A stacked deck

Further to my recent entry about the latest outbreak of PC mania at a university, this comment thread on the story at the David Thompson blog yielded this rather amusing link about 'Victimhood Poker'.

Victimhood Poker (VP) can trace its roots all the way back to the admissions department at Harvard University, where its constituent parts were invented back in 1978 following the U.S. Supreme Court's Bakke decision. In the interest of fairness and in order circumvent arbitrary admissions criteria such as scholastic performance and standardized test scores, sociologists at Harvard devised a brilliant system of using cards to assign a numerical value/ranking to applicants' physical features, sexual preference, religion, and/or gender. By enabling the University to avoid making admissions judgments tinged with ingrained and systemic Western racism/sexism/homophobia, the card-based admissions system was a huge success and it soon spread to other Ivy League schools such as Yale, Columbia, Brown, and Princeton.
[...]
One fateful day in 1996, a group of intoxicated freshman at the State University of New York- Oneonta broke into that college's admissions office looking for rolling papers and Doritos. Instead, they found the deck of victimization cards. Unsure what they were or what to do with them, the drunk freshmen stole the cards and took them back to their dorm. As legend has it, later that night over a carton of Marlboro light cigarettes and a case of warm Miller Genuine Draft, the freshman engaged in the first ever game of Victimhood Poker.''

We've all heard of the playing of the race card, and you can see the whole race deck at the link above.

It's amusing, but the fact is, real people's lives are affected by the use of this bogus system of penalizing the majority and rewarding 'underrepresented minorities' strictly based on their skin pigmentation. (Hey, I'm only repeating what I've been told so many times over the last 40 or so years: that race is only 'skin color' and nothing more. So why reward someone strictly for pigment in their skin? Isn't judging the content of their character supposedly desirable, according to a saint of the politically correct church?)

The value of the cards in the 'victimhood deck' displayed on the blog is based on the spoils system established by Harvard, which awarded points based on race and sexual orientation as well as sex, male or female. However, the hierarchy they established by that points system is not exactly analogous to the de facto hierarchy of victimhood. If I had to re-order the list, I would say that black trumps all, with Hispanic second these days, followed by Moslems, an up-and-coming contender for the crown. The rest of the hierarchy I would leave as it is, considering that it seems to reflect the real-life value accorded to the various victim groups, and their position on the PC totem pole.

American Indians take a fairly low position on the totem pole (irony intended), perhaps indicating their relative fewness in number, compared to the ever-burgeoning Hispanic population and the very vocal black population with their practiced shakedown artists like Jackson and Sharpton. Despite silly controversies like the recurring one over sports mascots with Indian names (polls have shown that most Indians don't care), Indians are just not very active in the victimhood competition. Moslems, by contrast, are among the more vocal groups when they smell an opportunity to cry victimhood and extort some kind of apology or concession. So they are fast moving up in the pack of victims.

Those who strictly adhere to the pecking order among various competing victim groups must have some tough choices to make these days; the difficulty of choosing who to afford the most sympathy to must be severe for the true believers in academia or the media these days; their agony is almost palpable when they are forced to choose a 'good guy victim' in stories like those of the riots in recent years between blacks and Hispanics, mainly in California. What do the media do in reporting those stories? One suspects that since the media are heavily dominated by 'diversity' these days, with many reporters having obviously Hispanic names, they must simply go with their own. But for the white liberal journalist the choice must not be so easy; do they pick the most downtrodden victim and champion him or her? Do they toss a coin? Or is there some kind of written guideline that comes along with the templates used by these professional journalists' associations, which are politically correct to the max?

Or are the leftists and the professional victims smarter than we think, and purposely trying to create a backlash which might work in their favor? The left works that way; they look to provoke violence so as to make themselves appear to be put-upon victims of 'hateful' right-wingers and racists. Then they stand back and feign innocence, while those they goaded are blamed and punished.

This latest affront, with the re-education classes and the 'all whites are racists' nonsense is, I believe, an overplaying of the leftists' and race-baiters' hand. I think they are causing a great deal of resentment and ultimately a backlash to their agenda. They just don't know when enough is enough.

Is TCM losing its way?

There is a discussion going on over at VFR about the Turner Classic Movies channel, or TCM.
The discussion began with Spencer Warren's piece about the Hollywood Ten, a group of people in the movie industry of the 1950s who were investigated for Communist connections.
Warren took exception to the leftist slant of the story as presented by TCM's Robert Osborne. Warren detected a bias, and another commenter at VFR, Mark E, wrote a long and impassioned defense of Osborne and TCM, extravagantly praising TCM for being

...THE bastion of conservative/traditionalist films, views, images, sense of life, historical perspective, film aesthetics and morality, etc., simply because of what it is in its very nature, and all the movies they show.

It is the only place in the contemporary media where the un-censored, un-PC, pre-Boomer past is presented with reverence as a good thing and not the family shame that is elsewhere the common dispiriting leftoid/"progressive" narrative about America.

They do not censor the past to edit out un-PC images of race relations, smoking, drinking, sexual attitudes, relations between men and women, etc.''

I tend to agree with Warren that Osborne displays a pronounced liberal bias, as does the station, despite Mark E.'s denial.

I've blogged about the decline of TCM before, here, and here.

I happen to be a fan of TCM, and a regular watcher -- if and when they show the old classics I prefer, which is becoming more and more infrequently these days. As I said in an earlier piece

Recently I've noticed that my favorite movie channel, Turner Classic Movies, has been gradually inserting more and more recent movies, at the expense of the old films. Yes, I know the official explanation: this month it's 31 Days of the Oscars or some such theme, which offers an excuse to show many films which are much more recent than what TCM has heretofore shown.

We old movie buffs have already witnessed the trashing of the old American Movie Classics channel, which used to show actual classic movies from the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood: you know, the age before the movies became obsessively focused on the seamy, ugly side of life, full of explicit and perverse sexuality and violence, not to mention gutter language and subject matter. And more than that, the movies in the PC era invariably shove political messages down our gullets as well, making them a must to avoid, for me. I watch movies to be entertained, diverted, uplifted, or inspired. If I want a sermon, I prefer to get it from a minister of the Word, not some Hollywood nihilist.

AMC in its heyday used to show the classics, and they showed them uninterrupted. Now, in addition to the change in the quality and vintage of the movies shown, the movies are also riddled with commercials.
So scratch AMC from the worth-watching column. So, remembering the sorry fate of AMC, it's not unreasonable to suspect that TCM may be slated for the same kind of transformation. After all, sex-n-violence is a sure-fire commercial formula, and the old movies are woefully lacking in those things, so it only makes good business sense to throw in some more recent movies with the requisite amounts of 'adult' content.
[...]
I don't know that there is a plan to gradually decrease the proportion of old movies to newer ones on TCM; it would seem so. I have noticed that the old 30s movies, to which I am partial, are often shown in weird time slots only, like 3 AM local time, while the newer movies get shown in the primetime slots, such as 8 PM. It's clear the newer movies are being given the best slots.''

And since I wrote that piece, the newer movies (to me, 'newer' means anything from the post-PC era, from the late 60s onward) are becoming more and more dominant in TCM's programming; I notice as before that the old movies are relegated often to the 3 AM slot, while prime-time might have 80s and 90s movies. Now the idea seems to be that any newer movie which is set in the past is appropriate for TCM.

And TCM has begun to show 'cult' movies of rather sleazy content, rather than the more respectable fare they started out with in the past. I'm referring to movies such as 'Faster Pussycat, Kill! Kill!' Classic movies, indeed.

If people want to watch those kinds of movies, they can be rented from Netflix, or they might show up on some of the more eclectic movie channels, such as FLIX or RetroPlex or something, but why do they belong on a Classic Movie channel? Especially when the real classic movies are shown only on TCM, having been banished from the other channels? Every 'Faster, Pussycat' takes up a time slot that might have been given to a real classic movie.

As for Mark E.'s contention that TCM is PC-free -- are we watching the same TCM? The TCM I get on my TV observes all the PC high holydays --- Black History month being reverently presented every year. And with many of the movies about the black experience, we get a lecture by some black 'expert' who holds forth on the correct interpretation of what we are about to see.

TCM showed the ultra-controversial Birth of a Nation last year or so, but not without an accompanying exegesis by a black expert. And to think, Birth of a Nation was a mainstream movie when it was released.

Personally I think TCM is slowly departing from its classic roots and aiming for a younger, hipper more 'diverse' demographic. That will surely mean fewer of the wholesome old classics with their racially ingenuous characterizations and politically incorrect tendencies. I see fewer hours being devoted to the old movie greats, and more being given over to later movies, with their crassness, vulgarity, and politically correct unctuousness.

Maybe I am inclined to see the glass as half-empty, but I am very jealous and protective of my old movies, which are a piece of the dear, dead past I love.

