The PC stranglehold on the arts

I've been coming across a number of posts on conservative blogs or websites recently which have touched on the question of why conservatives seem underrepresented in the arts, or at least, do not seem to exert any influence in that field. Why this is so is something that might be discussed at length, having many possible causes.

However I've noticed, too, that there are precious few critics or commentators on the arts, including popular entertainment, who seem to be conservative or traditionalist or just politically incorrect. This is maddening.

I notice on Turner Classic Movies (a channel which is deteriorating slowly into another American Movie Classics) there is a newer movie called Glory being shown this evening. Now, to me, anything made after about 1960 is a 'new' movie because that time period was when political correctness became established in popular entertainment.

I know nothing about the movie Glory except that it appears to be a movie about the War Between the States, and as it stars Denzel Washington, I am certain the issue of race will figure prominently in the movie. In other words, the movie will be a morality play, and I know before watching a moment of it who will be the bad guy and who will be the sainted victim.

So I go to IMDB.com to read the comments on the movie. Knowing how firm a grip PC has on our society,I fully expect that all the reviews will be glowing and full of quasi-religious language. I was correct. Commenters speak of their 'emotional experience' watching the movies and it's clear that these movies about race issues in the Bad Old Days are to them what Foxe's Book of Martyrs is for Christians.
This comment is an example:

I find this one of my most difficult reviews to write. Even as I sit here for what must be the 206th viewing, I marvel, as acutely as I did in the very first viewing, that this tale has the compelling and overwhelming power to touch aesthetically, viscerally, profoundly and emotionally my sense of pride,injustice, soul. Even if this were not a true story, I would still recommend this movie to everyone with awe and reverence. And even as I watch, there is goose-flesh and damp eyes. As there always is...''

Political correctness, leading to what seems to be self-flagellation for white people, is a religious thing these days. Do these people who experience some kind of numinous experience watching the villainy of their ancestors, or take some form of twisted pleasure in seeing their forefathers painted as inhuman sadists or cold-blooded oppressors? Or do they comfort themselves that it was ''those other white guys'', somebody else's great-granddaddies who were the villains? Or do they accept that yes, their own forefathers were ''racists'', and do they then thank whatever gods they believe in that at least THEY are enlightened and better than their kin a few generations ago?

Is it some kind of catharsis that they experience through these movies? Do they experience some feeling that they have expiated their 'original sin' of Caucasianness by weeping over play-acted scenes of Denzel Washington being mistreated?

Who can fathom what goes through the minds of the self-castigating white people? I don't think that even in my liberal days I experienced this kind of emotion in watching these kinds of things, so I can't put myself in the place of these commenters.

I do notice that whichever movie you look up on IMDB, the comments are always uniformly liberal. I truly cannot ever recall reading any kind of dissenting conservative comment on any movie there. This leads me to wonder: does IMDB censor the comments based on PC or even political orientation? It would not be surprising or unprecedented if this were the case.

There seems to be a crying need for some kind of non-PC criticism of popular entertainment or the arts in general. There are examples like this
but this is rather mainstream 'conservatism', and mainstream conservatism tends to be politically correct.
Most of the 'conservative' blogs on movies that I've seen are politically correct.

This discussion on Free Republic about conservative movie reviews degenerates into a slanging match between some Christian social conservatives and the 'South Park' Republican types who sneer at Christian conservatives as being prudes.

Many 'conservatives' are conservative only on fiscal and military matters, and socially liberal, or perhaps libertarian on just about everything else.

So is there any hope of any politically incorrect counter-influence in the arts, even if only in the form of criticism or commentary dissecting the propaganda? Or is the answer to just 'enjoy' the low-quality tendentious garbage put out by Hollywood and MTV?

It does seem that as long as the enemy controls all the media and the subliminal and overt images our society absorbs, they will control minds and hearts. What can we do, if anything, about that?

Is it anti-Americanism or...?

During this ongoing Obama-Jeremiah Wright controversy, I have been hearing a great deal of commentary from the mainstream 'right' which repeatedly uses the term 'anti-American' in condemning Wright.

I noticed in surfing past Fox News that they keep harping on Wright's 'anti-American' statements.

Is this just an oblique way of criticizing his anti-white statements? Is it more politically correct to say 'anti-American' rather than anti-white? After all, if the 'conservatives' on Fox News or the big Republican forums want to criticize Wright or Obama, they cannot criticize his anti-white beliefs without themselves appearing to be pro-white. And it's still verboten to be pro-white -- even in those 'right-wing' cable TV discussions.

Yes, Wright in his diatribes (I wouldn't dignify them by describing them as sermons) denounces the actions of the U.S. Government, specifically, as when he is haranguing in the video about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. That might be called 'anti-American' or at least anti-American government. But when he starts his accusations about HIV being cooked up in a laboratory for 'genocidal' purposes against black folks, then he is accusing whites as a group of diabolical actions and intentions. This is anti-white, not anti-American.
Wright is denouncing us as a race, and we are not allowed to defend ourselves in those terms.

But how do we denounce specifically anti-white propaganda without being, you know, pro-white? There's the PC dilemma.

This sums up our position in a nutshell. We are under siege in many different ways, and yet we are not free to defend ourselves verbally; to do so in most instances means we will be called names and shouted down, and for some, it may mean a loss of livelihood and it may mean social stigma and harassment by the armies of 'tolerance.' For people in some Western countries, defending our people, whites, may mean being subject to some kind of charge of 'hate speech' or other such thought-crime allegations.

In this context, it is understandable that people carefully frame this controversy in acceptable terms, making it about 'anti-Americanism.' But how long, I wonder, before someone will say that being pro-American is 'divisive, exclusive, and xenophobic'? Political correctness has a way of spreading and our freedom of expression is thus diminishing by the encroachment of PC.

But passively submitting to these strictures only weakens our position. At some point, people have to refuse to continue to conform, and break the taboos. The cowards in political office will not be the ones to do so, nor the media lackeys. It will have to start elsewhere. If enough of us stop meekly accepting these limitations on our speech and thought, we might reach that critical mass which makes it possible to break through the conditioning.

We can't continue being afraid to claim our racial identity. Everybody else has a racial identity, and racial pride, except Anglo-Americans. We are the only people, despite our supposed 'dominance' of this country, who are not allowed to speak up in defense of ourselves when attacked as a race by people like Wright or the Mexican revanchists or whoever else is slandering us on any given day.

Our inheritance

Our inheritance is turned to strangers, our houses to aliens.

The phrase above strikes me as being especially poignant these days.

This quote is from the Bible. Notice that the writer does not say "isn't this diversity wonderful? Diversity is our strength!''

And note that the book in which this phrase appears, in Chapter 5, verse 2, is the Book of Lamentations.
Lamentations.

What is the opposite of 'to lament'? According to an online thesaurus, the antonym is ''to celebrate.''

So why isn't the writer ''celebrating diversity''? Why is he lamenting it instead, and crying to God about it?

Is he a xenophobe? Perhaps a hater and a nativist and a bigot? A racist, perhaps? Mean-spirited?
Actually it's believed that the prophet Jeremiah, a man of God, wrote Lamentations, so I guess we had better not accuse him of being on the wrong side morally.

Still, this is exactly what many Christians of today are doing, indirectly, when they not only judge, but condemn those of us who lament our country, our inheritance, being turned to strangers, and our houses to aliens.

Is it in accordance with Biblical teachings for us to erase national boundaries in the name of 'social justice' or 'the brotherhood of man'? Some modern Christians insist that it is; in fact, they imply that we are actually commanded to sacrifice our countries and our birthright, in addition to our money, to accommodate anyone and everyone of the millions who want to come to our countries.

But where is the Biblical support for this radical egalitarian idea? Why is such an idea not spelled out explicitly in the Bible or in the writings of the Church fathers? Are universalist Christians ready to claim that the past generations had it all wrong? It would appear so.

Should it not give us pause to find ourselves outside the consensus of Christian interpretation over the last 20 centuries? It should. If we in our day have come up with some radically new 'understanding' we should think twice, three times, and more, about overthrowing all the past interpretations of the Bible.

Modern-day 'one-world' Christians usually imply that those who believe in the old ways of seeing things -- that is, in the existence of separate nations with boundaries -- are not only wrong, but guilty of the sin of 'hate' . If that is true, and if the sin of hate or 'xenophobia' is as serious as the universalists believe, then all our ancestors are now under damnation because they believed in separate nations and maintaining boundaries.

I'm not prepared to condemn my forefathers to hell, and I am appalled that so many of my fellow Christians are doing just that.

Our forefathers, bless them, believed in passages like this one:

''When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people...''

The Most High divided peoples, and set the bounds which separated them.
Our nations are our homes. The Bible very much supports the idea of property; the Ten Commandments warn us about coveting others' goods and wives, and warn us against stealing, which implies that property and ownership are part of God's order.

Nations are part of the inheritance, the property our fathers pass on to us.
The passage from Lamentations alludes to that fact.

