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• I meant to link to this Wall Street Journal piece last time but unaccountably neglected to do so: "Business Donors Bypass McCain," by Brody Mullins. Editor's intro: "Democrats Rake In Cash from Industry; Catch-Up for GOP."
Barack Obama's success in raising money from established corporations is particularly striking. We are supposed to believe, of course, that the Imam is getting all his money from small-fry donors on the Internet and that he takes nothing from "Washington lobbyists." Since no one else seemed to be covering the story, I'd almost started to wonder whether CounterPunch's Holly Martens was making everything up about Obama's Wall Street support. Sorry, Miss Martens.
A parting thought: Even though he's a pol and therefore a professional liar, Obama may be telling the truth about not being financed by "lobbyists." He seems to be taking the big cash directly from the regime's employers. And an employer doesn't need to "lobby" his gardener to mow the lawn.
April 30, 2008
• This story may strike you as fairly routine, but I think its very routineness makes it all the more dismaying: "Petition seeks to remove Denton Confederate statue," by Debbie Denmon of WFAA-TV in Texas. Just think of the historical diseducation involved in making this sort of thing possible.
April 30, 2008
• I get impatient with myself when I react to this kind of story with shock and indignation: "From Chief Prosecutor to Critic at Guantanamo," by Josh White of the Washington Post. I shouldn't have to remind myself that government is organized crime — on a scale dwarfing the Sicilian and the Russian and all the other mafias — and that the criminality and corruption of the Bushites horrifies even other members of the political-criminal class.
April 30, 2008
• In March, senior editor Ronn Neff wrote this for our "Stop and think" section:
If millions of acres worldwide are converted from growing food to growing corn for ethanol, is it not a virtual certainty that at some point we shall hear the Left screaming that there are famines and people dying from hunger because of the West's insatiable demand for — or "addiction to" — ethanol?TLD is grateful to Comrade President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela for stepping up and confirming Mr. Neff's expectations: "Chavez calls ethanol production 'crime'" (AP brief). Mr. Neff notes that Comrade Chavez is an oil czar, so he may have concerns more pressing than the "world food crisis." In any event, I'd be happy if my fellow Americanos understood that the Yankee Empire's ethanol subsidies are indeed a crime.In what sense, then, can ethanol be said to be "sustainable"?
April 30, 2008
• At his Pro Libertate blog, one of my favorite writers on freedom and justice offers an account of the state's assault on the polygamists in Texas: "The Real Cult Menace (Part One): 'Waco' in Slow Motion," by Will Grigg. A taste: "It's obvious that a heavily armed cult possessed of a deluded sense of mission would be a public menace. Indeed, we are ruled by just such people."
April 30, 2008
• Must-Read Alert. I somehow missed this Robert Higgs piece when the Mises folk posted it in October: "The Song That Is Irresistible: How the State Leads People to Their Own Destruction." It's from a speech he gave at the Mises Institute's 25th anniversary celebration. It contains so many good observations that I hate to pick out just one, but here's one of the best: "The mass belief in the general beneficence of democracy represents a kind of Stockholm syndrome writ large."
April 11, 2008
• But I'm not finished praising Higgs. This essay at the Rockwell site qualifies for "must-read" status, too: "Truncating the Antecedents: How Americans Have Been Misled about World
War II." I myself have written a little something, a time or two, about how the amnesiac (and miseducated) American mind is incapable of understanding that in history one thing is connected to another and that, in some cases, it is not too bold to argue that one thing leads to another. But my poor efforts pale before those of historian Higgs.
A sample: "If anyone deserves to be recognized as the war's 'winner,' that person is Stalin. Somehow this fact has never seemed to me to fit comfortably into a characterization of this horrible conflict as the 'Good War.' Perhaps I'm just unduly squeamish."
April 11, 2008
• Sheldon Richman, another of my favorite writers on liberty, lands another hard blow on our adversaries in this piece at FEE: "Statecraft Is Not Soulcraft."
The Rev. Michelle Obama has uttered obnoxiousities about "our souls" in "this nation," and Richman responds: "I don't want my soul being diagnosed — much less fixed — by the government or 'society.' I suspect I am not alone here. Politician, heal thyself and leave the rest of us alone." But as you'll discover, old Bombs Away is the main target of Richman's heavy ordnance.
April 11, 2008
• Writing at allAfrica.com, Angelo Izamawe reports: "U.S. Army Set to Recruit Citizens." Ugandan citizens, that is. When senior editor Ronn Neff tipped me to this one, he commented: "Of course — because that's what empires do."
April 11, 2008
• The story here lies not in the fact that this Obama delegate resigned but that she was actually ticketed for what she said: "Obama delegate resigns after remark" (Associated Press, no byline). The state's "disorderly conduct" dodge around its guarantees of free expression has always been dangerous, but now we're starting to see its full potential for tyranny.
Though this account should frighten all of us, I can't help but feel some good old Schadenfreude at the fact that Red Guard censorship has stung — a Red Guardess! (Get a load of that progressive, multiracial last name.)
April 11, 2008
• From the Left: Gary Brecher provides some perspective on the Empire's latest famous victory, in this posting at AlterNet: "How the U.S. Just Got Schooled by a 'Rag-Tag' Neighborhood Army in Iraq." (Warning: this piece contains a bit of gratuitous obscenity.)
April 11, 2008
• With some folks, you just can't win. Actually, though, we'd better let the fascists and socialists responsible for the anti-redlining interventions of the '90s handle this one: "The largest hate crime in history," by Harry C. Alford at The Louisiana Weekly. It is certainly true that most poor blacks do not benefit, overall, from leviathan's turnings and twistings. Beware government geeks bearing gifts.
April 11, 2008
• Dept. of You Can't Make This Stuff Up. Thanks to BBC News, we learn: "Danes sorry for Viking invasion." Editor's intro: "The Danish government has expressed regret over the Viking invasion of Ireland more than 1,000 years ago." The apology was directed at the Irish.
No doubt the looming Mohammedans will be impressed by the strength of the West as they see the white girlymen of Europe weepily apologizing to one another.
It is nice about the boat, though.
April 11, 2008
• Dept. of Get Them Out Now! — and May No Child Be Left Behind. At the Washington Post: "For Little Children, Grown-Up Labels As Sexual Harassers," by Brigid Schulte. Reflect: this state-school craziness has gotten so bad that even the Washington Post is running stories on it!
April 11, 2008
• A history lesson for voting addicts. This is an old item, from 2005, but we've just tumbled to it. At the Portland Independent Media Center, "zorro" posted what he says is an excerpt from Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, and on the basis of the content I see no reason to doubt it: "Rigged Elections in Vietnam, Nixon-Lodge Style."
The rubber hits the road, here, in the quote attributed to Henry Cabot Lodge beginning, "You've got a gentleman in the White House right now...." It's bad enough voting for pols if the elections are honest. What level of sap-hood does a voter descend to if they're rigged?
By the way, the Gen. Edward Lansdale referred to here has been implicated by Fletcher Prouty in a certain de-election held in Dallas, on
November 22, 1963.
March 29, 2008
• Speaking of history, here we go again. This is from the International Herald Tribune: "U.S. teens stumped by history survey," by Sam Dillon.
The students' performance on the Hitler question makes me wonder how far today's nitwits have actually fallen, because I still vividly remember an incident from my world-history class in high school, in 1965. It was a mixed class, including both sophomores and juniors, and we had been studying World
War II. I was a sophomore, ruminating in my dweebish way on the movements of armored units in the Battle of Kursk. The teacher asked a girl — an eleventh-grader whom I had not previously tagged as a space cadet — whether she could tell him who Hitler was. After an agonizing pause, the answer came in a hesitant little voice: "A ... Russian general?"Nevertheless, Dillon's report does have a distinctly modern flavor about it, as you will see when you get to the questions that the lads and lassies did the best with.
March 29, 2008
• Warning: This news from the Baltimore Sun may sicken you, especially if you're an old debater who played by the rules. The TLDer who tipped me to the story — himself an old debater — invited me to read it and then tell him whether there is any possibility that the fix wasn't in:
"Towson U. debaters take national championship," by Nick MadiganSubhead: "First African-American duo to win title are grads of city high schools."I don't know just how much corruption has riddled American society solely because of the fantasy of racial egalitarianism, but it probably makes LBJ-style electoral corruption look like spitting on the sidewalk.
March 29, 2008
• I've been waiting impatiently for The American Conservative to post these pieces from its
March 10 issue:— Robert Bryce: "Oil for War"March 29, 2008The title is a nifty turnaround, isn't it? Editor's intro: "After invading one of the most petroleum-rich countries on Earth, the U.S. military is running on empty."
— Steve Sailer: "Is Brown the New Black?" Subtitle: "Assimilating Latinos into the politics of victimhood."
The biggest chuckle I derived from Sailer has to do with the accordions and trumpets. And the most interesting serious nugget was the mention of those precious street smarts.
• I think race realists in both the statist and anti-statist camps will value this column by Fred Reed, writing from Mexico:
"Scoping Out Pepe: Why We Should Get It Right, But Won't"A taste: "While gringos and Mexicans live next to each other here in amity, they do not mix. They can't. A retired executive from Boeing has nothing in common with a man with a fourth-grade education who will never read a book in his life."
March 29, 2008
• At the Independent Institute, Robert Higgs takes on the Central Government's investigation of Major League Baseball, which meddling he accurately describes as both harebrained and unconstitutional; and he offers a reminder about who the biggest liars in this foolish spectacle really are.
