Conflicting messages

Travelers going ahead with plans despite vice president's gaffe, swine flu concerns

Pigs can’t fly yet, but the swine flu is still a reason to stay out of the sky.

At least, that is, if you ask Vice President Joe Biden. And most Southwest Floridians aren’t. Nor are their travel agents. Or their airlines. Or the rest of the federal government.

“I would tell members of my family — and I have — that I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places now,” Biden said on NBC’s “Today” show Thursday morning.

Only problem is, Biden’s advice is not in line with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official message, which is for citizens to only avoid non-essential travel to Mexico. Pundits quickly tacked the comment up as another off-the-cuff remark, which Biden has a reputation for, but travel industry officials were decidedly more upset, with one saying the comment bordered on “fear mongering.”

“To suggest that people not fly at this stage of things is a broad brush stroke,” said Tim Smith, a spokesman for American Airlines.''

I suppose a spokesman for American Airlines just couldn't have a bias, could he? Or a conflict of interest?

Either way, though, a possible Biden gaffe wasn’t going to keep Shari Munger of Sarasota from visiting Chicago on Thursday out of Southwest Florida International Airport. Munger, who said she was in her early 40s, said she felt the whole swine flu thing was being blown out of proportion.

“Not at all worried,” Munger said. “I think the media has a tendency to exaggerate things.”

But there are people taking precautions, feeling, like Biden, that confined spaces result in pandemics.

“It’s not just going to Mexico, if you’re in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft,” Biden said, adding that other transportation options may be worth a look.''

Just for perspective, let's see what information is out there on air travel and contagious illness. There's this:

Airborne illness and air travel simply go hand in hand, and anyone that travels often will tell you so. The problem with air travel is that you are talking about thousands and over the course of a year, millions of people who travel in the same aircrafts. Simply put, there are germs everywhere in an aircraft and it doesn’t matter how well the crews clean them, these germs cannot be removed because they are not just on things, they are in the air.
Every year millions of people come down with the flu or common colds after traveling on an aircraft. Though a good number of these people may not correlate the two, the likelihood that they picked up their cold or flu bug on the aircraft is very high. The problem with airplanes is that many people get on and off them all the time. Some of these people may be sick, some may just be recovering, and some may be sick and not even realize it.
[...] Obviously, when you are talking about an aircraft you are talking about a small place where the air is just recycled over and over again, allowing the germs the perfect environment to meet up with bodies that are just waiting to get sick! Air travel is one of the easiest ways to get sick, and for many, there is no way around it!

An obvious way to avoid the airborne illnesses on board an aircraft is just to stay away from them! Though, for many this isn’t really an option, as they have to travel for business or personal reasons. So, the best thing you can do is avoid air travel when you are recovering from an illness or any time you feel as though your immune system may not be at its best. Any time your immune system has already been compromised, you are even more likely to contract an airborne illness.
[...]
In addition to fighting off the airborne illnesses, you might want to think about everything you touch on board the aircraft. If there are germs and bacteria in the air, you can bet all the surfaces are contaminated as well.

And this:

Airplane Air makes People Sick

Former flight attendant now health activist, Diana Fairechild, has formed a nonprofit foundation to educate people about airplane air. She mentions a number of added hazards that may be present, resulting from things like hydraulic fluid gases.
Here’s what she says:
“The problem is apparently complex. A number of environmental factors in the aircraft cabin are being blamed, including low oxygen in recycled air, low humidity that puts a strain on the respiratory tract, and pesticide residues from systematic sprayings. Now a new problem is at the forefront of potential causes. Toxic chemical vapors originate from hydraulic spills—and the resulting cabin fumes are now being directly linked to incidents of flight attendant illnesses.”

And further:

Could a pleasant and enjoyable flight be the cause of a serious infection? Can airplanes be transporters of diseases? As you settle down in your seat, is a deadly infection already lurking amidst the carpeted and cushioned interior of the plane? Airplanes –Ticket to Infection?
[...]
Little did such thoughts enter our mind until the bird flu, SARS, hit our planet this millennium. In fact, air travel and communicable diseases have a hand in glove association; especially air borne infections.

A major cause attributed to the spread of infections within flights is the recycled cabin air. Till the 70’s, 100% fresh air was pumped into the cabin of airplanes every 3 minutes. But, anticipated increase in fuel costs during the late 70’s prompted research into methods of cutting down on fuel consumption and thereby, the cost. It was found that circulating fresh air within the cabin of an aircraft used up more fuel; so, since the 80’s, its percentage was cut in half. The reduced fresh air coupled with re-circulated stale air creates an environment conducive for many a health problem ranging from headaches, dizziness and nausea to various infections.

A study by Boeing and Pall Cabin Filters Brochure in 1999 showed that a cough produces 100,000 particles that can be dispersed over 20 rows in the cabin!

When infected passengers cough, sneeze or talk, droplets are released. It is in these droplets that the bacteria or viruses nestle until they gain entry into another victim. The unsuspecting, otherwise healthy passenger inhales the circulating recycled air that contains some of these droplets. Thus, the infection spreads among vulnerable passengers.

According to the Boeing Flight Manual, recycled air within an aircraft usually consists of 50% fresh and 50% stale air. Under such conditions, airborne germs are free to float around and the notorious ones include-

• Common Cold
• Tuberculosis
• Influenza (flu)
• Measles
• Mumps
• Chicken pox

Risk of tuberculosis - Kenyon T.A. et al (1996) proved that tuberculosis could be transmitted to passengers through the air conditioning. A study on ‘the transmission of infections diseases during commercial air travel’ reported in March 2005 in ‘The Lancet’, adds further proof to this finding. Researchers found that healthy passengers sitting within two rows of a contagious passenger for a flight, longer than eight hours, were at risk of contacting the disease.

SARS Infection - An outbreak of SARS on board a flight from Hong Kong to Beijing showed that passengers seated as far back as seven rows from the infected individual were affected.''

The article also mentions other conditions like skin infections, malaria, and even gastrointestinal illnesses being spread via air travel.

Interestingly, here is what the CDC has to say on air travel health hazards, from its own website:

In-Flight Transmission of Communicable Diseases
Concern has been increasing about the possible spread of communicable diseases during air travel. In certain circumstances when an infectious person or someone who is suspected of being infectious has traveled by air, public health authorities require passenger information for contact tracing and follow up. This information is collected from the passengers or the airlines and handled in a confidential manner. Information is available regarding in-flight transmission of a few diseases, including tuberculosis, Neisseria meningitidis, measles, influenza, SARS, and the common cold.

Tuberculosis
Only one investigation has documented transmission of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB) from a symptomatic passenger to six other passengers who were seated in the same section of a commercial aircraft during a long flight (>8 hours) (4). These six passengers were identified by conversion to a positive tuberculin skin test (TST); none had evidence of active tuberculosis. Driver et al. (5) investigated the potential for TB transmission by a symptomatic airline crew member over a 6-month period (5). They found that evidence of infection (i.e., TST positivity) among other crew members increased markedly during the period when the index case was most infectious and was associated with having worked >12 hours with the index case. Evidence suggested the potential that TB had been transmitted to passengers who had flown when the index case was most infectious.
[...]
People known to have infectious TB should travel by private transportation, rather than a commercial carrier, if travel is required.
[...]
Influenza
Influenza is highly contagious, particularly among people in enclosed, poorly ventilated spaces. Transmission of influenza is thought to be primarily due to large droplets and has been documented aboard an aircraft, with most risk being associated with proximity to the source. (See Chapter 4 and http://www.cdc.gov/flu for more information.) The 1979 airplane-associated outbreak of influenza in Alaska, during which 72% of passengers became ill with influenza-like illness, does not reflect what generally happens on commercial flights. In this situation, the airplane experienced engine failure prior to takeoff and remained on the ground with the ventilation system turned off. The cabin doors remained closed, and many passengers remained on board for hours (10). In terms of understanding seasonal influenza transmission dynamics on a commercial airline, a potentially more useful influenza outbreak investigation associated with an aircraft is the 1999 outbreak reported in Australia, during which most of the infected passengers were seated within three rows of the index case, and all the people seated in the same row were infected (11).

Since 1997, a new strain of avian influenza virus (H5N1) has been shown to cause infection in humans, primarily associated with direct contact with birds and with no sustained human-to-human spread to date. Because influenza viruses are very adept at changing, there is concern that this strain could eventually to spread among humans and thus would impact air travel. See http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel for more general information and up-to-date, specific guidelines for travelers and the airline industry.''

There is more at the website. Please note that the article I excerpted above was posted in June 2007, and not updated since then. Care to bet whether the CDC will have to update this page to make it conform to the current 'nothing to worry about' blather from the administration?

This travel forum contains some posts going back to April 22, warning of respiratory illness in South and Central Mexico.
I notice a number of posts appear to have been deleted since then. Why? For fear of hurting the travel industry? If the posts I linked to about the illness are no longer there when you click the link, they will have been removed by the website.

Has everybody forgotten this story from 2007 in which an American lawyer who had drug-resistant TB was quarantined after he defied doctor's orders and took a plane flight?

It is the first time since 1963, that the CDC has issued an order for a patient to be quarantined. Usually, such decisions are left to the states, but this case involved international and interstate travel, so the federal government stepped in.

