The response to the HL Mencken Club‘s second annual meeting (modestly entitled “We Are Doomed!”) has been tremendous. A week away from the event, well over 100 people have pre-registered. It’s sure to be a great crowd, and if you’ve ever wanted to see in the flesh many of the writers associated with Takimag (Pat Buchanan, John Derbyshire, Paul Gottfried, Kevin Gutzman, Tom Piatak, Steve Sailer, Thomas E. Woods, Jr., and Christian Kopff among them), you probably won’t have a better chance than this Halloween weekend. I don’t often boast, but in less than two years time, the HLMC board has created the largest alternative right-wing group in the country. The demand for such an organization is clearly high, and after this year’s success, we’ll be able to expand our programing in the coming years. 

I also have some mixed news to pass on. Peter Brimelow, pictured below, will not be able to join us this year.

The good news is that we’ve replaced him with this man:

Just in case you don’t recognize him, that’s John Brimelow, Peter’s twin brother. 

Peter and I considered just not telling anyone he couldn’t make it and have his twin brother impersonate him at the podium. This might have worked, but Peter worried that John might say something too radical and spoil Peter’s reputation for tolerance and moderation. 

John will be speaking on a very interesting topic: “The Rise and Fall of ‘Chimerica.’” He’ll discuss the importance of currency exchange rates and how Wall Street and Beijing have worked together to create an economic arrangement that’s been highly detrimental to Main Street and the American middle class. I greatly look forward to this talk! 

In future conferences, we might get both Brimelows to come, but only list one Brimelow on the program. This way, a Brimelow could end his speech by climbing into a magical-looking box on stage and then the other Brimelow could miraculously reappear in a flash at the back of the room.

As I said, we have big plans for the HL Mencken Club. Big plans. 

I like being right. And I also learned quite a bit from Dylan’s blog on the Front Porch Republic. (Daniel McCarthy has also done some good work critiquing these guys.)

I’ll be sure to needle Patrick Deenen about his “big government localism” when he comes to speak at the HL Mencken Club next weekend. As for “The ‘One Salvation’ of Ludwig von Mises”... The Front Porch Republic fact-checking department might want to look into John Médaille’s assertions about Tom Woods’s corporate funding and his friendship with Michael Novak and the gang at AIE. The story of Murray Rothbard’s conversion to Catholicism is also something I did not encounter in any of the major biographies… 

I became extremely skeptical of the whole “crunchy” second wave of social conservatism after I read that Alan Carlson had made a “conservative” case for the New Deal, a meme picked up by Ross Douthat, among others,  and after I heard Carlson speak at Yale last year at an ISI sponsored event. He used terms like the (state-directed) “re-distribution of property” and proposed government programs to increase home ownership among the lower and middle classes that sounded like wispy, Russell Kirk-y versions of the ones that created the housing debacle. I’m sure Deneen, Carlson, and I share a similar abiding respect for the Old America of strong, closely knit, and independent families, upright social and economic dealings, and a certain crusty skepticism I associate with my maternal grandfather. Unlike these two, however, I think getting the bureaucrats involved is the worst possible way of reviving this lost world. 

Also, Deneen and Carlson seem to be fellow travelers with those “pragmatic” and “moderate” conservatives and neocons who feel that it’s probably impossible and undesirable to shrink government, and thus we should work on reforms that promote a “conservative” (or in this case, “localist”) welfare state. I have a very different take. With 12 trillion in debt and 50-100 trillion of unfunded entitlement liabilities, I think it’s near certain that in the coming decade the American welfare state will collapse in a big hyperinflationary Götterdämmerrung. It would seem more “pragmatic” to start developing alternative, independent institutions outside the state that can endure, and not just work to be yet another Beltway rent-seeker. 