"There's a Time and a Place for a Beanball"March 29, 2008
• I just hate it when warchick Ann Coulter writes a column that's a mandatory linker. Well, here we go again: "Throw Grandma under the Bus" (Yahoo! News). I don't buy everything Coulter says here, but she is right on target in showing how Obama has dishonored his grandmother for "express[ing] the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has." Honor, once discarded, is not easily regained. Even if he weren't so preachy, Obama would still be a disgusting man.
March 20, 2008
• This piece by Dana Milbank at the Washington Post strikes me as a remarkably frank (or at least frank-appearing) piece for an Establishment journalist: "The Audacity of Chutzpah." It deals with Obama's Jewish problem.
March 20, 2008
• I direct your attention to an article on gunowner-control that is unusually restrained and well-balanced, given the fact that it's at AlterNet: "The Coming Showdown on Gun Control." It's by Rhonda Brownstein of (gulp) the Southern Poverty Law Center, but hold on. It's actually worth reading. A taste: "The one point on which experts agree is that the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia
v. Heller may be the most important decision on gun control in our nation's history." We need to keep our eye on this case.Brownstein mentions the importance the civil-disarmers accord to the phrase, "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State...." in the Second Amendment. Constitutionalists usually leap into a discussion of how the militia in olden times was actually the "people in arms," quite different from the modern National Guard; but I've always taken another tack, pointing out that the quoted portion is just a subordinate phrase. Our constitutional permission to bear arms would remain intact even if the amendment had started off, "An invasion from Mars, being considered imminent...."
I won't belabor the point that, whatever the wording of constitutional permissions, those permissions do not define our natural rights or equal liberty.
Modine Herbey comments. Every time the disarmament of the people is in the news, we ought to point out to our "progressive" friends that the poisonous wretches behind it want to disarm women threatened with murder and rape. They already have disarmed millions. Such trolls have no place in a civilized society.March 20, 2008
• I've had to employ my coinage "transparodistic" so many times now that I'm afraid it has about lost its punch. But I don't know how else to characterize the incident reported here: "Public Reading — a Hate Crime," by Richard Spencer at the blog for Taki's Magazine.
In tipping me to this piece, Ronn Neff observed, "Presumably, this means that eventually we will not be allowed to read any of Roger Devlin's articles in public."
I can testify from personal experience that, even before the cultural Bolsheviks imposed their thought control, public reading was already considered somewhat incorrect in this book-wary country.
March 20, 2008
• At The American Conservative, Scott McConnell attempts to peek behind the curtain: "Obama's Israel Test: Is the lobby losing its grip?" Obama's relationship with the Big Jews, Likudnik and otherwise, is something we need to keep investigating as the campaign wears on. It may change, in one direction or another. We have yet to see what the impact of the Jeremiah Wright fracas will be.
While his piece is well worth reading, McConnell seems unaware of the extent to which the Dark Suits are financing Obama.
March 17, 2008
• The fall of Eliot Spitzer continues to interest me. In my initial writing on the subject, I may have underestimated the offense Spitzer gave to the higher circles when, in 2005, he threatened John Whitehead. I should have recalled how senior a Dark Suit Whitehead was. In Dark Suits and Red Guards (1996) I referred to Whitehead as one of the investment-banking Wise Men who have served presidents as triple-digit-IQ advisors. Whitehead, a Goldman Sachs veteran, had been a deputy secretary of state for President Reagan as well as chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. In December 2005, Whitehead wrote this account of Spitzer's threat for Wall Street Journal Online: "Scary."
Something very interesting then happened. According to this unusually credible-sounding account of higher-circle plotting, when Spitzer began his run for governor he went hat in hand to Dark Suit titan Felix Rohatyn and apologized: "Putting on the Spitz: Eliot's Brain Trust," by Jason Horowitz at the New York Observer (August 6, 2006).
I don't know — and I doubt I'll ever know — what connection all of this had to Spitzer's eventual fall, but I am confident of one thing: while the Dark Suits may forgive, they never forget. One could speculate that even if the Suits didn't decide to knife Spitzer because of his smart mouth, they deliberately refrained from lifting a finger to save him when the weight, and smelliness, of his baggage threatened to become public knowledge.
It's true that if the Suits knew about Spitzer's baggage, it would have rendered him more controllable for as long as it remained unknown by us little people. But there's always another suitable pol in line, toting his own secret baggage. And chances are that that next pol will know to keep a civil tongue in his head.
Here's a more recent piece about Spitzer's fate, by John Cloud at Time.com: "Was Spitzer Destined to Fall?" Be sure to catch the anecdote about the Monopoly game. It's priceless — and so, so revealing.
March 17, 2008
• And now for today's screamer, courtesy of the AP: "Ala. building can't shake swastika shape," by Jay Reeves. I always knew all those Methodists were Nazis, didn't you? But there is a serious point to be made: the people raising this ruckus apparently feel that they're in no danger of exposing themselves to public ridicule.
And they're probably right.
March 17, 2008
• David T. Wright has tipped me to a story about the attack on California home-schoolers that is superior to the one I featured last time. This one is found at the San Francisco Chronicle, and one way in which it is superior is its inclusion of this classic quote from one of the Red Judges: "A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism, and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare."
"Homeschoolers' setback sends shock waves through state," by Bob Egelko and Jill TuckerThose who believe that totalitarian premises have infected the public mind only recently should take note that, according to the reporters, the judge was "quoting from a 1961 case on a similar issue."
March 11, 2008
• I was tipped to this one by senior editor Ronn Neff, who asked, "Where is Ayn Rand when you need her?"
"Minorities, poor get 'highly gifted' lift," by Jeremy P. Meyer, in the Denver PostEditor's intro: "A new [Denver Public Schools] system awards some kids an extra boost to make things more equitable." This kind of "equity" is, of course, one of the evil madnesses from which home-schooling parents are struggling to rescue their children.
March 11, 2008
• Another kudos goes to Mr. Neff for the tip to this AP piece: "Number of Hate Groups Rising, Report Finds" (no byline). Editor's intro: "Report Links Anti-Immigrant Sentiment to Rise in Hate Crimes." You get one guess about which "watchdog group" produced this report.
Mr. Neff would direct your attention to the funding figures reported in the latter part of the article. With respect to the anecdote reported at the very end, he also thinks it would have been interesting to know just what the "Hispanic man" said to the white woman.
For my part, I invite you to meditate on this rather dazzling irony: one of the groups endorsing SPLC's latest exercise in defamation is none other than La Raza — The Race! The AP blandly describes it as "a major Latino group." And so it goes, here in Bizarro World.
March 11, 2008
• Huzzah for Fred Reed! — who mounts a slashing assault on the pretenses of Duh-MOCK-risy in this piece at the Rockwell site: "Where the People Don't Rule."
March 11, 2008
• Reed's piece is a good lead-in to this one, by Sheldon Richman at FEE: "Are the Voters Qualified to Pick a President?" You can guess his answer, but that doesn't mean you should delay reading this essay, which is yet another in a long line of winners by Sheldon.
One of the libertarian classics he recommends, as an antidote to economic ignorance, is by the late Leonard Read, founder of FEE. I recently discovered a link to that essay, which I mean to award a permanent place on our main links page. But for now, this link will serve: "I, Pencil."
March 11, 2008
• At the Washington Post, Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz report that "The Iraq War Will Cost Us $3 Trillion, and Much More." You'll have to read past some endorsement of domestic socialism here, of course. (I have purloined this pick from a Future of Freedom alert.)
March 11, 2008
• Late-breaking news from the People's Republic of Alta California: "Ruling seen as a threat to many home-schooling families," by Seema Mehta and Mitchell Landsberg of the Los Angeles Times. Editor's intro: "State appellate court says those who teach children in private must have a credential." Apparently, if the Red Judges' decree is implemented, laws and regulations hitherto languishing in neglect will be enforced.
I find one possible consolation here: Even more white Westerners may now flee the Third World Communist hell hole that California is becoming. We would have to hope, though, that the refugees could find new homes that were more defensible against our rapidly multiplying adversaries.
March 6, 2008
• The editor's intro for this Dennis Dale piece at The American Conservative is, "The problem with partisanship: not enough of it." As one who believes that "bipartisanship" is just another word for collusion, I find that formulation congenial.
"In Search of Dear Leader"Dale deals largely with Michael Bloomberg's latest flirting with the presidential race, and now for the second time (by my count) Bloomberg has retreated from running. But Dale's analysis remains highly pertinent: "The Bloomberg effort suggests that our elites do not see the outsized power of the presidency and the direction of its policies as problems requiring any remedy other than the installation of a more capable sovereign." Ah, yes, we just need to elect good people, and then all will be well.
March 6, 2008
• Banana Republic Watch. The bigger and more powerful a state gets, the more it must depend on positive law, i.e., fake law. And the deeper the corruption of its "justice" system will become.
At CounterPunch, Paul Craig Roberts shows how it's done: "It Does Happen in America: The Political Trial of Don Siegelman."
March 6, 2008
• Dept. of No Spit, Sherlock. Kudos to Greg Toppo of USA Today for passing along this astonishing and unforeseen revelation: "Teens losing touch with common cultural and historical references." Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised to see how high the percentage is of less-than-total nitwits.
March 6, 2008
• You'll find some good entertainment on this page at Snopes.com: "I Have a WHAT?"
This has to do with a couple of placards displayed during a Martin Luther King Day, Jr. demonstration, or ritual, or something, in 2007; and the misspellings thereon. According to the accompanying commentary, a claim has circulated to the effect that the signs were actually displayed at an event promoting literacy, and the misspellings were deliberate. That turns out to be — sorry for the technical terminology, here — a lie.
March 6, 2008
• I usually don't link to pages that give you access to only the first paragraph of a piece and then demand that you register in order to see more, but I think it's worth doing this time. The gravamen is contained in the title and in the lead.
