...the one-eyed man is king

In my recent piece called 'In the Country of the Blind...', I wrote about the tendency of Americans to be followers: followers of fads, trends, and above all, followers of dubious individuals. This need to follow all too often seems to center on some individual who is apparently 'charismatic' in the eyes of his fans or disciples.

As I was writing that piece, Glenn Beck was foremost in my mind, although there are certainly many other figures who have gained wide popularity in this country based on perceived charisma  with a little snake-oil in the recipe.

On an article at American Thinker, which tends to be favorable to the brand of 'conservatism' endorsed by Beck and Fox News, there were two comments by the same individual expressing a lonely skepticism toward Beck and the rally. The comments tied in very much with my message here. I will quote from those comments.

''But there are not a few people who become histrionic if Beck's motives are questioned. Why? Isn't he just a man like the rest of us? Or am I wrong, and he has become a god? The point at issue is (or should be) this: When it is considered an outrage to apply reasoned criticism to an American public figure (even one so revered, so adulated, so "funny," so "adorably pudgy," and so adamant that he is "on the side of the little guy--even though he wouldn't waste a micro-second of his off-air time on the average Joe Shmoe American, then we've got a problem. And the problem is this: we've put peronalities before principles.''

Personalities before principles. That parallels something I said in my earlier post on this subject. And the tendency to reject any criticism of the personalities we admire is not a good thing.
This is the stuff of which cults are made of. It is not worthy of thinking people.

And in a later comment on the same thread, the reader says

''We've become a nation of televidiots. We sit down on our sofas and watch the TV talking heads, like the dolts on MSNBC, an assortment of unspeakably rotten attention whores, BTW. We listen to "talk radio" maestros who daily inform us of their luxurious lifestyles--their golfing, their jets, the famous and "important" people they mixed with over the preceding weekend. In other words, we get our info--ALL our info--second hand. That's not good. Our nation was founded on the premise that there would be an informed citizenry that would inform ITSELF. It's about doing our own heavy lifting in the intellectual realm--our own reading, our own internet research, our own townhall discussion groups. Once we make a commitment to sojourn in that realm we'll have a different view of these Pied Pipers who are reaping exhorbitant wealth by opportunistically using the current onslaught of the Left (a very real onslaught against the very foundations of our Republic) to make gazillions of dollars from selling books, and from astronomical speaking-engagement fees (and don't forget the revenue from show advertisers). This sort of thing sullies the unsung efforts of those who are genuinely and selflessly working hard to stem the tide of the leftist assault--it makes the conservative movement look like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers. I have an uncanny feeling that the Left is actually not really that worried about Mr. Beck's impact on their agenda.''

[I have left the spelling in the quotes as it appeared on the original post.]

I can only agree with what this commenter says. I think his words get to the heart of this servile and gullible streak in Americans.

In the last paragraph of the second comment, he says that the conservative movement looks ''like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers.'' That is the gullibility that I mentioned. In a way, though, perhaps this says something good about the basic character of many of these conservatives, in that honest, decent people are usually somewhat gullible, and trusting to a fault. I suspect it's easier to dupe heartland Americans than it would be to gull cynical city-dwellers. That's always been the stereotype of the heartland American: the 'country cousin' who is taken in by some sharp city-slicker.

But in today's more dangerous world, we can't afford that kind of gullibility and blind trust of anyone. Perhaps I've absorbed more cynicism than I would like to, but that's what life experience does to you, unless you live in some kind of Pollyanna bubble into which bad people and bad experiences never intrude.

The comments quoted above stated that Glenn Beck is not perceived as any kind of threat by the Left. Surely they must have enough sense -- mustn't they? -- to see that he venerates the same idols and bows down to their altars. Sometimes I wonder if their outrage towards him is feigned, as if to further cement his popularity with the naifs on the right. If the left attacks someone, surely they must be the real thing, right? Beck must be the conservative savior if the left hates him so much.

I do believe there is such a thing as controlled opposition, and that much of what is acted out on cable 'news' networks is so much pro wrestling drama. The two sides trash-talk and threaten and intimidate each other but behind the scenes they are all probably great friends. Rush Limbaugh's recent wedding is an example of this kind of thing, and yet Rush has his zealous defenders if anyone criticizes him, just as Beck. Or Ann Coulter, or any other such 'entertainer' on the political scene.

One more factor enters into this, in addition to the too-trusting nature of many Americans: the dearth of leadership. Where are our leaders? I can't think of any of the major political figures who inspire me; as Yeats said in The Second Coming:

The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Where are our 'best' people? Not on the political scene. There are a few who seem to have integrity, but they are lacking in the 'passionate intensity' that real leadership would demand in this time of trouble.