In other news, George Hawley of “post right” picked up on my post about this horrible Edmund Burke Institute in Washington, DC, and made an observation worth repeating: 

When Big Government liberals tell conservatives they need to be more like Burke, they mean conservatives should be gracious losers – this is hardly an accurate description of Burke himself, but I digress. In their mind, a “Burkean” Right is one that provides only minor speed bumps on America’s road to a centrally-planned utopia; to them, the ideal conservative is an erudite gentleman who pontificates for a few minutes, and then gets out of the way. They prefer conservatives like George Will, who bristle at any perceived “populism” on the Right, and they despise figures who would channel conservative anger into an effective political movement that actually threatens the present state of affairs.

This is very much the impression I got reading Sam Tannenhaus’s The Death of Conservatism, in which William F. Buckley is praised for offering nifty free-market solutions to urban problems, like wider bicycle lanes, during his mayoral run in New York City. In Tannenhaus’s mind, this is the greatness of “American conservatism,” a movement that’s sadly “dying” due to Sarah Palin, talk radio populists, and free-market fundamentalists.

There’s something about reading Sam Tannenhaus that makes me want to defend Rush Limbaugh… 

Of course, from another angle Sam Tannenhaus is himself a Burkean conservative—and we should treat him as such—in that he is an active defender of America’s ruling class and left-liberal establishment, of its education system, civic values, and public religion. I don’t support anything of these things. I’m not a conservative. And in our current situation, the Alternative Right can find better intellectual heroes than Edmund Burke. 

I’m glad we had a discussion about “Game” at Taki’s Magazine. As some might know, Taki himself once considered writing a one-man play about his life’s work. But he abandoned the project after he learned that the title “Vagina Monologues” had already been taken. 

Nick Griffin appeared on the BBC’s Question Time last night, prompting the inevitable hand wringing about “tolerating the intolerant” and the like across Britain. (Highlights from the evening can be seen here).

A friend of mine who knows lots of grassroots envelop-stuffers and cold-callers for the Labour party reported to me that his friends generally loathe Blair & Brown, their primary motivation for supporting them being the feeling that they’re standing tall against a potential BNP Machtergreifung of England and the European Union or something. Truly, if Nick Griffin didn’t exist, then the UK’s degenerate ruling class might have had to invent him. For the mainstream Left and Right seem to acquire much of their legitimacy from just not being him. 

This is not to say that the brunt of the BNP’s platform isn’t perfectly sensible and patriotic. I obviously have no qualms with the party’s central objective of restricting mass immigration and guarding the British people and culture (though its “aboriginal” requirement for party membership is awkward and unnecessary.) I think the party should be criticized mainly for resembling “old Labor” in sticking up for the National Health Service and making noises about major nationalizations and the like. In this line, I find the Ron Paul Revolutionairies (even if many of them are silly libertarians on the immigration issue) to represent something more dangerous to the Establishment in that they talk openly of eliminating whole bureaucracies and institutions, the Fed Money Machine being the most important of all. But of course, antagonism towards the BNP has nothing to do with socialized healthcare and everything to do with Western leaders’ obsession with stamping out even the faintest flickering of national-ethnic-racial identity among white people. 

I’ve often wondered why average Americans are so taken with the Brits. It’s almost as if one can recite the most conventional opinion imaginable, but do with a posh accident, and Americans start swooning as a Pavlovian response. We’ve imported a great many tedious prigs due to our weakness for long vowels. Clearly, people who think that England is one big episode of Masterpiece Theater have never travelled to the country. My impression is that England reproduces every American vulgarity—only more so. Thus while normally staid young people from the Midwest turn themselves into out-of-control fools for spring break, a great many Brits of all ages one up them while on “holidays” and act like buffoonish sluts the rest of the year, too. I’ve also read that social engineering and left-wing indoctrination in British schools is, if it’s possible, more intense than what we go through here in the States. I certainly sensed this when I heard the following question asked by an audience member on Question Time: 

Being that the the Second World War was fueled by the need to disarm racist and oppressive regimes, is it fair that the BNP has hijacked Churchill as its own?

