Cheering on our own demise

Why would any of us want to cheer on the invasion and demographic transformation of another American community, especially one which has until very recently been homogeneous and liveable?

Schadenfreude, of course. It's one of my pet peeves regarding our side; the tendency to cheer on the demographic destruction of our own. It's cutting off our nose to spite our face. We're all hurt when some part of America or the West in general is in danger of being lost or transformed for the worse. Our homeland shrinks each time this happens.

The community in question is Nantucket, Massachusetts. Now, despite my maternal New England roots, I've never visited New England, not even when I lived in the New York City area. I always intended to do so, but never got around to it. I've been in touch with some distant cousins on that side, but found them standoffish, at least in comparison to my kin in the South. Still, I wish them the best and I don't want to see them swamped by invaders, and I don't want the communities founded and built by our common ancestors to be lost and inherited by people who despise us and all we stand for.

One of the reasons given by some of the people who are gloating over the 'diversification' of Nantucket is that it is inhabited by rich White liberals, supposedly mostly blueblood WASP types, who deserve the worst things that can happen to them and their hometown.

However, this page which provides data on Nantucket, seems to show that people of English descent make up a scant 19.5 percent of the town's population.

Ancestries: English (19.5%), Irish (17.5%), French (7.0%), Italian (6.9%), German (6.8%), Scottish (6.0%).

Those figures don't account for everyone, so one wonders who the rest are, apart from the obvious minorities. Are they people who are so mixed as not to know their ancestry, or who call themselves just Americans? And as always I am certain that the statistics reflect far fewer immigrants than are actually present.

The Irish, French, and Italian-descended groups combined constitute a larger percentage than the English.
From all I know of New England (and granted, I haven't been there), very few areas remain, except perhaps the remote rural areas, which are populated mostly by original-stock WASP descendants. Whenever I read news stories datelined Massachusetts, I notice that Anglo-Saxon names are outnumbered by Italian, Irish, French, and even Portuguese surnames. I notice that the urban areas, according to what I read, are heavily minority, and there appear to be many Caribbean Islanders in New England, and many Brazilians.

So where are all these blue-blood WASPs supposed to be? Many of them, like one of my great-grandfathers, long since went West, pioneering back in the 19th century. Most of the descendants of these New England pioneers tend to be in the Midwest, which is now the last bastion of many predominantly White communities. I know from my family records that many of our related families went West to the Great Lakes states, and farther West to the Oregon territory. Some of their descendants are now solid heartland Americans, and not the effete New England liberals of many people's imagination.

I suppose there are some who have held on in the old stronghold, but it seems to me that WASPs are not the dominant group in Massachusetts these days. Time to find a new bogeyman.

And even liberal Whites can come to their senses and come 'into the light', as it were. Demographic transformation, however, is forever, more often than not. We should not be wishing that on any of our people, regardless of their politics. Every community that is 'taken over' is one more piece of our beautiful country that may be irretrievably lost, and it may be one less place of refuge for us or our children if and when our own communities become hostile and unliveable.

'Behold the proverbs of a people, a nation...'

In the discussion about American culture, cabbageroll observed that

I think Americans used to have a cocky self-assuredness. Like the gun slinging cowboy. We like those types ... Annie get your gun. Don't tread on me. Straight talkin', straight shootin'.''

That reminded me of this part of Carl Sandburg's 'Good Morning, America', where Sandburg reels off a list of American sayings, slang, and proverbs that seem to sum up a lot of quintessentially American qualities.

A code arrives; language; lingo; slang;
behold the proverbs of a people, a nation:
Give 'em the works. Fix it, there's always
a way. Be hard boiled. The good die young.

Be a square shooter. Be good; if you can't
be good be careful. When they put you in
that six foot bungalow, that wooden kimono,
you're through and that's that.

The higher they go the farther they drop.
The fewer the sooner. Tell 'em. Tell 'em.
Make 'em listen. They got to listen when
they know who you are. Don' t let 'em know
what you got on your hip. Hit 'em where
they ain't. It's good for whatever ails
you and if nothing ails you it's good for
that. Where was you raised--in a barn?

They're a lot of muckers, tin horns; show
those slobs where they get off at. Tell 'em
you're going to open a keg of nails. Beat 'em
to a fare-thee-well. Hand 'em the razz-berries.
Clean 'em and then given 'em carfare home.
Maybe all you'll get from 'em you can put in
your ear, anyhow.

They got a fat nerve to try to tie a can
on you. Send 'em to the cleaners. Put the
kibosh on 'em so they'll never come back.
You don't seem to know four out of five
have pyorrhea in Peoria.

Your head ain't screwed on wrong, I trust.
Use your noodle, your nut, your think tank,
your skypiece. God meant for you to use it.
If they offer to let you in on the ground
floor take the elevator.

Put up a sign: Don't worry; it won't last;
nothing does. Put up a sign: In God we
trust, all others pay cash. Put up a sign:
Be brief, we have our living to make. Put
up a sign: Keep of the grass.

Aye, behold the proverbs of a people:
The big word is Service.
Service--first, last and always.
Business is business.
What you don't know won't hurt you.
Courtesy pays.
Fair enough.
The voice with a smile.
Say it with flowers.
Let one hand wash the other.
The customer is always right.
Who's your boy friend?
Who's your girl friend?
O very well.
God reigns and the government at Washington lives.
Let it go at that.
There are lies, dam lies and statistics.
Figures don't lie but liars can figure.
There's more truth than poetry in that.
You don't know the half of it, dearie.
It's the roving bee that gathers the honey.
A big man is a big man whether he's a president or a prizefighter.
Name your poison.
Take a little interest.
Look the part.
It pays to look well.
Be yourself.
Speak softly and carry a big stick.
War is hell.
Honesty is the best policy.
It's all in the way you look at it.
Get the money--honestly if you can.
It's hell to be poor.
Well, money isn't everything.
Well, life is what you make it.
Speed and curves--what more do you want?
I'd rather fly than eat.
There must be pioneers and some of them get killed.
The grass is always longer in the backyard.
Give me enough Swedes and snuff and I'll build a railroad to hell.
How much did he leave? All of it.
Can you unscramble eggs?
Early to bed and early to rise and you never meet any prominent people.
Let's go. Watch our smoke. Excuse our dust.
Keep your shirt on.''

He captures the jauntiness, the bravado, the toughness, the playful spirit, the cynicism, and the self-assuredness of America. I wonder how well this fits us today -- or are we still the same people as in Sandburg's day?

Anti-Christians on the right

The other day I blogged about a piece at AmRen, and I've been following the lengthy discussion which has continued there.

The discussion has gone off in a decidedly anti-Christian direction, with a few posters going back and forth and cheering each other on in their slams at Christianity. Or is it one poster or two under several names?

This kind of stuff is not new on the right; I've alluded to it in the past and tried to give substantive responses to it. But it seems to be ramping up. I am sure most of you are familiar with the 'argument', such as it is. If for some reason you aren't, I'll sum it up: Christianity is the cause, or a main cause, of the dying of the West and all of its various symptoms, such as multiculturalism, mass immigration from the Third World, and the replacement or displacement of White people everywhere.

What do the anti-Christian zealots over there hope to accomplish? A lot of people on our side are Christians. The 'Bible Belt' has probably the largest proportion of people who are pro-White of any part of the country. What is accomplished by attacking the faith of many of your allies? I know it's certainly alienating me from that site and from those people who are constantly harping on how Christianity has to go.
The only people they are likely to persuade are people that are already 'post-Christian' or doubters.

I'll probably have more to say on this later, as it is deserves an answer. However, where are the pro-Christian responses over at AR? Apart from an occasional half-hearted defense, there's very little. And for every pro-Christian response, one or two anti-Christians pop up and go into their song and dance about how Christianity is an alien religion not fit for Westerners, and that we should go back to our pagan roots.

I've been given to understand that AR is strictly moderated. I don't post there, and haven't in the past, but I've heard that many comments don't pass muster, sometimes for less than obvious reasons. I have also heard that AR is very strict about not allowing criticism of certain religions, so why is it permanent open season on Christianity over there?

