trust anybody.” All that was lacking was my favorite therapy cliché, “Katie’s in a bad place right now.” 

As we know, the interview turned into a catastrophe, with Katie questioning Sarah in a cold, contemptuous, almost sarcastic manner that made the governor produce responses that were even more convoluted than usual. Working-mom solidarity was easily trumped by Katie’s snootiness towards a non-east coast, pro-life Christian. In many ways, Wallace reminds me a lot of Marcia Clark, the prosecuting attorney in the OJ Simpson trial who worked hard to select a mostly female jury, hoping that women would empathize with Nicole Brown Simpson and lock up the abusive OJ. The sly Jonny Cochrian went along with the scheme, but made sure that they were all black women. The final composition was 10 women, 2 men; 9 blacks, 1 hispanic, and 2 whites. As it turns out, the battle between “sisterhood” and black racial ideology is no contest.

And as Katie’s interview with Sarah shows, women are meaner, pettier, more jealous and unfair around other women than they are around men.

But then, this isn’t exactly a shocking revelation for anyone who’s ever attended high school.     

With all this talk of Black Metal, I hope we don’t lose sight of another truly conservative popular art form.

Note that Steve Sailer’s new book makes an appearance around minute two. And you say that conservatives ain’t cool? 

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?