It's everywhere

The following article was brought to my attention thanks to blogger Matt:
University to students: 'All whites are racist'

A mandatory University of Delaware program requires residence hall students to acknowledge that "all whites are racist" and offers them "treatment" for any incorrect attitudes regarding class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality they might hold upon entering the school, according to a civil rights group.''

The civil rights group quoted in the article is the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or (FIRE), and their news release on the story is here:


Referring to the mandatory re-education program, the 'residence life education program', FIRE says

The University of Delaware’s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional.”

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

I wonder if some thought I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect when I said at various times. that the PC commissars maintain that 'all whites are racists', with no exceptions. The quote above spells it out: all those of European descent, regardless of 'class, gender, religion, culture, or sexuality' are racists. And since these same leftists believe that to be a 'racist' is to be a vile person, worthy of losing the right to free speech, or livelihood, this kind of blanket condemnation should be distressing to all European-descended people.

The methods used are totalitarian:

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

In the Office of Residence Life’s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as “treatments.”

In the old Soviet Union, we know that people who were political dissenters were often diagnosed as mentally ill and sent off to re-education camps. There have been 'experts' cited in recent years who have declared 'racism' to be a mental disorder. Can we see where this is going?

The WorldNetDaily article gives us more details on the program:

.

..people of color cannot be racists, because as peoples within the U.S. system, they do not have the power to back up their prejudices, hostilities, or acts of discrimination….'"

The education program also notes that "reverse racism" is "a term created and used by white people to deny their white privilege." And "a non-racist" is called "a non-term," because, the program explains, "The term was created by whites to deny responsibility for systemic racism, to maintain an aura of innocence in the face of racial oppression, and to shift the responsibility for that oppression from whites to people of color (called 'blaming the victim')."
[Emphasis mine]

So it's hopeless to protest your innocence; you are guilty by virtue of your genetics, and there is no defense, no appeal. Guilty.

In googling the phrase 'all racists' I came across a link to some kind of college organization against 'racism'.
I would link to it, but I personally don't want the people who created the site following the link to my blog and leaving their droppings in my comment section. But here is an example of their 'solutions' with the title 'A Final Solution to the Problem of Racism in America. They call racism a 'cancer' and say that it is everywhere in America, and there is no escape. So the solutions might be

* Teach them to read.
* Make them travel. Mark Twain said, "Travel cures prejudice." Maybe getting them out of those little white towns and trailer parks would do them some good.
* Deport them to the Caucasus mountains.
* Force them to take a bath every day until they renounce racism.
* Put them on an island. Then they could be happy hating each other forever.
* Require them to attend college classes at state universities -- their failures will instill humility since non-whites will always outperform them.
* Euthenize [sic] all mentally deficient racists (per their own Nazi doctrine) -- this will eliminate over half of them.
* Lock them in a football stadium with lots of machine guns and alcohol.
* Send the Aryans back to India.
* Put them in the boxing ring and let them prove their superiority over blacks.
* Sterilize all racists them so they don't breed back into the population and pollute the human gene pool.
* Fine their mothers for littering society with white trash. If their fathers can be identified and caught, jail them.
* Make them take an IQ test and euthenize [sic] those who flunk.
* Make them wear yellow swastikas on their clothes, confiscate their property, and confine them to walled-in ghettoes or send them to work camps.
* Make them slaves for 400 years so that they understand the evil that they have done.''

All the spelling and grammar errors are left as is, which is a good illustration of the mentality of these people.
If these 'students' who cannot spell and write (or think) are white, they are a sorry example of white self-racism, and if they are 'diverse' which they probably are, since colleges worship diversity above all else, then they are proof that European-descended people are not the only 'racists'. And to think: the people who wrote the above will likely be 'leaders' of tomorrow, armed with their bogus college degrees.

And here, from Blogger News Network, commentary on a CNN poll which showed that 'Americans all Racists'
From the CNN story:

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.

“We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize,” Dovidio said.

He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.

“Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways,” he said.

That “stealth” discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''

University of Connecticut professor Jack Dovidio, who has researched racism for more than 30 years, estimates up to 80 percent of white Americans have racist feelings they may not even recognize.

“We’ve reached a point that racism is like a virus that has mutated into a new form that we don’t recognize,” Dovidio said.

He added that 21st-century racism is different from that of the past.

“Contemporary racism is not conscious, and it is not accompanied by dislike, so it gets expressed in indirect, subtle ways,” he said.

That “stealth” discrimination reveals itself in many different situations. ''

We all know this rhetoric; we've been subjected to it non-stop for the last 40 or 45 years. You who are younger are lucky; you have not heard it as many times as some of us have. And unfortunately those who have grown up under the politically correct regime know no other way of thinking, unless somehow they have been kept out of the mainstream or raised by dissenting parents who don't conform to the orthodoxy.

And how do we have a dialogue with people who think we are all racist, and hence evil? The answer: we don't. It doesn't happen. The only thing the other side has to contribute to any debate is slanders, insults, and hatred masquerading as anti-hate zeal.

I've mentioned before that I have an ultra-liberal friend, with whom I used to be quite close, and that since we've grown apart politically, our friendship has suffered. Ideally, among good friends, we should be able to discuss these things honestly and reach some understanding, but it doesn't happen. We tend to avoid the subjects on which we disagree vehemently, and I suspect my friend thinks I have become deluded and that I will come around to the correct way of thinking eventually.

But when I have brought up issues like this, thinking that, as a reasonable person, an educated person, my friend should be able to discuss things reasonably, she reacts irrationally. If I point out a story like this one, in which leftism is showing its derangement and totalitarianism, she merely rationalizes it away. Oh, it's just a few people in some obscure place who got carried away; they aren't typical of liberals or leftists. They're just zealots, most liberals don't think like that. Or: 'the right-wing media exaggerates things like that.'

Actually I see the same kinds of rationalizations among the neocons; when faced with a story that conflicts with their programming, they dismiss it as 'the lamestream media lying again.'

So what do we do, if we can't dialogue with these people on the left?
In my ideal universe, we'd be able to separate from them; the divisions between us and them are becoming so profound, and there is no good faith left, nothing much on which we can agree, that separation is the only real answer. Some will tell me I am being unrealistic, but is it realistic to hope we can live in harmony with people who insist we are 'evil racists' and who will do all they can to discredit us and marginalize us, and would send our dissenting young people off to be 're-educated'?

And here's a modest proposal: since we majority Americans have been declared to be universally racist, it might be sensible for those who are immigrating here to seek a destination country which is racism-free, such as another third-world country, because we are told that non-whites cannot be racists; only whites can be. So white countries should be ostracized by all the 'people of color.' Maybe that would "learn" us.

I really don't know what the answer is, but the answer, if any, is surely NOT for us to start denying, or becoming defensive, or attempting to prove how non-racist we are, as many on the mainstream 'right' love to do, and above all, the answer is NOT to go looking under the bed for 'racists' and 'bigots' and expelling them from our midst. Anybody who does that has in essence bought into the beliefs of the left, and has taken on the yoke of political correctness. Anybody who does that is gone over to the other side, whether they realize it or not.

At the very minimum, those of us with college-age sons and daughters should keep them away from these totalitarian campuses, but the trouble is, almost all colleges are infected with leftism, and the pressure to conform is considerable. I suppose if we bring up our children to be independent-minded, with sound values and principles, they might not fall prey to the ideas that are ubiquitous in our institutions of 'higher learning.' But I think it's the exceptional young person who is not swayed by all the leftist propaganda.

But one consolation in this 'we are all racists' nonsense is: if we are all 'racists' then racism is normal. If everybody has a certain innate characteristic, then that characteristic is the norm.

If we are all racists, then the word has no real meaning. How can something which is universal (as the left claims) be worthy of condemnation? Can you re-make human nature, with your sinister 're-education' programs and your witch-hunts?

If gays can claim the 'right' to their sexual preferences because it's inborn (so they claim) then why can't racists claim the right to be as they are, since it's evidently natural?

And one more question: how can purges against 'racists' on these blogs and forums be instituted, if everybody of European descent is racist? If racism disqualifies you from the right to free speech, and if all Europeans are racists, then no European-descended person has a right to freedom of expression. Ban us all. We'd even have to ban ourselves. Just give up and turn ourselves in for re-education.

I still maintain, however, that if we dissented en masse, refusing to go along with the totalitarian left's dictates, how can they enforce their will on the majority of us? It is really only a fairly small percentage of the actual population who impose this kind of nonsense on us; they are in the main a lot of soft, passive-aggressive people who use verbal intimidation and intellectual coercion. If we refuse to go along, what can they do, realistically, to us? They have as much power as we are willing to give them, and no more.

Ron Paul on Jay Leno

GOP candidates' true colors on immigration

I don't suppose there are many illusions to be lost regarding Rudy Giuliani and his immigration stance. However, he is saying
that it's the federal government's job to deal with illegal immigration, and not that of cities, states, or businesses. So he would not punish employers of illegals.

Giuliani told small-business owners he would not punish them for unwittingly hiring illegal immigrants.