The CDC is concerned about passengers seated in rows near the infected man on a May 13, Atlanta to Paris, Air France 385 flight and another Czech Air 0104 from Prague to Canada on May 23.
[...]
There have only been a few cases of people acquiring highly infectious diseases on long flights. Dr. Henry Masur, president of the Infectious Disease Society says exposure – even at close proximity — doesn't usually result in infection.
[...]
This man was advised not to travel and did. Why?

You're dealing with human behavior. We know that, dating back to the earliest of times, there are people who, for selfish reasons, for unclear purposes, will in fact do whatever they please. In this case, this is where public health has to battle the issue of individual rights and privacy with that of the greater health good. This was a collision that was bound to happen sometime and will happen more often in the future.

Shouldn't there be more stringent rules preventing them from doing whatever they please?

This individual had been compliant with public health action. It was only with the advent of his wedding in Europe that he decided that he wasn't going to be. There was actually an order issued before he left the United States, but [public health officials] were unable to serve it on him. This just points out that you have to have extreme measures for the very, very small number of people who just won't be compliant.''

Which brings me to another point: our derelict and irresponsible officials, so worried about the political and economic consequences of this flu outbreak, have repeated, despite what Biden said, they do not advise anyone to avoid air travel or public places --- except "those who are sick.''

But as the last paragraph in the quote above tells us, human behavior can be perverse; people can and do defy common sense and common courtesy and will go out in public, callously exposing others to whatever illness they have. The idea that all people who are infected, or who might be infected, will segregate themselves out of concern for the rest of us is foolish. The case of the TB-infected lawyer willfully exposing others to his drug-resistant malady on two long flights illustrate that fact. If we cannot trust a highly-educated and supposedly conscientious professional man to obey the rules and avoid exposing others, how can we expect that of people at large, perhaps people who are not capable of understanding the seriousness of the disease or the means of contagion?


And here's another story from a year ago, of a woman who caught TB from a fellow passenger on a New Delhi-Chicago flight.


So for anyone to chastise Biden, of whom I am no admirer, by the way, for a 'gaffe' about the risks of air travel or mass transit, is absurd, and it shows how people are so easily dissuaded from common-sense knowledge that was taken for granted not long ago.

Biden's statement, far from being a 'gaffe', was just politically incorrect, and now, in the effort to defend the administration's official story, officials are making him out to be a fool, and the FReepers are ridiculing Biden. But nevertheless, there are risks involved in taking mass transit, especially airplane flights, even though those in the travel industry or anyone with vested interests are now trying to downplay or deny that.

I find it creepy how easily people can be persuaded one way or the other, based on what their political authorities are saying.
And I find it sinister how people in high positions apparently have wanton disregard for the safety of the citizens of this country, choosing politics and economic interests above the life and well-being of their own countrymen.

I realize that some of the perpetual cynics on the right have an interest in denying that there is anything to this flu outbreak, but surely it's better to be safe than sorry. It is not a choice between denying that there is any danger at all and panicking. There is a sensible middle ground here; being vigilant and prepared is better than a knee-jerk denial of whatever the other side is saying.

Even if this outbreak proves to be nothing serious, and just another type of flu, the flu is no joke. I've been noticing for at least the last decade or so that there are much nastier and harder-to-shake kinds of respiratory viruses going around every year. To me, even if this thing is just 'ordinary' flu, it's well worth it to avoid it if at all possible, and it's irresponsible to laugh this thing off, especially this early in the game.

That being said, those in positions of authority seem to be contradicting themselves; I hear some people saying that the authorities are trying to cause panic, such as by raising the outbreak to pandemic level, while at the same time, these pathetic officials are telling us there is no need to close any borders or to quarantine anyone or even to avoid public gatherings and mass transit. The fact that they are now contradicting themselves, as the CDC is doing, based on their information from 2007, makes little sense. I don't see them creating panic; they seem just as equally committed to fostering a cavalier or passive attitude about this. What is going on? Are they trying to merely confuse people by repeating contradictory and conflicting messages?

All they are doing, as far as I am concerned, is discrediting themselves and showing themselves to have no real concern for us, the people they are supposedly sworn to serve.

By the way, see Tanstaafl's take on this here.

Moral confusion on the right

Did you watch the '100 Days' press conference? Neither did I, though I've looked at the transcript just to see what was said. But the following question and the ambiguous answer given has me puzzled. At one point, #44 says that waterboarding was torture, and that it 'violates our ideals and values' but then he says he is convinced it was the right thing to do. However I don't expect logic or consistency from him or his administration; it looks like he is trying to have it both ways, predictably:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. You've said in the past that waterboarding in your opinion is torture. And torture is a violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. Do you believe that the previous administration sanctioned torture?

MR. OBAMA: What I've said -- and I will repeat -- is that waterboarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture. I don't think that's just my opinion; that's the opinion of many who've examined the topic. And that's why I put an end to these practices.

I am absolutely convinced that it was the right thing to do -- not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways -- in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are.

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British, during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, "we don't torture," when the -- the entire British -- all of the British people were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat. And -- and -- and the reason was that Churchill understood, you start taking shortcuts, and over time, that corrodes what's -- what's best in a people.

It corrodes the character of a country.''

I have not blogged about this waterboarding/torture issue, because it is rather a thorny subject with which I haven't concerned myself very much. On the one hand, I find little sympathy for terror suspects but on the other hand, I cannot and could not bring myself to share the Rush Limbaugh attitude that, say, the incidents at Abu Ghraib were 'no worse than a fraternity hazing', just no big deal. I remember when that scandal first broke I was still somewhat of a mainstream conservative in many respects, but broke ranks with the dittoheads on the subject of the War on Terror or the Iraq War specifically.

So is waterboarding 'torture'? I don't know. I don't have a clear-cut answer. I do see a danger of simply reacting, as most Republicans do, in knee-jerk fashion to the rantings of the left. In other words, if the Democrats are agin' something, we have to be for it, and not only for it, but rabidly so. If they think waterboarding is torture, we have to say it's not only not torture, but in fact a good and virtuous thing. I reject knee-jerk politics or partisanship.

Overall, though, this issue is not high up on my list of priorities. But here is an interesting discussion from What's Wrong With the World, where Lydia writes about the changing views among conservatives on the ethics of 'torture' and capital punishment.

The End of a Consensus

This post is going to be full of sociological claims about which I am uncertain. It's okay if you disagree with me about them, so long as you do so nicely.

First claim: Thirty-five years ago, most conservatives were both very strongly in favor of the death penalty and strongly opposed to torture, where "torture" would have included waterboarding, if they had been asked about it.

Second claim: This is no longer true today. Now, conservatives who are strongly in favor of the death penalty tend to be the same ones who support at least some forms of torture, and conservatives who are opposed to those same forms of torture tend to be, at least, uneasy about the death penalty rather than strongly in favor of it.

Suppose these are both true. What caused the change?'

There is a paradox here. I would say she is right that a generation or so ago, most conservatives were pro-capital punishment yet they would not have approved of torture, or of some of the 'interrogation methods' that are apparently being used in recent years. She asks why views have shifted among conservatives. It does appear that more conservatives now have misgivings about the death penalty, but there is also a much more cavalier attitude about 'torture' in interrogation. I found the approval of torture by many conservatives to be surprising when it first became apparent a few years ago. I wondered at the time why this was so; I always, even when I was liberal, had a picture of conservatives as being more gentlemanly and civilized than many liberals. I suppose the generation of 'conservatives' who were dittoheads or listeners to talk radio generally tended to be less genteel than the old-time conservatives.

This isn't your father's conservatism.

But why has there been a change, as Lydia asks?

Further down, she says:

There is something to my mind bracing and healthy about a person who recognizes, sternly, uncompromisingly, and forcefully, the importance of the death penalty, who takes a manly position also on self-defense, who is nowhere close to pacifism, but who views torture with unmitigated disgust and rejection. Can anyone imagine John Wayne torturing anyone? But I can certainly imagine him solemnly sentencing a murderer to death. And what about the Marine hymn? "First to fight for right and freedom, and to keep our honor clean."

Regardless of what John Wayne would have countenanced, or more accurately, what his movie characters would have done, would, say, Robert E. Lee have approved of torturing anyone? Stonewall Jackson? Thomas Jefferson? George Washington?

Yet all of these men would, as Lydia says of Wayne, would have no objection to the death penalty where appropriate.

We live in a strange and inconsistent age; some of the same people on the right who support the death penalty for certain criminals are too squeamish to send illegal invaders home, or to close our borders, because that would be cruel and inhumane.

As far as the death penalty, this subject has come up here before. I notice something strange about the comments on Lydia's post at WWWtW: almost no one references or cites the Bible on the subject of the death penalty. Someone quotes G.K. Chesterton as an authority; I admire Chesterton as much as the next, and a quote of his adorns my sidebar. But he is not my authority on ethics and morals. Another commenter references C.S. Lewis; I would say the same of him that I say about Chesterton. But shouldn't a Christian look to the Bible to know God's will on that subject? Surely the absence of Biblical references is surprising on a site which espouses a Christian worldview -- or perhaps more accurately a Catholic viewpoint.