...and no culture

A while back, I had a commenter on this blog, someone in Europe, tell me haughtily that 'Americans are a people of no race.'
And more recently another antagonistic commenter condescendingly told me that 'America has no culture.'

These are not novel statements. The first one, though, I had never heard stated so dogmatically and baldly, so it rather took me aback. The second one is a rather common dismissal, a way of denigrating White Americans as being a nation of ciphers, a people whose only 'culture' consists of consumerism and lowbrow popular entertainment. The denial of recognition of American culture is just a way of dehumanizing us, in the very way that the chronically aggrieved say that majority White Americans 'dehumanize' them.

It's a way of denying that we even have an identity, or traditions, or folkways, or a heritage. It's a way of saying that we are nonentities in the world, of no import and having no rights to self-preservation.

Google the phrase 'American culture' and you will get lots and lots of hits about 'African-American culture', 'Latin American culture' 'Native American culture', and every kind of hyphenated American culture, but few about just plain old American culture. The few sites that come up among the top hits are sites that are devoted to little more than patriotic traditions, which is not bad in and of itself, but what exactly are we patriotic about? A flag? A set of ideals and 'propositions'? According to some of these sites, yes, and yes. And that's apparently all American culture and traditions are about.

By the way, Google helpfully suggests 'Also try African American culture...'

If I didn't know better, I would think that my antagonist was right: there is no American culture. We are a cultureless people.

According to one globalist-oriented site, American culture is synonymous with American popular culture, Hollywood movies and television. If that's true, we have worse than no culture; we have a depraved culture which is very alien to what our forefathers lived and died for.

This depressing page tells us that American culture is all about the melting pot, diversity, and all the usual drivel.

Here, arch-cynic Spengler tells us what American culture is, and it isn't pretty.

We all know instinctively that Americans have a culture; I was never more aware of it than during an extended sojourn across the pond. I was never more acutely aware of my Americanness than I was then. Otherwise friendly people in my host countries made me aware of my differences, and pointed out how typically American I was. At that point, I was still liberal and I was uncomfortable being told how American I was, when I considered myself so enlightened and progressive and cosmopolitan. But I began to appreciate what made me distinctly American and Southron and I began to embrace it. I was thrilled to get home again though my time abroad was interesting.

Many of the people I met in other countries had one trait that I found tiresome: they often seemed to think they knew America and Americans better than I know America and Americans, even when they had never set foot on our soil. Where did this preternatural knowledge come from? American popular culture. American movies and music. Many people in Europe think they know America inside and out, solely from watching American entertainment and meeting the occasional tourist. No amount of persuasion could make them see that they know only a false image of America. No; they had seen America on their TV screens or in the movie theater.

My interlocutors, who denied me a race or a culture, also think they know America better than an American knows it.

One thing that most Europeans seem to perceive correctly is that when they think of Americans, for good or ill, they think not of a Latino or other minorities; they think of a White American. The stereotype of Americans, though often unflattering, usually involves White Americans. The 'typical' American is a White American. Uncle Sam is white-bearded old gent, probably of Anglo-Saxon heritage. Maybe one day he will wear a sombrero or a kaffiyeh and have a different name, but for now, he is a WASP.

American=White, to most non-Americans.

American=European-descended, to most non-Americans.
Yes, there are and have been people of other stock in this country, but they are 'other' and are perceived by outsiders as not quite American.

Which brings me to the next accusation usually made by our antagonists: White Americans are Europeans by descent, hence they belong in Europe, having usurped and 'stolen' this country. Our Latino invaders allude to this when they use words like 'Pilgrim' as insults, or jeer at us to 'go back to Europe'.

The problem with that is, similar covetous invaders have staked their claims on Europe, the continent where most of our forefathers originated.

And the accusation is made that we have no culture because such culture and traditions as we have are mere hand-me-downs, as I think Spengler said, from our earlier forebears in Europe. Hence we have no distinctively American culture which is not derived from European influences.

I believe our European cousins would disagree with that; they can recognize that our ways are distinctively ours, and are hardly carbon copies of European originals.

Our centuries in this country have forged us into a distinctive people culturally, and to some extent genetically, as many people come from various different European strains. So if our enemies think to drive us back to Europe, which country would we choose? Most of us would have to choose between several different countries where our ancestors originated. More of my ancestors came from England than from any other country, but I also have Welsh, Scots, and some French and Dutch ancestry. Where is my ancestral home? I can name many of the places in Europe where my ancestors lived for millennia but which of them is supposed to be my true home if America is not my rightful place?

As for our supposedly non-existent culture, it appears that we who care about our survival should devote more effort to that culture, and try to make more people aware that we have a real cultural heritage which is far more valuable than the dross which comes from Hollywood or MTV. And yes, part of our cultural heritage is inherited from Europe, a fact we should be proud of, and a fact which we should not shy away from for fear of being told we 'don't belong here.'

Our heritage is originally European, specifically English or British, but it has become distinctively ours through the unique experiences of our forefathers over the last 400 years in this country. 'Culture' denotes, according to Merriam-Webster

b: the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group; also : the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life} shared by people in a place or time c: the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution or organization d: the set of values, conventions, or social practices associated with a particular field, activity, or societal characteristic...

Culture is not something that means only the fine arts and the highbrow pursuits, as some take it to mean, nor does it mean something that only 'diverse' 'vibrant' minorities have: dressing up in various regalia and gewgaws or speaking a foreign language or eating strange and exotic foods. Too many think that this is the main meaning of culture: something only colorful minorities possess.

We Americans have customs, folkways, social conventions and habits, shared memories and holidays, our own distinctive foods and folk-sayings and beliefs and folk-heroes and songs and stories. Too much of trash popular culture has crept in, but we still have something deeper and richer and more enduring than today's ephemeral, disposable entertainment, and we need to rediscover that and preserve it as best we can, lest we fall prey to the lie that we 'have no culture', and thus neglect the very real heritage that is ours.

I'll conclude with an invitation to my readers to offer their thoughts what our culture consists of, or to suggest things that are distinctly American, aspects of our way of life that make us what we are.

Waiting for the apocalypse

Reading around the Internet today, I kept coming across discussions about Obama and the frequently-repeated belief that his election will lead to some kind of turnaround in our favor. I suppose it could be said, then, that people on the right as well as on the left believe Obama's 'change' mantra, and somehow, both ends of the political spectrum believe that he is capable of working some kind of positive change, whether by accident or intentionally.

I hate to keep flogging the deceased equine, but let me go at this one more time from a slightly different angle. Assuming that Obama is incapable of delivering on his promises of 'healing' and 'unifying' and bridging the racial gap, assuming that a New Golden Age is not within his powers of manifestation, and assuming that things actually grow demonstrably worse (as most on the right assert) -- this is where it all breaks down for me. Suppose an economic collapse occurs, followed by conditions worse than in the depths of the Great Depression, which some believe will happen. Why should the masses of people out there, given their general cluelessness and passivity, suddenly begin to blame Obama, or even to be disillusioned with him?

Will the media desert Obama, or will they, like the good cult followers they are, cover for him and blame the crisis on the right?

If Obama fails in the sense that his agenda is thwarted in Congress (which I actually can't imagine happening), will the people blame Obama, or his opponents (who will of course be 'racists'?)

I think that just as when Bill Clinton ran into opposition and trouble, the left and the unthinking masses who are led this way and that will circle the wagons and support their beleaguered President.

Any economic crisis will likely be blamed on the greedy capitalists, who, as 'everybody' knows, are all WASPs who live in lily-white enclaves.

And if, as some foresee, there is a galvanizing of the White majority, what then? Any action, even lawful and legitimate, will likely be shown in the media as 'extremism' and the response will be to vilify any attempt by majority White Americans to press for their own interests.

The incident over the weekend of the church shooting is already being portrayed as 'right-wing extremism', and it will be followed by a lot of earnest condemnations of 'right-wing gun nuts' and bigots, with renewed calls for gun control and monitoring of 'right-wing hate sites' and groups. The man was deranged, to go after children and unarmed churchgoers, but he will be described as typical of White male 'right-wingers.'

And if some on 'our side', which means anybody White and right-wing, act out, that will only provide a pretext for more repressive laws and policies, and more ramping-up of PC propaganda.