Federal officials are "trying to put the responsibility for this on employers, on city government, on state government," the former New York mayor said during a conference call arranged by the National Federation of Independent Businesses.

"The simple fact is, nobody but the federal government can stop people from coming into this country illegally, and the federal government does a very bad job of that," Giuliani said.

He said no other presidential candidate will solve the problem.

"If you elect a Democrat, they're just going to open the borders, and more illegals are going to come in," he said.

"And if you elect one of my (Republican) opponents, they want to crack down on cities and states, and they want to crack down on businesses, but they don't want to solve the problem," he said. "If I become president, in a very short while, you will not be able to walk into the United States without identifying yourselves."

Further, we read how all the mainstream GOP candidates are busy accusing each other of being johnny-come-latelies on the border issue, and all accusing each other of insincerity in their newfound commitment to enforcing our borders.

It strikes me that in each case, it's the pot calling the kettle black. They are all play-actors and deceivers on this issue; none of them is committed to closing the borders.

In this discussion thread from The Stein Report, a commenter named Cynthia makes some good points, referring to Mitt Romney's claim of being ''someone who has fought to protect legal immigration but to stop illegal immigration stands up against anybody's in the country,":

How does Romney's position square with the fact that LDS leadership supports a wide open border?

Once again, I will point out that the MSM simply reflects the corporatist/fascist/socialist open border agenda and the fact that both Thompson and Romney are media darlings is very strong evidence that their new tough talk on immigration is understood to be nothing but pandering.

Those of us who have thoroughly researched the open border agenda understand that it is has been well organized and controlled by financial and political elites for several decades. These same elites are not going to allow any serious candidates a public forum if they haven't already signed on to the Establishment's agenda.

Neither Romney nor Thompson have ever attempted to publicly expose or derail the North American Union or any form of internationalism that undermines national sovereignty. This should be a major litmus test for those of us who work towards serious immigration reform.''

Cynthia makes sense. This is exactly why I am unpersuaded by all the tough rhetoric coming from these candidates, and I am convinced that were it not for Tancredo's presence keeping the immigration issue front and center, they would none of them be making these empty shows of false bravado.

As she says, if any of these guys were serious proponents of immigration restriction and opponents of globalism, they would not be the media darlings that they are, and they surely would be getting the same rough treatment which Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul have gotten from the party honchos and the establishment.

I am seeing increasing signs that a lot of people who were not thrilled with the 'top tier' candidates are now willing to settle for a Thompson ('he's not as bad as the rest') or Huckabee or even a Romney. Only if you believe the presidency is basically a meaningless position, and that another establishment neocon could not make our present situation worse, can you believe that these candidates are worth considering.

'Courage is the antidote'

Nick Griffin shouted down at MSU:

...Griffin was invited to Michigan State by the campus chapter of Young Americans for Freedom. He was supposed to give a one-hour talk about Islam and then answer questions for an hour, but audience members started shouting at him shortly after he started his talk and he shifted to Q&A format so he could answer what was being shouted at him.''

This account gives a more benign-sounding version of the event:

EAST LANSING - When British Nationalist Nick Griffin took the podium at a Friday night Michigan State University event, he tried to explain how Islam is a threat to Western civilization.

Protesters wouldn't have it.

Hurling obscenities and using chants to interrupt his address, rambunctious student organizations forced Griffin to abandon his speech and allow an informal question and answer session.

What followed was an unstructured banter between the speaker and a crowd of roughly 75 protesters. While many attempted to ask Griffin legitimate questions, others shouted obscenities.

"We have all come from different backgrounds," said Authra Khreis, 17, a pre-med student and a protester. "We should accept one another. I don't think he should be allowed to speak. You can use free speech until you hurt another person."

Griffin was invited to campus by a conservative student organization called Young Americans for Freedom, or YAF.''

According to members of YAF, they were chased from the building by those 'rambunctious student organizations' whose members were wielding canes and iron bars.

More from the article:

One student who engaged in a particularly long debate with Griffin was Junaid Mattu, a finance junior from India.

"I am a supporter of free speech, but at the same time there has to be a benchmark," he said. "Why does MSU time and time again show its insensitivity to minorities by inviting racists?"

Because several speakers invited to MSU by YAF have sparked controversy, MSU Trustee Faylene Owen is asking the Board of Trustees to take action.

"I realize that people like this have a right to speak on this campus, but we don't have to condone it," she said at a Friday meeting.

She called for a board resolution that "expresses our disapproval as a board of the message of hate expressed by this person."

"He's a hatemonger," she added in a later interview. "He says there's never been a Holocaust and Muslims are terrible people."

Please notice how a couple of the opponents of free speech who are quoted in the article are foreign students, such as Junaid Mattu from India and Authra Khreis, who comes from an unnamed foreign country. May I politely suggest to these 'guests' in our country that they have no standing to tell Americans what 'free speech' means, or to tell us that it must be limited according to their specifications? Does 'sensitivity to minorities' dictate what we can and cannot hear, or say? If so, free speech and freedom of thought are dead as a doornail in this country. This is one of the fruits of our foolish openness, and our willingness to bring so many foreign people who come from countries with no tradition of free speech and no ideas about our Constitution and Bill of Rights. They have no more right to come here and try to silence anyone than I would be afforded if I went to India and tried to silence people who 'offended' me, or if I went to Authra Khreis's unnamed country and told them how they are to conduct themselves. We in the West are the doormats of the world, allowing strangers to invade our countries and butt into our affairs, laying down the law to us. The whole world has our number now; they see that we are weak as water and that we allow others to manipulate us by guilt, and bully us with their demands.

What is going on in our world? The leftists and liberals are becoming increasingly unhinged, which is baffling, since they have everything their way; even our wimpified, politically correct country is 'right-wing and fascist' in their warped view.

The recent attack by some crazed leftist harpy on Condoleezza Rice, although I am not a fan of Rice, was a disgusting display, and it shows the increasingly unhinged behavior of the left. And then there was the heckler who angered Bill Clinton at a recent appearance, and the 'Truthers' who heckled leftist Bill Maher. So the left is attacking not only the right, but their own.

And of course in recent days we've been seeing the right (if you consider mainstream Republicans and neocons as the 'right') assaulting and accusing those they consider too right-wing and 'racist' or 'Islamophobic.' There was the Watson controversy, in which the 'right' were conspicuous by their absence when it came time to defend Watson for his 'racist' comments.

There are 'conservative' blogs which have been banning those who deviate from the party line, and then we have the neocon mouthpieces like Michael Medved recently using the old neo-nazi smear against Ron Paul.

This is actually not a new thing, this purging of those who are too far right: Free Republic, with its mass bannings of immigration restrictionists (although some have been allowed back, as the climate has changed) and certain other 'anti-illegal immigration' forums have had a longstanding practice of ejecting anybody, sometimes in a most humiliating fashion, for being too 'xenophobic' or 'racist'. You must always assert your eager support for LEGAL immigration or risk being blackballed for being a 'hater'.

So free speech is under assault from all quarters; it used to be that the right was somewhat more tolerant, despite popular stereotypes, than the hypocritical preachers of 'tolerance' on the Left, but now many on the right are just as intolerant. Do we not suppose that many on the neocon right were glad to see Nick Griffin silenced and shouted down?

The blogger who has been banning so many PC transgressors has also condemned Nick Griffin, and the YAF for sponsoring his speech at MSU. So the left and some of the 'right' are in agreement when it comes to politically incorrect speech; they favor silencing or shouting down or destroying the careers of those they deem beyond the pale.

I've been following the discussion on some of the mainstream 'counterjihad' blogs and forums and the dialogue often shows little sign of having improved or opened up; there is still a hierarchy of political correctness, in which many people ritually go through their denunciations of 'racists' and 'Islamophobes' and anti-Semites.There is still an obsessive concern with being 'moderate' or appearing so in order to attract more 'mainstream' people. This, I think, is a vain hope, and above all, I am at a loss to explain why people think we have all the time in the world to 'convert' the indifferent or the timid or the obtuse or the politically correct. Why do so many of these people, who obsess over Islam and jihad not see the urgency of our situation? As I see it, we are at a crossroads, and we have to take the shortest route to get to safety; we have no time for niceties and palaver and dialogue and trying to appear mild in order to attract the moderates.
Why is there so little sense of urgency among some on the so-called 'right'? Is it timidity, or wishful thinking, or denial, or is it just temporizing, hoping to buy time at the least expense?

With this unholy convergence between the PC right and the PC left, we are coming perilously close to outlawing 'hate' in general; we will not even be allowed to 'hate' those who are trying to kill us or conquer us. As I've written before, how can we outlaw emotions, especially when it is natural to feel antipathy and anger, and yes, sometimes hate?

We can and do outlaw certain behaviors that might be associated with 'hate'; we have laws against harassment, and inciting violence, and against assault and murder. We can and do outlaw behaviors, and I support harsh penalties for those who commit violence except in self-defense. But trying to forbid people to have an unfavorable opinion or a fear or yes, outright hatred for someone is wrong.