I think the question of the Church's teachings on capital punishment is an interesting topic which should be explored, although I won't attempt that here, as I am not a Catholic and I don't feel qualified to explore that. It's a subject for those who are Catholic or who are more knowledgeable about Catholic theology or doctrine than I. I do know, simply, that the Catholic Church used to favor capital punishment for certain crimes like murder, though I don't know how or why that position was reversed.

Even less do I know why Protestants, in some cases, are abandoning Biblical teaching on the death penalty. I was talking about capital punishment with a very conservatively-brought-up Christian recently, when we were discussing various crimes. This person told me that she was not sure about capital punishment because the Bible says ''vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the Lord.'' I attempted to point out that this is in reference to personal matters, admonishing us not to take revenge on someone who has wronged us, just as with the 'turn the other cheek' admonition. But I fear it fell on deaf ears. She thinks capital punishment is revenge, and that it is a failure to show mercy and forgiveness. Again, I tried to point out that God is not only merciful but just and holy, not tolerating sin. She was unconvinced. And I know there are many more like her, who are now becoming more liberal and vacillating on issues like punishment in general. Many have been persuaded by years of exposure to the Oprah approach, and the emphasis on mental illness as the cause of crime, not human sin or evil. Punishment, according to that worldview, is backward; an enlightened society 'understands' and 'rehabilitates' its 'sick people'; it does not punish criminals. That is so 'medieval.'

Someone on the WWWtW thread opines that the tendency to favor harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects is driven by the tribal defense instinct; we feel under threat so we are willing to justify harsh measures to protect our own in wartime or other such extraordinary situations. I think that makes sense; perhaps it's why I am not inclined to feel sympathy for terror suspects or actual terrorists. I don't believe that the Islamic threat is a bogeyman created by the neocons or the media. On the other hand, neither do I see Islam as the primary threat, so I don't fit in with the mainstream right on this issue.

As for the capital punishment question, I think it will assume more importance as the ascendant far left tries its best to abolish capital punishment. They have been relentlessly working towards that goal for decades and they are sensing victory, so they will ratchet up their efforts to end it. And what with the liberalizing of many formerly conservative churches and denominations, I fear Christians will lose the will to defend the death penalty, and concede the moral battle to the left, probably feeling good about themselves as they do so. It's all part of the same phenomenon which causes the Christian 'conservatives' to reverse themselves on homosexuality, same-sex ''marriage'' or other such social issues. What's next?


Addendum
Here are some good defenses, from a Biblical point of view, of capital punishment. They do a very thorough job of examining many possible objections or questions from skeptics on the issue:


Stand to Reason: The Bible and Capital Punishment
by Gregory Koukl

The Bible and Capital Punishment

Capital Punishment and the Bible

PC is a health hazard

The current Mexican flu epidemic, which is being facilitated by our foolishly lax border policies, reminds us that earlier generations had a modicum of sense on issues of health in connection with immigration. The editorial cartoon is captioned 'The kind of assisted emigrant [sic] we can not afford to admit'. The cartoon depicts the Grim Reaper, with the name 'cholera' emblazoned on his clothes, entering New York Harbor. The health authorities, bearing a bottle labeled 'Carbolic Acid' are coming out to intercept him, with Castle Garden (Ellis Island) in the background.

In those days, as this article at Lori's Latest reminds us, there were health standards in place, and immigrants were turned back if they displayed signs of contagious or chronic diseases. Nowadays, as the article makes clear, illegal immigration makes a mockery of any existing standards for legal immigrants, and sadly it seems that health standards even for legal immigrants are none too strict. I first became aware of the resurgence of Tuberculosis in the late 1970s, when it was occurring in large numbers among legal immigrants in the city where I lived.

Recently I was talking with someone who really had no clue about the myriad diseases being introduced (or re-introduced) into this country by illegal and legal immigration. More people should be made aware of these facts, but political correctness makes it practically an offense to point out essential health information.

Finding truth amid the lies and speculation

The events of recent days are so strange that it's hard to sift the news stories and the chatter about them to discern where the truth lies.
First, the bizarre flyover of Manhattan by Air Force One, accompanied by fighter jets; here's one blogger's take on it.

I've been following numerous internet discussions of that incident as well as talking with people about it in the 'real world.' Just about everyone agrees that the official explanation makes no sense -- that is, the story that a new photo of Air Force One flying over the Statue of Liberty was needed, and that the failure to notify the appropriate authorities or the public was just a 'mistake.'

It seems that there are theories aplenty of what really happened, and we will all be left to speculate and shake our heads about it, as we are not likely to hear a reasonably truthful account of it that makes sense.

My first thought when hearing about this supposed 'photo-op' flight was: why not just use Photoshop? Even I could put together a reasonable composite photo with Photoshop, and I am a rank amateur. No, I don't buy the photo-op story, but any other alternative explanation I can think of is so bizarre that it's pointless to speculate. But these days, almost anything, reasonable or not, seems possible, so strange are these times.

The second subject which defies our efforts to get at the truth is, of course, the Mexican flu story.

No, I won't call it the 'swine flu' as most of the MSM are doing, because from what I've read, the flu involves strains of not only swine but avian and human influenza viruses. And the fact that the politically correct get irate when someone calls it the Mexican flu, based on the site of its first known occurrences, convinces me that Mexican flu is just the right name for it. Whatever gives the PC crowd the vapors must be right.

The left-wing blogosphere is already using the term 'racist hatred' to dismiss any attempt to make the obvious connection between immigrants and this disease.

I've read and heard so much speculation and opinion about the flu from various people, and on the right it seems the most common response is skepticism; "it's just another flu, no big deal. It's a scare story cooked up by the mainstream media, who lie about everything" (which is nearly true, actually) or it's "created by the current regime either to 'cause panic' or to push through a nationalized health care plan", or to "justify repressive measures like martial law" or other outrages.

If it's true that there's nothing to it, that it's just another round of the flu virus, no different than the usual ones, what are all those images of Mexico City with people wearing masks, and the stories of the closing of many schools, and cancelling of public events? Or the closing of borders by other (more sensible) governments? How do the scoffers explain that away? Are the pictures all faked, like the supposedly faked footage of the moon landing in 1969?

If it were a manufactured crisis with a political end in mind, like 'pushing through nationalized health care', it would seem like a rather odd way to go about it. Why would such an event be needed? Does anybody think that the administration would have any trouble passing their health care plan, with the current Congress? How would a pandemic help, unless the idea is that a presidential directive or something would nationalize health care, that it would allow the administration to unilaterally do this?

It would seem to me that a pandemic, or another such nationwide health emergency, would be a bad time to try to institute a cumbersome bureaucratic system which included everybody. And there are the economic considerations; how could the enormous expense be justified in the current climate? I suppose that's a silly question, though, given our current wild spending spree with the economy on the rocks.

It may be a way to justify the need for some kind of 'global governance' to combat a worldwide health crisis; that would be more plausible to me, and if so, it's disturbing.

But regardless, the bottom line is: I don't think it's wise to scoff at the possibility that this flu epidemic might escalate into a real crisis, with widespread illness and lives lost. I certainly hope and pray it won't be as serious as that; I hope the doubters are right, but as of now, they are not basing their doubt on anything more substantial than stubborn skepticism and cynicism. They certainly have no solid reason that I've heard for their certitude that this is all hype and hysteria. Methinks they are whistling in the dark, or to use a grimmer metaphor, whistling past the graveyard.

Regardless of what one believes about the reality of this flu epidemic or about the degree of seriousness, it should trouble us that our supposed leadership seem to be more concerned with the political ramifications than with the health of the citizens of this country. It should disgust us that the people ''in charge'' seem oblivious to our well-being and safety, and that they have a completely passive, feckless attitude, reflected in their cavalier statements that 'there's nothing we can do to contain it' so there's no use in closing borders.

I've heard some cynical citizens make that same statement; they say it's too late; the horse is out of the barn. However I say it's not useless to try to close the door to the many illegal immigrants -- and the legal immigrants, tourists, and visitors from Mexico. I mean, is it not common sense to reason that the more such people enter our country, the greater the likelihood of the disease being transmitted to more Americans, faster? The government seems to take the attitude that since we've undoubtedly let the virus loose in our country, let's just say 'what the heck?' and bring in more and more of it via more immigrants and visitors. What does it matter if there are 1,000 people bringing the virus or 100,000 people bringing the virus? This is essentially the reasoning of our incompetent officials. One, or one hundred thousand, it's all the same, since it's here already.

What kind of 'leadership' is this?

Somebody in the blogosphere had my blog on a list of 'women misogynists', and I know this will further incriminate me in the eyes of such people, but I would feel a lot more confident with some old-style gray-haired gentlemen in positions of leadership. Call me misogynistic if you must, but the girls (of whatever age) with the grade-school-teacher personalities who are standing up there before the microphones inspire no confidence in me. They look and act and speak like sing-songy schoolmarms rather than people who should be in national leadership positions. (And please, if you are a grade-school teacher or any other kind, this is not meant to offend you. I am simply talking about a certain type of liberal female. I know there are wonderful conservative schoolteachers out there -- somewhere. And God bless them.)

Leadership is lacking, truth is in short supply, and the population is in a state of confusion and discontent.
This would be the perfect time, given the leadership vacuum, for local and regional authorities to step up to the plate and do what they should do; there is no direction from those at the top. America truly is, for now, a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

Kindred, tongue, people and nation

In my previous post, the issue of a Catholic Bishop's liberal position on illegal immigration was raised. Unhappily, there are many Protestant clergy and lay people who share the post-modern liberal interpretation of Christian doctrine.