"Author's faked Holocaust memoir sparks concerns about consequences," by Penny SchwartzI think we can all agree that those "concerns" are understandable.
March 6, 2008
• Another thing I usually don't do, here in the Off-site department, is link to 10-year-old columns; but the Sobran's site has recently featured a piece by Joe from April 1998, and I can hardly do less, in view of all the bone-rattling that has emanated over the years from the closets of Hillary and McCain, and my assumption that some Obamite skeletons, too, are in need of desperate concealment: "Blackmail in Politics."
Comment by Henry Gallagher Fields: I don't expect anyone to successfully blackmail Hillary. Anyone who tried to use a skeleton in her closet would probably end up as a skeleton in a cornfield.March 6, 2008
• Jeff Tucker pens yet another piece at Mises that is both frisky and powerful in its attack on the totalitarian mentality: "Rain, Rain, Go Away."
He cites a movement on the Left that I was unaware of, linking to an article on it at Beliefnet. Here's a direct link: "Groups Hope to Make Bottled Water a Moral Issue," by Rebecca U. Cho. As they say, you can't make this stuff up. And as I say, it's just transparodistic.
March 6, 2008
• I'm headlining today's off-site picks with this grand-slam homer by Sheldon Richman at FEE: "The Crazy Arithmetic of Voting." It may save my having to gin up yet another anti-voting piece of my own during this year's electoral ceremonies. On the other hand, I may not be able to restrain myself.
February 16, 2008
• Though it was posted in November, and I really should have linked to it before this, it's not too late to alert you to these needle-sharp observations by Richman about the war criminal whom the Republicans apparently are going to nominate for emperor: "Woodstock May Have Saved Sen. McCain's Life." If I have any objection to this commentary, posted at Future of Freedom, it's that Richman is too kind to the raving thug.
February 16, 2008
• It's been a while since I've linked to a piece by Justin Raimondo over at Antiwar.com. Now it's time to redress that. A mailing from FFF has alerted me to this highly significant column of his, and I recommend it most highly: "The Rise of the Imperial Class." Editor's intro: "McCain is their avatar, and war is their mother's milk."
A taste: "While the civilian economy is shrinking, the military sector is expanding — and, if either of the eventual major party candidates have their way, the military expenditures will balloon. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are pledged to an even bigger U.S. military. It's good for business, if your business is war or war-related, and it's good for votes — especially the votes, active support, and political contributions of the growing group of Americans whose livelihoods, and claim to some sort of social status, depend on the continuation of our foreign policy of perpetual war."
February 16, 2008
• A tip o' the green eyeshade goes to senior editor Ronn Neff for letting me know about this one: "Moms passed AIDS virus to kids by pre-chewing their food," by Mike Stobbe of the Associated Press. My initial reaction: Wait ... They ... what, now? It isn't exclusively a Dark World phenomenon, according to Stobbe, who writes, "Three such cases were reported in the United States from 1993-2004, government scientists said...." Three cases then; three thousand, no doubt, to come.
February 16, 2008
• Save money — just use Western culture! Mr. Neff also alerted me to this AP piece by Robert Barr: "U.K. Campaign Targets Kid Repellents." Mr. Neff commented, "What a terrible waste of money, when all they had to do was play classical music."
Seriously, in the past some shopkeepers have played classical music in order to repel culturally deranged young savages. But isn't it a shame that those who have the best hearing won't listen to actual music?
February 16, 2008
• The campaign to suppress Kevin MacDonald and his work goes on, according to this February 7 piece by Andrew Smith in the Daily 49er (Cal State Long Beach):
"Psychology department to issue statement on professor's controversial literature"Editor's intro: "Staff and faculty are worried that psychology professor Kevin MacDonald's work has anti-Semitic and racist overtones."Without devoting an entire afternoon to the search, I tried to find something a little more recent but failed. The 49er, in particular, hasn't updated the story in nine days. I'd be grateful to anyone who could tip me to more-recent developments. We all need to track this.
February 16, 2008
• As the correspondent who alerted me to this controversy pointed out, leftist anticulture types are always "shocked! shocked!" when they discover that some don't agree with their party line:
"Sharia law row: Archbishop is in shock as he faces demands to quit and criticism from Lord Carey" (The Evening Standard; no byline)This Williams character, who for the moment is Archbishop of Canterbury, has achieved what I had thought was impossible — provoked a vigorous pro-Christian, pro-freedom reaction from within the Church of England!
February 16, 2008
• Dept. of Utopians in Action.
— Forgive me, but I just love this kind of thing:
"Study: Ethanol Worse for Climate than Gasoline," by Richard Harris at NPRNaturally this is written from a left-wing point of view and reflects the usual Global Warming obsession. What upsets me the most about ethanol fascism is what the subsidies are doing to livestock farmers and food prices for ordinary people.— Why, how is it possible that our benevolent and all-knowing Big Brother didn't foresee this?
"Low-water-use toilets might be too effective," by Tony Davis of the Arizona Daily StarFolk who believe that the state can successfully plan an entire economy and society, right down to toilet level, must be awfully low-flow, mentally. But some of the people who are actually doing the planning, and the tyrannizing, aren't low-flow utopian fools at all. They've got their grubby mitts locked around a faucet that gushes power, pelf, and privilege. You could even say that they're flushed with success. But now I've gone and over-metaphorized.
February 16, 2008
• Challenging the assertions of Clive Hamilton, an Australian "green socialist," Peter Saunders shows "Why Capitalism is Good for the Soul" in this piece at the Centre for Independent Studies.
A sample: "When I was a university teacher, I frequently encountered students who argued just as Clive does. We are too materialistic, they told me, we don't need all these possessions, we should stop the capitalist machine and devote our energies to better and higher pursuits. But whenever I asked them at what point in history they thought the machine should have been turned off, they would invariably reply, 'now!'"
In other words, not before now.
I can think of some American paleos who might profit from reading this piece.
February 6, 2008
• At FEE, Sheldon Richman provides analysis — incisive and highly readable as always — of the "stimulus" alchemy that our rulers are attempting to practice:
"Where Free-Market Economists Go Wrong"Thanks to Richman, we see again how radically people's ordinary thinking, which they must depend on to get through their day, differs from the magical variety of cognition that I call "statish thinking."
February 6, 2008
• Dept. of Myth. If we're talking myths, what seems to be a myth is the popular notion that people in Airstrip One are ever so much better educated than we Yanks. According to this brief dispatch from Agence France-Presse, "Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll."
In this context, the "Churchill myth" is unfortunately not what Churchill revisionists such as John Charmley, David Irving, or libertarian Ralph Raico might have in mind.
A special note. Until today I had not realized that Prof. Raico's Churchill series, "Rethinking Churchill," had been posted to the Net. Kudos to the Rockwell site! I heartily encourage you to hit the link above and read away.February 6, 2008
• This sort of dodge is probably inevitable in a society infested by the Thought Police and its slimy little friends: "In the U.S. south, is Canadian a new racial slur?," by Graeme Hamilton at the National Post, of Canada. Some acquaintances of mine have been known to use another euphemism to refer to a certain ethnic force that is often, shall we say, contextually unmentionable in polite company. (Sorry, I'm not going to spill those particular beans.)
People who have lived under other totalitarian systems will understand how careful one must be with one's language in today's imperial multicultural metropole.
Reader commentary on the National Post article may be found at American Renaissance News.February 6, 2008
• When it comes to noninterventionism, the imperialists just don't get it. Or at least they pretend not to. At the Independent Institute, Robert Higgs expertly lays waste to a whole assortment of canards, misrepresentations, non sequiturs, and simple idiocies: "Libertarian Foreign Policy in the Hobbesian Crosshairs: A Reply to Bret Stephens."
January 30, 2008
• And when it comes to expert layings-waste, the Mises Institute's Jeff Tucker plays in the same league as Higgs, as he demonstrates in this admirable essay: "How Free Is the 'Free Market'?" Tucker targets the Consensus World's persistent assumption, or claimed assumption, that we live under laissez-faire capitalism, and I know what he means when he writes that it "makes anyone versed in economic history crazy with frustration." His explanation of how the sheeple can fall for it has merit, but in my opinion it is not the whole story.
January 30, 2008
• Jacob Heilbrunn's revealing new book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, provokes nutritious comment in two forums:
— By Philip Weiss at The American Conservative: "The Long Fuse to the Iraq War"
— By Jim Lobe at Inter Press Service: "Neocons Shaken, but Not Deterred"
January 30, 2008
• At Chronicles, Thomas Fleming hints that he is feeling more and more like a foreigner in his own country — just as I am — taking as his text the System's mourning over the death of the actor Heath Ledger: "Strangers in a Strange Land."
A taste: "The least depressing conclusion I draw from all the coverage of Britney, Lindsay, OJ, and now Heath is that elections mean nothing. People who care who the next American Idol will be or who will win Dancing with the Stars could not be trusted to elect the board members of the Parks Department, much less the temporary dictator of an empire of
300 million people." And yet they are so trusted. And they just won't stop voting. And, needless to say, the System labors relentlessly to cozen, or bribe, even more of them into voting.
I add two peripheral comments. Ledger's "ex-fiancée" Michelle Williams, with whom he produced an illegitimate child, has served the System's homosexualist agenda just as her mate did, though neither was actually a homosexual. Williams appeared not only in Ledger's homosexual-cowboy movie but also in an HBO homosexualist film, "If These Walls Could Talk 2," in which she played a lesbian. Naturally it was that performance that first garnered praise, from the System's scribblers, for Williams as a serious actress.