In a sense, we are all Nick Griffin, we who defy political correctness. Those who join in the braying mobs who shout him and all other dissenters down, whether they call themselves 'conservative' or right-wing, or left wing, they are the 'fascists' they profess to oppose.

I will quote, again, from J.R. Nyquist on Oriana Fallaci, who is an inspiration to me:

In the West, she says, our corrupt culture does not punish the body. It does not confiscate your assets or violate your political rights. It kills the soul by eliminating the possibility that anyone will acknowledge you. The thinker who steps out-of-bounds is quickly isolated, diagnosed, dismissed, being neither followed nor respected. The culture denounces what remains of a “wretch, a lunatic, a liar, a dissolute, a sinner.” Today’s democracy condemns the lone voice, the voice in the wilderness, “to civic death.” According to Fallaci, “Everything can be expressed, everything can be spread, except the freedom of revealing the truth. Because the truth leaves no way out, and inspires fear.”

Fear is the determining factor in the decline of democracy, Fallaci claims. And therefore courage is the antidote.''

'God Give Us Men' - a poem

God give us men! A time like this demands

Strong minds; great hearts, true faith, and ready hands.

Men whom the lust of office does not kill:

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honour; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue,

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog,

In public duty and in private thinking,

For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds

Their large professions, and their little deeds,

Mingle in selfish strife - O! Freedom weeps

Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps.
- Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Update: the writer of the poem, which I originally identified as Josiah Gilbert Holland, was apparently Maltbie Davenport Babcock.
Thanks to a reader for pointing this out.

'Most influential conservatives'

The most influential US Conservatives

My readers will know that I am always somewhat fascinated and sometimes bemused by these kinds of lists: the 'top 50' or 'top '100' in whatever category.

The London Daily Telegraph presents its list of the 'most influential US conservatives' which I've linked above. Suffice it to say that, as usual, the apellation 'conservative' is applied very broadly here. Those listed in this article are numbers 81-100, with the list being continued in future articles, just like counting down the top 100 on the hit parade, #1 being saved for last.

I won't list all of them; I will just mention a few of those on this list: Michelle Malkin, Bill O'Reilly, Henry Kissinger, Peggy Noonan -- and Ron Paul. Oh, and I forgot Larry Craig.

Make of it what you will. The comments following are rather telling as to the state of conservatism. The most frequently-heard howl of protest is that Rush Limbaugh was not included; obviously the commenters don't understand that this is only a partial list. For all we know, Limbaugh could be #1, although likely President Bush will hold that spot.

Any guesses as to who the top five will be?

I still say we need a new label because the word 'conservative' has ceased to have any meaning, because it includes so many people who are almost polar opposites in their thinking. The Republican Party can make itself into a Big Tent, and include everybody under the sun, but conservatism cannot be whatever we choose it to mean, per Humpty Dumpty.

Things fall apart, the center cannot hold...

During the recent TV news coverage of the California wildfires, I noticed in the many shots of the crowds at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego that the evacuees were mostly white, with a few minorities visible now and again. I found this surprising, given the substantial Latino presence in that part of the country. However, this article, which is via U.S. Asian Wire, partially explains those shots of mostly white people at Qualcomm:

Ethnic Media Cover the Fires
Elena Shore, New America Media

SAN DIEGO—(U.S. ASIAN WIRE)— Ethnic media are on the front lines of the Southern California fires, covering the effects of the devastation on their communities and providing information for evacuees and those who wish to help.

Hispanic residents who needed to evacuate their homes in San Diego had trouble finding information in Spanish about what to do, reports the Spanish-language publication Enlace.

“I saw a huge cloud of black smoke coming toward my house but I didn’t know what to do,” Noemi Orozco, a 38-year-old resident of Ramona, told Enlace. As the fires began to spread on Sunday, Orozco said, she turned on her television but none of the Spanish channels interrupted their programming to provide information.

“I watched the English channels but it was hopeless because I can hardly understand it,” said another woman. “At 7:00 p.m., the police came and one spoke Spanish, telling me to leave my apartment because of the approaching danger.”

Vianei Salmeron scanned Spanish radio stations Sunday evening for news about the fire, and didn’t find anything, Enlace reports.

On Monday, Spanish television stations began interrupting their regular programming to give the community information about the fire.

Many undocumented immigrants affected by the fires have been afraid to come forward to seek help, Hispanic media report.

The farm workers who live in the open air in the McGonigle Canyon, according to Enlace, are among the most destitute residents affected by the fires.

While some left the area, many of these “invisible victims” remain in the canyons, either because they do not want to or can’t leave.

"We’ve been telling them that they are in an evacuation zone but they don’t want to move because they have all their stuff in the hills and because they’re afraid of the police and the people," Juan Ramon, an activist with the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations, told the newspaper.
[...]
Despite being told to go to Qualcomm Stadium, the majority of Vietnamese residents forced to evacuate fled to their friends' and relatives' homes, CaliToday newspaper reports. Vietnamese families in northern San Diego were surprised when officials knocked on their doors and told them to leave. Several have returned to their own homes but were told to stay on alert if the fires were to change direction.
[...]
More than 2,000 Koreans living in the affected areas have fled to local Korean churches.


Instead of checking into evacuation shelters operated by authorities, about 300 Koreans have been staying at the Calvary Korean Presbyterian Church in Linda Vista since Monday night. Korean Hope Church of San Diego and Hanbit Church, both located near San Diego’s Koreatown that sprawls along Convoy Street, each provided shelter to about 100 people.
[...]
“People feel more comfortable when they band together with the same race, and some decided to come to church because the shelters they had gone to were crowded,” said Young Sung Joo, managing editor of Korea Daily's San Diego bureau.''

The above-excerpted piece was from the New America Media, which is a sort of 'diversity' media outlet, focusing on, well, 'diverse' groups of people, which by popular understanding, is a diversity that excludes whitebread types.

The article should not have surprised anyone; the bit about the Hispanic woman searching the Spanish-language TV stations in vain for news of the fire situation was what I would expect. We all know of many examples of Latinos who live in this country for decades and never become fluent in English, relying only on 'their' media, which keeps them in a very insular little world.

The predictable line, about the Hispanics being 'afraid of the police and the people' is frustrating, because somehow they seem to believe Americans are evil racists who will do them harm, or is this merely spin from the leftist media? If it is true, (and I don't see much evidence of fear among the illegals in my neck of the woods) then the left has much to answer for, because they constantly harp on the idea of 'racism' and 'xenophobia' which is slanderous to Americans, and which leads to more suspicion and hostility, provoking anti-white racism.

Many of the other ethnic groups mentioned above are very isolated. In most West Coast cities there are Korean enclaves, with Korean churches, Korean strip malls devoted only to goods or services to the 'Korean community'. There are also Korean-language TV channels or programming blocks on local stations.

Two ethnic groups which might not experience as much linguistic isolation in this country are the Filipino immigrants and those from India, because of the widespread use of English in those countries. Still there is a degree of insularity there too, despite the familiarity with English.

But the tendency of all these groups to cling together in this country doesn't bode well for the future. Personally I believe that it is human nature for people to gravitate to their own, even those of us who are fascinated with other cultures have a degree of comfort with those most like ourselves. In light of that fact, expecting that alien groups will assimilate and 'integrate' is asking too much, especially when the cultural and genetic differences between us militate against it. Some groups, I believe, are too intrinsically unlike us to ever really become part of the existing American culture, and many of today's immigrants come from cultures and countries that are hostile to us or have existing grievances against us. This also makes 'assimilation' an unlikely prospect. And of course it's a given that the more immigrants from a country, the more they will form enclaves and simply reproduce their own countries within our cities and towns, islands of foreign culture in our midst.

The fact that there are so many people who cannot speak the common language of this country is a problem when it comes to public safety, as the story of the Latina woman who was unable to hear the news in her language. Had it not been for the firefighter who spoke Spanish, she may have stayed behind and perished in the fire. There are countless other stories like this, where a lack of English skills leads to dangerous situations both for the immigrant and for the American who may have to risk his life or lose his life in rescuing non-English speakers who are in harm's way.

But most of all, the overall picture shown in the article is one of a balkanizing America, many countries within one. In a crisis such as a natural disaster, or a terror attack, how can there be the kind of coordination and unity that is needed to preserve order, or to rescue those in need, or to cooperate for the common good? Or will there even be any concept of the 'common good' in a disaster involving such a diverse area?

From what I have read of the Qualcomm situation in San Diego, apart from the problems caused by the illegals hauling away a few truckloads of emergency provisions, things went fairly smoothly; people were civil and patient and behaved in a civilized way, for the most part. This is reflective of the culture of the people involved, and it was made possible by the fact that there was a common standard of behavior and an ideal of mutual cooperation. When a disaster happens in a city made up of a number of different enclaves, and there is no common understanding, we can hardly expect order and civility to prevail. When people such as those illegals act against the common good in favor of their own tribe or clan, this is destructive to the public good. Yet the majority white population is always expected to behave in a more altruistic fashion, thinking of the common welfare, while each ethnic group is given license to look out only for their own tribe. There is an asymmetry here, an imbalance.