I just don't see that the worsening situation, which will come regardless of who is elected in November, will automatically act in our favor. That's where I just can't take the giant leap of faith required to be a believer in the Worse Is Better, Vote Obama movement.

Oddly, it appears that on the left or among the 'moderate'/populist faction, many people are convinced we are on the cusp of some kind of momentous change, but of course they diagnose our problems very differently, and prescribe very different kinds of therapy for us.

I found a link at Occidental Dissent to James Howard Kunstler's blog, (which I won't mention because of its vulgar name), to a Kunstler article about 'Rebecoming', which seems to be his idea of this change that is supposed to be upon us, where the ugliness of modern America will be swept away by something along the 'small-and-local-is-beautiful' lines. Now, I happen to believe that small and local are beautiful. I happen to agree that what America has become, with strip malls, Wal-Marts, trashy entertainment and directionless, dispirited people, is not what America should be, or used to be.

However, both Kunstler's take and that of most of his readers seem to focus on what they no doubt perceive as 'White trash' culture, although no one uses that term specifically. They discuss women with tattoos (I agree about that), video games, drugs, and NASCAR. The last item seems to be a slap at Southron people, since the South is the basic fan base of NASCAR, though many heartland Yankees like it, too. But I get the sense that the people at Kunstler's blog look down on lower-class Whites as being the problem. If only everybody were educated and refined as the upper middle classes.

They leave out the obvious fact that of course working-class middle America is dispirited and demoralized; what can we expect after decades of dumbed-down schools and 'entertainment', all promoted by educated upper-middle-class and wealthy liberals? They mention thuggish, underclass behavior on the part of Whites (though they scrupulously avoid racial labels), but they fail to see or acknowledge how the liberal racial agenda has acted as a way of spreading underclass behaviors to the general population.

They ignore how 'free trade' has all but destroyed our manufacturing base, and how much of our agriculture has also been destroyed, leaving many previously hard-working Whites without the hope of work other than low-wage, part-time McJobs, and leaving some to nothing more than unemployment benefits, if they are lucky.

Many of the people they apparently despise were once people who had well-paying blue-collar jobs, with security, and now these people find themselves adrift. These people are mostly ignored by the Republicans, and because most are White, are now written off by Democrats as well.

Kunstler and his fans seem to remind me of Bill Kauffman, the populist/agrarian writer. I admire a lot of what Kauffman has to say, and have linked to his pieces. He writes wonderfully, and expresses a nostalgia for lost America -- but like Kunstler, he seems unwilling or unable to see that the old America that was so much better, so much more liveable and safe and clean and well-ordered, was so because of the people who made it what it was. Change the people, by means of liberal propaganda and maleducation and depraved entertainment, and you change America. Replace Americans with people from retrograde Third World environments, and again, you change America for the worse.

It's all well and good to lament for what America once was, or might still be, given the right circumstances, but a recipe is only as good as the ingredients. The right ingredients in the right proportions are necessary. You can't change the people of America, or exchange the people for others, and wonder why it just isn't the same.

But the message I take away from Kunstler's piece and his commenters' reactions is that everybody, right and left -- and center -- see that America is in great distress. Everybody can read the 'mene, mene, tekel, upharsin' on the wall, but not everybody can decipher it. And unfortunately, though lots of people see the need for a cure, not many of us agree on what medicine is needed, or even which doctor should prescribe and administer it.

And seemingly everybody thinks that a change, any change, is bound to be a change for the better. But the problem is, how can so many different opinions lead to any kind of constructive change?

Everybody seems to be cheering on some kind of apocalypse, and thus we all seem to be following the first pied piper who comes along.

'Rank Strangers'

This song has always been a favorite of mine; I have a soft spot for the songs that bring a tear to the eye. But lately I think this song takes on a new poignancy with what is happening to our country and our hometowns. The lyrics are about going back to a childhood home to find that there is nothing familiar there: 'everybody I met seemed to be a rank stranger.'

The Suggins Brothers do a wonderful rendition of this song. I hope you enjoy it.

From vast wasteland to toxic waste dump

What a long way we've come since 1961, when Kennedy appointee Newton Minow of the FCC proclaimed television to be a 'vast wasteland.' The television of 1961 was certainly full of vacuous programming and commercials, but compared to today's TV, it was high art. And bad as it may have been in parts, it was at least mostly entertainment without an 'agenda' or without heavy-handed messages bludgeoning viewers over the head, and without the steady propaganda that is the whole purpose, seemingly, of much of what is on TV in 2008.

You can't watch TV without being aware of the propaganda and the conditioning. The commercials seem as much or more concerned with selling a politically correct message than with selling a product or a service.

Today as I was watching the National Geographic channel I saw this VISA spot, which I've learned is narrated by Morgan Freeman (who else?). It's ostensibly about the upcoming Olympics, but if you haven't seen it, click on the link and watch it. It's short, but they do manage to pack a lot of propaganda into a short spot. If you want to be really discouraged, read the mindless comments following the spot.

In a ubiquitous Vonage commercial, it isn't the globalist agenda so much as the feminist, anti-White male agenda. Vonage seems to heavily favor ridiculing and belittling White males while exalting snarky, superior females. I am sure you've all seen this particular one, which is inescapable on TV these days.

The smug, sarcastic female seems to be a stock character in commercials these days, alongside the inept, awkward, clueless White male.

But the global agenda and the 'we are all the same' message seem to be promoted more heavily than ever in recent months. I've mentioned the History International Channel before, with its obnoxious 'Globalize Yourself' slogan.

For History International, the image makers at ZONA Design, Inc. created and produced a :30 image spot that encourages each viewer to "Globalize Yourself"; To explore the lives, the cultures, the various histories that shape the world we share; To try and better understand the world's peoples as what happens elsewhere on our planet profoundly impacts our daily lives here at home.
[...] To artfully make the network?s point, the ZONA creatives transitioned a series of images from diverse cultures - Russian, Tibetan, Peruvian, Aboriginal - and faces of African, Asian, Muslim and Hispanic men and women, one to the other, in the process weaving a global tapestry. Each day the world seems to be getting smaller so we created a travelogue that we hoped would help viewers make the connection that, as the History International tagline states, what happens over there indeed matters over here,? explained ZONA Creative Director/Designer Zoa Martinez.''

Celebrate diversity. Or else.

And then the BBC has its 'One World' mantra going. A few years ago, the BBC even ran a poll to find out who most people preferred as leader of a one-world government, which they clearly think is the future.

Now the “Beeb,” as it is known, recently announced the results of a poll to find out who its audience would choose to head a worldwide one-size-fits-all government. And the winner was: Ex-South African President Nelson Mandela. According to the BBC, about 15,000 people voted worldwide and the contest was an interactive Power Play game modeled on Fantasy Football; participants were instructed to choose a team of eleven to run the world, from a list of about 100 people offered, coming mainly from the left-liberal end of the political spectrum. About half of the participants were apparently American, and for this reason if no other, the runner-up was William Jefferson Clinton. ''

I guess we all know who would be chosen today to head up this 'one-world' regime. And the media can take most of the 'credit' or more accurately the blame for that.

I suppose these propaganda efforts, obvious and overbearing as they are, must be somewhat effective, judging by the way the young are flocking to Obama and cheering 'Go World.'

But to return for a moment to Newton Minow's 1961 speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, if we read what he says, we can see the direction in which the elites were taking us even then.

Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years, this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.

Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or to debase them.''

He concludes:

I urge you, I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom. You must help prepare a generation for great decisions. You must help a great nation fulfill its future.

Do this! I pledge you our help.

Thank you.'

The cause of freedom. It all sounds good. But between the lines, it seems he is talking about the global community, in today's terms, and about the media exercising 'leadership'. The media, though some of them purport to provide strictly entertainment, are now involved in what they think of as 'moral leadership' but which is really social engineering and propaganda. And they believe it is for our good, that they have to enlighten us because we are ignorant and narrow.

It's easy to recommend going TV-free, but the fact is, we still live in a world in which most people spend hours of their lives each day in front of the TV, uncritically absorbing what they see and hear on it. That, in large part, explains the phenomenal rise of Barack Obama, and it explains the political correctness which has infected our society, particularly among the younger and more impressionable.