Now to Fleming's mention of "watching Charlie Gibson recite his ungrammatical and mispronounced platitudes on the nation's loss." Have you noticed, as I have, that the tele-heads are losing such command of grammar as they ever had, and, indeed, the ability even to construct an unscrambled sentence? The other day a young MSNBC commentator described her lack of engagement in the Hillary-Barack fight thus: "I don't have a dog in that pony." The malapropism is hilarious, inspiring at least two exotic images; but what are we coming to, when the tele-heads no longer have a grasp of the basic clichés?
January 30, 2008
• The totalitarians whom we permit to dwell among us will use any excuse to violate property rights and any excuse to terrorize ordinary peaceful people, as this entry at the Washington Post blog illustrates: "Preservation Police: Lock the Doors!," by Marc Fisher. The atrocity here occurred in 2003, but Fisher reports that the Central Government courts have now upbraided this particular department of the D.C. KGB. As I always exclaim in such contexts, So that's all right, then! Now Americans can continue forcibly exporting Freedom and Democracy, U.S. style, in good conscience.
January 30, 2008
• In this Los Angeles Times piece I find confirmation of something I had already started to suspect: "Girl, you'll be a woman sooner than expected," by Susan Brink. Editor's intro: "Puberty is arriving ever younger in American females — 8 is no longer considered abnormal."
Senior editor Ronn Neff comments, "The story mostly attributes this earlier maturation to better health and diet. But don't Third World girls (the ones featured on the Travel Channel, for instance) also become ready to produce babies fairly young? I don't get it." As for me, though I'm interested in exploring the effect of culture on biology, for now I restrict myself to observing: Strange days; strange days indeed.
January 30, 2008
• Though I fear that the Ron Paul campaign — and especially the success of its fund-raising — is a disaster for the freedom community, Dr. Paul certainly has many of the right enemies. At VDare, the muscular Steve Sailer swings his claymore at them, to good effect: "Marty Peretz vs. Ron Paul. Kids (and 'Mentor') vs. Grown-Ups."
Here's the original New Republic piece by James Kirchick: "Angry White Man." Subhead: "The bigoted past of Ron Paul."
At the American Conservative, W. James Antle III recognizes Paul's enemies but also identifies an inherent problem involving some of Dr. Paul's friends, as well as the candidate's own inherent identity problem: "The Paleocon Dilemma ... / The Ron Paul campaign illustrates the choices facing the antiwar Right."
Comments by senior editor Ronn Neff:
I like this observation by Antle: "Left-Right coalitions are ... problematic. They almost never end up being dominated by the Right." That is a point that even Murray Rothbard never picked up on.January 16, 2008In any case, I think that certain minarchist libertarians who thought the Paul campaign was going to publicize libertarianism and give implicit libertarians a standard to rally around are now faced with the fact that, hereafter, any libertarians who are not "debonaire" compromisers (e.g., in the ambit of the Cato Institute or Reason magazine) will have to defend themselves against gibes such as, "So, are you a racist like Ron Paul?" or "Are you an anti-Semite like Ron Paul?"
The great irony is that the MSM have taken Ron Paul and have defined him away from plain-Jane minarchist libertarianism. Indeed, except for his constitutionalism, Ron Paul's libertarianism is defined by ... TLD.
•
January 11 was a very chilly day for me, and I'm not talking about the weather. I'd just seen the news conference by KGB Chairman Mikhail Chertoff on the national ID card when I came across this piece by James Bovard at CounterPunch: "Stomping freedom: Inside the Martial Law Act of 2006." We haven't sufficiently taken account of that atrocity here at TLD. This link helps redress that.Also at CounterPunch I find this account, by Paul Craig Roberts, of a more recent triumph of bipartisanship: "Thinking for Yourself Is Now a Crime." Supertitle: "Jane Harman and Liberty's Lost Light."
It seems beyond question now that the Bush regime — assisted by its "loyal opposition" — has placed itself in the top rank of those that have demolished "civil" liberty, alongside the Lincoln, Wilson, and F.D. Roosevelt regimes, leaving less-focused competitors such as the Nixon gang far behind.
January 16, 2008
• A dispatch at Expatica.com informs us of a declaration by an eminent Eurobureaucrat: "Cultural tolerance 'is not enough,' says EU culture commissioner." Editor's intro: "Europeans should create an 'inter-cultural society' in which interaction across cultural boundaries is the norm, the European Union's top cultural official said."
We'll have to see how assiduously the Mohammedans pursue this policy after they finish taking over Europe. (The piece is dated
January 4, 2007, but I think that's a mistake.)
January 16, 2008
• They do know how to get my goat: According to this Reuter dispatch by Robin Emmott, "Catholics play vital role in helping migrants to U.S."
A priest quoted by Emmott declares, "Migration is a human right." Indeed it is! But I can only wish the good father had a more consistent view of rights. For I have a right to keep my money from migrating, via the IRS, into the hands of the Catholic Church as it pursues the antiwhite demographic revolution in this country. Everything the Church does on this front is subject to being considered criminal as long as it accepts loot from the government.
January 16, 2008
• In the context of District of Columbia v. Heller, the Anti-Defamation League offers strange new support for old-line constitutionalists skeptical of the 14th Amendment: "ADL to Supreme Court: States Should Regulate Firearms." The ADL's principal goal, of course, is to keep "guns out of the hands of 'violent bigots.'" Alas, one fears that the ADL will not pursue its radical federalism once the current case is settled.
January 16, 2008
• The telescreen reported the other night that the California Authorities have now "tabled" this scheme, so I guess there's nothing to worry about: "State proposes to take control of home temps," by Bradley J. Fikes of the North County Times.
Actually, I'm sure the Red Guards and their Dark Suit employers aren't distressed overmuch by the public uproar provoked by this totalitarian idea. They have an unending supply of such ideas in the pipeline, and the sheeple will buy most of them if they're properly advertised. No doubt this plan to have the state seize control of Californians' thermostats will be untabled as soon as its proponents link it to some tax break, mortgage relief, or other inducement.
January 16, 2008
• The import of this AlterNet piece by Stephen Zunes won't come as a surprise to you, but Zunes does provide some valuable chapter-and-verse from the history of Hillary: "Hillary Clinton Can't Be Trusted on Iraq."
Hillary strikes me as a good example of a "moderate" Zionist whose room for maneuver was constricted after 9/11, when the Bush Likudniks started their push for war on behalf of Israel. No doubt her difficulty reflects that of her "moderate" Zionist backers, who didn't envision a Likudnik war against Iraq before 9/11 but now have to go along in order to get along. (Moderate, in the present context, is very much a relative term. In 1997, for instance, one had to recognize the Clintons as radically Zionist.)
Zunes does not mention Israel or Zionism in his piece, which will come as no surprise to Steve Sniegoski.
December 19, 2007
• From BBC News we learn of yet another calamity in the Dark Continent: "Tanzania fear over albino killing." Editor's intro: "Tanzania's Albino Society has accused the government of turning a blind eye to the killing of albinos, after four deaths in the past three months." As is the case with all other unhappy developments in Africa, we may be sure that it is white Westerners who are really guilty of these crimes.
December 19, 2007
• When charlatans meet ... At Chronicles, Thomas Fleming posts an amusing assessment of "The Oprah Obama Show."
December 19, 2007
• Also at Chronicles is an especially thoughtful piece by Prof. Clyde Wilson. A Christian friend of mine fears the eventual Muslimization of America, but I have always pooh-poohed the possibility, insisting that Muslimization is a European problem and that other cultural infections pose a threat to America that is much more exigent and dangerous. On the basis of Prof. Wilson's observations I now wonder whether I should reconsider:
"A Muslim America?"December 19, 2007
• Given the déclassé cultural choices of so many middle-class white youths, I have long assumed that middle-class black youths must experience special difficulty in turning out recognizably bourgeois. Now the Brookings Institution offers an analysis of Census figures suggesting that black youngsters with a middle-class background are more likely than their white counterparts to subside economically: "Economic Mobility of Black and White Families."
December 19, 2007
• This Agence France-Presse dispatch falls under the head of "No spit, Sherlock!" — if you know what I mean — but it's still good to have it on the record: "U.S. minorities don't trust each other." Actually, this part was news to me: "All three [colored] ethnic groups viewed white Americans in a more favorable light than they did members of another minority."
December 19, 2007
• Run! Mammoth dung! Just when I thought I'd heard the Goreites' entire repertoire of scare stories, Steve Sniegoski tipped me to this one: "Mammoth dung, prehistoric goo may speed warming," by Dmitry Solovyov at Reuters.
Now the funny thing is that, heretofore, the Greens have always had good things to say about methane as an alternative fuel. I thought we might be getting into some analysis of that when I saw this claim by one of Solovyov's sources: "The deposits of organic matter in these soils are so gigantic that they dwarf global oil reserves." But the piece doesn't mention the possibility of capturing the (notional) methane as a resource. Do I smell some anti-economic premises bubbling under the permafrost?
December 19, 2007
• This piece by Paolo Caruso at Information Clearinghouse is written from a left-wing point of view, but it reminds me of what I wrote toward the end of Dark Suits and Red Guards about the uses of disorder: "The U.S. Middle Class Meets the Bloods and the Crips." Outer Party members, bad things can happen to you in ultra-violent Lumpen Land if you don't obey!
By the way, it is not necessary to postulate a cabal of cackling investment bankers, engineering every detail of this dynamic from the 53rd floor of Rockefeller Center. Certain political-cultural-economic phenomena emerge naturally from certain political-cultural-economic systems. General management is all that is necessary to make most things fall into place for our masters.