The problem is such that it is becoming increasingly hard for the faithful Christian to answer the ever-louder voices of the critics on the right who say that Christianity is to blame, solely or in part, for the fall of the West and the threatened loss of our country.

AmRen in particular, among racial-realist websites and forums, has its insistent critics and enemies of Christianity, a couple of whom regularly post quite disparaging comments about Christianity and Christians. I can only assume that their viewpoints are agreeable to the moderators of AmRen if not also to the site owner. It's a fact that many comments in general do not get past the moderators, so those which do see the light of day are apparently agreeable to the mods and/or to the site owner.

I know some will say this is just even-handedness. It's not. Islam has its critics on AmRen, but none as insistent as the regular anti-Christian voices. Judaism is not considered fair game for criticism on AmRen, presumably because this is a group which is being courted and whose support is apparently valued more than that of Christians. This makes little tactical sense, because Christians make up a much larger demographic.

For whatever reason, Christians are now on the defensive on the right as well as on the left, and Christianity's detractors are stubbornly unwilling to listen to any defense of Christianity.

It's noteworthy, and heartening, that a British clergyman, Reverend Robert West of the British National Party, has spoken out on the issues of immigration, race, and repatriation in light of Christian belief.

Whilst the BNP is a secular and not a religious party, its views generally agree with the Bible’s own teaching that we are to live as nations, in our nations, and not to submit to a “resurrection” of the Babel thesis of one undifferentiated mass under some form of, probably dictatorial and very unstable, world governance.''

To the credit of AmRen, the issue of Christianity's culpability for the decline of the West was debated there some dozen years ago, and this piece by H.A. Scott Trask was posted there later, although I do wonder if something similar would be posted today. (Incidentally, thanks to Dr. D for calling Trask's piece to my attention once again.)

The Christian Doctrine of Nations

Biblical law respects boundaries of race and nation
by H. A. Scott Trask

In the September 1997 issue of AR there was a debate on whether Christianity is at least partly to blame for the demise of Western Civilization and the suicidal course being pursued by Western peoples. Both positions were ably argued, and on the whole I had to agree that the key to the controversy was a distinction between historical Christianity and contemporary Christianity. As Michael W. Masters (“How Christianity Harms the Race”) acknowledged implicitly and Victor Craig (“Defense of the Faith”) acknowledged explicitly, the two are not the same; and, as Mr. Craig argued persuasively, historical Christianity has not been indifferent to the fate of the European peoples.

The situation today is quite different. Whether Catholic or Protestant, conservative or liberal, all Western churches have embraced leftist dogmas on questions of nationality and race. The only difference appears to be that the more liberal churches openly support the multicultural and anti-white agenda, while the conservative churches ignore it. Of course, ignoring an agenda that pervades everything from politics to advertising is a form of tacit acceptance. The question is not whether Western churches are betraying their predominantly white congregations; they are. The question is whether they have doctrinal justification to do so.

It would be hard to overestimate the extent to which churches have surrendered to the leftist racial world view. Two years ago, the Pope said this about the inundation of Western countries by Third-World “refugees:” “These foreigners are above all our brothers, and no one should be excepted for reasons of race and religion.” Of course, one could argue that race and religion are the two most important reasons to prevent foreigners from settling in one’s homeland. A common race is the foundation of any true nation, while a common religion is the foundation of a common moral code.

Leaving aside the race question for a moment, what kind of insanity has gripped the Catholic hierarchy that it would maintain that a Christian country should not keep out non-Christians? Whatever the answer, Protestant churches in Northern Europe and North America suffer a similar affliction. While liberal Protestants prate about the endless benefits of “diversity,” conservative Protestants boast they will convert the newcomers. So lost have they become in the mists of political correctness, so effeminate has become their Christianity, they do not realize the erection of mosques, Hindu temples, and Buddhist shrines in the formerly Christian lands of the West is not a sign of progress in world evangelism but is terrible regress and defeat.

If the children of these pagan newcomers are, indeed, to be converted from the religions of their parents the contest will be between evangelicals and hedonistic liberals. Is there any doubt that the latter will sweep the field? These children’s parents came here to enjoy the good life and escape the challenges of building up their own nations. Their children will inherit this materialistic and self-seeking orientation. Christians can boast all they want about tolerance and love of foreigners, but immigration is only further marginalizing Christianity in our culture.'
[...]
Most Christians never mention, much less oppose, policies that directly harm whites: racial quotas, affirmative action, anti-discrimination laws, forced busing, extortion-motivated “civil rights” lawsuits, black-on-white hate crimes, interracial marriage, and Third-World immigration. They believe Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American Christian hero who truly deserves to be the only American with a national holiday in his honor. They believe “racism” is a sin, but a sin only when it is white racial consciousness or loyalty, never non-white racial consciousness or identity. They believe whites have a moral and Christian obligation to “bridge the racial divide,” integrate their churches, reach out to people of color, etc. It therefore seems a bad joke to speak of Christian conservatives or the Christian Right, for there is nothing conservative about acquiescing in a demographic revolution to turn whites into a minority.

White Christians became racial liberals mainly because the Church has been besieged by the same forces that now dominate every other Western institution. The universalistic and egalitarian ideas of the Enlightenment have now fully penetrated Western culture. Feminist and socialist values have worked their way into Western culture and have overthrown traditional ideals of manhood, patriarchy, and chivalry. Biblical illiteracy, illogic, and historical ignorance have created an environment in which the Scriptures have been perverted into a religious justification for racial liberalism.''

Trask goes on to refute the frequently-cited interpretation of Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus”.

I will let you read the entire essay for yourselves. It's a very thorough job of answering the liberalized postmodern Christians who have no problem with breaking with two millennia of Christian belief to embrace the 'one-world' agenda. I often repeat this, and it doesn't seem to pierce through the indoctrination, but how do such Christians reconcile their radical departure from what their parents and grandparents and so on, as far back as you can go, believed? Our Christian parents and our forefathers did not believe there were no nations or races; they did not believe we were to drop all barriers and tear down borders and fences and become one undifferentiated mass of humanity, as today's PC pharisees have decreed we must do.

If we believe that the traditional understanding of nations, as laid out in the Bible and by centuries of custom and tradition were not only mistaken but sinful and immoral, where does that put our ancestors, who held such 'immoral' beliefs and lived by such 'hateful' customs? If today's politically correct believers are right, most of our forefathers will not enter the kingdom of heaven, having not known the 'truth' according to today's wisdom, and having lived what today's generation would call 'racist' and xenophobic lives.

As for me, I am not prepared to condemn our forefathers in that way, while assuming that today's confused Christians are the standard by which to judge.

I suppose there is little chance of exonerating Christianity from the accusations made by some nationalists and realists; I have always had the feeling that they have rejected Christianity already, and are simply looking for further reasons to denigrate the faith and to vilify Christians. So I don't think that anything will change their condemnation of Christianity.

If they are intellectually honest, they would surely at least try to explain why, as I often ask, Europe and the West generally were at their zenith when Christianity still reigned, and when it was a strong and muscular faith. And why, conversely, did the West become effete and passive and self-doubting as the Christian faith waned, and Christianity became stripped of its original power?

These questions are often touched on in various essays of Cambria Will Not Yield, such as this one.

If the ''Christianity did it'' theory of the West's demise were true, should not the West have fallen centuries ago when Christianity was at its peak of power, when the majority of people in the West truly lived their lives according to Christianity's precepts? Why did the fall of the West come only as Christianity became enfeebled and had strayed from its original truths, and when only a small number of faithful believers remain? It makes no logical sense whatsoever, yet I have never heard any of the anti-Christian critics explain why this paradox exists, if their theory is true.

I don't hold any hope of dissuading the 'Christianity did it'' sect from their beliefs. I would, however, hope that some Christians who think it is sinful and evil to close our borders, or to want to preserve our nation and our people, will rethink that position based on what Trask has to say, or better yet, what their Bible has to say, minus the politicized interpretations of our day.

PC goes PC

PC won't permit illegal immigration opponent to speak

The 'PC' alluded to in the headline is Providence College, by the way:

PROVIDENCE -- Tom Tancredo, former congressman from Colorado, Republican presidential candidate and outspoken opponent of illegal immigration, is scheduled to speak in Rhode Island Wednesday. But he will not be addressing students at Providence College as he had originally planned, after college officials rejected a request from a student group to invite him to campus.
[...]

Student group Youth for Western Civilization asked PC officials if they could also host Tancredo, but the request was denied, said PC spokeswoman Pat Vieira.

"They are not an officially recognized group," Vieira said. "They asked very late in the semester when there was not enough time for the request to go through the usual channels."

Just as important, Vieira said, were Bishop Thomas J. Tobin's views on immigration and how immigrants -- whether here legally or illegally -- should be treated, which contrast sharply with Tancredo's.''

Happily, another venue has been found for Tancredo's speech, under the sponsorship of another group.
What is going on with this treatment of Tancredo? He has had a long record of opposing illegal immigration, but I don't remember him being shut down as much as he as been in recent times. Why, now, are his views intolerable, or more so than they used to be to the PC 'tolerance tyrants'?