One would think the PC line on Churchill would be that he was a Victorian Dinosaur: an open imperialist who bragged about mowing down future subjects in battle, an admirer of the Duce, and even the Führer for a time, who was so anti-progress that after the First World War, he pressed for an Allied invasion of Bolshevik territory. What is clear is that Churchill wanted war against Germany because he saw it as a rival, as a nation-state that threatened British power and world supremacy (or what was left of it.) The old bastard couldn’t have cared less about intolerance and racism. (And, of course, in order to disarm the Germans, he aligned Britain with a regime that was more oppressive than the Third Reich.) But it seems that in Cool Britannia an obviously reactionary figure like Churchill can be reconstructed into a force of multiculti tolerance (though, I’m sure, the time will come when Churchill, too, will need to be denounced and discarded as usable national hero.)

The British school system’s obsession with the Nazis reached a point that even the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority started to complain. When I was at grad school, I met a dumb woman who once taught at a British public school and told me that for a summer project, she had her students make evil “Nazi” advertising posters in which the ultimate form of beauty was light skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. It was, of course, drilled into the students how absolutely immoral and disgusting it would be to value these distinctive features of Northern Europeans. Only Nazi bogeymen would do that! Such stories indicate to me that we’ve reached some advanced stage of liberal nihilism in which no one is willing or able to affirm any left-wing value or commitment outside of the utmost necessity of crushing all wicked intolerant Nazis.         

At any rate, who could gainsay Nick Griffin when he said that if Churchill were alive today, he’d be on the side of the BNP? For, among reasons, “no other party would have him,

for what he said in the early days of mass immigration into this country, for the fact that “they’re only coming for our benefit system,” and for the fact that in his younger days he was extremely critical of the dangers of fundamentalist Islam, in a way that would now be described as Islamophobic.

Regarding the facemask question, a reader writes:

You made a really good point about facemasks.  I played rugby in college and law school.  Because we don’t wear pads and helmets, we don’t fly through the air at each other like human spears.  Nobody want to hurt himself in the process of delivering a massive hit.
That said, rugby is boring to watch and football rules.  Long live facemasks!

Republican out-reach reaches a new low…

[ht: Richard Hoste]

Like Kevin Gutzman, I, too, grew up playing football in Texas, though, granted, I attended a small, elite private school—replete with dorky uniforms and compulsory Episcopalian chapel—so my experience wasn’t exactly made of the same stuff as Friday Night Lights.  (My legendary high school had quite an equivocal reputation: St. Mark’s was sneered at as a frufy institution of science geeks and preppy faggots by its public school detractors, called “the military academy on Preston Rd.” by its envious private school competitors, and written up as an Eton for the sons of JR by the gawking D Magazine.)

Anyway, I have many fond memories of busing out to places like Pilot Point, TX, where the football stadium would emerge off in the distance like a great cathedral at the center of quaint Texan village. These memories are fond now, at any rate; at the time, I was shaking in my pads in the face of those tough-as-nails Pilot Pointers, all whom wanted to teach the prep boys from Dallas a hard lesson. If you want a picture of what’s its like for a “Marksman,” as we were called, to play real Texas High School Football, just imagine a cleat stamping on a human face—forever. 

But that’s all history. While Kevin makes the case that football has become less difficult and more wussy over the years, through various rule changes and the like, the rest of the country is expressing its concern that pigskin is too barbaric and dangerous. Just this week, America’s favorite public intellectual, Malcolm Gladwell, argued in the New Yorker that football might be morally equivalent to dogfighting due to all the concussions, and even brain damage, that result from those viscous crask-back blocks. Gladwell suggested such injuries aren’t “incidental” to the game but “inherent” in it:

Part of what makes dogfighting so repulsive is the understanding that violence and injury cannot be removed from the sport. It’s a feature of the sport that dogs almost always get hurt. Something like stock-car racing, by contrast, is dangerous, but not unavoidably so.