How, then, can tens of millions of immigrants stake a claim to others' countries, their rightful inheritance?
Accepting small numbers of immigrants, who seek admission lawfully and in an orderly way (as the Bible enjoins to follow the laws of the land) is one thing. Allowing tens of millions of uninvited 'guests', or invaders, to put it more bluntly, is another matter entirely. Small numbers of people can be absorbed into a society with a minimum of disruption and distress for all involved. Millions, tens of millions, as we have now, create chaos, disruption, and conflict. Change happens quickly, without the consent of the existing inhabitants. People are displaced from jobs and homes. Quality of life deteriorates as large numbers of people barge into an area in a short time. Financial crises occur as the local area has to provide for the masses of newcomers.

Is this hard to understand? Even a twelve-year-old is capable of understanding the situation. But why are those of liberal views so stubbornly obtuse when it comes to this issue?

Surely, even those slow of understanding can see that immigrants are assimilable only in smaller numbers. Mass immigration makes such absorption impossible. Or is this what liberals like about it? Liberals think it an injustice, a manifestation of ''racism'', to ask that newcomers assimilate and adapt to us. I sense a certain amount of hostility on the part of said liberals to the existing order. I sense that there is a desire to see chaos, and destruction of the America as we have known it, in order to make way for some imaginary New Age of Social Justice and Equality.

Is this a Christian attitude? I say that it is not. Biblically there is no justification for the idea that human beings can ever create an ideal society, and it is hubris to believe that we can, especially when all past attempts to create some kind of egalitarian paradise have ended badly, often with bloodshed.

One more point, which is simple common sense.
When a society is as badly out-of-balance as ours is, it is necessary to make a sharp correction. Easy-does-it won't suffice when we are about to careen off a cliff.

Liberals seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that our society is ailing not because it is run by 'right-wingers' but because it has gone way over the top with liberal ideas, which have all proven unworkable or destructive. We have been doing things the liberal way, working toward liberal goals, for the last half century and more. We now have out-of-control mass immigration which is changing the face of our country. We face becoming strangers in our own country, outnumbered by people who, at best, care nothing for us, and at worst, hate us and would do us harm if they could. Is this a happy prospect? It is not. But it's happening; check the census projections, and think about being reduced to an outsider in your own country, or about the prospects of our children in such a country.

And there is no way that this dire situation (which does exist, despite the massive denial of many) can be blamed on 'right-wingers' or 'xenophobes' or 'racists.' No, our country has gone quite over the edge in the opposite direction, in attempting to root out 'racism' and to cater to minorities, including people who are not native to our country. We now have draconian speech codes called 'political correctness' which stifle all honest discussion. Those who purport to feel shocked by what I have written here, if they are truly shocked, are so only because they have been protected by PC from hearing real honest discussion and both sides of the issue.

If this truly were a racist and xenophobic country, we native-born Americans would not be on the ropes in our own country. As it is, we are at a disadvantage; if we were so 'bigoted' and xenophobic, we would not be so careless about letting millions of unauthorized people enter our country and make demands of us, would we? If we are 'racists' and 'xenophobes' we must be awfully ineffectual ones, since we have so many strangers and aliens among us.

No, it isn't 'right-wingers' who are to blame for the mess that is our country: it is largely the result of perhaps well-intentioned but foolish people who want to sacrifice their country as a form of reparations to the Third World. We have gone too far to the left; we need to return to the kind of country we once were, when life was much more sane and safe and peaceful.

Our current state of affairs is not working. The patient is sick and getting sicker, and the remedies are harming rather than helping. We need a change of course, a change of doctors, and a different course of treatment, and there is no time to lose.

So if I speak bluntly here, if I say things that seem 'harsh' and unloving, it's only because America needs some 'tough love.' We have no time for tiptoeing around. We've had 40 years or so of wandering in the liberal wilderness, and let's admit it: we are lost. We have to retrace our steps and go back the way we came.

We've had half a century of coerced 'niceness' and saccharine altruism. Now it's time for a correction, and that may require that we stop mincing our words, and stop the lies and the flatteries and the self-deception.

Sometimes you have to throw cold water on someone to wake him up and bring him to his senses. Our country is in need of being doused with the icy water of truth.

Right now, at this point in our history, it's time to be loving towards our own, towards our children, grandchildren, our progeny, our stake in the future. Our first loyalty is to them, and to our living kin and neighbors. Our responsibility is to them, and we are failing them in an effort to show how unbiased and inclusive we are. We are harming ourselves and our own in the name of helping the whole world.

Is there not one honest liberal who can acknowledge that it's time to correct this imbalance, and look to ourselves and those nearest to us?

I will conclude with some appropriate quotes from Christian and secular sources.

“Since you cannot give aid to everyone, one has to be concerned with those who by reason of blood, time or
circumstances are by some chance more tightly bound to you” - St, Augustine, De Doctrina

“Just as there are in a military camp separate lines for each platoon and section, men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries. [In this manner,] God, by his providence, reduces to order that which is confused.” - John Calvin


"We begin our public affections in our families... we pass on to our neighbourhoods.''
[...]
"To love the little platoon we belong to in society is the first principle of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country and to mankind.'' - Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France

“For Western civilization in the present condition of the world, the most important practical consequence of the guilt encysted in the liberal ideology and psyche is this: that the liberal, and the group, nation or civilization infected by liberal doctrine and values, are morally disarmed before those whom the liberal regards as less well off than himself.” -- James Burnham, 1964.

“Nationhood is not an arbitrary human arrangement, but a principle of divine order. The separation of vastly different peoples helps reduce conflict and promote fruitful diversity. Massive uncontrolled immigration defeats God’s order. Love and compassion fare poorly in chaos - and also in the tyranny that follows chaos.” - John Vinson

The Scots-Irish and McCain

The Scots-Irish, that group of people which is popularly held to make up most of the population (or at least the old-stock, pre-invasion population) of the South, are in the news again, thanks to the recent overblown anti-South piece by Michael Hirsh from Newsweek.

Daniel Larison dissects the absurd Michael Hirsh piece here, which laments the supposed Southern domination of our culture, particularly our politics. Larison disagrees; read the whole article for his take.

He then obliquely discusses the candidacy of John McCain, who is partially of Scots or Scots-Irish descent:

No one can look at American politics today, seeing the main presidential candidates who are now running for the White House, and conclude that the South has triumphed in any meaningful way: we have two out-and-out Northerners and a transplant whose ancestors may be Scots-Irish but whose loyalties are to the central state and the status quo and who has immersed himself fully in the culture of the capital. The South has become the most populous region, and yet it still wields vastly less cultural power than the major urban centers of the East Coast and California. Hirsh is free to prefer the urban, Eastern liberals, but he should give up on the idea that the power and influence of Easterners are meaningfully in decline.''

I agree with his conclusions.
The ancestry of John McCain, however, is often brought up in internet discussions, with some people using his supposed Scots-Irish ancestry against him, for example, in claiming that his genes make him volatile and bellicose. Most of the people who discuss the Scots-Irish seem to be content to generalize about that group as being 'warlike', despite the fact that otherwise, many of the same people disclaim any belief that race or ethnicity affects behavior at all.

Are the 'Scots-Irish' or Ulster Scots, as they are sometimes known, are described thus:

The Scots-Irish settlers made superb frontiersmen in early Colonial America. Their experiences over the previous few centuries, first in the Scottish Borders and then fighting the Irish Catholics in the north of Ireland had created a race of hardy unyielding people who were ideally suited to clearing the forests to build farms and pushing the borders further and further west.
[...]
Their experience of religious discrimination in Ulster by their Episcopal English landlords meant the Scots-Irish had no hesitation in taking the side of the rebels in the War of Independence. In the words of Professor James G. Leyburn "They provided some of the best fighters in the American army. Indeed there were those who held the Scots-Irish responsible for the war itself".

No less a figure than George Washington once said "If defeated everywhere else I will make my last stand for liberty among the Scots-Irish of my native Virginia".


The Scots-Irish provided 25 Generals and about a third of the revolutionary army. The Pennsylvania Line was made up entirely of Ulster-Scots emigrants and their sons. The Battle of Kings Mountain was a Scots-Irish battle where a militia of mainly Scots-Irish Presbyterians defeated an English army twice its size.
President Theodore Roosevelt said of the Scots-Irish "in the Revolutionary war, the fiercest and most ardent Americans of all were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants"

However, according to the same web page,

"The Scots-Irish embraced America and gradually lost their distinct Scotch-Irish identity to be Americans period.''