I realize the Catholic Church is not a democracy, nor is it meant to be, so the Church leadership is not accountable to church members for their political stances -- but it seems a little separation of church and state is in order here.

I also understand, though, that Providence is a Catholic college, but as the article notes, the college has not prevented pro-abortion politicians like Ted Kennedy from speaking, though abortion is against Catholic teaching. It would seem that immigration, legal or not, is a more 'sacred' principle than life to some of these liberal theological types.

Some music for you

Here is fiddler Hulda Quebe performing one of my favorite traditional fiddle tunes, 'Sally Goodin'. I only just discovered The Quebe Sisters, who are talented fiddlers and singers, thanks to Wheeler MacPherson.

Hulda's version of Sally Goodin is a little reminiscent of the style of another fine fiddler, Elana James, formerly of Hot Club of Cowtown, though by no means am I taking anything away from Miss Quebe's performance or her originality.

Anyway, kudos to Wheeler MacPherson for the introduction to the work of the Quebe Sisters.

Fresh out of inspiration

I'm short on inspiration and on time at the moment, so I have no post ready.

However if my readers have something on their minds, feel free to treat this as an open thread. The usual rules about civility apply, but otherwise, feel free to post about news stories or any other topic relevant to this blog.

I love my country too...

From Free Republic:
I love my country.....and I won't give it up!

I'm tired of hearing the refrain...."the GOP is dead"....and "the country is going down the tubes the way of Western European socialist countries".

I'm sorry, I won't accept that.

I'm willing to bet most of the people parrotting these lines are old, grizzled, bitter men who are cynical bastards to begin with.

Here's the deal.....I'm a 20-something conservative who loves his country and the values, traditions, and institutions it was founded on. I refuse to accept that it is all for naught at this point.

He goes on to list the discouraging argument he hears from 'conservatives':

Common refrains I hear are:

1. Demographics are changing this country and eliminating any chance of a conservative renewal.

A: Well, Irish Catholics not too long ago voted straight ticket Democrat 100% of the time. Blacks were solidly Republican until the 1960s. Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.

2. Young people are indoctrinated in schools and universities.

A: Hogwash. Another baby-boomer argument. The students at University of Missouri were NOT a bunch of brainwashed lefty ideolgues.
[...]
Final comments:

I believe in the power of goodness. America is a special place. Freedom is a universal value. The GOP and the conservative movement et al needs to start pushing this hardcore.
[...]
All you moronic, cynical old nellies can just bother not responding to this post. This is for optimistic freedom-loving Americans ONLY.

God bless all of you, and God bless America...the country I love.''

Well, I guess I am one of those 'moronic, cynical old nellies' the poster despises.

There is that idea, so often expressed by mainstream Republican types, that to be 'conservative', one must be optimistic all the time. Anything else is labeled a 'liberal' attitude; only liberals find fault with things as they are. I don't know how or when this kind of attitude became mandatory among the mainstream GOP types; I am going to guess it was probably during the Reagan era, when Republican triumphalism and smug optimism seemed to be the thing. The belief was apparently that the country was returning to its 'conservative' roots and the future was rosy -- as long as people voted GOP and stayed optimistic. The optimism seems unwarranted, in retrospect, as things have undoubtedly gotten steadily worse from a conservative standpoint. Of course this young man probably cannot see that, since it appears he was probably born after Reagan's presidency and has little historical perspective.

His contention that colleges do not indoctrinate their students is not supported by any facts; he merely says that his school (apparently the University of Missouri) was not liberal. So it seems, however, that his college education did not teach him anything about argument and debate; providing an anecdote does not prove his assertions.

He also takes a swipe at 'baby-boomers', whom he obviously dislikes; this seems distressingly common these days. I would guess his grandparents could have been boomers, if not his parents. To my mind, respect for elders is a must for real conservatives; how is it possible to be ''conservative'' in any way and loathe the generations before you? Sure, the boomers were in many cases notoriously liberal, but it appears the later generations are even more so, considering the numbers of them who voted for the current regime. Again, exceptions do not disprove the rule.

It appears that, as with far too many Americans, he considers 'conservative' and Republican to be one and the same; surely he should be able to see that this is far from true. All he has to do is to look at the party leadership, or at the pathetic candidate who was just defeated at the polls, to see how very un-conservative his beloved Republican Party is.

The first complaint on his list was about the demographic changes harming the prospects of his beloved GOP. He does not believe that this will be the case. Obviously he's been listening to Karl Rove, George Bush, John McCain, Mike Huckabee and all the others who foolishly believe that the Hispanics who are here in the tens of millions will one day vote Republican:

"Are you telling me conservatives cannot win arguments with Hispanic voters to bring them to our side??? Only if we write them off!!!! People who take the demographic argument are making a borderline racist argument. Yes, the Dems have made an effort to institutionalize minorities into government programs, but they are doomed to fail. Let's start winning some arguments! It aint' that hard if you really try.''

Only the most stubborn and blind Republican can continue to wallow in that kind of fantasy about winning over Hispanic voters (who are supposedly really ''conservative'' at heart) and bringing minorities en masse into the Republican fold. This thinking is rooted in the idea that the Democrats are 'holding minorities back' with their socialism, and that if only minorities learned about the wonders of the free market and the Protestant work ethic, they would be staunch Republicans and all-American success stories. He totally discounts any inherent differences among the races. Little does he realize, it seems, how very liberal his own thinking is. And he caps off the bit about demographics with a flourish of the race card, saying that the 'demographic argument' is 'borderline racism'.

Sometimes when I encounter people like this who believe themselves conservative while holding many core liberal ideas, I wonder if it is worth it to try to open their minds a little bit and examine their liberal presuppositions. If I meet someone who is as vehement as this young man seems to be, I tend to write them off; he seems very fixed in his thinking, and he's certain he is 'conservative' and right. Such people are very hard to get through to; if I tried to engage this young man in a discussion he would probably think me to be one of those 'right-wing extremists' or one of those 'cynical old nellies.' I think he is one of those who stubbornly holds to his beliefs despite evidence to the contrary in the real world, and in many instances, this stubbornness is rooted in the determination to be ''optimistic'' as he describes himself.

Is conservatism optimistic as a rule? I think conservatism above all should be realistic. Being aware of the world's essential imperfections and imperfectibility, and above all, being cognizant of the fact that human nature is flawed and limited tends to rein in any tendency to blind faith in a rosy future, or any utopian schemes such as the liberals love to envision.

Being optimistic is good only as long as we temper it with realism and humility and a little skepticism. If I don't see these traits or at least the potential for them in someone, I don't attempt to try to reason and argue with them. I suppose I have come to choose my battles a little more carefully. I only hope that this young man and the others out there who may be like him will come to realistic views on the world, and above all, I hope he will come to realize that patriotism should mean, above all, a commitment to his people, to his kin and home and faith, (if he has one).

Putting all his hope and faith in a political party or in some abstract universal idea like ''freedom'' will lead to eternal disappointment and frustration. I hope that he and others like him will look to the wisdom of earlier times rather than the dubious 'wisdom' of Limbaugh or Hannity or Beck.

I hope he learns that if he truly wants to conserve, then conserving one's people and heritage is at the top of the list.

Open borders flu

Below are several links to stories on the Mexican flu outbreak:

California expects to find more new flu cases


Officials Say 8 NYC Prep School Students Probably Have Swine Flu


More cases of swine flu reported; WHO warns of 'health emergency'


UK crew member in hospital after Mexico flight


BBC Have Your Say: Mexico flu: Your experiences

The last link above is from the BBC website, with readers in Mexico giving first-person accounts of the situation.

Over at Free Republic, there is a thread essentially denouncing all the news stories as so much media hype and propaganda. The original poster scoffs at the whole idea of a new strain of flu, and believes it's media-invented, or some kind of government-generated hype. A majority of the comments agree, with only a few on that thread believing there may be something to all the hype and hysteria.

I am keeping an open mind; I remember well how, a few years ago, there was the flurry of scare stories about SARS, the respiratory bug that seemed to be killing people in China, or people who had lately visited there. Then, starting a few years ago, there has been a constant flow of stories about possible Avian flu pandemics; that has somewhat died down now, but when it was at its height, I wondered why, exactly, the media (or the health authorities, or whoever was feeding the media) wanted to create fear around the possibility. After all, the authorities and the media seemed to say that there was little that could be done to prevent such an outbreak or even to contain it, much less to prevent it. So why generate so much anxiety and concern about something over which, apparently, we have no control?

At the time of the SARS scare, I wondered why on earth there was no effort to control our borders and to assiduously screen anybody who had recently been in the infected areas. Of course since the epidemic happened in 2003, I've concluded that our insane elites' dedication to open borders and 'globalization' override any petty concerns for public health and safety.

The worldwide influenza epidemic of 1918 was aided, so it's said, by the mass movements of peoples associated with World War I.
Considering the differences in mass transportation and the globalizing of our world, plus the huge overall increase in population, I would venture to guess that there are many, many more people on the move around the planet now than at any time in human history, and it is a wonder that we haven't yet had a devastating global pandemic thanks to this widespread nomadism that is happening today. Couple the unprecedented movements of large numbers of people with the poor hygiene and health that prevails in many parts of the world, especially the parts of the world which send immigrants to the First World, and such an epidemic seems highly likely, sooner or later.