We've discussed leadership on this blog before, and the lack of leadership is more glaringly obvious now than it was a few years ago when I lamented it. Ron Paul has come and gone, having been a disappointment to many who put too much faith in him, and each betrayal or disappointment disillusions a few more people.

But as long as there is a void of leadership, the snake-oil peddlers and hucksters and charlatans and false messiahs -- and the 'one-eyed men,' the blind leaders of the blind, will step in to fill that vacuum.

And maybe the leaders that we need will not be in the political realm at all. It isn't all about 'Democrats vs. Republicans' or left vs. right, or Islam vs. Christianity or whatever Fox News says it is.

The best thing that could happen to the American populace would be to stop watching television and stop partaking of the 'mainstream' media, including Hollywood movies. That is the source of the ignorance or false information that has become so rife in this country. It should be obvious to even the most slow-witted that the media are not informing or entertaining us, but shaping our minds, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, and shaping them in a way that may be the end of us, ultimately.

Every day I hear of somebody else dropping their cable or satellite TV service -- yet too many still devour the propaganda willingly. However even turning the TV off will not help if people do not care to inform themselves and cultivate some independence of mind, and a habit of examining what people in 'authority' tell us. That is also part of the message of the comments I posted above.

Long ago, the left liked to spout the phrase 'Question Authority.' Of course, that was in a time in which authority tended to be conservative. I wonder if the left at that time would have anticipated how quickly their kind would come to BE the authority in our society, to be the establishment and the entrenched orthodoxy. They still like to think of themselves as the brave dissenters and principled rebels. That's no longer true; it's the right, especially the politically incorrect right, that are the true dissidents and the upholders of truth.

If we fall prey to the con men and the false pied-pipers of the ''right'', who will be left?

To VDare readers

I noticed, today, a greater than usual number of hits coming from the VDare blog, and this is due to a link from Patrick Cleburne of VDare to my piece about the 'Respectables Rally'.

Welcome to any of you who are first-time visitors to this blog from VDare or elsewhere. I hope you will continue to visit.

And thanks to reader and commenter Sheila for calling my attention to the VDare post, as I had not seen it yet.

Some little-discussed American history

Recently I posted about the role of immigration in the War Between the States. A few days ago, I came across an old book, The Human Side of American History, which was apparently used in the schools once upon a time. More to the point, it was written just on the cusp of the present Politically Correct era, so the material is presented in a way that may not fit the current template of how things were then.

The book is full of primary source information from people who were there at the time and place of certain historical events. One of the excerpts was from letters written by an eyewitness to some of the troubles, describing his experiences in the New York City draft riots of 1863.

This is something about which I have read very little, and it is somewhat jarring to realize how serious these riots were.

Rather than post the excerpt here, although it is not overly long, I posted it at the Forum where you may read it if you are interested.

Other links from the web, with witnesses' accounts:

Martha Derby Perry: Eyewitness to the 1863 New York City Draft Riots

also, here and here, where you can view images of contemporary Harper's magazines reporting the riots.

The respectables rally

I could find surprisingly little about the rally on the blogs I read. Free Republic, predictably, was a cheering section for Beck, 'colorblind conservatism' (did you know MLK was really a Republican, and his 'dream' speech was Republican? I learn something new every day at FR) and all thing PC.

However, Countenance Blog has a piece about the rally.

* Does Glenn Beck not realize that real freedom and Martin Luther King’s vision on that very soil of 47 years ago are diametric opposites? We lost a whole lot of freedom pursuing MLK’s Dream. Ironically, one of the major bloggers associated with this event today advised people to go nowhere near D.C. neighborhoods and public transit stops that are associated with the people who we just had to extend civil rights to in the last generation. Oh yeah, pander to blacks, but just don’t travel anywhere near them.

* Beck implied that MLK/CRM were entirely on the side of the angels, while the opponents were nothing more than moronic knuckle-dragging bigots. I regret to inform you, Mr. Beck, but there was a lot of resistance to the CRM in the 1950s and 60s on the intellectual and cerebral level. As loath as this publication would be to admit it today, half the anti-CRA intellectuals of those years worked for National Review. At least two states in the South declared a certain day on the calendar to be “Race and Reason Day,” titled after Carleton Putnam’s book.''

Also, please see Old Atlantic's piece, if you haven't yet read it.

Everytime Diversity is honored at White events its a moment of shame for Whites. This is its meaning even to those who organize it and experience it. The Diversity is not honored for anything other than as a symbol of White Guilt and White Shame. The Diversity Token is not there for themselves, they are therefore to symbolize White Guilt, White Shame and White dispossession.

The Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their right to be a nation and a people. Diversity Tokens symbolize that Whites give up their own Whiteness as having meaning and identity. Diversity Tokens are a funeral decoration not a life affirming celebration.''