I would agree with that last statement. During my growing-up years, I was aware that some of my paternal ancestry was Scots-Irish or Ulster Scots, and yet this was not something that was made much of. I knew nobody in our environs, among a lot of old-stock Southrons, whose identity was tied to their Scots ancestry; there were no hyphenated Americans there. They had no ties to the 'old country,' their ancestors having left there centuries ago. Unlike Irish-Americans of more recent immigrant stock they have little or no identification with the 'old country'. To my mind, it seems that this emphasis on Ulster Scots ancestry in the South is a fairly recent development, fostered in part by the general trend, after the 1970s or so, to look to old-country roots among many Americans. Irish-Americans became more Hibernocentric, and made trips to Ireland and incorporated more genuine Irish culture into their lives; similarly with other ethnic groups in America, with the exception of those with English or Scottish or Welsh origins. The latter groups tended to identify simply as American, and in the case of those in the South, as Southron (or Southern, if you insist).

There are no 'Scots-Irish' enclaves or organized activities on a large scale. Yes, some areas have 'Highland Games' and Burns Nights, but I think these are more recent developments. I don't remember them from my childhood years.

So is Scots-Irish ancestry truly as significant as the Dixie-phobes make it out to be? Can we blame Scots-Irish genes for the warrior culture or the culture of honor (which does exist) in the South? Can we blame McCain's hair-trigger temper and bellicosity on his supposed Scots-Irish origins? And by the way: a recent article on the candidates' genealogies which I linked to here claimed that Hillary Rodham Clinton is also Scots-Irish, as is Barack Hussein Obama. Are they, too, irascible and temperamental by virtue of that ancestry? Or does it count only among those with Scots surnames, like McCain?

And speaking of surnames, McCain is only ONE of the names in John McCain's family tree. A look at his genealogy as displayed here
shows, by my reckoning, that he has probably more English and a little Welsh ancestry than he has Scots ancestry. Surnames like Wright, Fletcher, Kidwell, Atkins, Young, Small, Dickens, Higgins, White, Young, Howard, Clements, outnumber the identifiably Scots names like McAllister or possibly Garside.

Granted, the Youngs and the Whites seem to have come here from County Antrim -- but their names suggest their ancestors were English colonists in Northern Ireland, probably settled there in the 1600s as a few of my ancestors were.

My family name is Celtic-sounding, although I have relatively few Scots ancestors, so obviously to consider McCain as Scots because he has a Scottish surname is rather careless.

I just don't see all the Scots ancestry there in McCain's family tree. It looks to me as though McCain has more Sassenach blood than Scots, but it seems nobody wants to claim their English ancestors; so dull and whitebread, you see. And so oppressive, those Anglo-Saxon males. How much better to claim to be a descendant of Braveheart or Robert the Bruce (the latter is claimed as an ancestor by McCain.)

But if we decide that a candidate's ancestry is fair game for examination in deciding whether or not to vote for him, let's examine everybody's, including Obama's. Or would that be 'racist'? Of course it would.

This blog has a rather heated discussion of McCain's ancestry, with various voices (including the genealogist who was quoted in the article the blogger is discussing) claiming various nonsensical things about genealogy in general. See for yourself.

There are several genealogical bugbears contained in that discussion. The first: a number of commenters claim to be descendants of crowned heads of Europe, including Charlemagne. Someone counterclaims, in response to these rather extravagant claims, that ''nobody can trace their ancestry back to medieval times.' If that's the case, the remaining royalty in the world should be deposed from their respective thrones. But of course it's not true; it is possible though rather difficult. In the past, many of the privileged classes kept meticulous records of their family lineage; everything hinged on that. So it's absurd to say that none of us can know our ancestry further than a few generations.

The opposite extreme is expressed by the genealogist, who repeats a popular bit of nonsense. He says ''we are all descendants of Robert the Bruce and Charlemagne.'' Really? Any proof for that? I think it's based on a mathematical calculation that, given random mating among all members of a population, we would all be descendants of, say, George Washington or William the Conqueror or whoever. This presumes that people do mate randomly, ignoring the fact that in the past, particularly, social classes divided people considerably, not to mention geography and the relative difficulty of travel in past eras, as well as factors like religion and race being barriers to intermarriage or casual mating.

The idea that genes of past generations are all randomly, evenly distributed among all living people of today is just silly. People do not mate and reproduce randomly and genes are not distributed evenly.

If it's true that none of us can know who we are descended from, then there's no need for genealogical research at all. If it's true that 'we're all descended from Robert the Bruce' and that ''we are all connected'' as the genealogist claims, then there's also no point to genealogical study.

In the meantime, though, absent any proof of either of these wild assertions, I will continue to believe, based on the evidence of my eyes and my common sense and my life experience, that there are differing groups of people, and that our behavior is somewhat related to our genetics.

But I have a problem with not only the South being made the perpetual whipping boy, but now it seems this newly-discovered 'Scots-Irish' population of the South.

I've said before: look in the phone directory of most cities or towns in the South (before the current invasion) and you would see a preponderance of English surnames. The Scottish surnames in certain areas might be more numerous; I don't have as much knowledge of Appalachia, the supposed stronghold of the Scots-Irish people, but in the rest of the South, English and Welsh surnames combined far outnumber the Scottish names. Yet there is this popular notion that the old-stock Southron people are homogeneously 'Celtic' or Scots-Irish. I would like to see some documentation of this, and I don't think any is forthcoming. After centuries, I think most old-stock people in the South are a mix of Anglo-Saxon with Scots and Welsh and a dash of French (via the Huguenots in some areas) and a little German.

It's claimed that the culture of the South is Celtic but this is based on what? The writings of Flannery O'Connor, who was rather an anomalous Irish Catholic writer from the South? Or possibly the fictional O'Hara family in Gone With the Wind? It's fiction, people.
The usual argument is that the South is a 'vibrant' culture, expressive and high-spirited, and well, everybody knows that Anglo-Saxons are cold, impassive, phlegmatic people.

I would dispute that; I've had enough English friends (I won't say British, because British is a catch-all term these days) to know that they can be expressive, good-humored, jocular, fun-loving, and occasionally 'vibrant.' I think the contention that the South cannot be of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Norman character is based, simply, on a stereotype of the cool, reserved English. Not all English people fit that description.

So is McCain one of these warrior Scots-Irish we are hearing so much about these days? I think those who hate the South and all it stands for would like to make him so, because they have decided that the South has a 'warlike' Scots-Irish character, which they dislike.

I don't consider McCain a real son of the South, regardless of whether he has much Scots descent or whether he is of mostly English descent. He has condemned the Confederate flag and by extension the Confederate cause for which some of his ancestors fought.

At one point during the 2000 race, McCain called the flag a ''symbol of racism and slavery,'' but the next day described the flag as a ''symbol of heritage."

How can a feisty Celt be wishy-washy, I wonder?

So on the flag issue at least, he has renounced his Southron citizenship and his connection to the people of the South. Sorry, the North is stuck with McCain.

The cult of the Other

God Will Be an Illegal Immigrant With An Ankle Monitor

I have a friend with an interesting theology.

He believes that God takes the form of whoever we are disgusted by.

He believes that God takes the image of the person, or group of people, that most revolt us. God does this to teach us mercy, compassion, humility. God does this to teach us grace.

He tells the story of a conversation with two policemen. Going back and forth, the two policemen spoke with great disgust about certain populations of people in the area.

''I can't stand the homeless,'' said one policeman. ''Yes, and I hate those Hispanics,'' said the other. ''And the gays and queers too,'' returned the first policeman.

And at that point, my friend realized that for those two policemen, God will take the form of a gay, homeless, Hispanic who will ask them: why did you not love me? Why were you so estranged from your fellow human?''

Frequently in various discussions around the Internet, some conservative accuses Christians of being to blame for the crises of our age, namely, mass, uncontrolled immigration, multiculturalism, and politically correct universalism. Ultimately, all of these things are facilitating our dispossession, all of us in the West, and our ethnic cleansing, in effect.

I've grown weary of trying to offer a defense of Christianity to deaf ears; people are just not willing to listen to arguments which absolve Christianity of blame for what is happening to our countries -- especially when they read things like the above-linked piece. The writer is a prime example of why a growing number of people think that Christianity is a mushy one-world socialist religion.

I thought to post this piece over in the Forum in the Christianity section, but decided that it isn't just an issue that Christians only have to deal with; it affects all of us, because it has to do more with liberalism/leftism/cultural Marxism than with real Christianity. The article illustrates the perverse thinking of liberals and leftists very vividly.

I've remarked on this many times: liberals and leftists are obsessed with society's downtrodden, or those they perceive as downtrodden, almost to the degree of idolatry. They actually place the 'others' of society -- those who are antisocial or aberrant in some way -- above the rest. They perceive that mainstream society mistreats and looks down on these aberrant people, whether illegal immigrants, prisoners, sexual deviants, or other such outsiders, and rather than merely treating these others as brothers, they overcompensate and exalt the outsiders as actually being above the rest of us, and in this piece, even equate these people to God himself.

It's true that our Lord exhorted us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, and give to those who ask, saying ''Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.'' But when we are enjoined to feed the hungry and be hospitable to the stranger, does this refer to occasional individuals, or does it extend, as the liberals insist, to feeding and welcoming tens of millions of uninvited guests?