But not only in emergency situations are commonalities are needed to make things work, but in everyday life. It's the little rules of human interaction in a culture that act as a social lubricant to minimize friction and misunderstanding. We take small things for granted, such as body language, little niceties of conversation, eye contact, small acts of courtesy, all of which are the things that enable us to get along and to function as a society. The more 'diversity' we have in our midst, the more communication breaks down, and the English language is not all that is needed for good communication; it involves the non-verbal cues and behaviors and signals, too. And when it comes to those from other cultures, especially those widely separated from our own, the greater the potential for misunderstanding and actual conflict, especially when there is an already-existing layer of suspicion and 'distance' between peoples.



Note: after I began this post, I read Rick Darby's latest blog entry on his recent visit to California, and it seems to tie in with the story behind this article. So I recommend that you read Rick's account of his recent experiences in California, as always, very much worth reading.

Tancredo will leave Congress after present term

I haven't seen much discussion of this story around the internet as yet. But I wonder what it portends for the immigration restriction cause?

A former state Senate president. The son of a former U.S. senator. The secretary of state. A radio talk show host.

The long list of candidates mentioned as possible successors to Congressman Tom Tancredo reads like a Who's Who of Suburban Republicans, and paves the way for what is sure to be a fascinating primary race.

One day after Tancredo announced he would not seek a sixth term in Congress, the jockeying began to determine who might replace the nationally known Littleton Republican, who is reviled and revered.

"I assume there will be a spirited primary," Dick Wadhams, chairman of the Colorado Republican Party, said Monday.

"It's kind of a family feud that has to play itself out."

At least four Republicans have expressed an interest in running for the seat: Secretary of State Mike Coffman; businessman Wil Armstrong, son of former U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong; and state Sens. Ted Harvey and Tom Wiens.
[...]
Tancredo is the 17th House member, and the 14th Republican, who will not be seeking re-election next year, according to CQPolitics.com.

There has been talk for some time that Tancredo will run for the governorship of Colorado; this might be a good move for him and good for his home state, which apparently is being hit hard by illegal immigration.

Tancredo says that he feels his run for the Presidency will have accomplished what he hoped it would, regardless of whether he is is the GOP nominee. He hoped to draw more attention to the immigration issue, and he feels that goal has been accomplished, since there are now more Congressmen who are adopting the restrictionist position, and there is more open public discussion of immigration. It's also noticeable how much more restrictionist the 'top tier' candidates have been sounding lately. Of course whether or not they can walk the walk remains to be seen; I doubt it. Tancredo, however, is the real deal; he is sincere in his concern for this country and its preservation.

Whatever Tancredo decides to do, I hope he will not leave public life; he is sorely needed right now, as never before.

More on free speech, PC, and the right

I expect most of you have read Steve Sailer's latest essay at VDare.

It fits very much with the theme we've been discussing here on this blog: the growing intolerance on the right toward anyone who transgresses the holy laws of political correctness.

Sailer notes with considerable disgust that virtually nobody on the 'respectable' right, such as the NRO crowd (with the exception of John Derbyshire) or the army of 'conservative' bloggers at Townhall wrote a word about the recent Watson controversy, despite its considerable import. After all, it is not just a political issue; although the assault on free speech should concern all good Americans, but the Watson story has implications for scientific inquiry and the pursuit of truth. Surely someone should care about that, even if they are not concerned about the political ramifications of the public humiliation of Watson.

Sailer sees in this situation a reflection of the lack of courage and integrity among those on the Right.

The level of intellectual integrity on the Right—let alone courage—is catastrophically lower today than just 13 years ago, when the John O'Sullivan-edited National Review responded to the publication of The Bell Curve by devoting most of its December 5, 1994 issue to an impressive symposium on race and IQ.

In it, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's bestseller was attacked by some, but also stoutly defended by Michael Barone, Michael Novak, James Q. Wilson, Dan Seligman, Arthur Jensen, and Ernest Van den Haag.

Where have you gone, Michael Barone? (Or John O’Sullivan, for that matter).''

In a recent entry on political correctness among conservatives I used the phrase 'the righteous right,' and wondered who had coined that term. Apparently it was Sailer, in the context of the Trent Lott debacle of a few years ago. At that time, I became extremely disillusioned with many in the Republican Party, not only the leadership but many average party members, as they all, as one, attacked Trent Lott and called for his head over his relatively innocuous remarks to Strom Thurmond. At that time, it was evident that political correctness was as much of a religion to many on the right as it is on the left. I found the whole Lott 'scandal' to be dismaying.

So yes, the 'righteous right' has embraced a peculiarly leftist form of 'righteousness'.
If you read the Time article linked above, you will see the liberals at Time lecturing the Republicans about their 'racist' ways, and the Republican response was to scurry to deny their 'racism.' The politically correct instinct in Republicans seems to be a conditioned response to any liberal accusations of bigotry, and the 'conservatives' who respond by conforming to the liberal rules can't seem to see that their eager compliance makes them appear to be deferring to the liberals, acknowledging that the accusations of bigotry are really true.

Sailer advises against apologizing for gaffes, as Lott did to little avail, and as Watson did:

Never apologize for a "gaffe" (i.e., the telling of an unpopular truth).

When you beg forgiveness, the hate-filled jackals just smell your fear and weakness. It excites them, so they pile on. Further, the watching crowd can't tell who's right, so they respect whoever seems the master of the situation at the moment.

In his October 19 response in the U.K. Independent, "To question genetic intelligence is not racism," Watson seemingly tried to be subtle, arguing that there was a difference between inferiority and diversity, then pointing out the Darwinian implausibility that everyone could have evolved to be identical.

Well, swell. But the politically correct don't engage in rational argument. They just hound and bludgeon. So you have to stand your ground.''

Sailer rightly admonishes that those who are hauled up before the PC kangaroo courts stand their ground. Yet there are few who seem able or willing to do this. I agree with Sailer that those among the 'righteous right' are buckling to the left, and failing to defend their own. We are allowing not only our 'side', but truth itself to be routed.

And in the context of the discussion we've been having here about the politically correct neocons, it seems that they have decided to follow the old saying, 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'' So now the PC neocon 'right' have taken to acting as part of the PC inquisition on their own, so as to pre-emptively ward off the accusations of the left. It seems they have so internalized the left's PC moralizing that they have themselves begun behaving like the left.

The consequences of this abdication by the 'right' are serious. The truth will be more marginalized and silenced than ever if those on the right, who are supposedly the upholders of the idea of truth and free speech in a morally relativistic, post-modern world, have given up and surrendered.

'Practitioners of a dark faith...'

Somehow, in all the flurry of articles and comments on Watson's impolitic comments, I overlooked this piece by the always-brilliant Selwyn Duke. So below are some excerpts, wherein Duke gets to the heart of things, asking Can We Please Define Racism? and asking what becomes of truth in a world in which certain ideas cannot be explored or discussed?

He also manages to work in an overlooked point about the relevance of the idea of evolution to the question at hand:

...What, though, should be our standard? Well, it cannot be discovered by analyzing what has been said about Dr. Watson but, rather, by what is usually left unsaid. As was the case with the reception given to The Bell Curve, critics tend to take the position that the issue should not be raised, much less debated.

And that brings us to the crux of the matter. All intellectual inquiry, be it scientific or philosophical, should be a search for Truth. This search must be sincere and remain unfettered by agendas or dogmas, and we do otherwise at our own peril.

This is why the politically correct thought police are so destructive. When they criticize a man like Watson, not only do they rarely say his statements are untrue, but the Truth of the matter doesn't even seem to enter their minds. No, it doesn't because they are blinded by their agenda.

Oh, having an agenda or hypothesis doesn't make them unusual, but an intellectually honest seeker of knowledge will alter his hypothesis when the data contradicts it. To these folks, however, their agenda is deified and takes precedence over Truth; thus, when the Truth contradicts their agenda, instead of altering the latter, they simply suppress or rationalize away the Truth. Or, that is, anything they may fear is Truth.
[...]
The Truth is that the outrage here isn't Dr. Watson's remarks; they're either true or not. What's outrageous is that we're suffering under the yoke of those to whom Truth means nothing -- the practitioners of a dark faith. They don't care if a statement is correct, only whether it's politically correct. They hate the Truth when it contradicts their agenda, and they'll stop at nothing to still the tongues of those who would dare voice it.
[...]
And what is the Truth about racial differences? For one thing, is it logical and rational to claim that, except for appearance and a few diseases and conditions of the body, every group is the same in every way?