If I understand OA's words correctly, I agree that the presence of 'diversity, especially when it is put front and center, as at these events, seems to symbolize guilt and 'repentance'; yes, we know we are congenitally guilty because of things our forefathers did or did not do, and we renounce our former evil ways. So please, please, don't call us the r-word. As long as we feel the need to act out this apparent 'cleansing' ritual or symbolic confession of guilt, then the idea of 'colorblindness' is nothing but a bitter joke.

Old Atlantic's piece quotes many comments posted on MSM sites. The comments are as vitriolic and ugly as we've grown to expect from leftists. It is still somewhat wryly funny that the name-calling from the usual suspects is not the least bit mitigated by Beck and company pandering themselves silly, and bowing at the diversity altar. When will people learn it does not pay?

Wanted

Does anybody have any recommendations of UK-based pro-nationalist blogs with good commentary and coverage of the issues we discuss here? There were several UK blogs I used to read, and some are no longer active. Maybe some of you have recommendations to make. I am open to your thoughts and your links. Maybe there is some UK blogger reading this who would like to provide a link to his blog.

Similarly, I would be interested in any European blogs which deal with the same issues.

In the country of the blind...

I recently read this excerpt from a Kenneth Minogue book, The Servile Mind.  I have yet to get hold of the book, but I hope to read it soon. Meantime Minogue's words seem to apply very much to our society, and to the West overall. I hope to comment on the excerpt later.

What is on my mind now, in connection with what Minogue wrote, is this upcoming, much-hyped and much-vilified 'rally' in Washington, D.C., featuring Glenn Beck and his PC "revival" show, or whatever it is. Somebody (and I would like to credit that person, but I can't recall where I read it) described Beck as a weeping TV evangelist of the political right, or words along those lines. I think he is just as much a huckster as the show-biz 'ministers', playing on people's emotions and on their gullibility.

Beck seems to be shilling for a new religion, sort of a Politically Correct cult where MLK and the Founding Fathers are co-venerated.

I was checking the posts on Free Republic as I often do, to 'take the temperature' of the Republican faithful, and they are eager for this rally to take place. When I read that forum these days, I truly do wonder about the future of this country because I keep hoping for any sign that the mainstream ''right'' will wake up, and sometimes it seems as if they are doing that. Some of the politically incorrect comments there make me think that the critically ill patient is showing signs of recovery, but then they lapse back into the febrile babblings, the obsession with 'racism' on the left, and with sniffing out racism among their fellow FReepers.

I've thought a lot about what is wrong with our people, and that's really the theme of this blog, since 2006 when I first began. I've spent a lot of time discussing the symptoms and their possible etiology, and I've looked for that magic bullet, a remedy for this sickness-unto-death that seems to be gripping the entire West. I keep taking the patient's vital signs, and sometimes he rallies a bit, but goes on languishing.

I've written about Beck and his counterparts on the Republican side: media personalities like Rush, Hannity, Mark Levin, et al. Politicians are part of the problem, too, but I think the root problem of all this may be something that is more and more common in the character of Americans and other Westerners: the tendency to be followers. That is at the heart of Minogue's piece, which I hope to blog about later in more detail. But the thing is, Americans in particular have become too besotted of individual personalities, whether it be Beck, Rush, Sarah Palin, or their favorite politico. Some people from Arkansas are fiercely defensive of their guy, Mike Huckabee. Some fawn over Bobby Jindal because they see in him some kind of hope. Herman Cain is a recent darling with the FReeper crowd. Lately there has been a furor over Ann Coulter's remarks about conservatives who oppose homosexual 'marriage', with many of Ann's devotees fiercely defending her.

If someone criticizes one of these 'personalities', his or her followers will react as if their own mother or beloved spouse were being attacked, or perhaps, more aptly, as if their faith and their God were being blasphemed. If only we could defend our kin and our people as aggressively as some defend their favorite personality.

I don't know if there are more of these blind loyalist individuals around these days; I have generally thought that our society has declined in the character of the people since our colonial and founding generations. I still think that to some degree, but perhaps there have always been these people who are 'respecters of persons', in the Biblical sense, people who will fix their loyalty and devotions on some individual with charisma or with glib answers and a good spiel. Beck seems to be the most successful of these types at the moment.

I don't know what will happen at this rally tomorrow, which has been so much 'cussed and discussed'. I do hope that he will not continue to lead 'conservatives' down the rabbit hole of political correctness as he seems to be doing.

Americans talk a great game about individualism and independence, but I am afraid I see far too many people willing to be led up the garden path by some snake-oil salesman. I don't know where all our discernment has gone, or if there is any regaining it.

Perhaps it is natural for people to follow leaders, but woe be to us, as we have no leaders of character and courage to stand up today, it seems.

As the old saying goes, in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. How else can we explain the grasping at straws that causes people to follow these media shills and charlatans?