By all means, keep your children from TV if you can, but it's getting harder and harder to separate oneself from the all-pervasive messages being spewed from television.

Are we ready to be 'edified'?

I can't fault much of what Jared Taylor says in this piece on Why Obama Will Win. I suppose my problem with the piece has to do with his conclusions. Overall, I get the impression that Mr. Taylor believes that an Obama presidency will, at worst, be ineffectual and bumbling, that it will be a failure in the sense of not being able to deliver on promises made.

If only I thought that. If the worst we had to deal with was just another ineffective presidency, it would not be so bad.
The concluding sentence of the piece is the following:

''It will be an edifying presidency; and whites may be a little less deluded in 2012.''

Now, maybe there's some meaning of the adjective 'edifying' which eludes me; my Webster's Dictionary gives this secondary meaning of the verb to edify:

'2. To instruct and improve, esp. by good example; to profit morally or spiritually.'

For the life of me, I cannot see how we might even be instructed, much less 'improved' by an Obama presidency, and I am really at a loss as to imagine how we might profit morally or spiritually by it.

It does seem as though Mr. Taylor is joining the 'worse is better' group, although he stops short of recommending that his readers vote for Obama as a number of people on the right have done.

I gather that he sees the election of Obama as a certainty, and most of the time, I see it the same way.
However the election is still a few months away. Things could change in that period of time. It ain't over till it's over. Unless, of course, the whole process is rigged, which is entirely possible. At no time in my life have I ever had less confidence or trust in the system.

The discussion that follows is a lengthy and interesting one. I expect many of you have already read it. If not, click on the link and read it. There are a few useless comments but many good ones.

The following comment seems to be along the lines of what I have been thinking since the Obama speech in Berlin:

I met a woman with high political connections in this country. She stated flatly that they want Obama as a President because then nobody in the world would criticize us because we would have collectively put on his racial armor. And our countries actions would not be called out because that country or person would then be guilty of racism.

So they apparently think they will be needing this heavy armor for what they have in mind next. This reasoning frightened me…''

It makes sense, in a crazy way. I can imagine our elite masters thinking this way. Judging by the insane policies they are forcing on us, it make a perverse kind of sense.

I don't doubt that all the decades of conditioning of the American masses are meant to bring us to the day when we are willing to submit to being led by minorities, because this is the only way the global agenda can be implemented. And if this one-world agenda is to succeed, we can't have a White male at the helm nor a White dominant majority in this country. We have to be humbled and brought down, leveled with the rest of the world, apparently.

Not so many years ago, I would have scoffed at this idea, but things have become so crazy in this world that few bizarre explanations seem implausible when trying to understand it.

If an Obama presidency would be a mostly failed endeavor, we'd have little to be concerned about, but I am not convinced of that. I don't think, as I once naively thought, that the President is really 'the most powerful man in the world.' But he does have the most powerful men in the world behind him, or he would not become President.

Without chivalry

Men have always tried to isolate women, to keep them as creatures apart. Men have always put women in houses, shut them away behind walls, kept them for themselves, detained them apart from the community. Men used to put women in a harem; now they put them in a house. But the home, like the harem, has considered its own interests rather than the interests of the community, and in so doing it has jeopardized its well-being rather than fostering it. The home, like the individual, is insufficient when it stands alone.

If a man commits an indiscretion all other men protect him. If a woman is at fault, other women, instead of protecting her, are often the first to condemn.

Women in the past have been afraid to lose the respect or the admiration or the love of men by opposing their wishes. In the last few years the suffragists have demonstrated that women do not lose the admiration of the worthwhile men by expressing their own individualities. On the contrary, it has been my experience that the modern man finds the intelligent, socially conscious, individualistic woman a more companionable person than her frightened sister who fears to speak or move lest she offend him.
Women gain far more than they lose by an attitude of independence.''

The above is from a magazine article from 1922, called Women as Dictators, written by a Mrs. Oliver H.P. Belmont, president of the National Women's Party.

Notice how the writer asserts that men, all men, men in general, have 'shut women away behind walls' or 'in a harem.' She does not specify which men, where, but indicts all men as guilty of doing these things.

The earlier waves of feminists were little different than the later, post-1960s feminists in this respect. They refused to differentiate between men in the Western countries, the men who were their own forebears, and men in the Islamic world or the Eastern world where purdah was often practiced, and women were truly secluded and treated as children or worse. No; they convicted all men of doing these things, without exception. And in this respect they were also following the pattern of today's liberals and leftists, the first rule being 'never give your own people any credit for their good points, and never fail to criticize and condemn every imperfection of your own people.'

It's ironic that in the part of the world where women have traditionally enjoyed the highest status and the greatest degree of personal freedom, feminism of the most militant type arose.

The very women who already had the most privilege were the ones who complained the loudest about oppression and 'discrimination.'

Maybe this is not so ironic after all; it does follow a pattern. One of my black political science teachers in college said that the 'oppressed' groups only organize to demand their 'rights' when the Oppressor (guess who that would be?) takes his foot off the neck of the 'oppressed', thus giving them room to stand up for themselves. So the 'victim' groups who are organizing to make demands and to push back against their perceived oppressor are already in an improved position, or they would not have the chance to rebel or 'resist'. Organized 'activist' groups are by definition in a position to push 'back'. Were they truly denied any power or any 'rights', their protests and complaints would either be ignored or silenced. Their complaints and grievances would not even be heard, and in fact, they would be too harried or distracted to organize on their own behalf, if they were truly oppressed or persecuted.

And there seems to be a truth here. All the aggrieved 'victim' groups have the freedom to organize and accuse and complain and even to engage in open defiance of their supposed victimizers. This in itself discredits, to some extent, their claims to being helpless victims.

Most of the perpetually aggrieved minority groups already have considerable privilege and status. Few are really 'oppressed' or persecuted or even discriminated against. Why are the 'oppressors' so willing to put up with the constant accusations and demands? This is not what we would expect from a ruthless oppressor class of people.

If we look back in history, we can see that even in supposedly 'backward' ages in the Western world, women enjoyed much better treatment than their counterparts in the East, particularly in the Islamic world. The Western tradition of chivalry, which I've written about here in the past, was part and parcel of the Christian culture of Europe, although it can be argued that the Northern and Western European cultures, even before Christianity, were inclined to monogamy and an elevated status of their womenfolk.

Christianity, as often happens, is and has been blamed for 'holding women back' or 'keeping them subservient', with the blame being laid mostly on the apostle Paul and his politically incorrect remarks about women obeying and submitting to their husbands. But the rest of the quotes in question involved Paul's instructions to men to love their wives. It was not a one-way street; the Bible implies that men and women both have rights and both have duties in marriage and in the world in general.

The militant Mrs. Belmont quoted above rails against Christian male dominance:

The church has been very, very hard on women. It has done its best to keep us in subjection and to restrict us mentally. Women are beginning to feel very bitter toward the church or the men who control it. They haven't driven us away from the Christian religion. They can't do that. But by their dictatorial discrimination they are driving us out of the churches as they are organized -- out of the edifices.

Women have given their time, their energy and their money to support the church. We are allowed to sit in the pews, but not to stand in the pulpit. The men of the church accept our support, but are not willing to share their exalted position with us. We are required to acknowledge man as our spiritual superior. We do not acknowlege him as such, and we know that Christ did not so acknowledge him.

If man wants to make a little god of himself he will have to do it by himself and for himself. He may stand in the pulpit and sit in the pew, but we must also stand as well as sit.''

Mrs. Belmont may not have anticipated that her feminist successors would, a few decades later, be talking about women being 'goddesses', and even introducing goddess worship into 'Christian' churches.

I wonder, though, if Mrs. Belmont would even be troubled by that; I suspect she would find it reasonable, and in that light, she and other feminists would be doing what they accuse men of doing: making 'little gods' (or goddesses) of themselves. And that is a picture of our age: the 'self' is the true god of much of the world.

On another front, Christianity is now being blamed for the perverted altruism and pathological refusal to discriminate that is killing the West. But again, Christianity is not to blame, but a corruption thereof.