December 19, 2007
• I save the best for last, and I hereby award it a rave review. Jeff Tucker spent some time in court recently, and now, on the Mises site, he mashes a pie into the face of our minarchist cousins who defend a statized justice industry: "Victims on Trial: The Everyday Business of Courts." We must never forget that the state is a criminal gang, and this report by friend Tucker is a spicy and powerful aide-mémoire.
December 19, 2007
• Last time in this space I took note of the latest frightening Census figures, and now Steve Sailer at VDare frightens us anew by examining some recent numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics: "Diversity Is Strength! It's Also ... 2006's Demographic Death Spiral."
A taste: "The demographic good news for a number of years had been that black fertility was finally headed toward racial equality with white fertility. (You are in favor of racial equality, aren't you?)
".... But, ominously, the black 'total fertility rate' reversed its decline in 2006."
December 14, 2007
• Senior editor Ronn Neff prefaced his tip to this one by writing, "The fruit of free speech is Auschwitz." I thought it was just a sardonic gem, but as it turns out, it's a close paraphrase of something quoted in this Washington Post dispatch: "White Nationalist Group's Meeting Prompts Protest," by Fredrick Kunkle. Editor's intro: "Jewish Defense Organization Urges Herndon Hotel to Halt 'Neo-Nazi' Conference in February."
The demonic gathering referred to is the American Renaissance Conference.
You've got to stick with the story to the end to see how the Jewish Defense Organization — which is the adversarial outfit here — has been characterized, along with what group did the characterizing.
Information on the AR Conference appears here, and if you wish to register on line, you'll find a link leading you to the proper page.
December 14, 2007
• The irrepressible Fred Reed is scheduled to speak at the AR Conference, and as one of my correspondents observes, he seems to be warming up for it in this piece: "Learning from Diversity." It involves a racial horror story from Baltimore that will probably not inspire an investigative series on CNN or a propaganda movie on Showtime.
The subtitle is "The Case for Expatriation," although Reed never actually makes that case in the article. Still, I have to point out that Ronn Neff made the definitive case against the dictatorial policy of repatriation in his 1997 classic, "Repatriating the West."
December 14, 2007
• Writing at the Occidental Observer, Robert Griffin offers "Advice to Racially Conscious Whites under Fire." This subject calls for much more examination, and in fact we need to do more with it here at TLD.
I find this especially compelling: "Put your mind and body in the best condition possible. If you have some physical or mental issue, habit, addiction, whatever it is, that is getting in your way, get it out of your way, starting now. " Such things will get indeed in our way; moreover, any skeletons in our closet afford our prowling adversaries an easy means of destroying us while at the same time (under today's climate of illogic) discrediting our arguments.
December 14, 2007
• At Future of Freedom, Sheldon Richman writes trenchantly of "Iran's Phantom Nukes," and along the way he asks an excellent question: "Why is it dangerous for Iranians to know how to make a nuclear weapon (assuming they do) but not Americans?" Of course the ingenious Prof. Chimp would reply, "Because them's Evildoers, and us Amurkins is Good-doers!"
December 14, 2007
• From the Left, AlterNet's Jeremy Brecher and Brendan L. Smith ask: "Have Pelosi and Dem Leaders Been Complicit in Bush's Torture Policy Since 2002?" Beyond the effects of general moral degradation, a crucial factor here is the power of Zionism among "respectable" Democrat pols.
December 14, 2007
• Here's some more analysis, also from the Left, on complicity, or collusion, or — as the Goody Two-shoes types like to call it — civic-minded bipartisanship: "Cave Dwellers: More Democratic Deceit on War and Torture," by Chris Floyd at Atlantic Free Press. I relish the spectacle of all these leftists' savaging the Democracy.
December 14, 2007
• The moral slide continues, as demonstrated in this piece by Tanya Caldwell at the Orlando Sentinel: "Breaking rules necessary to get ahead, teens say." Editor's intro: "Some condone lying, cheating, and violence in an ethics survey." Fans and defenders of the Zeitgeist will reply that a large proportion of teens have always cheated and acted up, it was just underreported in the past, nothing has changed, yadda yadda yadda. But even if that is true, did youngsters in the past freely admit and try to justify their dishonesty and savagery?
December 14, 2007
• Meanwhile the Red Guards, ever tireless, continue their progressive, humanitarian, compassionate work: "Students Learn Lessons of Physical Challenges," by Nicole Barbano of the Staunton, Va., News Leader.
Unintentional humor and unintentional truth emerge side by side in this quote from one of the school's consultants: "The activities we're doing here are meant to make learning difficult."
Modine Herbey comments: It's nice to know there's at least one state-run middle school out there all of whose students can find their country on a world map and name the sides that fought in the Revolutionary War. No Jaywalkers there! Otherwise the teachers wouldn't be spending time on this frippery ... right?December 14, 2007
• At The New York Times we find an account by Mark Mazzetti of the astonishing news involving Iran: "U.S. Says Iran Ended Atomic Arms Work." Ended it, indeed, in 2003! In his news conference today, the Wee Emperor confirmed that none of his intelligence wallahs or aides explained the findings to him or suggested that he lower the volume when he was promoting terror about World War III a few weeks ago. That is further evidence that the little man is not among the top power players in his own administration.
Even more remarkably, Bush said that the revelations make no difference to his policy — "my opinion hasn't changed" — which indicates that, so far as he is concerned, the justifications for that policy are nonfalsifiable. But I suppose we already knew that.
Stop Press. The media are now reporting that Bush was briefed about the import of the new information at an early point.December 4, 2007It appears, then, that the wretched man just lied.
Of course, lying and being a pawn of powerful liars are in no way contradictory.
• In a cover article for The American Conservative, Scott McConnell assesses the impact of Mearsheimer and Walt's book: "The Lobby Strikes Back." Editor's intro: "A new book riles the AIPAC crowd, but makes it to the bestseller list anyway."
McConnell engages unnecessarily in some water-muddying midway through, and of course he doesn't mention the vast research accomplished by our own Steve Sniegoski long before we ever heard from Mearsheimer and Walt; but this piece is still very much worth reading.
December 4, 2007
• It goes on, and on and on it goes: "9-year old suspended for 'hate crime,'" by Robert Anglen at the Arizona Republic. Get a load of the mandatory public confession — very progressive, comrades! But not so progressive is the state official's telling the boy that it was OK for him to harbor thoughtcrime so long as he kept it inside his skull — that telling is in itself thoughtcrime! The official must surely lose her membership in the Outer Party, and forthwith.
Raising this black (or brown) comedy to the level of art is the name of the children's prison where it all happened: Abraham Lincoln Traditional School.
December 4, 2007
• On the Left, AlterNet's Joshua Holland writes "In Defense of Ron Paul." Editor's intro: "Ron Paul's a wingnut, yes, but he's an anti-empire, anti-war wingnut who doesn't believe the president should be king."
Along the way, Holland claims that Dr. Paul has "introduced four bills, including a Constitutional amendment, defining human life as beginning with conception." I thought that was worth checking out, because if it were true it would undermine Dr. Paul's old-time federalism; so I consulted an aide to Dr. Paul who has worked for him for 11 years. The aide replied: "Maybe [he did] in the seventies, but the only pro-life legislation Ron has introduced since I have been working for him restricts federal jurisdiction over abortion and forbids federal funding of abortion."
December 4, 2007
• As I have mentioned before, the scandal of purported libertarians' supporting Bush's War is one of the reasons I have pretty much dropped the word libertarian. Writing at EconLog, Bryan Caplan asks: "Why Did So Many Libertarians Support the War?" and offers some possible answers.
Some of the blog responses to the piece are more interesting than others, but here's one that illustrates the ahistorical approach of most responders: "My attitude is that wars are like hurricanes, or other massive destructions of physical and human resources, they happen with a certain regularity, and one adjusts one's behavior accordingly." A freeman's proper education — including some study of the political and imperial history of the past hundred years, at least — would correct the view that wars just happen.
If I were still inclined to mount a stout defense of the term libertarian, I'd award a full three cheers to the blog-responder who wrote: "No libertarians supported the Iraq war."
December 4, 2007
• No doubt you've heard something about the latest Census figures involving immigration. Investor's Business Daily posts this account: "Wave of Illegals Turns into Tsunami" (no byline). Whatever our beliefs about state power and the proper response to the deluge of colored aliens, we ought to be aware of the statistics making the rounds, even if they're untrue. I don't automatically lend credence to government number-crunching.
I do find these figures all too believable: "Nationwide,
40 percent of all households headed by illegal aliens use one or more major welfare programs. The share in cash programs is actually quite small — less than1 percent. But33 percent of all illegal households get food aid, and another27 percent are on Medicaid." And: "States together spend$20 billion a year on illegals' welfare costs alone."Now, in light of those revelations — assuming they're true — should those worried about the colored deluge demand an increase in government power or a decrease in government power?
December 4, 2007
• That pro-market freak of the mainstream media, John Stossel, proposes some alternatives to the Coercive Global Refrigeration agenda in this posting at TheAtlasphere.com: "Free Market Solutions to Global Warming." Stossel's observations are more moderate than anything you're likely to see here at TLD, but it's nice to know that someone else is in the same book, if not on exactly the same page.
December 4, 2007
• Two urban Democratesses are sponsoring a bill that is not finding favor among hunters in the Buckeye state: "Proposal Will Grab Guns from Young Adults and Youth in Ohio" (U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance). Apparently the Democratesses think their proposal — which would restrict the freedom of hunters of ages 18-20 — has something to do with suppressing urban crime, as well as gun accidents. Sometimes leftists and other totalitarians, whirling dizzily within the confines of their own obsessions, just appear ridiculous when they grab for more power. I hope this is one of those times.