This is the left's implication, and it's absurd. It seems especially odd when you consider that most of these inquisitors are secularists who subscribe to the theory of evolution. Yet, despite their belief that different groups "evolved" in completely different parts of the world, operating in different environments and subject to different stresses, they would have us believe that all groups are identical in terms of the multitude of man's talents and in every single measure of mental capacity. Why, miracle of miracles, all these two-legged cosmic accidents, the product of a billions-of-years journey from the primordial soup to primacy among creatures, whose evolution was influenced by perhaps millions of factors, wound up being precisely the same. It's really the best argument for God I've ever heard, as such a statistical impossibility could only exist if it was ordained by the one with whom all things are possible.''

Needless to say, the entire piece is worth reading.

Nationalists and neocons

Paul Belien at Brussels Journal asks 'Are We All Nazis Now?'

Sadly, I think that, as seen through the distorted lens of the neocons, the answer is 'yes.' All of us who believe in nationalism in any way, shape, or form are 'nazis' or 'fascists' or extremists. Again, we can split hairs over nationalism vs. patriotism, or quibble over whether a nation or a state are the same thing, and we can argue about whether a nation and a people are the same. But neocons care only about the nation as a set of propositions, or a geographical entity, not a nation as a distinct, historic group of people based on kinship and ancestry. Anybody who does care about these things, intrinsic though they are to the traditional understanding of nation, is a nazi.

Belien describes the whole furore over the Vlaams Belang over on a certain 'conservative' forum, and I won't go into detail on that as it has been discussed in minute detail already by others. I think most of us here are familiar with the basics of it. But Belien describes the attitude of one of his American hosts in the context of the current debate:

As Roger Scruton says it needs courage to brave the charges of racism, xenophobia or neo-Nazism in order to speak out. This courage is what Europe lacks.

Unfortunately, some Americans realize that Europe is in for a disaster but seem to think that it is only getting what it deserves. Europe has to be destroyed by the Muslims as a punishment for the Nazis’ crimes during WWII. Last year, I was invited to speak about the situation in Europe at one of America’s major universities. For two days my host subjected me to the most terrible accusations. He told me I would have to suffer for what my ancestors had done to his ancestors. “One cannot respect the Europeans,” he said. “America should have nuked Europe during WWII instead of Japan. If ever things turn nasty in Europe I will make sure that neither you nor any white European will be allowed to seek shelter in the US. I would rather invite the Muslims in than you and your lot, because one can respect Muslims but not Europeans.” Since my host was Jewish and had lost his family in the war I could understand his anger, but not his short-sightedness. I think he did not mean all he said, though it was an upsetting experience and one of the most unpleasant moments in my life.''
[emphasis mine]

I can fully believe that an American would say this kind of thing. I have heard this kind of anti-European self-righteousness from a number of 'conservative' Americans, and I have to say, in all honesty, it disgusts me as much as 'racism' or 'xenophobia' disgust the neocons and their leftist cousins. It should disgust us even more; why? Because it amounts to turning on our own in favor of outsiders, which by my lights is an unnatural thing to do. There is something inverted about taking the side of outsiders (the professor says he would rather have Moslems than Europeans in our country) against one's own. However, to be fair to the professor who made the ugly comments, he obviously does not consider Europeans his kin, and probably not even European-descended Americans. His kinship circle does not include those among whom he lives. And this seems to be true of many neocons. I am reminded of an ugly exchange I had with a neocon 'Texan' who told me that Mexican illegals were better Americans than I am because I was a xenophobe who wanted to exclude people from this country. There are plenty on the so-called right with similar sympathies. To them, their country is just an address with a transient population.

But to return to Belien's post, he describes the dispute over Vlaams Belang, and the reasons for the American neocons' vendetta against it.

Last week almost 80 people from 15 European countries, plus sympathizers from the US, Canada and Israel, convened in the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss a common strategy to fight Islamism. This important and historical event, which shows that there still is a fighting spirit among some Europeans, has been criticized by Charles Johnson, the owner of Little Green Footballs, an influential American neo-conservative website, because members of the Vlaams Belang were present. Though the VB did not organize the conference, it provided an important part of the logistics and the security of those attending. Johnson says the VB is a neo-Nazi party. His arguments are:
(1) that the party abstained in the European Parliament from approving the above mentioned Holocaust resolution;
(2) that early this month the party organized a “white supremacist” demonstration;
(3) that Nazi skinheads applaud the party;
(4) that neo-Nazis link to VB videos.''

So there we are: guilt by association. This is the kind of thing leftists use; it's their stock-in-trade, when they want to smear somebody. We see the left and the neocons trying to smear Ron Paul for similar reasons: supposedly 'neo-Nazis' and 'racists' have supported him so by association he must be one of them. Might I remind those on the left that the Communist Party almost always endorses the Democrat candidate? In response, Democrats will hastily say that 'the candidate has no control over their choice to endorse him, and besides, the Communists are a pathetically irrelevant party, with few members, and the Right is paranoid about the insignificant Communists.'

We can rightly say the same thing about these right-wing bogeymen the neocons and leftists like to bring up: how many actual 'neo-Nazis' are there in this country, or anywhere in the West? And groups like the SPLC are not a good authority on such matters; periodically they put out their propaganda about a vast 'right-wing extremist' conspiracy out to wreak violence, but there is no evidence in real life of any such threat. A few extremists out there do not a movement make. So why all this hysteria and condemnation over a mostly imaginary 'right-wing extremist' movement? It's just a scare tactic, to keep people within the accepted bounds of political dialogue, which these days is strictly limited, ranging from the far left to the so-called 'right' which represents more the rightward edge of liberalism than it represents anything conservative. The so-called 'right' in America is more often liberalism with a hawkish edge.

On another blog's comments section, I asked, in sincerity, are neocons simply half-converted liberals, or are they Gramscian moles in conservative parties? In some cases, I truly suspect the latter to be true. We know that the Gramscian idea was to infiltrate every institution, including academia, churches, and yes, political parties, and slowly transform them in the left's image, with leftist/liberal values. It looks very much to me like this is what has happened, and is happening.

Now, I am not saying that every person who spouts neocon ideology is a Gramscian leftist; many people have simply been influenced by these ideas which have been let loose in our society, via the media (Fox News, talk radio, 'conservative' punditry, 'right-wing' blogs and forums) and they truly do not realize that what they believe is at odds with what traditional America stood for, or with Western Christian values. They know that their admired political leaders and pastors and talk-radio personalities and neighbors and fellow country-club members believe the same things, and people tend to absorb the ideas of those they identify with.

So without even realizing it, many people inadvertently absorbed many liberal values and presuppositions because these ideas permeate our national atmosphere. They don't realize how liberal those ideas are.

On the Brussels Journal thread, a commenter named darrinh says the following:

It is remarkable how neo-cons go into throes of self-flagellation whenever nationalism is mentioned. Both LGF and TimBlair.net do this. By using the same catch-cries of the left, all they are doing really is assisting the Islamic propaganda machine and ultimately, despite their best intentions, will fail in the struggle against an enemy who does not care for such niceties.

The road to hell was indeed paved by good intentions and is maintained by the reasonable man. I do not intend to be that reasonable man.''

Amen.

The commenter above also mentions an important point: this division and competing for PC purity among Westerners is weakening us.

I would like to ask the 'conservatives' who are so holier-than-thou with anything they deem to be 'extremist', do you honestly, in your heart-of-hearts, believe that there is a resurgent 'nazism' waiting to happen in Europe or in America? Why? Do you believe, with most leftists, that people of European descent have some kind of gene for 'hatred' or 'fascism', some kind of atavistic Berserker gene which will cause them to revert to a barbaric past and start some kind of violent purge of foreigners in the West? If you believe that, isn't that a 'racist' attitude towards Europeans? I say it is, and since liberals and neocons have established that we can arbitrarily call anything 'racist', with or without proof, I say it's racist to accuse European-descended people of innate 'fascism.' And some have come quite close to doing that, notably some like the neocon hawk Ralph Peters, who bizarrely vacillates between fulminating against Islam and all its works and all its pomps, and fulminating against the 'Islamophobes', especially those in Europe, who are just itching to take up the sword against Islam again.

On one of the blogs where this whole furor is being discussed, an angry commenter defends the counterjihadist blogger who is at the center of it, saying that he does a great service by telling Americans and others of the 'horrors of Islam.' Now, I am always baffled by the many Americans who will zealously and angrily defend their favorite personalities, whether a pundit, a blogger, or a talk radio host -- or a President. If only we in the West had this kind of loyalty and zeal for our people and our civilization as we display for a personality or a political party or a president, then we would assuredly not be in this terrible predicament vis-a-vis Islam or immigrant invasions. I think this, too, is one of the unhappy fruits of the inroads of leftism: since allegiance to our people is now in disrepute, and since loyalty to kin and nation has been declared tantamount to Nazism, then the natural, normal, healthy, wholesome, good tendency to fight for one's own has been re-channeled, diverted into unnatural 'us-vs.-them' factions, such as political party and personality cults, cults of political figures and vacuous celebrities and false religious leaders. This is all a perversion of natural human tendency to ally with a group.