And given the fact that we now seem to have a 'thou shalt not close the borders' commandment governing our policies, it would seem that even a deadly epidemic on the scale of the 1918 occurrence would not end our insane openness.

We might say that borders are our country's immune system, and that we now have a seriously impaired immune system, no longer defending against invaders. And what the open borders crowd vilifies as 'xenophobia' is just our psychological immune response to potential threats. Liberalism and the cult of 'diversity and inclusion' is the destruction of our immune system, the equivalent, really, of AIDS in a nation.
Open borders = tempting fate.

So what should be the proper reaction to these flu stories? I don't believe we should panic or become unnecessarily fearful, but on the other hand I can't join the scoffers' chorus and say that it's all hype and nothing to worry about. I think we have to exercise sensible precautions, such as avoiding travel to affected areas, and avoiding contact with anyone who exhibits any suspicious symptoms. It would be bad if this thing spreads, and people resort to panic buying of food, water, and other necessities. It's always sensible, however, to have enough food and water on hand in case of any kind of emergency such as a natural disaster, so many of us probably have such things on hand.

One thing I haven't read in the stories that have appeared is a definite incubation period. It's important to know how long it takes for symptoms to develop once someone has contracted the virus. If the incubation period is short, that makes it worse.

If any of you have information to share or any reports of illness where you are, share them here, please, and of course offer your opinions on this situation.

Update: Apparently, Guatemala is acting to tighten up their border with Mexico,. (H/T Elsinore at Cordelia For Lear)
And there are some informative posts on the flu story, with many good links, here and here.

Identity and conflict

Tom Sunic, in an Occidental Observer piece called White Identity in Postmodernity, discusses the minefield of "White identity". He writes of how many Whites in the West, wary of expressing a White identity, choose instead a sort of neutral national identity, as with most Republicans whose identity is bound up exclusively with national patriotism and loyalty to 'the American idea'. For many on the left particularly, who have been schooled to regard White identity as not only illegitimate but as prima facie 'racism', their choice is often to identify with some subculture. He cites the examples of Whites who champion the cause of Tibet or, in his words, 'exotic Afro or Asian escapism.' These types are very common among those who are politically leftist. Everything they do and everything they enjoy is meant to express their desired solidarity with some Third World culture or cause. They may wear 'rasta' dreadlocks or tattoo themselves like tribesmen of some sort or wear some kind of Third World ethnic garb, and listen to Third World music and eat exotic foods and worship at the altar of Asian religions or some kind of syncretic faith which involves Third World traditions.

Many less exotically-identified American liberals instead choose to identify with black Americans or Afrocentric culture. Their counterparts back in the 1970s and 80s may have been more likely to pick ''Native Americans'' as their ersatz identity.

What seems to be the important thing in adopting such a false identity is to express solidarity with some 'underdog' or downtrodden group, apparently as a way of assuaging their hyper-developed consciences about history's wrongs. For the last 40 years or so, Whites have been taught at every turn that their identity is in itself a guilt-saturated thing, because their ancestors were the authors of most wrongs in the world.

Sunic mentions that many Europeans or European-descended Americans may not discover any ethnic or racial identity without being threatened by someone else's national identity, and he uses the example of the break-up of Yugoslavia to illustrate his point.

He also emphasizes how victimhood and victimology are at the heart of the many competing minority identities which are proliferating in the West. There is inevitably a hierarchy of victimhood, and in our country blacks and to some extent Jews enjoy primacy in this department, though the exponential increase in the number of Hispanics in our country threatens to topple the current victim-order.

When I was in college in the 70s, as all this victim-veneration was just reaching a new peak, I noticed, to my surprise, that blacks did not like to share the victimhood mantle with other minority groups; there was instead a competition among the minority groups as to whose suffering was most intense or most prolonged. Blacks at that time fell back on frequent references to '400 years of slavery', sometimes extended to '500 years of slavery' or '500 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow' or some such claim. American Indians were enjoying a vogue in the 1970s, and there were many Ward Churchill types running around campuses, their identity being based on having supposedly had a remote ''Native American" ancestor. Asians were also in the victimhood sweepstakes, and their claims centered on past expulsions of Asian immigrants or the internment of Japanese during World War II.

But I noticed that these groups did not work together; they were all intensely ethnocentric, and quite competitive or jealous when it came to sharing the victimhood spotlight. They might put aside their rivalries to participate in some anti-White demonstration on campus but generally they were wary of each other, or outright unfriendly to one another.

As Sunic points out in his piece, when victimhood is claimed, that implies a victimizer, or a 'monster' as he says. It does seem to be an ironclad rule: the common thread in all the victimhood narratives is "Whitey did it." It is Whites who are to blame in every case; there is always a Honky in the woodpile when a cry of victimhood is raised.

And as Sunic says, the victimology leads to conflict not only between the vicitims and the accused (and automatically convicted) White victimizer, but among minority groups scrambling for their place in the hierarchy and their share of the spoils. If 'reparations' for blacks are to be paid, there will be outcries from Hispanics, who will demand payment for the 'theft' of their fictional Aztlan. What happens when the spoils are no longer so plentiful?

And more importantly, what will happen when the goose that laid the golden egg is moribund?

Sunic says that an authoritarian society is necessary to manage all the divisiveness that is inherent in such an unstable system; his words are that 'high levels of social control' are needed. We are seeing that happening. And many of us wonder if that is not one of the reasons why our rulers have purposely introduced so much diversity into Western countries: to break up any natural cohesion and racial integrity, and to produce instability as a prelude to their further plans. Otherwise we can only conclude that our ''leaders'' are utterly incompetent and clueless. Either explanation is sobering to say the least.

Sunic describes the psychological state of Western White people as being overwhelmed by the constant barrage of guilt and the clamoring by the various voices of grievance and discord. I think this is taking a toll, as he implies, and I think it may reach a tipping point before very long, unless the cacophony of complaints and accusations stops. Is this too part of the plan, I wonder?

He says that Whites don't have the option of claiming victimhood themselves, but actually some do just that; for example in our country, those who see their immigrant ancestors as having been victimized by founding-stock Americans a hundred or so years ago are rather good at bringing up their grievances, and these same people all too often side with illegal immigrants and work towards open borders and the third-worldizing of America.

America is perhaps more disunited than other Western countries in that respect; those European countries which are monocultural and monoethnic have a decided advantage over those countries with more than one nationality within their borders. This is illustrated by the comments on this AmRen thread discussing Nick Griffin's remarks about Black and Asian residents of the UK not being Britons. Someone asks whether ethnic Irish in the UK are ethnic foreigners, and several answer 'yes'. A squabble then erupts between posters who appear to be Irish-descended Americans and Anglo-Americans or British posters. It's an interesting but complicated argument, with people citing British celebrities who are supposedly ''really'' Irish. There seems to be some confusion about Irish people of Anglo-Norman descent, or people of mixed English and Irish descent. So even in the United Kingdom there are elements of ethnic conflict, though among closely-related peoples. America is not the only English-speaking nation with internal divisions among close kin.

These are issues that have to be addressed, along with ideological and religious divisions in our country and other Western countries. If we lack the capacity to put aside our other differences in favor of uniting based on our kinship connection, we really don't stand much of a chance.

Reclaiming what's ours

"...just smash your piano, and invoke the glory-beaming banjo!" - Mark Twain

On the other hand, Twain also said "A gentleman is a man who can play the banjo, but doesn't."

Still, I am a partisan of banjo music; readers of this blog will know that I love old-time string-band music and its offspring, bluegrass.
So, over at Winston Smith's Blog, I was delighted to see that he has a post on building a fretless mountain banjo.

Now, I am not looking to build a banjo but I love to read about how craftsmen build these things. Back in simpler times when music was something that was often homemade, not something you bought in a store and consumed passively, people knew how to make instruments with which they made their music. It is good to know that it is not a forgotten art everywhere.

I think of the humble "banjer" as a quintessentially American instrument, and Winston Smith has some thoughts about its origin:

There's a myth that the banjo (the "gourd banjar") is a Negro invention, and it came to America with Negro slaves. The implication us that our beautiful Appalachian and Bluegrass music is the child of Africa. B******T! In the first place, instruments like the banjo - strings over a stretched hide - have been in China, non-Negroid Egypt, the Caucasus, Near Asia, and many other places for thousands of years. Negro Africans may have developed such an instrument (highly improbable), but they didn't "invent" it. In the second place, the banjo existed in regions of Appalachia long before our excellent mountain kin folk had ever laid eyes on a Negro. Thirdly, if Negros invented it, then why did they abandon it?''

Those are questions I've wondered about, and posed to other people as well, so it's good to see that I am not the only one asking.

Some people have asked me why it even matters to me who 'invented' the banjo. It matters to me not only because I love the banjo, but because I think the truth matters. In recent years, as I've written so often about on this blog, we've been subjected to an all-out campaign to rewrite history and to take credit away from our people, assigning it, rightly or wrongly, to others. Why? To build others' fragile self-esteem? To diminish our own confidence and pride in our people? To make the gullible think that America was always a multicultural society and a melting pot in which we are only one minor ingredient? I think it's all of the above, and if there are any other possible reasons I am open to considering them.