Chivalry arose as part of the Christian culture of Europe but the original pre-Christian cultures of Europe contained the seeds of chivalry in the great degree of equality between the sexes. The sexes were not considered the same, as among today's deluded feminists and egalitarians, but different and complementary. There can be a kind of parity without pretending that the sexes are 'equal' or 'the same.'

There's a very good piece here about chivalry and feminism. The writer quotes Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scouts on the subject of chivalry:

A man without chivalry is no man.''

I've heard some men curse chivalry as being another damaging practice from the past, like Christianity, and men are often understandably embittered by the excesses of feminism and leftism/liberalism generally. But it seems to me that chivalry, and the Christianity of which it was a development, actually strengthened men, and of course, society at large. It may seem paradoxical, but it certainly appears that the West was far stronger in the days in which we were Christendom, and in the days in which women and men had their separate spheres.

If we look to find the causes for the rise of feminism and of the left in general, I think it's easy to overlook the decline of Christianity and the loss of faith of much of the Western world. Into the vacuum steps the counterfeit Christianity which is the gospel of humanism and egalitarianism, with its bogus heaven-on-earth notions of a socialist multicultural utopia.

Instead of the 'easy yoke' of Christianity we now have the heavy hand of totalitarian political correctness, which has more 'thou shalt nots' than the Bible has, and which is enforced with a harshness that the strictest Christian sects cannot compare with.

I have no magic prescription of how to find our way out of the maze, except to say that I think men will have to assert their rightful leadership positions and simply stop bowing down to feminism and all the works and pomps of liberalism and leftism, which is after all the ideology of a coalition of the failed, frustrated and envious of the world: weak men and militant women.

The global citizen, and those troublesome walls

Obama, the self-described 'global citizen' pontificates to 200,000 mesmerized Europeans, and shows his one-world leader aspirations:

Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.''
[Emphasis mine]

Would these 'new walls' that Obama tells us 'cannot stand' include the walls of nationality? Race? Evidently so, as he talks about how the wall 'between races and tribes; natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew' cannot stand, and that ''we'' must tear them down.

Does this not sound very troubling? I find it so. He is virtually announcing this new borderless, 'trans-racial' world in which neither race and kinship nor faith mean anything anymore. All divisions will apparently be seen as 'hateful' and bigoted and such divisions will be in essence outlawed.

We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.''

These are all half-truths; the walls have come down in Berlin but the West did not win; the old divisions have only been replaced with new ones, with hostile 'immigrants' within all European countries. The sectarian strife in Northern Ireland may have quieted somewhat, but it has not been eliminated. And we all know what a horrible travesty the end of apartheid was in South Africa; the country is far worse than it ever could have been under apartheid.

So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.

That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations - and all nations - must summon that spirit anew.'''

It sounds as though we are being prepared to accept some kind of union with the EU; the first (forced) step will be the NAU, which will then be united with our supposed 'partners' in the EU. But the people who are in control of the EU are no friends or partners to Americans; they are all globalist cosmopolitans with no national loyalties or allegiances.

I wondered, when I heard about this speech in Berlin, what is Obama doing there? Is he running for President of the world? Evidently so.

Read the rest of Obama's overblown and cliched speech at Free Republic, here, if you must.

Here is one German take on the speech, from Spiegel Online:

Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.

It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.''

And here, more gushing Obamadulation:

The speech of a global citizen," "perfect performance," an "homage to Berlin" -- After Thursday's big Obama show at Berlin's Siegessäule, German politicians seem quite impressed by the US candidate's performance. "This will strengthen the trans-Atlantic bridge," said veteran politician Edmund Stoiber.''

We might write these reactions off as being typical liberal/leftist journalistic infatuation with Obama, but there were some 200,000 Europeans gathered to pay obeisance to him. Sometimes it seems as if what is happening in our world now is some kind of bad dream, or a movie in which everybody is under some kind of delusion. What is wrong with these Europeans? Here in the USA, we have all been horsewhipped with racial guilt for 50 or so years; what is wrong with Europeans that they are likewise afflicted with guilt and a need to abase themselves?

I don't believe Obama when he refers to himself as part of the American 'we'. I don't buy it when he talks about America as his country, and I don't believe him when he talks of his 'love' for America as he does here:

But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived -- at great cost and great sacrifice -- to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world.''

I actually don't believe he even understands the meaning of forming 'a more perfect union'; I doubt he has ever really read what any of the Founding Fathers said or wrote. A more perfect union does not mean a utopia, and it does not mean a union between our country and the European Union or Canada or Mexico or anyone else.

Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom''

Speak for yourself, Mr. Obama. You surely don't speak for us there. Our country was neither conceived nor established as some kind of international dumping ground or a 'trans-racial' Tower of Babel. We were originally a nation of people of common descent and a common Christian faith. Read the documents.

-- indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares.''

And if 'every language' is spoken in this country, that is not to our credit; it betrays the treasonous nature of 'our' leaders who have refused to protect us from foreign invasion and who are in fact actively working to reduce the founding stock of this country to an enfeebled minority.

As for 'every culture' leaving an imprint on ours, that is a ludicrous bit of hyperbole, not worthy of anybody who claims to be intelligent and informed. And every point of view is most assuredly not expressed in our public squares; only that which is politically correct and consistent with what our secretive elites want to be expressed. Viewpoints like mine are decidedly neither heard nor welcomed in the public squares.

What has always united us -- what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America’s shores -- is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.''

Again, we were united at the beginning by common origins and a common faith and culture. We were never united by a 'set of ideals' based on universal aspirations. This is all false. And the idea that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose is also hollow rhetoric.

Back when Obama first announced his candidacy, he spoke of 'remaking America.' I found this alarming and ominous at the time, but so many on the 'right' insisted Obama was just a rather well-spoken young African-American man who was lacking in experience, nothing more and nothing less.

If I could believe that, I would not feel quite so discouraged about the fate of this Republic.
My one consolation is that I don't confuse the Republic with my nation. The nation is the people. The nation will always be the people. Nations are always, by definition, rather exclusive clubs. Nations are based on birth, not on ideas or ideals or 'aspirations' or any other such high-flown words.

It's time to mend the fences within the nation, and strengthen the walls Obama says should be torn down. Our walls, in case he hasn't noticed, have long since been trampled down, and our sorry leaders refuse to build them up again. But not all walls are made of stone or concrete; some walls are made by nature, and some walls cannot be torn down by governmental command.

The house divided: a fraction too much friction

'Men and women need each other
Should be like sister and brother
There’s a fraction too much friction...'

Well, I didn't want to write about this subject but it seems to be everywhere I look these past few days. It's the subject of the rift between men and women that seems to exist mostly among racially-conscious Whites. On the recent thread about race and dating/marrying, the subject was discussed, with men blaming feminism for their misunderstandings with women, and/or their antipathy to White women.


And on Steve Sailer's blog, in a discussion about an Obama-related piece, there was this comment:

...The phenemonon of whites bashing other whites for perceived insensitivity towards minorities is too widespread to be disputed.

[...] I think that the gender version of this is just as commonplace but considerably more lethal -- men bashing other men for being insensitive to the needs of women; i.e., for not saluting feminist shibboleths. To some extent, it isn't anything new under the sun; just a PC version of the chivalry racket that men have been caught up in for centuries. But given that men and women are considerably more inseparable than any set of racial groupings, a permanent schism between men and women - i.e., a governing mindset that says that "all men are bad for women" (with the man of the moment who is making that declaration always exempting himself from that universal censure) -- is bound to have a much more toxic effect on human relationships (both male-male and male-female) than mere racial and ethnic one-upmanship.''

And here, from TakiMag, on a thread that had nothing, really, to do with male-female conflicts:

...Not only are 3rd world women still pretty--they don’t suffer from a divided puritan psyche (madonnah-whore) which plagues so many western women. In short, western women are boring!'''

It's tempting for me to undertake a knee-jerk defense of my own sex, in the face of the criticisms, but it would be just that: a knee-jerk reaction, which I usually counsel against. I know that I myself am not one of those male-bashing women, but I know that they do exist.