December 4, 2007
• Anti-fascists, awaken! Courtesy of NY Protest Calendar, we learn: "White supremacist conference to be held in DC area in February!" Yes, fellow fraternal fighters, "in 2008, neo-nazis and racist bigots will be planning more racist terror at the American Renaissance Conference." More racist terror! Initially I thought this might be anti-leftist satire, but it's for real.
It's funny, but when anyone who's not a free-market absolutist uses the term anti-fascist, you know you're dealing with Commies. These Commies say: "In the spirit of the anti-fascists that [sic] came before us, let's shut these racists down by any means necessary." I plan to attend, and I'm not too worried. At the last AR conference I attended, the hotel efficiently banned protesters from its property, and that property included acres of parking lot. I never even saw any of the freedom-hating goofballs.
Actual information on the conference appears here, and if you wish to register on line, you'll find a link leading you to the proper page.
If you attend, please look me up and buy me a drink.
December 4, 2007
• Neocon or no neocon, Mark Steyn has penned another tremendously interesting piece — he's good when he sticks to culture or demographics — and I recommend it most highly. It prods me to get back to work on my long-envisioned article about today's Aesthetic of Ugliness:
"Twenty years ago today"It's posted at The New Criterion.
November 27, 2007
• I like gut-punching last lines. At Future of Freedom, Bart Frazier delivers a winner, winding up a short but resonant cri de coeur: "Heading Towards the Police State."
November 27, 2007
• TLDers may not agree with the folks at VDare about the solutions, but the latter do have a talent for pointing out the problems:
— As we know, the Red Guards never sleep, they never rest, and they never keep their filthy mitts off America's vulnerable youngsters for long. John Derbyshire writes: "Diversity Boot Camp Closed at the University of Delaware — but Big Brother Is Still Going Strong." A taste: "Untold thousands of people have their careers invested in this gibberish: not only outright babbling lunatics ... but bland, cheerful middle-class careerists — pod people, whose nervous systems have been taken over by alien intelligences."November 27, 2007— Stay away! Stay the hell away! would be my advice, but the Civil Rights Authorities won't let us: "Penicillin Is No Match for Immigration," by Edwin S. Rubenstein.
• Writing at the Washington Times, Donald Lambro reports some survey results that remind us that the ruling class is by no means a Republican preserve: "Study: Democrats the party of the rich."
I don't find the business about the "wealthiest congressional districts" as significant as the mentions of Democrat-subsidizing bankers and hedge-fund managers. Again I express my wish that G. William Domhoff would produce an updated version of his 1970s thought-provoker Fat Cats and Democrats. (The Dark Suits, of course, lined up pretty solidly behind Bill Clinton in his 1996 campaign against the zombie Baaab Dooole.)
November 27, 2007
• Freedom of expression goes global ... errr ... ahhh ...
"Vanity Fair sued over neo-Nazi interview" (Jerusalem Post, no byline)November 27, 2007
• Courtesy of Medical News Today we learn: "Study Finds White Children More Positive Toward Blacks after Learning about Racism." However — and I know this will shock you — black children, similarly educated, do not display more-positive attitudes toward whites.
As you read, remember that this piece appears at a site called Medical News Today, in a department called Children's Health News. Do you not hear the specter of the Soviet psychiatric clinic rattling its chains?
November 27, 2007
• There's another "zero tolerance" movement afoot among our supervisors, according to the Denver Post's David Harsanyi, writing at Reason: "Prohibition Returns! / Teetotaling do-gooders attack your right to drink." Make sure to catch the confessions forthcoming from the founder of MADD.
November 21, 2007
• The Noose News:
— At the The Detroit News, Paul Egan writes: "NAACP: Feds must toughen noose law." In alerting me to this, senior editor Ronn Neff wrote: "I didn't know there were any noose laws to be toughened!" Neither did I. Once again, things are moving too fast for us to keep up with.November 21, 2007— At MyFox Kansas City.com, Tess Koppelman writes: "Students Suspended for Talking about Nooses" — and if you haven't already, you should now start feeling the noose tightening around your neck.
• Speaking of free expression here in the Yankee Colossus, that great exporter of Duh-MOCK-risy to the world, I offer this op-ed by Ralph E. Shaffer and R. William Robinson of the Baltimore Sun: "Here come the thought police." It deals with the so-called Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which is zooming through Congress.
Any time a story starts out, "With overwhelming bipartisan support ...," you know you'd better head for the hills. And any time you see "Joe Lieberman" and "Homeland Security" in the same sentence, you know you'd better run.
Oh, never mind. According to the story, the bill "clearly states that no measure to prevent homegrown terrorism should violate 'constitutional rights, civil rights or civil liberties.'" So that's all right, then. However, David T. Wright, who tipped me to this piece, does have one little question: "Is freedom from waterboarding a constitutional right, a civil right, or a civil liberty?"
November 21, 2007
• Paulists, watch out! The fire-rimmed Eye of Sauron has turned in your direction, according to this dispatch from the Jewish Telegraph Agency: "ADL taking concerns to Ron Paul" (no byline). But the Paul apparat may take comfort in the fact that at least one Establishment-designated Hate Site, TLD, will not be endorsing him. (We endorse no one for the post of Emperor.)
November 21, 2007
• Dept. of True Crime. A rash of armed robberies broke out in Idaho on
November 15, as a band of violent criminals made away with considerable quantities of real money on behalf of a giant counterfeiting ring based in Washington, D.C. The thugs also attacked a business in Evansville, Ind."FBI raids seize dies, records in CdA [Coeur d'Alene] / Operation targets 'Liberty Dollar,'" by Bill Morlin at SpokesmanReview.comI have to sound another alert for the Paulists, as Morlin writes: "The organization was about to begin selling and distributing 'Ron Paul' dollars."
November 21, 2007
• This is speculation, but it seems to be of the informed sort: "What World War III May Look Like," by Philip Giraldi at Antiwar.com. Former CIA officer Giraldi writes, "It might be useful to imagine just how war with Iran could play out if the Iranians don't roll over and surrender at the first whiff of grapeshot," and he goes right ahead and imagines.
November 21, 2007
• Paul Tibbets, Jr., a very important American indeed, died
November 1. At The Independent Institute, Anthony Gregory assesses this particular member of the "Greatest Generation," beginning with a comparison of how he died with how his victims died: "The Man Who Bombed Hiroshima."Gregory is not as radical as I on the question of Tibbets, but his account is still very much worth reading.
November 15, 2007
• It is imperative, for our rulers, that their subjects not be able to think economically. At the Mises site, Jeff Tucker manfully attempts to break through the ignorance, and we, at least, will benefit from his keen analysis: "The Other Side of the Transaction."
November 15, 2007
• At American Renaissance, Jared Taylor shows admirable patience in discussing the latest "achievement gap" smudge-out, convening this week in Sacramento: "Race/IQ Explanation Gap at 'Achievement Gap Summit.' " But what he writes still requires me to attach a Thoughtcrime Alert, of course. (The piece was originally posted at VDare.)
November 15, 2007
• Ronn Neff, who alerted me to this Chicago Tribune piece, wrote that he knew I'd appreciate its even-handed tone. I certainly do: "Illegal abroad, hate Web sites thrive here," by Russell Working. Subtitle: "1st Amendment lets fringe groups use U.S. sites to spread their message around the world."
Like other mainstream writers, Working is careful to concentrate on sites that can be accused of endorsing violence; but there's no doubt that if U.S. laws and practices were as democratic, fraternal, and peaceloving as those of Progressive Europe and Canada, The Last Ditch itself would be long gone, and Neff and I, along with the other TLDers, would be residing behind the wire. You might be, too. (I give us about five years.)
November 15, 2007
• Chutzpah unbound, on both sides: "U.S. to purchase $700m worth of arms from Israel," by Yitzhak Benhorin. Posted at YnetNews.
November 15, 2007
• Well, of course not! At the Jerusalem Post: "Israel won't be included in new genocide probes," by Hilary Leila Krieger.
November 15, 2007
• At Mises, David Gordon writes a useful review of Glenn Greenwald's A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency:
"The Manichean President"My own opinion is that, whatever Bush's ideology may truly be, his handlers and controllers have exploited it for their own very different purposes. And that they are phlegmatically shrug-prone about whether his presidency has been "destroyed."
November 11, 2007
• Meanwhile, William Astore of Tomdispatch.com argues that "The Bush Administration Plans to Blame You for Iraq." Astore persuasively draws some historical parallels. (The piece is at AlterNet.)
November 11, 2007
• I'm always nervous about linking to anything at the Weekly Standard — that fortress of our Adversary — but P.J. O'Rourke unfortunately writes for it, and this piece of his must not be missed: "Generation Vex: The (really) long goodbye of the Baby Boomers."
November 11, 2007
• At the Village Voice, Nat Hentoff surveys the current condition of the United State's "separation of powers," which, as we know, is always highly touted as an impenetrable bulwark of our liberties:
"Bush's Man Mukasey: Will the Supreme Court also bow low to the president?"One wonders whether the religious rightists who are so concerned about a Republican president's appointing "good judges" care whether those judges will wind up ratifying torture and unconstitutional imprisonment. Perhaps someone should ask Pat Robertson, who has just endorsed Rudy Giuliani.Hentoff identifies Mukasey as Giuliani's "close friend and, until his nomination, his adviser on constitutional matters during Giuliani's presidential campaign." Another friend of Mukasey is the Democrat senator from New York, Charles Schumer, who, it is fair to say, lacks a sterling record of opposing torture.