I cannot imagine that the scriptures in question ask us to welcome mass invasions or to help people to the extent that we are harming ourselves and our own people, which we are doing when we welcome mass influxes of aliens. And the illegals for example: are they not guilty of covetousness, of greed, of avarice? Are they hungry? Or are they merely wanting more and better material goods than they have in their countries?

Our Christian forebears were much more devout, in general, than many Christians of today, with our casual, undemanding brand of Christianity. And yet for all their devoutness, they never imagined that the Bible told them to welcome mass invasions or to martyr themselves in the name of charity or hospitality. They had no qualms about fighting the Moslem invaders of Europe, but according to these modern liberals, they should have simply acquiesced to conquest in the name of hospitality. They should have 'seen God' in the Moslems, after all, if God chooses to manifest as the thing we most recoil from, they should have fallen on their knees to the Mohammedans.

Liberals in general, not just Christian liberals, tend to idealize and romanticize the outlaw, the deviant, the alien, and the marginal. To exercise tolerance toward such people is one thing, but the liberal/leftist goes much further: he, or should I say she (liberals are all feminine in their attitudes) lionizes the deviant or the transgressor. Look at the way liberals and leftists make heroes of killers, as with Mumia Abu Jamal . Look at the way the French liberals protected the fugitive murderer Ira Einhorn , and thwarted justice for years. Why? Because he was a leftist himself, or because he was a member of a 'protected' group like Mumia? I notice that liberals are rather discriminatory in choosing which criminals to defend; the criminal has to be of a victim group.

It seems as if the French were very impressed with Einhorn's supposed intellectualism and more, they wanted to stick a thumb in the eye of the bloodthirsty Americans who were demanding Einhorn face justice:

One thing that has impressed him and many French people about Einhorn is his voracious reading, the constant references to literature, historical events, scientific concepts. Concludes Guilloton: "I think this guy is a superior intelligence." If Einhorn is representative of an evolved American, then his case presents the opportunity to chastise uncivilized, fanatical, wolfish Americans. A number of people invoke boilerplate examples of despicable behavior, mostly hyperbole from Philadelphia columnists and editorialists, such as encouraging folks to throw tomatoes at photos of Einhorn. Fayaud had told me she was appalled by American blood lust and what looked to her like a kind of hysteria, conduct unbecoming.''

Liberals and leftists: they're the same the whole world over. Leftism, not music, is the universal language, it seems. The excerpt sums up the liberal attitude: defending the criminal is often just an in-your-face to ''the system'' or those evil conservatives who actually believe in backward ideas like law and order. The same motives are at work with the leftists who defend illegals. It's just a way of spitting in the eye of the rednecks, the nativists, all those troglodytes who aren't as 'compassionate and evolved' as the liberals. The liberal or leftist is in a permanent state of rebellion against Daddy and therefore all authority, order, and tradition, and will in a perverse way defend everything that offends ordinary, law-abiding people.

The homeless, a group that the left especially champions, are in rather a different category than say, illegal immigrants or criminals or sexual deviants. There are no doubt some who are homeless through some set of circumstances beyond their control, but in general, in our country, only a lifetime of bad choices can explain chronic homelessness. Some estimates put the rate of alcohol and drug abuse at 65-80 percent among the homeless.

The liberal will no doubt answer that addiction is a 'disease' over which these people have no control, but I am not convinced the 'disease' model has been proven. There is always an element of choice in these things. The liberal, of course, believes that most people are mere pawns, that they are victims in some way of bad upbringing, cruel conservative policies, and an uncaring society. In the liberal universe, we are all children who are not accountable for our actions -- with the exception, of course, being conservatives, who are to be blamed and held accountable at all costs.

Am I a bad Christian or a bad person if I find it hard to see the divine in a drug addict or a street drunk? I do feel pity and compassion, but if I give money to that person (which I have done, many times in the past) am I only helping them to harm themselves? Of course even the criminal and the addict are made in the image and likeness of God, I believe. But living a life of addiction and criminality tends to efface God's image in the human being; that's one of the tragedies and the sins of living a debauched or lawless life -- we deface the image of God in ourselves.

No doubt we should do all we can to help those lost in this kind of life; some Christians are very good at reaching out to the people most in need of help, but the individual has to want to be helped. And when we do 'reach out' to the criminal or the addict, do we embrace the image of God in them, or do we exalt instead their defects as being something admirable? I think the liberals and leftists do the latter: they have a lurid fascination with the dark side, and they tend to be drawn to criminality and the transgressive for its own sake.

In addition, many liberals are exhibiting pride in their superior 'compassion'. They feel puffed-up because of their superior ability to be 'caring'; they think they are the moral betters of the rest of us who don't share their morbid fascination with darkness. They don't try to lift the addict or criminal out of their sordid lives, but instead treat this kind of life as being something valuable in itself. For example, liberal Christians have decided that homosexuality is not unnatural or sinful, and they would like us to remove the stigma from that behavior, if not to outright 'celebrate' it.

In all of these habits, they are putting themselves outside the mainstream of Christian belief. I understand many liberals proudly call themselves ''allophiles'':

...positive attitudes for a group that is not one's own—is a term derived from Greek words meaning "liking or love of the other" (Pittinsky, 2005). Studied by social scientists, allophilia is the antonym of negative prejudices and the antonym of a host of "–isms": sexism, racism, heterosexism, ageism, anti-Semitism, elitism/classism, and phallocentrism. Allophilia can be felt towards members of a different race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, class, nationality, school, team, or workplace (occupation).''

Of course they try to make it a virtue, but in the old order of things, people like this were just called turncoats or, despite their delusions of moral superiority, traitors. For all their vaunted compassion, they are merely acting as accomplices and apologists for evil when they defend criminals and aggressors. The pharisaical liberal asks why some of us are 'so estranged from our fellow human beings'. I ask in turn: why are you so estranged from your blood kin, your fellow American human beings?

Illegal, but not criminal

From the Newark Star-Ledger, we read that according to U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, illegal ''immigrants'' are not criminals.
Huh?

Immigrants and their advocates today found an unlikely ally: the top law enforcement officer in New Jersey.

U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie surprised many at a Dover church public forum when he said sneaking into the United States is not a criminal act.

"Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime," Christie told more than 60 residents and town officials. "The whole phrase of 'illegal immigrant' connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime."

Being undocumented may be a civil wrong, but it's not a criminal act, Christie said.

"Don't let people make you believe that that's a crime that the U.S. Attorney's Office should be doing something about," he added of entering the country illegally. "It is not."

After having read the whole article (read the rest at the link, if you think it will help) I still say: huh?

Can some of my readers with legal savvy or knowledge explain this to me? Or is he just obfuscating and announcing that he has no intention of doing his job? I really don't understand how something that is illegal is not at the same time criminal. Is this just parsing of words, or is there something I am not understanding? Or does it depend on what the meaning of ''is'' is?

I ask these questions in all seriousness, not rhetorically. Explanations, anyone?

The reaction to Chuck Baldwin's candidacy

I've been looking at the coverage of the Constitution Party nomination of Chuck Baldwin, and it's much as I expected.

Surprisingly, though, the Fox News coverage (see the video here) was rather fair and even-handed.

But here, the headline seems biased:
Constitution Party chooses talk-show host over Keyes for presidential nomination

Meeting in Kansas City on Saturday, the Constitution Party tapped talk show host Chuck Baldwin over former ambassador Alan Keyes as its 2008 presidential nominee.

The pick was seen as something of an upset, given Keyes’ higher national profile. Known for his fiery stemwinders, Keyes is a two-time GOP presidential candidate who abandoned the Republican Party this month to join the Constitution Party, which stands for limited government and is committed to ending abortion and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.

But Baldwin’s roots in the Constitution Party run deeper. He was the party’s 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and party members said his stands were more in line with party thinking.

Still, the two waged a fierce battle in the days leading up to the vote, described as the most contentious in the party’s 16-year history. Baldwin wound up winning easily, 384-126. The Missouri and Kansas delegations basically split their votes between the two.

“They just rejected the most qualified man to be president,” said Tom Hoefling of Lohrville, Iowa, who is Keyes’ national political director. “Chuck Baldwin will have no impact on this election whatsoever.”

And Keyes would have an impact?! Keyes, who has already run twice for president, and who couldn't even make a go of his cable TV show, or talk radio?

I see that the Freepers are reacting to this news with their usual knee-jerk responses. About 25 percent on the thread I read are conservative enough to recognize that Baldwin is the real deal, while another 25 percent seem to think Keyes is by far the better man (Keyes has a small cult among Freepers, some of whom are still looking for their personal black conservative hero), while close to 50 percent on the thread are already sneering and jeering.

The Constitution Party can't win; Baldwin, they say, is an unknown (unlike the household name, Keyes, I take it) and the CP is full of 'fruit loops' and losers.

At least reading the discussion over there, I am reminded once again just why I want nothing more to do with the Republican Party.