In the past I've been fairly critical of women on this blog; I've actually taken a more critical stand towards my own sex here than many males on the right do, and some of my male readers have disagreed with me and defended women or even some feminist ideas. A woman criticizing other women is always at risk of being branded disloyal by other women and, even more likely, being branded -- by men -- as 'catty' towards other women. So it's a delicate balancing act.

I've said or implied on this blog that I thought female suffrage has, overall, been a negative for our society, and I've expressed disapproval of women in combat and the co-ed military, as well as the absurd practice of having women police officers or firefighters who are not the equals of men in size and muscular strength. Oddly, many men have disagreed with me, not so much on this blog, but on forums where we've discussed such things.

The commenter from Sailer's blog alludes to this phenomenon of men defending feminism, or bashing other men for not being appropriately 'sensitive', and it doesn't just happen among liberals.

So why is it, guys, that some of you defend many feminist innovations, like the co-ed military and women in combat or other such roles? Another way in which many men defend feminist innovations is in regard to legalized abortion.

Hermes over at Wise Man's Heart discussed a slightly related topic: Does sexual liberation deter white men from being traditionalist, in other words, does it encourage men to at least outwardly support feminism?

...But the predicted white men's reaction to my traditionalist views is: "you're never going to get laid with an attitude like that." Young men know that most single young women are liberal, and, except for those with strong religious convictions about sexual behavior, the overarching concern in life is to have sex with women. So the truth or falsity of non-liberal views is almost irrelevant; the question for the young man is "will women be attracted to me if I accept this view versus that one?" This phenomenon has spilled over to religious conservatives as well; a few weeks ago I remarked to some evangelical Christian friends that I thought that by and large, women should not be doctors, and one of them said to me, "you're never going to get married!"

[...] in the past restraining one's sexual desires was seen as manly, whereas today to bend over backwards for liberal women in order to "get laid" is seen as manly while to care more about standing on principle than about opportunistically having cheap sex will get one labeled weak, feminine, wimpy, etc.''

In some cases, though, some men on the right are simply trying to be 'fair' in taking the non-traditionalist stance as regards women and 'women's rights.' Some of you have daughters and you want your daughters to have all the opportunities that men have, although presumably conservatives or realists can see that women and men are not equals in all respects, just as the races are not equal, and women cannot do certain jobs that men do.

I could spend more time on this blog bashing feminism, because I certainly think it's been an immensely destructive force along with all the other guises which leftism assumes, but would that be shouting into the wind? I seem to have more male readers and commenters than females, and I think this is a reflection of the fact that more men than women are political, interested in what is going on in the world, and men are more inclined to be nationalistic or 'tribalistic' or territorial, as opposed to women whose concerns are more domestic, familial, and personal. So my blog is less likely to draw female readers; so be it. I wish that more women would see things as I see them; some do, obviously, as I have some female readers, and there are other like-minded women on our side.

But in criticizing feminism, who would my audience be? My women readers are already something of an exception, and are not likely to be in need of a message critical of feminism. And some of my male readers seem to have the urge to go all chivalrous when I have criticized feminism, or when they perceive that I am bashing my own sex. So in all, it seems counterproductive for me to criticize feminism or feminists, though I certainly have taken my shots at them from time to time.

I think instead what is needed is a message of reconciliation between men and women, particularly those of us who care about the future of our people. The stark fact is: we have no future if we can't resolve our anger and resentments towards each other.

I've mentioned before that I used to be quite the feminist when I was young and liberal. But even then, I recognized the absurdities of some of the radical feminist ideas, such as female separatism. Even then, I could see that while people may form separatist groups along many lines, such as religion, age, politics, or race, they could not divide along sex lines and still continue. The two sexes are interdependent and complementary in ways that other such groups are not. Men and women need each other. There might be some individuals who have no need for marriage and who for idiosyncratic reasons don't like the opposite sex, but they are anomalous, and overall, men and women, and the male and female principles are necessary to survival and to a healthy balance.

But right now, survival in the narrow sense is what we are concerned with. Our numbers are dwindling, we are under siege, psychologically, politically, physically. We have nobody but each other. There are precious few among the minority groups who will side with us, even in the most tepid fashion. We are all we've got.

We truly cannot afford to be a people divided against ourselves, and yet we are, in many ways. Left vs. right, Christian vs. non-Christian, young vs. old, rich vs. poor, everybody vs. middle-class, urban vs. rural, North vs. South. And now male vs. female. We just cannot afford it.

It seems pointless to try to point the finger at the other side, to accuse men like the not untypical one I quoted above saying 'western women are boring' and extolling Third World women as superior. It's not helpful for us to quibble over who marries out more, or who embraced that trend first. It's all counterproductive, and it keeps the cycle of blame and anger going. Time is wasting. We have to try to put the resentments and the rancor aside and realize we need each other.

Men who claim to be racially conscious or pro-American and who still seek out foreign women are frauds, plain and simple. Who we marry and have children with shows much better than words where our loyalties lie. Marrying out is the surest way of turning your back on your own people. Some imagine that their kids will be unequivocally 'American' even if they marry out. This is not so; there will be conflicts, there will be divided allegiances, and in many if not most cases, the nonwhite, non-American side wins out.

Somebody has to break the impasse. Why can't both women and men try to focus on the good things about our own opposite numbers within our own people, and stop finding fault? It wouldn't hurt either women or men to examine their own behavior and attitudes and see where and how we are guilty of contributing to the hostility and the resentment.

I certainly am aware of a lot of 'male-bashing' on the part of women, and although the battle of the sexes is age-old, going back to Adam and Eve, it has escalated greatly since feminism. I hear from the younger generation that many younger women (even the married ones) are very prone to bitterness towards men.
Insofar as I have any influence at all, I try to be a counterexample, and I am not above calling women on this if they do it in my presence.

Men, own up; many of you do your share of female-bashing too. Some of it is thoroughly justified; I have a few male relatives who have been seriously wronged and 'taken to the cleaners' by predatory-type women. It does happen. There are abusive and exploitative wives, just as there are abusive husbands. We tend to think women are the gentler sex; unfortunately we are not, always.

Women, we can do a lot better in trying to teach and model more respect for the opposite sex among our daughters. We have to try to counter all the propaganda of the media, both the 'news' media and the entertainment media, which is the source for the worst of the anti-traditionalist messages being received by our younger generations. The schools, too, are a source of the poison. Homeschooling is of course to be preferred for anybody trying to raise up good children.

The answer, such as it is, is to 'ask for the old paths', to go back to traditional attitudes and roles. They worked reasonably well for millennia. Of course relations between the sexes, like any other human interaction, will never be perfect and problem-free, but we have to muddle along and do the best we can, with the goal in mind of preserving what we are at risk of losing: our children's future.

Who wins, who loses?

The excuses and rationalizations are all lined up, in case Obama is elected President.
Many naive White Americans think that an Obama presidency will put paid to complaints about 'racism' and discrimination. The usual way it is framed is that if Obama is elected, it will be because large numbers of Whites voted for him. He cannot be elected simply by the votes of nonwhites, even if every last one voted for him; White votes are necessary for anybody to win the Presidency, no matter what the renegade old media imply. So Obama's election would show that most Whites were willing to have a black President, and this, supposedly, would silence all the cries of 'racism' in this country.

Imagine that happening. The silence would be deafening. I can barely remember such a world.
But would that happen? Not if these representatives of the 'African-American community' are an accurate sample of blacks' thinking. Race-obsessed CNN asks Could an Obama presidency hurt black Americans?
and various blacks answer:

...Glen Ford, executive editor of the online journal blackagendareport.com, offered some white Americans a free solution to the race problem: "Millions of whites came to believe Obama could solve the 'race problem' by his mere presence, at no cost to their own notions of skin privilege," Ford wrote in an essay in January.''

At 'no cost to their own notions of skin privilege?' Tell me more about this skin privilege business. In my experience, the only 'skin privilege' goes with dark skin.

But let's hear the rest of the race-card playing:

Other African-American commentators say the "post-racial" tag attached to Obama could be used to dismiss legitimate black grievances.

Andra Gillespie, an assistant professor at Emory University's political science department, says Obama's success doesn't mean America has become a post-racial society. She says it may signal the decline of individual racism but not another form of discrimination: systemic racism.''