November 8, 2007
• The TLD stalwart who tipped me to this piece from the Kennebec (Maine) Journal Morning Sentinel observed along the way that it's "yet one more step toward making 'hate' a crime." Indeed:
"Man charged with hate crime," by Doug HarlowNovember 8, 2007
• At VDare, Nicholas Stix offers an extensive assessment of a certain black-on-white atrocity that Minitrue has smudged out: "The Knoxville Horror: Crime, Race, the Media, and 'Anti-Racism.' " Stix takes a little detour into Jewish matters, but it's probably necessary, given the awkward involvement, in the protests, of Alex ("No Jews, just right") Linder.
November 8, 2007
• Karen Kwiatkowski, honorable fugitive from the Imperial Colossus and unterrified interviewer of our own Steve Sniegoski, is on fire: "What the Neocons Need." Her fierce blaze glows at the Rockwell site.
November 3, 2007
• Justin Raimondo isn't exactly lukewarm in this piece at Antiwar.com: "'Invade and Bomb With Hillary and Rahm' / Why war with Iran is likely." He cites the stomach-churning results of the Zogby Poll, according to which
"52 percent of the American people favor attacking Iran to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons."
November 3, 2007
• I am advised that the Red Guard assault that is the subject of this package has now been abandoned — in this particular guise, and for the time being. So that's all right, then! No more worries!
"University of Delaware Requires Students to Undergo Ideological Reeducation" (news release from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education)Perhaps I'd just been anticipating the nightmare, but I'd assumed that such programs had long since been cemented in at all dorms at all state universities. And probably some "private" ones, too. (Let's keep checking.)"Brave New Schools / University to students: 'All whites are racist,' " by Bob Unruh at WorldNetDaily.com. Editor's intro: "Mandatory program 'treats' politically incorrect attitudes."
November 3, 2007
• Speaking of things that are Brave and New in the Huxleyite sense, here's a dispatch by Peter Fimrite of the San Francisco Chronicle that may have you reaching for the Soma: "Children detach from natural world as they explore the virtual one."
November 3, 2007
• Tipping me to this piece in the Daily Mail (of London), senior editor Ronn Neff quoted Pythonite Graham Chapman's tagline: "This bit has just gotten silly!" Yep:
"'Racism' protests over the high street hanging [of] black mannequins," by Luke SalkeldUnlike Jack Woltz in "The Godfather," the Nut Left and Colored Hystericon can afford to be made to look ridiculous. Unfortunately, that says more about us than it does about them.
November 3, 2007
• Too much bleakness? Well, this one's just for fun, y'all (or youse, as the case may be): "Yankee or Dixie?" — a dialect quiz.
November 3, 2007
• At VDare, Steve Sailer smites the O'Briens who seek to kill our mind: "James D. Watson: Broken by the PC Inquisition, Betrayed by the Righteous Right." One thing I like about Sailer's writing is the variety of citations and analogies he brings to bear. However, the business at the very end, about Galileo and the effect of his troubles on science in Italy, is balderdash. That said, there's no doubt that we are on the threshold of our own Dark Age.
October 29, 2007
• The drive to define Hate Crime as a stand-alone offense, European style, won a frightening victory in New York state last week: "New York Considers Anti-Noose Law," by Michael Gormley. This is an AP dispatch posted at AOL.com.
October 29, 2007
• Let's call this the Evil Schools Package:
— "Is That 4-Year-Old Really a Sex Offender?," by Yvonne Bynoe at the Washington Post. My opinion, as an out-of-touch Old American: A 4-year-old should not be in school in the first place.America's parents must abandon the state schools as if fleeing a forest fire — and may no child be left behind!— "Boy Suspended for Watergun Drawing." Posted at 11alive.com; no byline.
— "Maine middle school to offer birth control" (Associated Press, found at CNN.com). Apparently this is one of those thoroughly modern state institutions that's part school and part medical clinic. Now we see where that innovation of the welfare state can lead.
— This one is from 2005, but I first heard about it last week: "Explicit pamphlets displayed at school / Health center regrets mistake," by Joanna Weiss of the Boston Globe.
Another view of the "mistake": "Group Caught Giving Kids Graphic Homosexual Booklet," by Robert Knight at Concerned Women for America.
— Here's a similar horror story that's a little more current: "Pro-Family Groups to Appeal Against Md. Pro-Gay Sex Ed Curriculum," by Doug Huntington of the Christian Post.
October 29, 2007
• Meanwhile, columnist Mark Morford of SFGate.com writes: "American kids, dumber than dirt / Warning: The next generation might just be the biggest pile of idiots in U.S. history." Morford is obviously a liberal, which makes this piece even more interesting. Wait 'til you get to the part about using the rulers.
October 29, 2007
• Have you heard of Chalmers Johnson? Writing at The Nation, Stephen Holmes offers an overview of his thought, from Chalmers's third book on the U.S. Empire, Nemesis. Holmes's piece is "Apocalypse Now?"
As you read this excerpt, keep in mind the March of the Jaywalkers as described by columnist Morford: "[Johnson] almost begs his American readers to imagine what it would be like to have foreign soldiers stationed on bases inside the United States, molesting teenage American girls and running over American pedestrians while driving drunk. That anyone is listening is doubtful, however, which is why Johnson, in the end, lodges no more hope in American citizens than in the Congress they periodically elect."
October 29, 2007
• At the Rockwell site, the man himself takes an anti-statist look at the California conflagrations: "Land Socialism: Playing With Fire." Along the way, for benefit of those of us who are still pro-human, Rockwell formulates a fundamental law of reality: "We thrive and rule nature, or nature rules and eats us alive."
October 29, 2007
• It's really happening. Not yet in America, but in Airstrip One: "UK Police Visit Priest to Discuss Views on Radical Muslims," by Kevin McCandless of the Cybercast News Service. But don't get too upset. The Thought Police didn't actually haul the good father away; they just had a polite chat with him. So freedom of expression is unimpaired!
October 20, 2007
• This is happening here, thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger, working hand in hand with the Red Guards of the California legislature to terminate what little remains of Western culture: "'Mom' and 'Dad' banished by California." This is an unbylined exclusive at WorldNetDaily. Subtitle: "Schwarzenegger signs law outlawing terms perceived as negative to 'gays.'"
Fans of fairy tales will delight in this latest triumph of decentralist American federalism, which creates a diverse assortment of "laboratories of freedom" across our land. As the article explains, "Analysts have warned that schools across the nation will be impacted by the decision, since textbook publishers must cater to their largest purchaser, which often is California, and they will be unlikely to go to the expense of having a separate edition for other states."
Meanwhile, millions upon millions of white Westerners continue to consign their children to the state schools.
October 20, 2007
• I never expect a high-toned lit'ry type to emit much in the way of good sense, so I find this piece by Doris Lessing remarkable: "Questions You Should Never Ask a Writer." It's at the New York Times.
A taste: "The phrase political correctness was born as Communism was collapsing. I do not think this was chance. I am not suggesting that the torch of Communism has been handed on to the political correctors. I am suggesting that habits of mind have been absorbed, often without knowing it."
October 20, 2007
• Despite her "anti-Semitism" crisis, Ann Coulter has not yet been shipped off to re-education camp, as this piece proves: "Another Liberal Noose-ance." Now here's the stunner: it is still possible to get such articles published by the timorous Human Events! Could it be that the editorial board automatically reacts in favor of a piece when they see that it beats up on "liberals"?
October 20, 2007
• At American Renaissance, Jared Taylor weighs in to good effect on the latest disgusting shriekfest over racial differences in intelligence: "Watson Recants."
"Watson," of course, is Dr. James Watson, pioneer investigator of DNA and Nobel Prize winner. As Taylor notes, Watson has been suspended from his administrative responsibilities at the lab where he works. He's an old man now, and we should be grateful that he did not get himself into Negro trouble when he was still young and working hard to achieve scientific breakthroughs. But the example stands for young scientists who may find themselves pursuing actual truth in contradiction to Official Truth. Taylor imagines them asking: "If they made one of the most famous names in science grovel, what will they do to me?" Darkness continues to fall — right on schedule.
At the Independent: "As he arrives in Britain, DNA pioneer breaks his silence on racism row," by Steve Connor, Cahal Milmo, and Amol Rajan.October 20, 2007
• Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Ayn Rand's masterpiece, Sheldon Richman posts this exquisitely focused essay at FEE: "Atlas Shrugged and the Corporate State."
He writes: "What sometimes goes unappreciated by readers of the novel is the extent to which Rand targeted business people as potentially the most egregious saboteurs of freedom."
October 15, 2007
• At the Jerusalem Post, Nathan Burstein assesses a recent article of concern: "Jewish power dominates at 'Vanity Fair.'"
Here's the VF article itself: "The Vanity Fair 100: The 2007 New Establishment." Vanity Fair in fact understates Jewish power: the only members of its top 20 (24, actually) who may fairly be described as high-powered investment or banking types are Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group and Warren Buffett (a non-Jew, of course). Yet investment bankers, a disproportionately Jewish group, are the very presidium of the ruling class.
Near the end of his article, Burstein produces an authentic startler, referring to "a traditional Jewish aversion to political power." That cries out for an intelligible context.
October 15, 2007
• Winning this month's Nifty Title Award (for pieces not resident at TLD) is this highly dangerous article at the American Conservative by Philip Weiss: "Surge Protectors." Subtitle: "The mixed motives behind the Freedom's Watch ad campaign."