This source is typical in crediting Africans with influencing Appalachian music and with introducing the banjo -- and the writers get extra PC points for tying the instrument to Islamic origins as well:

ONE of the greatest influences on Appalachian music, as well as many popular American music styles, was that of the African-American. The slaves brought a distinct tradition of group singing of community songs of work and worship, usually lined out by one person with a call and response action from a group. A joyous celebration of life and free sexuality was coupled with improvisation as lyrics were constantly updated and changed to keep up the groups' interest. The percussion of the African music began to change the rhythms of Appalachian singing and dancing. The introduction of the banjo to the Southern Mountains after the Civil War in the 1860s further hastened this process. Originally from Arabia, and brought to western Africa by the spread of Islam, the banjo then ended up in America. Mostly denigrated as a 'slave instrument' until the popularity of the Minstrel Show, starting in the 1840s, the banjo syncopation or 'bom-diddle-diddy' produced a different clog-dance and song rhythm by the turn of the century.
[...]
The instrumental tradition of the Appalachians started as anglo-celtic dance tunes and eventually was reshaped by local needs, African rhythms, and changes in instrumentation.''

Winston Smith mentions that the banjo is associated with the old minstrel show tradition, and yet blacks, since the 1960s era, have disclaimed this tradition as being an offensive racial stereotype. I've also heard that such entertainment was something that many blacks feel their ancestors were ''forced'' to do by Massa, and that it was demeaning to them. I have noticed that there are very, very few blacks who play the banjo today. If it was 'their' instrument originally, it seems they've abandoned it.

It does seem, too, that there are no home-grown analogues to the banjo in Africa, no apparent antecedent that I'm familiar with, and I do know a little about world music. There are, however, many related instruments in the Western tradition, making it much more plausible that the banjo was a European-derived instrument, probably being developed to its present form in our country, among our people.

I think it's important for us to take credit for our own traditions. The politically corrected cultural history has just about taken away every American folk tradition from us and credited it to blacks -- traditions such as buck-dancing, flatfoot dancing, and later traditions such as rock 'n roll music.

Anyone who is familiar with the dance traditions of the British Isles recognizes that buck dancing and flatfoot dancing, as well as clogging and 'square dancing' are derived from traditions that came with our early English and Scots settlers.

If we're to believe the popular historians of today, we have no culture of our own; blacks had to teach us everything when they came here from Africa. And this idea fits with the current demeaning stereotype of Whites as being mere blank slates with no innate character or culture to speak of. This is particularly said, maliciously, about White Americans. So it's important for us to confidently claim our own traditions back again, and to refuse to let ourselves be stripped of our traditions, however humble they may be. They are part of us.

Read the rest of Winston Smith's post at the link.

Beauty is truth

I don't watch the celebrity and glamor-oriented TV programming, but it's impossible not to hear about these things in real life and of course in the blogosphere. So there's no escaping them, even for those who are TV abstainers.

I am not going to mention the names of the principals involved because that will only draw the attention of those people who are googling the names and leaving idiotic and abusive comments on blogs and forums on this subject. The people involved are the current Miss California and some 'celebrity' blogger who practices a certain politically correct sexual perversion. I am sure most of you know who I mean. If not, the story is here.

And Old Atlantic's blog entry on the story is here.

I don't usually have much to say about these celebrity stories, but several issues about which I do blog are wrapped up within this story.

First of all, the 'culture war', which, like every aspect of the left-right battle, has heated up since November, and this includes the question of free speech and freedom of thought vs. political correctness. Then there is the dishonest newsertainment media which are fomenting all the controversy around this. There is also the issue of the increasingly virulent anti-Christian, anti-traditional morality faction in this country, which sadly includes not only the left-libertines, but the secular/atheist libertines on the 'right'.

To add one more troubling ingredient, there is the glaring picture of a dumbed-down apostate ''Christianity' which is illustrated by the remarks made by several professing Christian celebrities regarding this story:

"Love is love!" Britney Tweeted... "People should be able to do whatever makes them happy!"

Miley Cyrus Tweeted similar thoughts ... "Jesus loves you and your partner and wants you to know how much he cares! That's like a daddy not loving his lil boy cuz he's gay and that is wrong and very sad! Like I said everyone deserves to be happy. I am a Christian and I love you — gay or not. Because you are no different that anyone else! We are all God's children!"

Apparently her comments are right in line with those of "Hills" star Heidi Montag, who is expected to marry the show's Spencer Pratt this weekend.

"God says in the bible that we should love our neighbor and he created us all as equals. I know in my heart that gays and lesbians should have the same government rights that Spencer and I will when we get married. So, yes, this blonde Christian believes in gay marriage and I hope to one day go to your wedding, Perez!!!"

Now, I am proud to say I don't know who Mzz Montag is, nor do I really want to know; I care only that she pretends to represent Christianity and wrongly cites the Bible in support of her libertine and oh-so-hip-and-postmodern views.

Miley Cyrus can be excused somewhat, as she is still a minor child who has evidently not had a good grounding in the Bible nor in Christian morality as set out in the Bible. I suppose having a parent in show-biz is also a definite handicap when it comes to having a good upbringing and sound values and morals. Still, she should know better, and I fear that many gullible and malleable young 'Christians' will follow her example and adopt similarly unsound viewpoints, if they haven't already absorbed them from the corrupt and ugly culture that passes as 'entertainment' in our day.

And I am not sure that the person to whom their comments were addressed will suddenly soften his views towards the Bible or Christians in general; I have encountered many such people in real life and they are perpetually embittered that there is a Bible which condemns their pet vice, and they hate the fact that anyone reminds them of that fact. Ergo they hate Christians.

One more bit of trivia about the 'celebrity blogger' who was the center of all this: he is an example of the much-vaunted ''conservative'' Cuban-'American' community of Florida. Now, does anybody care to tell me again how Cuban-'Americans' who fled Castro are such staunch conservatives and Republican stalwarts? Or how they are poster children for legal immigration?

Over at the Big Hollywood blog, which is incidentally not exactly too staunchly conservative either, a commenter mentions something about the pageant:

On the subject: As a pageant competitor you spend an entire year doing mock interviews, discussing every hot-button or political topic under the sun. There is NO WAY her pageant directors were unaware of her stance on gay marriage prior to the pageant.''

This is the question that occurred to me: was the question a set-up? I suspected that they knew the young woman's Christian background and set a trap for her, asking her a question which they knew she would likely answer 'wrongly' -- after which they could gin up a public brouhaha and make an example of her. The object? To further marginalize and ridicule Christian believers, to remind everybody once again, lest anybody forget, that there is only one correct viewpoint on 'gay marriage' and that deviating from that PC viewpoint carries some penalties.

I give the young woman considerable credit for answering honestly; she was probably savvy enough to know that she was giving the 'wrong' answer and yet she answered honestly. Many people (not just Christians, but people in general) would have dissimulated rather than risk the consequences of giving an 'incorrect' answer. She stuck to her guns. Good for her.

I am also left wondering how and why our popular culture exalts people like the 'celebrity blogger' in this day and age. It was true, once upon a time, that to become a celebrity, one had to be, if not talented or fascinating, at least attractive and presentable and well-groomed. None of these are true of the walking grotesquerie who is at the center of this story. Standards have fallen; I lament this often. We seem to have dropped our standards in every area of life. Nowadays we celebrate the ugly, the sordid, the grotesque, the freakish, and the repellent, not only in popular culture but even in the high arts. What happened to our ideals of beauty and grace? How do we get them back? And how do we banish the ugly and the corrupt, which dominate our public sphere so relentlessly?

And what do we do about weakening this politically correct tyranny which exercises enormous power via our corrupt 'entertainment' media? I personally think that the so-called entertainment media wield far more power than academia, the school system, and the so-called 'news' media. More people get their PC ideas from watching trashy entertainment programming than from any other source -- other than peer pressure, which also is more powerful, even among adults, than many people acknowledge.

I know of a good number of people of mature years who have reversed themselves on social and political issues based on what they pick up from the media; they learn to like 'gay' celebrities, for example, and decide that not allowing 'gay marriage' is hateful and mean as well as 'behind the times.' Many people in my area learn virtually everything they ''know'' about blacks from the flattering media; they then begin to fawn over certain black celebrities, and slowly adopt the PC, pro-black attitudes they learn from the media, becoming de facto anti-Whites.

As I've said before, those who find TV and movies offensive or objectionable always get the facile advice ''just don't watch.'' But there is no isolating oneself; even if we don't watch the propaganda, we are exposed to it second-hand, or third-hand. And if we shield our children or grandchildren from it by throwing the TV out and boycotting movies, they still absorb it from their classmates or neighbors. Unless we take up dwelling in caves in the most remote areas we can find, there's no avoiding it. Ultimately it finds you. You can run, but you can't hide.

And here, James Edwards writes about how it's becoming 'uncool' to have traditional beliefs about homosexuality. Even the supposed 'conservatives' like Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rick Warren have fallen in line with the PC viewpoint. I remember well when Dr. Laura was detested and denounced by gays because of her supposed 'homophobic' beliefs, and now she has recanted and joined in the PC chorus.