Just so I might one day command six-figure corporate speaking fees, as does Herr Doktor Gladwell, let me offer this modest proposal for making the game of football both tougher and less head-injury prone.

Remove the facemask. 

In order to make football safer, everyone wants to make the helmets more elaborate and sophisticated, with perhaps rear airbags being the logical culmination of the trend. But let’s not forget, a free-safety is willing to launch himself horizontal to the ground in order to deliver a thunderous blow to a wide receiver who dared go out over the middle only because he knows that his head—or, more likely, his visage and grin—will be reasonably well protected by his polycarbonate alloy plastic helmet and vinyl-coated steel-alloy facemask. The unintended consequences of better helmets are more head-first hits. Remove the facemask, and overnight good, solid form tackling will be back in style. Here’s a preview of what we could look forward to:

I’ll muster one and half cheers for Eric Holder’s decision not to prosecute cannabis users who obey state “medical marijuana” laws. The good news is that we might be one step closer to legalizing a substance that has definite healing and pain-relieving properties and as recreational drug is more benign than booze. The bad news is that if legalization takes place, the federal government will tax marijuana till the seeds squeak, as Dan Flynn argued at Takimag a little while back. 

A bud bureaucracy, dubbed the Cannabis Control Authority, would act as a quasi-judiciary/legislature/executive on all matters marijuana. Seven gubernatorial appointees, serving for seven-year terms at salaries 20 percent of the governor’s, would comprise the board. It would issue and revoke licenses, make rules, collect taxes, subpoena witnesses, and even refer to the courts for sixty days of jail time those who don’t cooperate with them—a penalty harsher than just about any marijuana-smoking scofflaw received before decriminalization went into effect on January 2. With an FBI investigation charging several high-profile Boston politicians with bribery in connection to meting out prized liquor licenses, it’s not difficult to see the marijuana trade going to pot once elected crooks get involved.

And small businessmen Mark and Charlie have no plans to open up their life’s work to elected crooks. “If you had to pay the licensing fee, it wouldn’t necessarily be cost prohibitive,” Mark concedes. “But with the taxes, your clientele is going to disappear. A lot of people would just balk at paying that.” Instead of patronizing overpriced, state-licensed dealers, legalization would perversely orient pot smokers toward the same underground dealers, like Mark and Charlie, that they have always relied on for ounces, quarter bags, and mere joints.

Paying tax on bong hits to fund banker bailouts sounds like a pretty terrible arrangement to me. 

We staunch conservatives have always admired the great Edmund Burke. Burke, the man who stood for chivalry in the age of mass democracy. Burke, one of the first to recognize the totalitarian, murderous end point to which the logic of the French Revolution inevitably led. Burke, who sympathized with the American Revolutionaries as defenders of their rights as Englishmen.

But then let’s not forget Burke, who advocated for equal pay for women in the workplace. Burke, who sought to crush the racist elements in American society that stood in the way of African-American entrepreneurship. Burke, who dreamed that one day the Republican Party might reach out to Hispanics as a reliable voting base! 

What? You don’t recognize that Edmund Burke? Well, that just means you haven’t yet visited the webpage of The Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal (“A New Generation of Conservative Thought”). Here are some snippets to help you bring yourself up to date with what you should believe as a reactionary:

New Feminism

This program is designed to show how conservative principles affirm the fundamental rights, values and liberties of women; there is no contradiction between conservatism and feminism. We want to help women achieve equality in the workplace, play a greater role in the nation’s political life, and remove any remaining barriers hindering their potential. We also envision a distinct role for women in public affairs that fulfils their feminine nature. […]

African Americans and Traditional Values

We seek to place the issues dear to African Americans at the forefront of political debate. This program will find solutions that are based on empowerment, independence and entrepreneurship. We celebrate the history and culture of African Americans and affirm their contributions to American society. Furthermore, the program recognizes that there are still racist elements in American society that must be crushed. Hence, we will be vigilant in defending African Americans from injustice and inequality. […]

Hispanics and the Conservative Movement

We will integrate Hispanics within the conservative movement. There are millions of diligent and talented Hispanics in America who have a Christian heritage, hold dear to traditions which exalt the family and the community, and who are determined to improve their economic standing. These traits render them natural allies of conservatives. Our program will highlight the specific concerns of Hispanics regarding immigration, achieving greater social mobility and entrance into the highest echelons of power. Moreover, Hispanics will finally feel welcome in a movement that empowers them to achieve their goals while also celebrates their cultural contributions to American society.