There is just something pathetic about being fighting mad over words, over someone 'dissing' your favorite blogger or favorite talk radio pundit or your political party. It's pathetic because it is an unnatural thing.

Over on Free Republic, when people post news stories, they are allowed to alter or add to headlines and make 'editorializing' comments thereby. The other day, a news story announced 'scientist predicts humans to split into two branches'. The poster had added: 'Conservatives and liberals?' What an illustrative question. To the people who frequent Free Republic, the most important division among human beings is 'conservative vs. liberal.' Truly. Or more accurately, 'Republican vs. Democrat.' There are people there who defend illegal immigrants, some doing so quite angrily and forcibly. Some will defend 'moderate Muslims' but Democrats and liberals are the root of all evil in the world. I can sympathize somewhat, because liberals and leftists have wrought considerable destruction to our world and our way of life. Though liberals disclaim violence as a tactic, there is more than one kind of violence, and their effort to dismantle and pull down our traditonal societies has caused a great deal of destruction and yes, even loss of life. But there is always the possibility that a liberal might become more conservative, or have a complete change of heart. It has happened. Whereas some people are congenitally our enemies, and will never be really on our side.
So here is where I part company, vehemently, with neocons. They really, honestly, seem to think that their fellow countrymen or Westerners who are more right wing than they are (and that could include a lot of people) are a more serious danger than Islam at its worst. They would rather risk terror attacks by Moslems in our countries than to be 'Islamophobic' enough to ban Moslem immigration or deport anyone. To me, this is proof positive that their thinking is deranged. Should another terror attack happen (as our blithely feckless government assures us it will), it will be partly on the head of the neocons who are too squeamish or too holier-than-thou to expel anyone. They would rather die and see other Westerners die than deport -- because that would be 'extremist', you see. In that respect, how are they one whit different from the leftists? How?

And as for the counterjihad bloggers who are praised by their followers for doing such great service, I have mixed feelings. I used to be a regular visitor to some of those blogs and forums, and I did learn from what I read there -- but on the other hand, 9/11 taught me all I needed to know about Islam. Actually, I had an inkling before that terrible day. Way back in 1972, after the terror attacks at the Munich Olympics, I wrote about the violent fruits of Islam. So I knew the score on Islam back then, but little did I notice, in the intervening decades, how many Moslems were quietly slipping into our country and setting up shop here. I think few of us realized there was a conscious policy of colonizing, and establishing their presence and power by degrees in Western countries.

The counterjihad blogs and forums do a good service -- but if those who run them stop short of recommending deportation or exclusion, what then? After they have spent years warning everyone about the dangerous designs of Islam on the West, about the violent admonitions of the Koran and the Hadiths, after years (it's more than six years since 9/11, after all!) of recounting many horror stories, what now? After years of telling us of honor killings, beheadings, rapes, bombings, terror threats, random attacks in our country and elsewhere, reports of cruel punishments in Islamic lands, slavery, repression, persecution, desecrations of churches, what now? What's our move, if not deportations, or at the very minimum, stopping all Moslem immigration? What is the point of all the hand-wringing, the warning, the lamenting, if there is nothing we can do about it except to wage an endless, expensive war 'over there, so we don't have to fight them over here?'

And why are some of the most ardent supporters of the 'War on Terror' and of the war in Iraq the most vehement opponents of deporting or excluding Moslems? Does that make sense? It's 'mean' and hateful to deport or exclude, but sending an army into their countries is just dandy?

What is the solution to the Islamic problem? What do the neocons who think deportation is racist propose we do then? Do they think we can convert them? Kill them with kindness? Intermarry with them? Convert en masse? Pay jizya to make them stop killing us? Accommodate to them? Or do they believe we can reform Islam? Make them 'enter the 21st century' as some optimists say we must do? How do we do that?

If the counterjihad blogs and forums are nothing more than places to vent or tsk-tsk about the latest atrocity in some far-off corner of Araby, then what good is that? Is it just a way to defuse and channel some of the anti-Islamic fears and frustrations?

It appears to me that some of these forums are essentially just a debating society or a way to defuse some of the fear or anger. If there is no solution, if we categorically rule out the most obvious solution, why even bother to spend so much of one's life thinking about the problem and talking about it?

Those on the left will continue to denounce anyone who holds the forbidden 'nationalist' views, because that is what they do. But how can a conservative believe that nationalism and the desire to protect and preserve one's country and culture is evil and wrong? It seems we are seeing who is truly conservative and who is not.

And as far as the irrelevant idea of some of the European parties having been associated with Nazism or collaborationists -- excuse me. That was more than six decades ago. Most of the people alive and active in that era of history are now long since dead. Why is anyone trying to keep that dead past alive? And before someone invokes the Holocaust, I have to say the same as I would say about slavery: what does that have to do with today's generation? The Moslems are the main enemies of Jews today; why pretend that Europeans are a threat? And why dredge up history as a weapon to use against people of today who had no part in the events of six or more decades ago? I suppose my patience is wearing thin for those whose main identity has to do with victimhood. The guilt industry and the concomitant victim industry are the main factors in the inability of the West to claim the natural right to self-defense, and the God-given right to exist.

Free speech, political correctness, and the right

David Thompson gives us his take, as always interesting, on the recent controversies over 'hate speech,' for example in the Islamic Awareness Week at Tufts University.

Fear and Hate

It should, I think, be unnecessary to point out that claims of being offended don’t, in themselves, entitle one to anything in particular, and certainly not rights of unilateral censorship. But we live in strange times and some repetition may be in order. As I wrote back in May 2005:

In this fashionable rush to condemn those who cause offence, we are in danger of overlooking something important. All grievances are not of equal merit. Nor are they deserving of equal sensitivity or accommodation. Whether or not a person is offended may not depend on what is actually said or written, which may be perfectly coherent, measured in tone and serious in intent. The perceived offence may depend on the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the supposedly aggrieved party... Very civil and inarguable comments can, for instance, cause “offence” to someone who is determined to be offended for political gain and determined to exploit the pretence of being hurt. Indeed, the pantomime of being conspicuously aggrieved can be a form of passive-aggressivism - a way to express hostility or dominance while hiding being the role of victim. This tactic is widely employed by the morally incontinent and by bullies of all kinds.

In light of those comments, the following may be of interest. Mike Adams has developed a similar line of thinking and arrived at an interesting, and quite helpful, definition of “hate speech”:

Hate speech is verbal communication that induces anger due to the listener’s inability to offer an intelligent response. Because this inability to offer an intelligent response is due to one of two reasons, there are really two different types of hate speech: (1) Speech that is too dumb to merit an intelligent response, and (2) Speech for which the listener is too dumb to offer an intelligent response.''

Good commentary from both Thompson and Mike Adams.
Thompson says, of Adams' ideas:

If, as Adams suggests, “hate speech” is defined by the listener’s inability to tolerate dissent or formulate an intelligent response, then advantage is given to those who least deserve it. Those who resort to threats and howls of impropriety gain leverage over people who are prepared to listen and rebut with argument and evidence. Thus, moral incontinence, idiocy and bullying prevail.''

All in all, it's an interesting piece. The entire thing should be read, and please do read the discussion thread, which, sadly, illustrates yet another example of neocon/right-liberal political correctness, in which the bogeymen assume the usual guise of 'racists and bigots.' The Klan are invoked, and poor old James Watson is again given a drubbing for his comments. I notice however that as usual nobody has a cogent argument with which to refute anything Watson has said, but I guess you don't need one if you have noble motives such as defending the downtrodden victims.

Is there any hope of disabusing the 'conservative' apostles of political correctness? They seem quite convinced that they are the epitome of 'conservative' righteousness. They seem to have no inkling that they are following along two steps behind their left counterparts, as regards their adherence to PC.

Somebody coined the term 'the righteous Right' to describe conservative Christians, but I am inclined to use that term for the PC adherents on the 'right' who get the vapors when somebody says something politically incorrect. Get the smelling salts. Maybe they are the 'self-righteous right.' Or maybe some of the commenters are actually liberals of the garden variety. It's getting so hard to tell these days.

The Olympians vs. human nature

I happened across these two pieces, one by Kenneth Minogue and one by James Pinkerton, both of them from a while back, but they seemed like bookend pieces, and they address the very relevant issue of universalism vs nationalism or patriotism, and national sovereignty vs. internationalism or globalism.

Minogue notes that the people who are most determinedly pushing globalism and universalism are an odd collection of people who nevertheless have similar goals. He examines the different motives which lead a rather disparate collection of people to pursue similar ends. The most obvious people who advocate the universalist view are the 'humanitarian' types, the do-gooders who want to save suffering humanity, end war, and bring about some global utopia.

Kenneth Minogue on National Sovereignty Vs. Internationalism

...In arguing that sovereignty has become an irrelevant, indeed obstructive, hangover from the past, humanitarians present themselves less as assassins, than as executioners of the verdict of history.