October 15, 2007
• Writing at the Telegraph, Boris Johnson asks: "How can we let children live in fear?" Apparently Airstrip One's civil-disarmament decrees, which might make Stalin blush, are somehow failing to protect peaceloving people. Rappers have now been enlisted to help with the propaganda:
And then it was the climax of the show, and a hip-hop group called Green Jade came on, and started singing a very catchy number all about what it was like to be caught in the crossfire. It was called Brah-kah-kah, and on the instructions of Wizdom, the lead singer, we all started waving peace signs in the air."Peace signs" — even more stuff you just can't make up! Those poor Brits.I wonder why it is that modern people, who are supposed to be so sophisticated and so much smarter than their dumbhead ancestors, are so insensible to idiom. The primitive brutality of the rappers' idiom is far more palpable and powerful than any "progressive" lyrics the "singers" may condescend to chant.
October 15, 2007
• Mean girls, redux. Four coeds at Ball State University, right here in my Hoosier homeland, have fully absorbed the new Zeitgeist: "Women Accused of Beating Victim, Bragging on Web" (posted at TheIndyChannel.com, no byline). Their photos, aired by the telescreen, reveal three of the pugilistic young ladies to be white and one to be a light-skinned Negress. (A fifth woman took part in the assault but is not a Ball State student.) All of the coeds are respectable-looking, which I suppose demonstrates the worth of first impressions. Be careful out there.
October 15, 2007
• Sheldon Richman has penned another winner at FEE: "Government Failure." Richman demolishes the always-lurking utopianism of our statist adversaries — their fantastic assumption that government can or will do better than the market. I recommend this one most highly.
October 10, 2007
• Intellectual Ammunition Dept. Antiwar.com has posted a long but illuminating excerpt from Grant F. Smith's Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal:
"Where Did AIPAC Come From?"A sample: "It took millions of dollars of Israeli government and overseas funds and decades of effort to create the public relations, lobbying, and political juggernaut that now dominates in America."
October 10, 2007
• One of the usual suspects has been heard from, and in no uncertain terms, according to this dispatch in the Telegraph by Toby Harnden: "U.S. 'must break Iran and Syria regimes.'" The veteran warmonger, whose name may be familiar to TLD readers, is David Wurmser, "a leading neoconservative who has played a pivotal role in the Bush administration since the
September 11th attacks," and who recently resigned as Dick Cheney's advisor on wrecking the Muslim Middle East and murdering its inhabitants.
October 10, 2007
• I linked to this piece by Jared Taylor in a "Stop and think" installment, but it deserves a place on this page, too: "What Really Really Happened in Jena." It's at American Renaissance.
October 6, 2007
• Isn't it plainer than ever before that the policeman is not your friend? Or as David T. Wright might say, that "You are the Enemy"? At the Rockwell site, Paul Craig Roberts takes on "America's Police Brutality Pandemic," pointing out that "Americans are in far greater danger from their own police forces than they are from foreign terrorists."
October 6, 2007
• To develop the theme, here's a CNN story on the death of a disturbed woman, Carol Ann Gotbaum, at the Phoenix airport, keying on the cops' indifference or incompetence in the face of her husband's desperate attempts to save her: "Husband called airport on day wife died in cell" (no byline). A police flack says that his bumbling thugs are "very upset about what happened."
October 6, 2007
• Writing at CBS News, David Paul Kuhn opines: "Dems Must Woo White Men to Win." Editor's intro: "Flight of White Male Voters Away from Democrats Will Shape 2008 Election."
Whatever your position on the voting mania and the threat of the Cackling Witch, I think you'll find some interesting cultural commentary here, including this:
Today, many white men continue to feel disempowered, distant from liberal mores and unmoored from the stability that their fathers and grandfathers enjoyed. Like others, white men feel controlled by bosses and compelled by fiscal responsibility. They take on thankless work to meet their obligations, and it often creates a sense of compromised manhood.... For many, the definition of being a man has meant surrendering what one wants to do for what one must do. This has long been true. But modern liberalism no longer saw it that way. The hard life was said to be the easy life if one was born white and male.October 6, 2007
• This press release may seem a a bit dated (it's from May), but I was provoked to link to it by a disgustingly damp PSA that Big Pharma is running right now on the telescreen, for the children ... for the CHILDREN!
"PhRMA [sic] Launches National Campaign To Support SCHIP Reauthorization"I cannot think of a better illustration of how Dark Suit and Red Guard agendas converge.
October 6, 2007
• Yet another New Yorker piece by the indefatigable Seymour Hersh is making headlines: "Shifting Targets: The Administration's plan for Iran." Hersh maintains that the new target in Iran is the Revolutionary Guard Corps but that, once again, the glorious victory is to be accomplished through "surgical strikes" carried out by the Imperial air force.
Hersh quotes a "recently retired C.I.A. official" in this wise: "The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through." Have they not, really? I wouldn't be too sure about what the neocons have and have not thought through.
October 2, 2007
• As the TLDer who alerted me to this AP story exclaimed, "Leave it to South Carolina!"
"S.C. leads in single-gender classes," by Seanna AdcoxThe segregated classes are purportedly "tailored to the learning styles of each gender." However, I'm not holding my breath waiting for compassionate progressives, even in South Carolina, to recognize the sharply different "learning styles" (and abilities) of each race.
October 2, 2007
• Sheldon Richman knows how to push my buttons, and here he goes again, this time in a posting at FEE, where he edits The Freeman: "Pundit in Wonderland."
The chief button this time involves the leftist notion that we live in an environment of "stateless laissez-faire capitalism." When it comes to political-economy, the leftists really do live on a different mental planet from the rest of us, don't they?
Immigration-restrictionists will find some of Richman's analysis irritating. So sorry.
October 2, 2007
• I do try to give leftists their due, as demonstrated by my frequent linkings to articles at AlterNet. Here's another one, written by a fellow who, I believe, takes a dim view of what he takes to be "capitalism," but who also makes some ponderable assertions: "The Mega-Lie Called the 'War on Terror': A Masterpiece of Propaganda," by Richard W. Behan.
Cutting across some of the analysis here at TLD is Behan's claim that, at least to some extent, the interventions in both Iraq and Afghanistan were "wars for oil." He writes:
By early February [2001], Vice President Cheney's "Energy Task Force" was at work. Federal agency people were joined by executives and lobbyists from the Enron, Exxon-Mobil, Conoco-Phillips, Shell, and BP America corporations.Finally we see some specific oil companies mentioned in the context of the run-up to the Bush wars. But I'd like to see Behan's sources. And if Behan is reporting accurately, I'd like to know how Big Oil could possibly be so stupid, in encouraging the easily foreseeable wrecking of the oil patch.Soon the task force was poring over detailed maps of the Iraqi oil fields, pipelines, tanker terminals, refineries, and the undeveloped oil exploration blocks.
October 2, 2007
• The conclusions of this piece surprise me, but the writer, IQ investigator and thoughtcriminal J. Philippe Rushton, directly confronts the counterintuitive aspects: "Indians Aren't That Intelligent (on Average)." It's at VDare.
October 2, 2007
• That woman, who may well end up as our first Empress, has now tinkered with her stand on torture, ostensibly after consulting — of all people — retired Imperial generals!
"Hillary flip-flop on torture inspired after meeting generals," by Michael McAuliffMaybe it's just as well she didn't consult Imperial generals who are still on active, and bloody, duty. The piece is at the New York Daily News.
October 2, 2007
• In this American Renaissance piece, Jared Taylor reveals some important details about the Jena circus that I hadn't heard from the MSM, and I wouldn't be surprised if the same were true of you: "What Really Happened in Jena." Especially noteworthy is the nature of the "party" that the victim attended after his stomping by the Negroes.
September 24, 2007
• A characteristic attack on anti-statists ("libertarians") by a conservative writer prompts Anthony Gregory to turn the tables, in this fine essay at the Rockwell site: "The Cultural Contradictions of Statism."
A taste: "Just because we think it immoral and socially destructive to use violence against someone doing something peaceful doesn't mean we have to approve what he does. Drinking three bottles of whiskey a day is legal now. That doesn't mean it's a good idea. Is this really that hard to understand?"
On the basis of my own forty years of frustration with the statist mentality, I answer: Apparently it is that hard.
September 24, 2007
• Gregory's piece serves as a perfect context-setter for this AP story by Matthew Verrinder: "Cities Cracking Down on Saggy Pants." Vanity of vanities! — when giant government at all levels sets out to restore the culture it has done so much to wreck and sets out, as well, to make the leopard change his spots.
September 24, 2007
• This piece at AlterNet is thought-provoking, but it calls for a nuanced introduction. The gist is that the Resident Evil and Grand Theft Auto series of video games involve a good deal of hateful violence against persons of color. Interesting, if true; and if true, it's even more interesting that few adults seem to be aware of it. My idea is that, as justifiable white resistance is driven underground, much of it is likely to become degraded, especially among unparented, diseducated white boys who lack righteous and heroic role-models.
"'Resident Evil: Extinction' Flick Based on Racist Video Game Series," by Roberto LovatoI was surprised to learn that the Grand Theft Auto series has evolved toward celebrating anti-colored violence. My only knowledge of the GTA games is based on some TV coverage I saw a few years ago — both commercials and outraged commentary — but that coverage strongly suggested that the games celebrated savage violence by Negro street trash.
September 24, 2007
• Davidus Petræus: dux aut deus? Egad, judging from the outcry from the warhawk Right in response to criticism of this military bureaucrat and Imperial proconsul, you'd think that he'd once beaten back a mass invasion by twelve-tentacled creatures from Alpha Centauri. But according to this account by Larry Beinhart at AlterNet, his achievements have been decidedly more modest: "Petraeus: A Failure by His Own Standards."
September 21, 2007
• We're hearing soft murmurs about "national service" once again, and I am afflicted by the sick feeling that if we retain a Democrat Congress and acquire a Democrat presiden