If this is the Right, then what need have we for a Left? 

Put simply, Bernie Madoff never could have gotten away with it for as long as he did if weren’t for the Securities Exchange Commission. It’s easy to forget this fact as the agency has been granted greater regulatory powers and a few good people, Harry Markopolos most prominently, have gotten praised as whistleblowers and truth-tellers. Madoff’s scheme, which duped not just celebrities and charities but hedge funds and major Swiss institutions, is boggling in the simplicity of its design: old investors were paid off with funds from the new ones. Simple as that. SEC regulators who couldn’t pick up on this were either criminally negligent or else in on it. (As mentioned in the Inspector General’s report [pdf] on the scandal, in 2005 the SEC received a memo entitled, “The World’s Largest Hedge Fund Is a Fraud.” It had little effect.)   

While most Ponzi schemers promise their victim-clients profits undreamed of, Madoff took a very different tack—he offered returns that were consistent and reliable, boring even. Most investors suspected something was up, but few thought that Madoff was pulling off something as brazen and déclassé as an actual Ponzi scheme. The most common theory was that he was using his know-how as a market-maker to “front-run” trades, that is, learn about big institutional buys and sells before they happen and then ride the wave. Again, the tacit assumption must surely have been that the SEC regulators were either oblivious buffoons or else getting a cut. The fact that SEC compliance official Eric Swanson was dating Madoff’s niece, Shana—and eventually married the woman—certainly gave people the impression that a great conviviality had arisen between regulator and regulatee. 

Those who put their money with Madoff because they actually believed he was an investment maestro were, in part, taken in by the inherent moral hazard of any SEC-like organization: If “the authorities” put the stamp of approval on a business operating in the mostly highly regulated industry in the country, then why bother with due diligence?

No one at the SEC has been fired over Madoff, and many have been promoted. Arthur Levitt, the chair of the SEC from ’93-2001 (big years for Madoff), has moved on … to a top position at The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm known for its close ties with the Military Industrial Complex. 

But that’s all history… But my mind has been revisiting the Madoff-SEC relationship a lot recently, especially after I learned that a 29-year-old Goldman Sachs vice president, one Adam Storch, has been named the new chief operating officer of the Security Exchange Commission.

It simply wasn’t enough for Goldman to have its former Co-CEO, Hank Paulson, in charge of the Treasury under Bush—not enough to have Timothy Geithner, a protégé of another Goldman Co-CEO, Robert Rubin, as the head of the Treasury now—not nearly enough that the firm received some 50 billion in bailouts from the Fed, Treasury, and FDIC—not even close to being enough that Goldman was the chief beneficiary of the AIG bailout und so weiter, und so weiter…  Bernie kept a low profile, relatively speaking, just churning out consistent phony profits. Goldman, on the other hand, has taken over Washington with an up-front, so-what-you-gonna-do-about-it bravado, installing its men at the top. 

Storch is an interesting development, in that this graduate of SUNY Buffalo seems more Boiler Room than Wall Street. John Carney, who acquired the only known photo of Storch, has also dug up this amusing tidbit: 

Interestingly, Storch seems to be a big fan of Bill Clinton. At Stern, he created a website asking people to vote for Bill Clinton in the 2008 election. “Don’t stand for the 22nd Amendment!” the website implores.

Clearly, this doofus is not intended to be a power-player… Instead, he’ll serve his purpose as an insecure, timid soul who’ll defer to his old boss on everything.