Such is the negative element in the humanitarian project. The positive project is nothing less than that of transforming the human situation. It aims to remove the oppressions of torture and poverty so that each individual on the planet can be assured of what activists often call "a good quality of life", and what philosophers refer to these days as "flourishing". Each person must be given what one might call a "quality assured" life.

This is obviously a secular vision -- religious concerns are merely lifestyle choices within it -- and there is a sense in which one might well think it a highly desirable utopia. One could hardly say that it is a noble vision, however, because it treats the inhabitants of the globe as a set of victims who must be provided with these desirabilities. Humanity is to be the passive beneficiary of a perfection supplied by an élite of busy humanitarians.''

[A quote from H.L. Mencken comes to mind here: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."]

Minogue continues:

Still, given the horrors that take place in many parts of the world, humanitarianism is a very understandable aspiration. And as it operates in contemporary politics, it takes the form of internationalism, since its most evident character is the aspiration to transcend sovereign national independence and replace it with rights enforced by a benign world authority. Internationalism is a political movement, and its exponents are, as it were, the patriots of a patria which does not yet exist. Since most people seem instinctively to prefer their own values to those of foreigners, our next question must be to ask: who advances the project of internationalism?

The answer is that internationalism appeals to a self-consciously enlightened public opinion, an opinion whose doctrines descend, indeed, from the movement which actually called itself the Enlightenment. This is a public opinion prone to express its preferences in terms of abstractions such as rights, peace, negotiation, equality, rule of law, inclusion, etcetera. It is evidently a rationalist cast of mind, which treats every defect in the human condition as a problem for which lawyers and experts (lawyers especially) can always find a solution.

To say this is to say that internationalist activists have commonly been trained at universities in the social sciences, but have understood their training as having transcended the academic disciplines (which recognise that every logic of inquiry has its own specific limitations) in favour of a more general ideological orientation. This orientation rejects the current world order as radically imperfect, and aims at salvation by implementing whatever the favoured abstractions currently seem to intimate. Implementing such policies commonly collides, however, with the instincts and prejudices of most of the populations even of Western countries, and this is the reason I have on occasions referred to this area of public opinion as "Olympian".
[...]
Here, then, in the Olympians we have a new class, as they have been called, consisting of academics, journalists, lawyers, teachers, clergymen, politicians and administrators. They are not only prepared to take issue with their own governments, but positively take a pride in doing so. Such dissidence is thought to express a virtue above the mere parochialities of local patriotism. But as political actors seeking to transform the world, Olympians have several disadvantages. One of them is that they are not a very warlike set of people. They are crusaders of the pen rather than the sword. Today the levers of power in Western societies give Olympians access to a military power to which (except when they need it) they are essentially hostile. Their ultimate aim is to create a world that won't need soldiers -- indeed, even now they are trying to turn warriors into a different kind of thing called a "peace keeper".

There is another problem impeding their project of perfecting the world. Almost all of them are to be found in Western countries. They are all the products of Western liberalism. Their challenge lies in presenting an essentially Western middle class view of the world as if it expressed the essence of humanity itself. On the other hand, in their doctrines of rights and their recourse to international law, they do at least have instruments capable of disrupting other societies. Their secret weapon against non-Western societies is women, who have a great deal to gain from Westernisation.

Acute readers may already have recognised a contradiction in my account of the Olympians who sustain the humanitarian movement. On the one hand they stand for humanity itself, and therefore espouse equality, but on the other hand they conceive of themselves as having a rather superior status. But we need not dwell greatly on this point, for it merely reveals that we are dealing with something entirely familiar: namely, a new version of the Marxist doctrine of the vanguard of the proletariat.

...We began with something like a mystery: who is trying to kill sovereignty and the nation state ? We have discovered that there are many suspects both within and without the state, but that the real situation is that sovereignty is to be killed in order to turn the state into something that will subserve the Olympian ambition to create a world guaranteeing a good quality of life to every individual on the planet.''

However, James Pinkerton expresses a belief that these utopian 'Olympians' do not have human nature on their side, and hence have less of an advantage than we may think.

Pinkerton notes the presence of another faction of people who are aggressively promoting globalism: the right-wing corporate interests.

Universalism vs. Nationalism

Here's a question: Why do Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have such similar views on immigration?

The answer is that all four of the above -- Mahony, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Journal -- have chosen universalism over nationalism. The four embrace different visions of universalism, to be sure, but each one of them is similar insofar as it seeks to transcend passports and borders. Each of the four pursues a trans-nationalizing, world-flattening globalism that regards nation-states as, at best, necessary evils -- and at worst, unnecessary evils. Far better, the universalists say, to unite the world, regardless of color and class, according to common belief. In terms of either religion or ideology, many find it inspiring to think that the whole world might be united into one big system, in which all pursue purity or prosperity. It's all pretty heady stuff, these universalisms.

But there's one big catch: Such universalizing is terrible politics -- the folks at home don't like it, and they won't vote for it. Regular people don't seem to like universalism; they like nationalism, particularism, localism. Electorates, each in their own homeland, seem to reject new world orders, preferring to organize themselves into something that many thought was dead and discredited: the nation state.''

[Note: Apropos of this, James Burnham once said]

But modern liberalism does not offer ordinary men compelling motives for personal suffering, sacrifice and death. There is no tragic dimension in its picture of the good life . . . In their place Liberalism proposes a set of pale and bloodless abstractions - pale and bloodless for the very reason that they have no roots in the past, in deep feeling and in suffering. Except for mercenaries, saints and neurotics, no one is willing to sacrifice and die for progressive education, medicare, humanity in the abstract, the United Nations and a ten percent rise in Social Security payments.”

He seems to have been right; despite what the 'proposition nation' neocons and the left-liberal do-gooders say, loyalties to abstractions are watery and thin, compared to our allegiances to kith and kin, home, and native soil.

Pinkerton describes the four universalizing forces as Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church, Islam, leftist internationalism, and right-wing internationalism, or globalism. Though on the surface, these groups might seem to be at odds, they are in general agreement on some things. Pinkerton continues:

All these universalists have come to agreement on the desirability of more immigration. And they have something else in common too: they are being routed in the public square by the nationalist immigration-restricters. Grand belief systems, vaulting overhead, are being shattered on the low-rising rocks of stable communities and reliable neighborliness.

The universalists have big ideas, but they are, well, too big. Albert Einstein, a big thinker if there ever was one -- who would be categorized into the lefty ACLU grouping -- disdained anything less than full internationalism: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind." But half a century after Einstein's death, it's apparent that humanity isn't growing out of its nationalism. The Kurds, the Chechens, the Palestinians, the Tamils, and the Montenegrins, to name just five groups insistently pressing for independence, would say that the full realization of nationalism has a way to go.

To the endless consternation of the globalists, most people prefer to think small: to express affection for their own, first.
[...]
To put it another way, the wind is in the face of the border-openers, such as George W. Bush.
[...]
In the long run, "normal" wins, because normal is also numerous. Which is why Bush & the Open Borderers are being beaten so badly on the immigration issue -- they are outnumbered. As we have seen, the normal mode of behavior is to be loyal to people, family, flag, and place, as distinct from distantly vaporous abstractions.

Those who aspire toward abstract universalism thus had better learn an important lesson: humility. And yet "humility" and "universalism" don't naturally go well together; after all, if one Knows the Truth about the whole wide world, it's hard to be modest.''
[Emphasis mine]

Minogue describes these 'Olympians' as people who conceive of themselves as a moral as well as intellectual elite, and Pinkerton seems to agree, adding that not only are the Olympian internationalists out of touch, but they are not likely to succeed in the long run since they are in opposition to human nature.

If Pinkerton is right, and I surely hope he is, then we who want to maintain our natural human loyalty to our people, our homes, and our faith and heritage, have the advantage of normality, of our following the dictates of healthy human nature.

The prescient Carleton Putnam said

I have already said something about brotherhood, but I will add one thing more. Love, like charity, begins at home. A man who loves all countries, and all races, as much as he loves his own, is like the man who loves all women as much as he loves his wife. He merits suspicion. I have seldom seen the matter put better than by William Massey in his article "The New Fanatics," in the section entitled "Whither Brotherhood?" To that question Mr. Massey answers: "Nowhere. The current furor over brotherhood is compounded of fallacy and foolishness. For it is fallacy to believe that men are no longer separated by enduring differences, and it is foolishness wilfully to believe this fallacy. Yet this fallacy is the basis for the present campaign for brotherhood. This is not a campaign by men who love humanity, but by men obsessed with a vision. Their vision is of a united mankind marching toward a Utopian world. It is the stylized, inhuman vision they love, not man. They do not look at man dispassionately, or even with affection, to see his condition and help him. Instead they preach a mystic brotherhood of man that is both goal and means to the goal. This brotherhood is not reached by good will, understanding and tolerance. It is a fanatic's dream, a will-o'-the-wisp that gives them the self-righteousness to vent their hatreds with a clear conscience. Better an honest enemy than so strange a brother."