The mere fact that so many people in both parties, but especially, it seems, on the ''right'' are so quick to declare all third parties as hopeless causes, and as havens for 'nutjobs' and crazies, explains very well why we now have two dysfunctional parties with a strangehold on our political system.

As long as there are so many diehard party loyalists who think that straying from our two divinely-ordained political parties will result in the end of the world, we will never find our way out of the maze we are in.

At what point will these hard-heads and dimwits realize that the system as it is ain't working -- or at least, if it is working, it is not working for the American people? If our present sorry state of things does not break people of their dependency on the two-party system, nothing will.

We all just witnessed a combination of our malevolent media and obtuse citizens reject the candidacy of a good man, Ron Paul. For many months, since Ron Paul first announced his candidacy, we've heard the news media ridicule and dismiss him, on those rare occasions when they deigned to notice him at all, and we've heard every village idiot in the country proclaim 'no third party can win. You're throwing your vote away if you vote third party.' Or this one: ''if you vote third party you are just helping to elect a Democrat, and it will be your fault when [Hillary/Obama] is in the White House''.

This kind of ''thinking'' is what will guarantee that our situation only goes from bad to worse. This stubborn cluelessness is what has allowed our two monopolistic parties to flout the will of their constituents, and to go rogue. The political classes know that they don't even have to pay attention to the will of the people; they know that there are enough docile, knee-jerk loyalists who think they have 'nowhere else to go' who will vote for them and continue contributing to their candidacies and to the Party, regardless of their defiance of us and their open contempt for us.

Is there a chance that we can learn from the experience with Dr. Paul's candidacy and avoid letting the media and the obstructionists among us marginalize Chuck Baldwin's candidacy too? This may well be our last chance to stand up for traditional American principles before the demographic tidal wave washes away the last real vestiges of our political power. There is a lot at stake in this election, and yet I see a state of torpor among many in this country, or a kind of passivity born of resignation and cynicism. I see too many people who are beaten already, who are convinced that nothing we can do will make a difference, so why even try?
There are so many who have been thoroughly convinced that the two-party system is inevitable and forever; we can't change it, so we are foolish to try.

With such defeatist attitudes, of course these lugubrious predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can't change things precisely because people have been convinced that we can't.

Either we try to rekindle the old American can-do spirit and the spirit of independence of mind, or we just give up and shuffle off the stage of history, leaving it to the invading hordes and their multiculturalist collaborators.

We have another chance now; let's make the most of it.

Some rare good news

According to Red Phillips at Conservative Heritage Times, Chuck Baldwin has defeated Alan Keyes for the Constitution Party nomination.

I had pretty much resolved to write in Ron Paul, but now there is an alternative for those of us who cannot in good conscience vote for McCain or any of the other existing candidates.

Pastor Baldwin is someone I admire a great deal, and I think he is an excellent candidate, someone I would vote for even if the other candidates were not completely unacceptable.

'...an enemy called ignorance'

Art hath an enemy called ignorance. - Ben Jonson

James F. Cooper asks, in an essay in First Principles, why conservatives should be concerned with beauty.

The Problem With Modern Art: Or, Why Beautiful Art Matters

...Why should a dissertation on beauty be addressed specifically to conservatives? Does the topic of beauty hold more relevance for conservatives than, say, liberals? If the answer is yes, as I propose it does, why hasn’t there been more attention paid to the subject of beauty by Republican and conservative leaders? This blind spot about cultural issues has hurt conservative credibility with the public. But, more importantly, it hurts true conservatism at its moral, spiritual and philosophical core. At this critical post 9/11 time of world terrorism, this nation finds itself culturally disarmed, its moral strength sapped. The reason for this decline is no mystery. Conservatives abandoned the culture some time around the end of the First World War. By century’s end much of the old master legacy was being ignored, and major art museums were aggressively collecting postmodern minimalist and neo-Dada works. Beautiful architectural treasures such as Pennsylvania Station were torn down to make room for highways and high-rise glass boxes that destroyed the soul of inner cities in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. If one political party stands more responsible for the precipitous decline in cultural standards, the other blindly ignored it.

Conservatives clamor to lead in the twenty-first century, but they choose to ignore the legacy of 2,500 years of Western civilization, which could elevate their cause to a higher level. The cultural direction isn’t to the left or right, it’s hierarchical. Beauty provides the key to a door that conservatives have been trying in vain to unlock for almost a century. That door leads to a world that reflects the timeless values and permanent truths that conservatives hold dear: faith, transcendence, virtue, freedom, God, patriotism, natural law, conservation. In short, what I am suggesting is that beauty provides the epistemological structure of a good society—not only through the ideological infrastructure, its laws, religion, customs, and government, but in the physical structure of its architecture, homes, public works, monuments, roads and bridges.
[...]
For those of us who consider ourselves conservatives, the recovery of beauty is a pilgrimage. I use the word pilgrimage because, in some ways, the recovery of beauty involves the recovery of the sacred. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” wrote Keats. “That is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” Beauty is not about pretty pictures, pleasing flower arrangements or some Hollywood star’s sumptuously decorated mansion featured on the cover of Architectural Digest. It is about offerings inspired by the noblest, most profound and sacred works men can create. It is about the inner sanctum, the oracle, the Holy of Holies, the Ark of the Covenant, the Golden Mosque.
[...]
Across civilizations, from antiquity to the present, we see basic formal aesthetic qualities reoccurring in music, art, architecture and literature. There was an acrimonious debate between the nineteenth-century Academy and the early modernists, but aesthetically pleasing works from both schools share important formal qualities. When modernism declined into postmodernist theory in the late twentieth century, artistic discourse lost sight of the universality of art, including beauty and formal excellence. The revival of Realism in our own time has as much to do with the recovery of the ideas that have been lost—aesthetics, myth, spiritual, virtue—as with the recovery of high standards of quality in the arts. When modernism began to embrace a political agenda and cut off the ties to 2,500 years of Western civilization, it lost the moral high ground in the culture wars. The argument about whether “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” matters. There can be legitimate differences in taste over what is beautiful or merely adequate, but the idea that beauty is relevant to civilization is once again gaining ground. In the last decades of the twentieth century the mainstream establishment lost sight of the basic principles of art and beauty.
[...]
Why is beauty important? Because beauty—the idea and physicality of beauty—suggests a universal truth. The idea of truth, any truth, is abhorrent to those who believe that everything is relative. The war against beauty has been going on in the culture for much of the twentieth century. Conservatives, indeed most Americans, pay it no mind until some scandal in government or corporate funding to the arts reminds everyone that much of contemporary high and low culture is ugly, pornographic or anti-religious. You don’t have to launch a frontal attack on religion or God if you have already deconstructed the idea of absolute values.''

The writer suggests that conservatives need not only to oppose the ugliness and the decadence that is modern 'art', but to support and sponsor real art, art that expresses the idea of beauty and truth and transcendence. So far, this is not being done in any significant sense.

One hopeful sign is found in the existence of The Art Renewal Center.

ARC is the Eye of the Storm, at the core, hub and center of a major cultural shift in the art world. With a growing body of experts, we are setting standards to become ARC Approved™ for artists, art schools, systems of training, museum exhibitions and historical scholarship, to bring guidance, direction, goals and reality to an art establishment that has been sailing rudderless for nearly a hundred years.

Additionally, the Art Renewal Center is a non-profit educational organization committed to reviving standards of craftsmanship and excellence. Only by gaining a full command of the skills of the past masters can we create the masters of tomorrow. This is a step forward for our culture. Experimentation and creativity can only succeed and prosper when built on a solid foundation of past accomplishments, with the tools which empower artists to realize their visions.

Nothing has been more restricting and debilitating than the theories of modernism, which eliminated these tools, along with the skills to employ them. We are providing a forum for artists, scholars, collectors and the public to appreciate great art, and to recognize that they're not alone in their suspicions about the emptiness of modern and postmodern art. These suspicions are fully justified by the overwhelming body of evidence and historical facts.'' - Fred Ross, Chairman of ARC

I can't say I really understand Ross's explanation of how modernism gained control of the art world in the last century or so. He ties the 19th century masters, like William Bouguereau, John William Waterhouse, William Godward, and others to the Enlightenment ideals, to the revolutionary ideas of 'liberty, equality, fraternity', and thus to what has since become our present-day liberalism. But I don't see how these things fit together. Yes, Bouguereau painted common people, peasant girls, rural folk, rather than kings and queens, lords and ladies, as the court painters of an earlier age did. But to my eye and my perception, it seems to me that the painters Ross holds up as exemplars (and I agree with his high opinion of their work) also presented a rather idealized, idyllic, etherealized image of their subjects. The peasant girls Bouguereau painted looked like celestial beings and Madonnas, and would not have been out-of-place in one of the Renaissance paintings of Biblical scenes, of angels and saints. Bouguereau's barefoot peasant maidens were not dirty or disheveled as real-life girls of that class would be; they looked like goddesses.