Ahh, systemic racism. I had actually forgotten that sub-category of racism; silly me. I recently listed off the various brands of 'racism', such as unconscious racism, subconscious racism, and 'institutional racism.' I learned these things back in the 70s from my militant black sociology teacher in college. It seems I need to be sent back for a refresher course in black victimology. So I'll let the all-knowing Ms Gillespie bring me up to speed on White Racism 101:

It doesn't mean that there aren't prejudiced people anymore," she said.

Systemic racism is a form of racism that's entrenched in institutions. Some argue that it's the primary cause for intractable problems in the African-American community that range from substandard public schools to disproportionate rates of imprisonment, she says.''

Well, some say these 'intractable problems' (credit to Gillespie for at least admitting that they are intractable) are due to, ahem, differences between the races. But I have a feeling that's not the desired answer.

Electing a black president does not mean that America is ready to take on systemic racism, Gillespie says.

"A rising tide doesn't lift all boats," Gillespie said. "Just because [Obama] gets elected doesn't mean the lives of poor black people are automatically going to improve."

It could actually get worse for poor African-Americans, she says.

"People could say if Barack [Obama] can succeed and someone can't get off of the stoops in the hood, it's their fault, and it has nothing to do with systemic racism," Gillespie said.''

It's their fault? Imagine anyone saying that. Who would make such a scurrilous judgment? Racists, of course.

So no, it's obviously not going to happen that blacks will wake up the day after election day, should Obama be elected, and thank their lucky stars that America is no longer an evil racist nation where Whitey keeps the black man down. No, life will go on as before, and unless I miss my guess, the old tattered race card will be flourished with increasing frequency. The only difference will be that Obama himself will probably be leading the chorus of accusations, and encouraging more of the same.

Granted, we haven't had a President who unequivocally represents majority White America for decades now, but does anybody on the right seriously think that Obama would even feign impartiality or neutrality?

In this piece, the columnist mentions talk of 'civil unrest' in the event of an Obama defeat in November.

... I’m not a conspiracy theorist or alarmist. But I do believe that current cultural and political conditions are such that a McCain “victory” in November could create, at the very least, some significant tension in our society, if not outright civil unrest. Much of my concern has to do with a rather skewed, subjective, and selfish view of the notion of “injustice” that Obama himself has propagated throughout his campaign.

Think about it. On both implicit and explicit levels, Obama’s rhetoric suggests that the annoyances, the risks, the hardships and insecurities of your existence are the result of various injustices done to you, and that he alone can correct those injustices. ''

In other words, if the idea is widely accepted among blacks that Obama's election is the only way for their myriad grievances to be addressed or corrected (an impossible task, in any case), then they will likely react with great bitterness should he be defeated.

And if he's elected, will the situation be any better? I think race relations can only be further polarized and inflamed with Obama in office.

But if this is the case, then the 'worse is better' theorists believe worsened race relations would galvanize Whites and cause a new solidarity to develop. I am not convinced that this would be the immediate effect.
But if Obama's defeat would lead to civil unrest, as some posit, could that not be sufficient to wake up our somnabulists? I think that would be a far less risky gamble than placing our bets on an Obama presidency as a strong dose of reality tonic for most Americans.

And it seems clear that the single most intractable thing is the insatiable demands of the perennial victims. It has truly become a way of life, this constant complaining and demanding, so that no objective change for the 'better' will ever be sufficient. And unfortunately, our adversaries' idea of 'better' is objectively worse for us.

'Worlds apart...'

Do women have stronger same-race dating preferences than men?
According to a study cited in this piece, it appears so.
I am not a scientist, so some of the details of the study are a little technical for me, but it appears that the people in this study were Columbia University graduate students (and that already makes the sample rather atypical) and they were of all races.

A frequent observation (or complaint, depending on the viewpoint of the speaker) is that White women are more prone to date and mate outside their race, as compared to White men. Just in observing couples around the country, it does seem that there is more of this interracial pairing, but it is still, in overall numbers, not that common. But it does seem to be increasing, and no surprise there, given the media's constant promoting of racial mingling.

Overall, though, I've seen far more White male-nonwhite female pairings than vice-versa. And this is a longstanding trend, going back long before the present PC era, when it was far from unknown for White men to marry nonwhite women (Latina, American Indian, or Filipina).
After World War II, the Asian war bride phenomenon was not uncommon.

It does seem that men are more programmed to mate with women they are physically attracted to, and many men do not discriminate when it comes to the primal urges. Women tend to think more long-term with relationships -- often to the chagrin of men -- and will evaluate men as potential husbands rather than just on the basis of sexual attraction.

With men, the trend of mail-order brides is growing, it seems, as discussed here.

When I was a child, there were Asian 'war brides' married to White American men who had served in Korea, Japan, or elsewhere in Asia. I had classmates who had Irish-American or Anglo-American dads and Japanese mothers. It seemed especially common for men who served in the military to marry Filipina women or East Asian women. In some parts of the country, White men not infrequently married Latina women or American Indian women. And this, remember, was in an era where interracial marriage was generally frowned on, if not outright forbidden. But there has always been a stronger taboo against black-White marriages or pairings.

By contrast, I rarely if ever encountered White women married to nonwhite men of any race, with the occasional exception of a Hispanic male-White female or in some areas, American Indian male-White female marriage. But by far, most interracial marriages appeared to be White men with various nonwhite women: Asian, Pacific Islander, Hispanic or American Indian.

I still think these pairings are more common than any form of black-White pairing. So I do think it's a little unfair to blame women excessively for lack of racial/ethnic fidelity.

Many men who seek out mail-order brides from various parts of Asia and the Pacific blame feminism for their choosing to marry an exotic woman. I think this is in many cases a rationalization for their personal preference for these exotic women. Some term the preference as a 'fetish' and I would say that isn't too strong a word.

Is feminism to blame? Certainly feminism has not improved understanding between the sexes; arguably it has worsened the battle of the sexes in Western countries. But to be fair, not all women are feminists; I often say that feminism has spread to the right, with many 'conservative' women sounding like Gloria Steinem, but traditional women have not disappeared completely. Likewise, I think it is an inaccurate stereotype that the Asian-Pacific women are all frail little lotus blossoms. I've worked with some who are decidedly assertive women, not at all demure and retiring, despite the popular image.

But if a man really wants to maintain racial integrity and fidelity, he would not be inclined to choose a woman of such a racially disparate origin.

As for the women who date or mate interracially, these days, given the 'colorblind' dogma of liberalism, and the fact that most women are politically liberal, it isn't surprising that many women date interracially. Women, unfortunately, tend to be vulnerable to an appeal to their sympathies and their nurturing side. 'Victimhood' awakens the softer feelings of some women. But most importantly, most women don't want to be called 'racist' -- which, trust me, they are called by nonwhites whose advances are not welcomed. The race card is usually played very early on and many weak-minded women give in when the r-word is thrown at them.

It seems to me to be an unfair tactic to use in approaching someone of the opposite sex but it does happen.

Nowadays, choosing to stay within one's own race or ethnicity is increasingly portrayed as 'bigoted' and racist. But it's generally acknowledged that people tend to pair up with those who have commonalities and similarities; the idea that 'opposites attract' is overrated. Men and women by their respective natures sometimes have a difficult time understanding each other; why add ethnic/cultural misunderstanding, racial grievances and guilts, and historical resentments to the inbuilt male-female conflicts?

In the 1957 movie Sayonara, which was really all about interracial love, and the 'star-crossed', misunderstood qualities thereof, the message was that ultimately, love conquers all, and only narrow minds want to bring race or culture into it.
The tagline of the movie was

Worlds apart...theirs was the daring love affair violating every rule, every custom, every centuries-old belief!''

Do you think Hollywood was working the agenda then? There was a spate of these movies during the 50s.

I do remember that near the end of the movie, when Marlon Brando is trying to persuade his Japanese lover, played by Miiko Taka, that she should go against the taboos and marry him, she makes a speech about how their children will be neither Japanese nor American, and asks him where they would belong.
Now, I'm just going from memory here, so please don't chastise me if I remember incorrectly, but I recall that Brando answers with a speech about how that the only thing that matters is Love, not popular opinion, and not even their respective families who might object.