It may be that we are just seeing the wheat divided from the chaff; I never believed Warren was 'conservative,' especially in a Biblical sense, and Dr. Laura has been rather inconsistent on her religious beliefs, but it seems as though we are swiftly moving towards a time when it will not only be 'uncool' to refuse to toe the line on homosexuality, but it may soon be costly in terms of consequences, if not downright illegal.

'PC-swindled' out of our freedoms

Peter Hitchins blogs about 'Conservative liberty and left wing liberty' in Britain.

...What is the difference between conservative liberty and left-wing liberty? Does it matter? (Yes) Can they be reconciled? (Not for long.) I'm grateful to Lord Hoffmann for an interesting and clever speech last week, which made this much clearer than before. Leonard Hoffmann is no fool. He knows his stuff. A lot of the speech, which you can find on the web by Googling "Universality of Human Rights" and "Hoffmann" is perceptive and clever. I am specially grateful to him for quoting Jeremy Bentham's enjoyable savaging of the ghastly French 'Declaration of the Rights of Man', the founding scripture of several gory tyrannies.

This vicious document, a series of foggy statements of the obvious, qualified with sub-clauses making them useless when most needed, actually contained one rather clear section (article 27) which would eventually allow its own authors to have their heads sliced off by the Guillotine they had themselves set up. Should we be sorry about Robespierre and the rest of them being devoured by their own revolution? In my case, not very - though nobody ever seems to learn from these events, and the Russian Bolsheviks ended up in the same fix, devoured by their own revolution.

Otherwise the French declaration was more or less like all the other scrolls of atheistical, grandiose blethers about 'rights' which have been endorsed, acclaimed and adopted all over the world since then, culminating in the United Nations Universal Declaration and the European Convention - and now rivalled by the EU's own Charter of 'fundamental' rights, soon to be used to interfere still more in our lives. Some might also draw attention to the Soviet constitution of 1936, acclaimed by many Western leftists as the finest ever drawn up, just in time for the mass purges and the Moscow Show trials.

The problem with these declarations, with their 'rights' to private life and their 'rights' to a fair trial and their 'rights' to everything else is that it all depends what you mean by private, and fair, and so forth. And what if these 'rights' come into conflict with each other? Who decides which is supreme? ''

This ties in somewhat with my post of the other day about the different kinds of revolutions, the restorationist, the Lockean, and the Jacobin kind. What Hitchins is discussing under the heading of left wing liberty is of the Jacobin variety, which always ends in tears and bloodshed, as history has shown.

As for his questions above about the definitions of ''fair', and so on, in arbitrating these liberties, the answer, as he says, is that the answers are left intentionally vague and open -- so as to give the authors of these documents the power to interpret them.

"Human Rights" have in effect become a replacement for religion. Why is that? I think it is because their supporters see that the problem of deciding what they mean will give them power. The elite increases its power by keeping the right to interpret and enforce these vague laws. It becomes the replacement for God, which is what it has always wanted to be.

Just look at the bizarre constructions placed even on the relatively clear bits of the US Bill of Rights by the American Supreme Court, which manufactured an abortion right out of nothing, drove prayer out of the schools on spurious grounds and for a while abolished the death penalty on an equally feeble pretext, then decided the penalty was all right after all. It is really hard to see how the same document can be read to say that execution is right one year, and wrong the next. It's clear that the real power comes not from the document, but from the court - and of course from those who appoint it.
[...]
That is why left-wing rights increase the power of the state. Conservative rights, as expressed in the hard, cool, terse language of the 1689 Bill of Rights, and its Scottish Equivalent the Claim of Right, and in the grand simplicity of the 1628 Petition of Right, concentrate on saying quite clearly what government cannot do. And in the space that is left, when the ruler is restrained by such things, free men can live, write, speak and think.''

What Hitchins is saying in the above passage illustrates the difference between 'negative rights' and positive rights, which is a kind of dividing line between the left-wing and conservative views of liberty which I've touched on here before in the past.

Under the theory of positive and negative rights, a negative right is a right not to be subjected to an action of another human being, or group of people, such as a state, usually in the form of abuse or coercion. A positive right is a right to be provided with something through the action of another person or the state. In theory a negative right proscribes or forbids certain actions, while a positive right prescribes or requires certain actions.''

The idea of positive liberty is generally associated with the Jacobin-style political philosophies, and because the proponents of such thought always see themselves as being the champions of all that is good and right, and as having the blueprint for utopia, they feel constrained to impose measures on people 'for their own good' or in the service of their ideals. This is the situation we are in now in the West, wherein today's leftist ideologues believe that things like 'hate speech laws' or political correctness in general are justified, thus leading to a net loss of liberty among the population.

This piece which appeared in The Australian tells of the increase in 'thought police' activity in the UK.

''BRITAIN appears to be evolving into the first modern soft totalitarian state. As a sometime teacher of political science and international law, I do not use the term totalitarian loosely.

There are no concentration camps or gulags but there are thought police with unprecedented powers to dictate ways of thinking and sniff out heresy, and there can be harsh punishments for dissent.

Nikolai Bukharin claimed one of the Bolshevik Revolution's principal tasks was "to alter people's actual psychology". Britain is not Bolshevik, but a campaign to alter people's psychology and create a new Homo britannicus is under way without even a fig leaf of disguise.

The Government is pushing ahead with legislation that will criminalise politically incorrect jokes, with a maximum punishment of up to seven years' prison. The House of Lords tried to insert a free-speech amendment, but Justice Secretary Jack Straw knocked it out. It was Straw who previously called for a redefinition of Englishness and suggested the "global baggage of empire" was linked to soccer violence by "racist and xenophobic white males". He claimed the English "propensity for violence" was used to subjugate Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and that the English as a race were "potentially very aggressive".

In the past 10 years I have collected reports of many instances of draconian punishments, including the arrest and criminal prosecution of children, for thought-crimes and offences against political correctness.''

In this related piece by Ed West in the UK Telegraph, we read similar reports of how even private conversations are being reported to the 'thought police' by self-selected informers. This is an ominous twist to things: the government does not even have to do the monitoring; the populace have become so indoctrinated, in many cases, that they themselves will voluntarily tattle to the authorities.

On the Hitchens blog, there are some good comments, like this one:

...We must ask ourselves some searching questions about why we did this. Did we really want our country to turn into a free-loader's paradise, a place where drunks rule the streets and hospitals double up as abortion clinics? Did we want cameras on every corner, our most private details held on Government computers and to be forced to carry ID cards? Did we want to complicate our lives with regulations and red tape for everythng from selling houses to starting a business? Did we want to subsidise the pensions of millions of beaurocrats from our taxes? Did we want to take in a few million immigrants, many of whom hate our way of life and want us dead? Did we want to surrender our sovereignty to Brussels or remove Brittania from our devalued coinage?

Unfortunately, asking these questions is simple. Putting right the wrong is going to be much harder.''

We in America can ask ourselves similar questions.

Another comment from the Hitchens blog:

Contributor S. Deol writes:
"If you live in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, India or the U.S.A., consider yourself lucky that you live in a nation of English liberty." adding later that " All men can think, say, write and do whatever they please with reasonable restrictions."

Aye, there's the rub, as Shakespeare might have put it. I was waiting for that "with reasonable restrictions" or some such get-out expression. It is precisely the scope and definition of that adjective "reasonable" that is the crux of the whole matter.

People must have laws and laws are there to forbid things but when a nation comes under the control of rulers determined to solve all natural inequalities by piling laws upon laws - an enterprise doomed from the outset to failure in any case, that nation soon finds that it can do very little without requesting official permission or submitting to official supervision.
[...]
A modern Briton's freedom to say or write what he pleases is -as anyone knows - nowadays severely restricted by arbitrary rules of verbal expression sanctioned by no tribunal elected for the purpose and imposed on a law-abiding populace by now cowed into submission both by threat of threat of judicial punishment and by its own intellectual inability to discern the imposture by which one of its time-honoured liberties is being quietly removed.

The extent of our people's gullibility becomes plain when realises the incredible audacity of the imposition of the so-called 'political correction'. Its authors have pulled off a trick with which it would have been impossible to hoodwink our people even a couple of decades ago.

It is well known that bad language - in some cases even obscene language - eventually suffers the fate of all metaphor and loses its power to shock and what is unspeakable in one era can become only mildly distasteful or even totally anodyne in another. However, until someone decided that the British people were so habituated to buying their opinions along with their groceries that they were were ripe, so to speak, for being PC-swindled, the semantic traffic had, as far as I know, never gone in the opposite direction.

Bad words had sometimes become good but I can think of no good words which had before PC gone bad. And most of our gullible, tele-spoon-fed fellow-citizens have bought it hook, line and sinker.
And you talk about English liberty, sir! Don't make me laugh!''

English liberty is in fact the idea on which our American ideas of liberty are based; our Founding Fathers said that they desired 'only the rights of Englishmen.' We Americans too often imagine that we invented our idea of liberty from whole cloth, and that it is based on no antecedents, when in fact it draws from longstanding English traditions, going back at least to Magna Carta and English common law.

So it is especially sad to me to see that in Britain, the fount of many of our ideas and traditions, freedom and liberty and 'the rights of Englishmen' are under attack, if not moribund.

And as the first comment above says, 'putting right the wrong is going to be much harder', and that applies to us as well as to our cousins in the UK.

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee: she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
William Wordsworth, 'London 1802'