Many of the other painters represented on ARC's website often painted scenes from mythology or medieval legend and lore, or literature: The Lady of Shalott, Ophelia, Morgan le Fay, Sleeping Beauty, Pandora. The world these artists portrayed so masterfully was an idealized world of the past. And I say this not disparagingly; this adds to its value. It shows us the misty world of our remote ancestors, the world we all read about when we read the legends of King Arthur or Sir Gawain. It has a mystical and transcendent quality for those of us who care about our past and our heritage. The scenes seem to resonate on a deep level for many of us who feel a bond with that past, idealized or not.

But Ross proclaims that the artists in question were part of the liberal tradition, deriving from the ideas of Rousseau et al. To me, it seems that Rousseau, with his 'noble savage' idolatry, was the father, indirectly at least, of the movement to pull down standards and distinctions. The liberal movement sought to exalt the low, the crude, and the base as being on a par with the great. Once it was decided by the 'enlightened' liberals that distinctions and standards were the enemy of equality and 'justice', then all standards of excellence and beauty and even truth had to be pulled down. The common and crude came to be exalted over the holy and the beautiful and the sublime.

By the 20th century, primitive art from backward cultures became more valued by the Western 'cultured classes' than the beautiful works of their own ancestors. Rough, childish carvings of voodoo gods and the like were put on a par with the great art works of Europe at its height. The arts became dominated by the ugly, and as the century ended, 'art' often consisted of the shocking and the scatological or the simply banal.

And I would say this was the logical end of this sanctimonious drive towards "equality" and the destruction of standards and rules in every area of life, in other words, this was simply the fruits of liberalism/leftism. It was the enlightenment taken to excess, or perhaps to its logical (and ugly) conclusion.

Art became commandeered by leftists and assorted nihilists who wanted to use it to promote their corrupt agenda, and to destroy whatever was left of the classical heritage of the Christian West. After all, that heritage was declared to be guilty of 'male supremacy, bigotry, sexism, elitism, homophobia, xenophobia, and imperialism.' Down with it. Just as the French Revolutionists wanted to pull down the monarchy, the aristocracy, and to start from scratch, even declaring a new calendar, so do our present-day leftists and post-modernists want to deface and dishonor everything which signifies the excellence and the achievement of our past.

Even now, a popular device of many of today's ''artists'' is defacing images of Christ or of other sacred Christian symbols. The war against our Christian Western heritage is still very much in progress.

As Cooper says in the essay from First Principles, we must do more than merely react by protesting these outrages and blasphemies; we must present an alternative. We must do all we can to revive and promote and support a renewed Western art which honors beauty and truth and the best of our traditions.

This creation of a renewed art need not mean just the fine arts, or high culture, which after all, is patronized by a relative few people. It should extend to all of the arts, including, broadly speaking, pop culture and the entertainment media. We need to foster and support the good and the beautiful and the true in all ares of culture: music of all kinds, movies, plays, literature. It's true it won't be easy to do so, considering that the arts and all cultural institutions are dominated by leftists and cynics who are no friends to our Western heritage or to traditional standards. But we have to create ways of doing this, if we are to change our society for the better. Politics, elections, and the realm of government have their place (although I increasingly think they are also merely a show of 'democracy') but they are not the be-all and the end-all. Societies change, or are changed, in other ways. The men who sit in seats of power, dominant though they may be, are not in control of everything. Many real changes begin with the people, with a change of heart and mind, or to use a favorite liberal term, a 'change of consciousness.' Those things are not yet completely under the control of the political classes. Though they may pass laws to try to control our thoughts and our words and our feelings, those things are still practically speaking beyond their reach. They are not, after all, omnipotent or ominscient.

We might make a modest, but necessary, start by re-familiarizing ourselves with our artistic and cultural heritage. We in the West are often like an unknowing heir to a great fortune who is living in poverty and squalor. Most of us, it seems, are oblivious to the treasures of our past, and too many of us, especially younger generations, are unfamiliar with our great cultural heritage. Those of you who are wise enough to homeschool your children, I hope you are introducing your children to the great artists of the past, and all the great works of literature and music. Re-discover, or discover for the first time, the classic movies of the last hundred years or so. Yes, even the old silent movies are often works of beauty. Not all art, as I said, need be 'high' art.

If we live only in our present era, neglecting the riches that we have forgotten we possess, we are truly impoverished.

Conservatism means not just conserving ideas and philosophies, but our cultural traditions, folkways, arts, and crafts. All of it is an outward manifestation of the soul of our people, and all of it is a kind of spiritual sustenance for us. This may be what is lacking in our dispirited and jaded age.

'Links in the great chain of being'

A few words from Daniel Webster on Pride of Ancestry:

"It is a noble faculty of nature which enables us to connect our thoughts, our sympathies, and our happiness with what is distant in place or time; and looking before and after, to hold communion at once with our ancestors and our posterity. Human and mortal although we are, we are nevertheless not mere insulated beings, without relation to the past or the future. Neither the point of time, nor the spot of earth in which we physically live, bounds our rational and intellectual enjoyments.

We live in the past by a knowledge of its history, and in the future by hope and anticipation. By ascending to an association with our ancestors; by contemplating their example and studying their character; by partaking their sentiments, and imbibing their spirit; by accompanying them in their toils; by sympathizing in their sufferings, and rejoicing in their successes and their triumphs -- we mingle our own existence with theirs, and seem to belong to their age. We become their contemporaries, live the lives which they lived, endure what they endured, and partake in the rewards which they enjoyed. And in like manner, by running along the line of future time; by contemplating the probable fortunes of those who are coming after us; by attempting something which may promote their happiness, and leave some not dishonorable memorial of ourselves for their regard when we shall sleep with the fathers -- we protract our own earthly being, and seem to crowd whatever is future, as well as all that is past, into the narrow compass of our earthly existence.

As it is not a vain and false, but an exalted and religious imagination which leads us to raise our thoughts from the orb which, amidst this universe of worlds, the Creator has given us to inhabit, and to send them with something of the feeling which nature prompts, and teaches to be proper among children of the same Eternal Parent, to the contemplation of the myriads of fellow-beings with which his goodness has peopled the infinite of space; so neither is it false or vain to consider ourselves as interested or connected with our whole race through all time; allied to our ancestors; allied to our posterity; closely compacted on all sides with others; ourselves being but links in the great chain of being, which begins with the origin of our race, runs onward through its successive generations, binding together the past, the present, and the future, and terminating at last with the consummation of all things earthly at the throne of God.

There may be, and there often is, indeed, a regard for ancestry which nourishes only a weak pride; as there is also a care for posterity, which only disguises an habitual avarice, or hides the workings of a low and groveling vanity. But there is also a moral and philosophical respect for our ancestors, which elevates the character and improves the heart. Next to the sense of religious duty and moral feeling, I hardly know what should bear with stronger obligation on a liberal and enlightened mind, than a consciousness of alliance with excellence which is departed; and a consciousness, too, that in its acts and conduct, and even in its sentiments, it may be actively operating on the happiness of those that come after it.

Poetry is found to have few stronger conceptions, by which it would affect or overwhelm the mind, than those in which it presents the moving and speaking image of the departed dead to the senses of the living. This belongs to poetry only because it is congenial to our nature. Poetry is, in this respect, but the handmaid of true philosophy and morality. It deals with us as human beings, naturally reverencing those whose visible connection with this state of being is severed, and who may yet exercise we know not what sympathy with ourselves; and when it carries us forward, also, and shows us the long-continued result of all the good we do in the prosperity of those who follow us, till it bears us from ourselves, and absorbs us in an intense interest for what shall happen to the generations after us, it speaks only in the language of our nature, and affects us with sentiments which belong to us as human beings."

The new Old West

Mike Tuggle at Rebellion points us to this interesting piece, with the rather ponderous title How the West Was Changed: Degradation of the Townspeople After World War II in the American Western.

The obvious change in Western movies was that the townspeople were portrayed in a less and less sympathetic light, and in some cases, white American townspeople were no longer part of the storyline, as in 'The Magnificent Seven', in which the townspeople were Mexican.

The reason, per Mike Tuggle:

Simple, says the author -- the Hollywood elite, angered by Middle America's rallying around Joe McCarthy -- had declared war on the white middle class...''

The Nous American blog had an interesting series of pieces on Hollywood Westerns and the way in which they reflected the social revolution of the late 50s and early 60s. (Unfortunately the pieces are not all linked to each other, so one has to navigate through the archives to find the pieces in question.)

The blogger, GMason, describes some of the reasons why the Westerns shifted. Up until the mid-20th century the Westerns, particularly 'B Westerns' were 'morality plays', with positive values -- the chivalric code exemplified by the 'good guy' hero, and the triumph of the good and decent people, including the honest townsfolk.

B westerns operated as though they were under some special ethical directives. In fact, Bs have often been called "morality plays," and they were. Some made better use of their moral situations and portrayal than others, but none blurred the distinction between good and bad, or good and evil.