Typical Hollywood cliches, but does that work in real life?

And what about the children? I suspect they would have trouble deciding where they belong. Most likely they would identify more with the nonwhite identity; that seems to be the general rule.

But what could be more natural than wanting children and grandchildren in whom we can see our parents and grandparents? One of the distinguishing marks of family members is that there is a physical resemblance. Family members generally share outward physical traits as well as mental and psychological similarities. I am sure that Japanese grandparents might prefer to have a grandchild with distinctly, identifiably Japanese looks, one who looks like them. Of course they would not be called racist for feeling that way. Only Whites are accused of racism for wanting their descendants to look like them and to be part of the continuity of a family line of the same race.

A family has a dimension in time; our extended family is not just those who are alive at the same time, but those who have gone before us, who gave us life, and those to whom we give life, those who come after us. Why should we not want them to be as like us as possible, and like our parents and grandparents and their parents and grandparents?

We are all part of a continuity which made us what we are today, and we are the result of many generations of holding true; we owe something not only to our living kin but to our forebears and above all, our progeny. Those who choose to ''violate every rule, every custom, every age-old belief' as the movie tag-line put it, are acting selfishly and shortsightedly. They are disavowing both their ancestors and their progeny, who will likely feel little connection to them.

The article I linked yesterday contained the prediction that this country would be completely hybridized in a matter of time. I think it's likely, if present trends continue, that this will be the case. Given that the younger generations seem so programmed to be militantly 'colorblind' or to actually prefer nonwhites, it seems the trend is bound to accelerate with each new generation. That prospect, to me, seems almost tantamount to being told that I will have no progeny, because the people who inhabit this place after I am gone will likely speak another language, honor other traditions, be of an alien religion, and look very unlike me and my forebears, even if they bear some of the same genes. The fact is, they will bear other, very dissimilar genes, and identify as part of that people. And that, in essence, will be the end of my line.

I do think that there will be some who will want to resist being put into the big DNA blender. It may be only a few, but as long as people still have some free choice about marrying and reproducing, at least some will continue do what is natural to us: choose to remain among our own.

'...so hybrid a nation...'

''...McWhorter suggests we're in a transitional phase in the way people feel about race as a national obsession. In the short run, "I suspect that where we are going is whites feeling ever more that it's time we blacks get over it, while an ever shrinking population of blacks continue hoping that whites will change their tune and 'wake up,' " he says. But this too shall (eventually) pass. "In about 50 years," he adds, "we will be so hybrid a nation that any idea of black-white relations as a major problem in need of address will seem archaic."

The above comments from John McWhorter, who is often touted as one of the 'moderate' or 'conservative' blacks, are part of the concluding paragraph from a piece called Double Vision: The Race Issue Revisited from AdWeek.

According to Ron Guhname at Inductivist, McWhorter said on the Laura Ingraham show that he is supporting Obama.

...he plans to vote for Obama for president because of the tremendously positive psychological effect that it will have on blacks. Hope will be felt like never before, and race hustlers like nut surgeon Jesse Jackson won't be taken seriously anymore.''

Mr. McWhorter, in all his racial excitement, must have neglected to read yesterday's New York Times poll:

The results of the poll... suggested that Mr. Obama’s candidacy, while generating high levels of enthusiasm among black voters, is not seen by them as evidence of significant improvement in race relations.

For the first time ever, the person who is one step away from the most powerful position in the world is black, but still blacks folks don't think things are getting better?!''

Guhname is skeptical of the 'vote-for-Obama-because-worse-is-better' meme which has taken a stubborn hold among some on the right. McWhorter thinks that an Obama presidency will give blacks 'hope' while polls suggest they don't see the prospect of an Obama presidency as any evidence of 'progress.' So what will change after January 20, 2009?

The AdWeek piece on the race issue contains the usual PC boilerplate. Nothing much to see there, but there is confirmation of some of the trends many of us have noticed:

If some white people are insensitive to the travails of their black compatriots, some are very, very sensitive -- and proud of it. "There's now a kind of white person under 30 who thinks of himself as an 'honorary' black person [because he's so highly aware that] the playing field isn't level," says John McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Race and Ethnicity, and author of the just-published All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America. "Quite simply, the 'playing field' issue means that blackness is thought of as a problem, which is not where we need to go." Moreover, he says, this sort of hyper-consciousness leads to such white people "thinking they can 'be' something that you cannot 'be' unless you were born to it.
[...]
There's clearly a sizable white constituency that welcomes the prospect of an Obama victory as a sign that America has already become a post-racial society -- that the struggle of race is behind us. This sentiment also influences the way in which people react to popular culture, advertising included.

It's obvious to anyone who watches TV that the content of advertising has become more inclusive, and not just in the form of "black" versions of "white" commercials. We see easy-going interaction between the races in recent spots for everything from Miracle-Gro plant food and McDonald's Happy Meals to Levi's jeans.

David Lubars, chairman, CCO of BBDO North America, suggests advertising content is a pop-culture leader in its inclusiveness. "Advertising does a much better job of showing diversity and reflects the American fabric better than the movies or TV shows," he says. "You watch any evening of TV commercials, you see a great mix."

The piece is full of the usual smug PC platitudes on race, and it's clear that the advertising industry has an agenda other than inducing people to buy products or services. They are selling an agenda, trying to shape society towards ends that they see as moral and good. Should that not be the province of clergy and philosophers, not advertisers? Oh, for the good old days of advertising when they were merely pushing widgets or toothpaste or soap. Now they are shaping the world we live in, leading us in directions that we might not go if we were approached more directly, rather than insidiously as with today's advertising.

McWhorter's support for Obama is not surprising; blood is thicker than politics, as we've said before. The idea that Obama's election will inaugurate not only the first black president, but new heavens and a new earth, will prove to have been a fantasy, I'm afraid. It is too big a gamble on a long shot to think that some kind of new consciousness will awaken in White people. As the AdWeek article says, we have a large constituency of White people, especially the under-30s, who see themselves as 'honorary blacks', by virtue of their great sensitivity. One of these days, these people will be in the ascendancy, and an Obama presidency will probably be the beginning of the end of the old America.

The idea of hoping for an Obama débâcle to 'wake people up' reminds me of the idea many non-Christians have about Christian believers. I've heard the accusation made that 'fundamentalists', believing in the impending End Times, want to hasten Armageddon in the Middle East so as to provoke Christ's return and thus inaugurate the 'new heavens and a new earth' promised us. The fact is, I've never encountered a Christian in real life or even on the wild-and-wooly internet who thinks that way, or who would say 'bring on Armageddon!' so as to hasten Christ's second coming. But isn't that the thinking behind the 'worse is better' scenario? Bring it on, so that the millennium will follow? As for me, I have no thoughts of hastening the tribulation. I believe we should work to delay this 'worse' that is supposedly inevitable.

And let's keep in mind that last paragraph I quoted at the beginning of this piece. McWhorter thinks that it will take half a century for our people to be 'hybridized' out of existence. I see it happening much sooner, if things don't turn around, and I am not sure that speeding the process up, which is what an Obama presidency would do, is helpful.

Following the truth, continued...

A couple of months ago I posted an entry about the post-Katrina cover-up, which amounted to a denial by many in the old media of the horrific events which occurred in New Orleans.

I suppose those who are determined for whatever reason to deny that certain things happened will continue to deny, but here is one more piece of corroboration of the kinds of things that happened. The story is an AP story so I won't excerpt it, but a doctor who was trapped in a hospital in New Orleans during the post-Katrina chaos gives her account, and it confirms much of what had originally been reported.

There are just too many first-person stories along these lines to be explained away or dismissed. The cumulative evidence is too hard to ignore.
The other question the deniers don't address is: who would benefit from making up such stories? The deniers are forced to resort to claiming that people like this doctor are mere attention-seekers conjuring up a juicy story. It just won't work. The deniers have many reasons for choosing to deny: the stories are too politically incorrect, and conflict with the victimolatry which underpins the liberal agenda. On the 'right', people who are obsessively pro-Bush believed that 'the Democrats' made up these stories to discredit the President, which is patent foolishness.

It seems to me that the evidence is there, whether it suits someone's agenda or not.