Typically in a B western, there are men who want something that is not theirs and intend to get it from the honorable persons who own what the bad guys covet. This may involve cattle, land, water, oil, gold, bearer bonds, stagecoach contracts, and so on. The baddies violate the sovreign rights of those who possess what they covet. To achieve their nefarious ends, they initiate all sorts of physical force, including fraud.

The defenders of the good must discover, then uncover, and deal with the issue and its instigators. Adding to the plot complexity are mistakes of knowledge, bad assumptions, and ignorance, which delay rectification. Invariable, however, retaliatory force, in the name of the law, of rights, of property ownership, of the good, etc., must be used to correct the situation. There are fist fights, brawls, major and minor shootouts, right on up to the cavalry arriving to restore right from might. Good always triumphs. That was standard moral fare in Bs.''

On the subject of Westerns and European culture, Cambria Will Not Yield also had a good piece, which I referenced here before. Those who missed that piece might like to read it here.

But returning to Aaron Barlow's above-linked 'How the West Was Changed', we find that he indicates that the most obvious change was in the way the townspeople were regarded. In the old 'poverty row' B Westerns, pre-1950s, the ordinary people were presented as deserving of protection from the 'bad guys' who threatened their way of life and their peace and safety. And it was such people, mostly white 'average' people, who were the audience for these Westerns. It would seem odd to present them with movies which showed their ancestors in an unfriendly light, but that is what happened after the end of the B-movie era, and as only 'A' Westerns were made.

'

The movie Western had moved from “poverty row” (abetting the demise of these poor-cousin studios) and firmly into the mainstream. Along with a changing social and political climate, better production values, actors, writers, and distribution led to a Western quite different from what had been presented before. Yet, though many of the Westerns of the 1950s are among the best the genre has ever seen, something is lost whenever a change of this magnitude occurs.

In this case, it was the people. Their protection once having been the rationale behind the Western, they now played—at best—the role of oppressor in scenarios where attention is turned to other problems, or had disappeared completely from consideration while questions of individualism and personal morality began to dominate the genre.
[...]
After World War II, however, the “good” population began to disappear from sight in the Western.

Why?

Why, for example, was a cultural split added to The Magnificent Seven (John Sturgis, 1960), the Hollywood remake of Shichinin no samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954)? In the original, the townspeople are simply poor and oppressed; they share a cultural background with the samurai they hire to protect them as well as with the people who are expected to see the film. In the remake the townspeople are alien—to their protectors and to most of their intended audience. Why? Why make it a Mexican town in need of protection by Americans?''

The essay ties together a number of things: the changing portrayal of the average small-town American in the 1950s and 60s, the Cold War, the McCarthy era, and the increasing media hostility to rural white America.

The Hollywood elites probably had always felt that they were outsiders in Anglo-American culture, and they, being mostly urban people, of more recent immigrant roots in many cases, were distrustful or even disdainful of the rural or small-town white culture of America. In the 50s and thereafter, in the divisive atmosphere of the 'Red Scare', small-town Americans increasingly became depicted in movies as sinister or at least as ignorant and crude and unfriendly. We saw this trend culminate in the 70s and thereafter, with many Western movies depicting bigoted whites persecuting Indians, and in the old 1970s TV series 'Kung Fu', the ''Chinese'' character Caine. Each and every episode of that series had scenes of leering, slavering bigots attacking Caine while calling him racial epithets.

Dances With Wolves, in the 90s was another movie whose depiction of whites was relentlessly disparaging, with the only exceptions being the hero, who turned his back on white civilization and went native, and his love interest, another white-gone-native.

Another way in which this manifests itself is in the negative image of Confederate soldiers or former confederate soldiers in recent movies; in the past, portrayals of Confederates or ex-Confederates were often sympathetic.

This is just one more front in the war on our past and on our ancestors. Can't Hollywood just let our forefathers rest in peace, or must they repeatedly exhume them for a posthumous flogging?

Although Barlow generally makes good points in the essay linked above, One quibble that I have with 'How the West Was Changed' is that the writer seems to presume that McCarthyism, so-called, was some kind of political witch hunt; he does not seem to credit the idea that there was substance to McCarthy's allegations, despite his personal flaws. And there is no hint that the writer believes that Communism was a real threat which should have been confronted and dealt with. The fact that some people in Hollywood were 'blacklisted' and could not find work in the industry for a while (many of them were back in the industry later) seems to be considered 'persecution' Soviet-style by many Americans. As if 'blacklisting' were morally equivalent to gulags or mass purges.

But it's an interesting piece overall. It is obvious to most people, except the most willfully blind, that Hollywood and the media in general have an ideological agenda, and that they subtly -- and sometimes not-so-subtly -- shape our ideas about the past, and about the present and about ourselves. In this sense they have enormous power, and we really ought to scrutinize the 'entertainment' media (and the news media) as much or more as we scrutinize elected officials. Politics takes many forms. 'Entertainment' these days is all too often another form of indoctrination, but it's presented to us in a shiny, attractive package rather than in the form of lectures and polemics. It's the spoonful of sugar; we watch a Hollywood movie or a TV program or a music video or even a commercial these days, and we have images and subtle messages implanted in our consciousness. And when you try to point out to someone the messages in the media, often the response is: ''it's just a movie'' or 'it's just a TV show; lighten up.' Yet it does have an effect; sometimes it's a gradual, subtle effect, but in some cases, especially among the more impressionable young, a movie or a TV program (or less frequently, a book) will profoundly affect the thinking and beliefs of the target. If my readers remember I posted a link to a thread from a liberal blog where the subject of discussion was 'what movies have changed your life?' Many of the people claimed that a movie did in fact change their lives. Sometimes, especially in this present subjective age, people are more susceptible to manipulation via visual images, especially when their emotions are aroused by the images. A picture is worth a thousand words, as the trite (but true) old saying has it.

It's been said before, but I think we need to look at our entertainment with a critical eye and point out the ways in which it is destructive to us. The politically correct, anti-white left absolutely dominates the media, including the entertainment media, and they are challenged far too infrequently on the heavy-handed propaganda they peddle. We need more voices on our side to provide some perspective on this, and to try to counteract it.

'They endured immigration...'

We've all probably seen or read about this poster which is the work of the Italian political party Lega Nord.

''The party has a tough, and often harsh, stance on crime, illegal immigration, especially from Muslim countries, and terrorism. It supports the promotion of immigration from non-Muslim countries in order to protect the "Christian identity" of Italy and Europe, which, according to party officials, should be based on "Judeo-Christian heritage").''

But I think the poster, depicting the Indian, with the message ''They allowed (endured) immigration and now they live on reservations', is rather inspired. The point is obvious: native Italians are in danger of being overrun and marginalized and displaced in their own country, just as native-born old-stock citizens in our country are slated to be the 21st century 'vanishing Americans.'

Political correctness apparently has a rather weaker hold in Italy than in most Western countries, if we are to judge by the campaign posters. Please scroll down the web page at the link above,and see the poster which says 'Indovina chi e el ultimo?' The image is that of several 'diverse' immigrants and one Italian man waiting in a social service line. Notice the rather caricatured features of the immigrants. Can we imagine such a poster by any political party in this country? Enough said. And the message, which translates to 'guess who is last?' is rather frank, too. We all know that in our Western countries, the immigrant and the minority (the two terms overlap) are given precedence, while the native-born citizen is pushed to the back of the line.

But is the American Indian's situation, or ''plight'', as the old books called it, analogous to that of white European-descended people as the West is being broken up and given away to Third Worlders? There are some parallels but the circumstances are rather different. At least the Indians were able to fight for their land, --- though they ultimately lost, but modern European-descended people are stifled by political correctness and thwarted in many places by laws proscribing any kind of 'hate speech' (i.e.criticism) against the invaders. The Indians at least were not crippled by guilt-trips and propaganda in their struggle to maintain their territory.

This question of how European colonists and settlers ''stole the Native Americans' land'' is a persistent thorn in the side of Americans who are resisting the loss of their country. I can't count the number of times that some liberal has triumphantly introduced this accusation in a debate over immigration. They always flourish this as their trump card, their ultimate retort, so they think. They smugly say 'white people stole this country from the Natives', and they then expect this rather juvenile statement to silence their opponents.

I've said to such people that if they truly believe this, they should show some integrity and give all their property to the Indians and pack up to go to Europe, rather than remaining on 'stolen' land where they have no right to remain. I haven't yet gotten a response to that from any liberal. They obviously don't literally believe that this land 'belongs to the Indians', or else they would vacate it.

Another question I pose to these pestilent liberals is: ''were the Indians racist and xenophobic when they tried to expel or kill the whites? Why didn't the Indians 'embrace diversity' and why weren't they 'tolerant' and inclusive enough to accept the whites rather than attack them?"

This usually elicits no response, or a changing of the subject, usually accompanied by angry sputtering.

I continue: "if the Indians were within their rights to try to keep their land, why aren't we?"
The usual answer, if any, to that is: ''well, that was different; they belonged here, but our ancestors didn't." This, of course, dodges the question of the origins of Indians, and of their being transplants from Asia.

As for the accusation that whites killed and dispossessed the Indians, I remind the accusers that Indians did the same to each other; there was mutual hostility among many tribes, with constant conflict and frequent skirmishes, and sometimes considerable bloodshed. Indians displaced other Indians in their conflicts.
Indians also enslaved other Indians. Captives became slaves in many cases. The foolish idea that all Indians lived in some kind of idyllic noble savage utopia before the whites intruded still persists.

The liberal always wants to introduce guilt trips about how the Indians were ''forced onto reservations."
David Yeagley gives an Indian point of view on this: he says that far from being forced into isolation, the Indians preferred this solution. They in no way desired to be part of white society; they just wanted to remain Indian and to continue to live in their traditional ways. In a way, their position was the opposite of the black demands for integration, and for the right to live, work, go to school, and mingle socially with whites. Indians preferred to stay with their own kind in most cases. The idea that Indians follow the pattern established by blacks in their campaign for integration and 'equality' is false.

And if it happens that we become, like the original 'vanishing Americans', displaced and relegated to being walking museum pieces, will we want to be 'integrated' into the polyglot, Babelized society that supplants our civilization, or would we want to have our own sovereign, separate areas, where we can continue our own culture and way of life? I think I would choose the latter, if I had to choose between the two. Being swallowed up by some alien culture, among people who are hostile to me and mine, would seem like annihilation to me.

Still, though a 'reservation' or enclave of some sort would be the lesser of evils, I think that most of us are not meant for that kind of life; ''we must be free or die...'' as the poet said.

But I think that Italian campaign poster is a timely warning. We, all of us in the West need to contemplate, and realize how late is the hour, and how precarious our position.

Recovering lost memories

David Yeagley over at BadEagle.com has been writing something of a series on the South and the War Between the States. Recently he offered a piece, Home of the Patriots, in which he stresses the importance of the traditions of the South, and their distinctive place in the American story, and the American nation.

Those who are not of Southron origin may feel this is irrelevant to them, but I am increasingly convinced that this North-South issue is crucial to understanding how we got where we are today. The obvious area in which the history of the North-South division is relevant is that of the perennial race question. Race, whether people are willing to acknowledge it or not, is at the heart of much of what is threatening not only our country but the entire Western world. In essence, our great fear of addressing the race issue directly, and our guilt about it, and the strong taboos surrounding it, are paralyzing us at the very moment when we stand in danger of being displaced or replaced, blended out of existence as a people.

Most people, in our maleducated age, know little about the War Between the States, more commonly called the Civil War. The very name of the conflict is dependent on one's viewpoint; many unreconstructed Southerners call it the War of Northern Aggression, or, less pugnaciously, The War for Southern Independence. To Northerners, it's the Civil War, usually viewed as an act of treason by rebellious and disloyal Southerners who fought to retain possession of slaves.

But whatever the conflict is called, it is a terrible wound to our nation, which has never really healed, and possibly cannot be healed.

And without some knowledge and understanding of what really happened, and why, we cannot really resolve anything and come to terms with it.

The issue of race and slavery are issues that we never cease hearing about, in this liberal age in which we are expected to castigate ourselves because of our 'original sin', as Obama referred to it, or our 'birth defect', as Condoleezza Rice called it. Lately various states have issued apologies for slavery, even though no American today owns slaves or has been a slave. Next on the agenda: reparations. There will likely be a reparations payment in my lifetime, but count on it: reparations will not resolve the issue. Reparations would only create further demands.

But with a country populated mostly by people who have been fed only propaganda about the War Between the States and the 'peculiar institution' of slavery, we are destined to go on and on in the endless cycle of recriminations, apologies, demands, and conflicts.

It's time we were able to examine the history behind the Gordian knot of race in our country, and it would be helpful for most of us to go back and re-examine the War Between the States and Reconstruction, in order to give us some context and some background of how we got to the present impasse.

The South and her people are inevitably depicted as the caricatured villains in this piece. Most people, having been fed on Hollywood or other fictional depictions, have images in their minds of evil white slave-hunters as depicted in the fantasy "history" of Roots. We all know the stereotypes of Southern whites as evil and cruel and ignorant.

The real ignorance is exemplified by the persistent stereotypes of the South and of the Civil War era.
Dr. Yeagley, to his credit, examines the culture of the South with a sympathetic eye. I am not sure how much Dr. Yeagley, an Oklahoman, identifies as a Southerner; I surmise that his identity is as a Comanche and an American, but he is sympathetic to the South.

Here he describes the Southron culture, and American identity:

...The South was culture chiefly of gentlemen, men of honor. Men of bravery. Men of war.

And men of a homeland, and a way of life. Never before had America--any portion of America, had to fight for their homes and their way of life. The Southern came out of the war with an unforgettable image of home. And that's really what patriotism is about--the home. Love of home. To the Southerner, his own state was one giant, extended family. The unity and brotherhood they felt was akin to a nationhood. Their state was more important than any political theory or economic congolmerate pawned off as "nationhood." To the Southerner, home wasn't an idea. It was a place, a real place, with real houses and land, that grew real food and had real people--family, living on it. Those stars and bars stand for home. The "idea," or we should say, the reality, of home, is expressed in that Confederate battle flag. In a way, the Stars and Stripes were never the same. Home came with the victory. The South was held as part of the Union. The North bought a home, really. At least a sense of it, as never before.

The Union should remember the South for that mighty lovely cause. Home. Otherwise, the idea of the United States is little more than a giant business. Without the South, there is no sentiment of home in the United States. (I wouldn't expect most American people to understand how the Indians feel about the homeland, but, they should be able to grasp how Southerners feel. But, in a way, Southerners are like Indians. Indians still today enlist in the armed services from sheer intuition of valor, or warriorhood. Our home is still here, our land is still here, despite what has happened to us. The same is true for true Southerners. After the Civil War, their reservation was a bit larger, I must say, but, they were never trying to rule the world either. Like Indians, they just wanted to be left alone.)

[...] In a sense, the Civil War will never be over. It was the expression of an ever-occurring battle of ideas. Who shall rule, and to what extend. The nature of the country is under perpetual examination. With the trend toward globalism, the abolition of nationhood, and the delusion of global financial imperialism, we do well to raise the Confederate flag, and fly it high--above every other issue. The nature of our country, the meaning of our nationhood, the idenity of the United States of America is under seige--the enemy being Washington, DC. The challenge is from traitorous, avaricious failures who are unable to understand America, and behave like angry opportunists, like children fighting over the biggest piece of pie. At least the Confederate flag reminds us of something in the way of origins, something of how that pie came about. The Confederate flag calls our attention to the true identity of the United States. Obviously, we need to reconsider--when we see the kind of people running for the highest office in the country today.''

Dr. Yeagley has also written about the women of the South, who are often caricatured as vacuous and vain 'Southern belles', and he presents a much fairer picture, recommending some primary sources: the writings of Southern women themselves. I highly recommend reading some of these sources for another view of life in the Old South. He cites Mary Boykin Chesnut; she wrote A Diary from Dixie which is a very interesting account of her life during the War. She was the wife of a Confederate general, so she knew many of the principal figures in the Confederacy, and gives a good description of the times and the people. She was obviously very well-educated and articulate, and does not fit at all the shallow stereotype of the Hollywood Southern belle, who was always an empty-headed and manipulative creature. Mary Boykin Chesnut is nothing at all like Scarlett O'Hara or other such fictional creations.

Read some of the excerpts from her diary, describing daily life before,during, and after the War, and the interactions between the races, and between Southron and Yankee during that same era. We have heard one side of the story relentlessly in the years since the War, and the propaganda is the fiction on which our present politically correct house of lies is founded.

Are there not two sides to every story?
I think we need to go back to that era and read the whole story, from original sources as much as possible, not from some modern-day revisionist with a liberal agenda. Some perspective and some balance is desperately needed. The whole story of the War Between the States and Reconstruction is the background of our current situation. We can never really see our way out of this maze we are in until we get the whole truth and look at it through the eyes of those who were there, who participated in the events of the time.

There are still old sources to be found; read the old books and reference sources. As much as possible, avoid more recent sources, which are tainted with the PC agenda.

There are many sources to be found out there on the Internet; you can find Mary Boykin Chesnut's Diary from Dixie here.

The same collection has many works of Southern literature online.

It's vital to be able to understand and freely examine what happened in the past to have a correct and full perspective on what is besetting us now. As it is, we are crippled by a lack of knowledge and information; we are like amnesiacs, having only fragmentary or false memories of our past.

In our present presidential campaign, the issue of race will be front and center, and so far, the usual politically correct falsehoods go unchallenged and unquestioned. We need to be armed with real knowledge. The truth will set us free.