Breaking news from 2009

According to this story which appeared in the UK Telegraph some 10 months ago:

The huge increases in migrants over the last decade were partly due to a politically motivated attempt by ministers to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", according to Andrew Neather, a former adviser to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett.

He said Labour's relaxation of controls was a deliberate plan to "open up the UK to mass migration" but that ministers were nervous and reluctant to discuss such a move publicly for fear it would alienate its "core working class vote.
[...]
Critics said the revelations showed a "conspiracy" within Government to impose mass immigration for "cynical" political reasons.
[...]
He wrote: "Earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural. "I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn't its main purpose – to rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."
[...]
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of the Migrationwatch think tank, said: "Now at least the truth is out, and it's dynamite. "Many have long suspected that mass immigration under Labour was not just a cock up but also a conspiracy. They were right. ''

[Emphasis mine]

I was not blogging at the time this story broke last year, and I was not reading political blogs in general, so I have no idea how much discussion this generated among the right-wing bloggers. It should have generated a lot of anger but little surprise.

I think a lot of us have long believed that this whole 'enrichment by enforced diversity' was not simply a method of dealing with spontaneous demographic change, as our ruling classes imply, but a deliberate and malicious policy. I've said that this whole demographic disaster that is being visited on us was either done through abysmal incompetence or deliberate malice. I don't think our ruling classes are as incompetent as they are malicious, or hostile to us, the people of Western Christendom.

I particularly noticed the phrase in this article about 'rubbing the Right's noses in diversity.' Very telling. So at least one of their convoluted motivations was a vengeful attitude toward ethnoconservative citizens of our countries: ''Those xenophobic bigots don't like diversity? Well, we'll make sure they get it, good and hard.''

The left, at least the true-believing, 'mad dog' liberals as CWNY terms them, have at least as much malice and loathing towards White, especially Christian fellow-citizens as they have love for Diversity. Diversity is just one more weapon, one more battering ram, to be used against us. For these unhinged lefties, it isn't about love for poor downtrodden Third Worlders, it's about hate for their own neighbors.

Celebrate diversity, or else

The recent events at the Iowa state fair are known to all of you, I'm sure. The attacks by a group of 30 to 40 blacks on White individuals was at first said to be 'unconnected to race,' then 'possibly racially motivated' and today, spokesmen are denying that any real evidence of racial motives is present.

Apparently the report written by a police officer is now being questioned; the victim's account is being discounted, seemingly.
The officer says

“I’m color-blind when it comes to preparing my police reports,” Murillo said. “Any and all information that comes from a credible source that I believe may be pertinent or relevant to a follow up investigation of a serious crime is always included in my police reports because that’s the way I’ve been instructed to prepare them for 32 years.”

Police Chief Judy Bradshaw stood behind Murillo’s handling of the matter. She said she regrets that some details of the report were misinterpreted and led some to think the information came from the victim, who told police he did not see his attackers and could not provide a description.''

The officer appears to have a Hispanic name so surely he cannot be thought guilty of White bias in reporting what happened. But it is hard not to believe that political correctness is driving the reporting of this case. We know that this happens. We know the media are hopelessly and shamelessly leftist and 'pro-diversity' in their reporting. We know that police departments, too, are under the sway of the 'diversity' dogma, just as our military. Think about the way the Fort Hood massacre was handled by our military, with Gen. Casey's remarks that the worst tragedy would be if our commitment to diversity were sacrificed or words along those lines. As if loss of life is trivial compared to ''diversity.''


Meanwhile, the victim alluded to in this piece is in the hospital, suffering from serious injuries. But heaven forbid that anybody sully the name of holy diversity. We can't have that.

I am going to say that anybody who is so diversity-besotted as to actively try to push it on their area bears some responsibility for any harm that comes to innocent people as a result of their misguided efforts.

I will say right here that the officials in Iowa who pushed and lobbied and pleaded for ''diversity'' in their state should be called to account.

Shouldn't some of the people of Iowa start to question whether there was a 'need', as their pandering officials claimed, to make the state more 'diverse'? Anybody who lives in a diversity-enriched area could tell them that this kind of wanton violence is one of the undiscussed consequences of diversity. Yet every day we are told by our officials and our 'news' media and our academics how 'diversity' is a must in the so-called global marketplace, and that we are in need of enrichment by it.

We could call the victims of these assaults, and so many others like them, 'collateral damage,' in the struggle for sacred diversity.

Sam Francis wrote a piece way back in spring, 2001 about the 'diversity' obsession on the part of Iowa's officials.

''Last September, the state’s Democratic governor, Tom Vilsack, was infected with the idea that what Iowa really needs are more immigrants—namely 350,000 of them—to be imported from Third World countries to help poor, backward, white Iowa “diversify.” For all the pompous rhetoric about the holy mantra of “diversity,” the real reason behind the governor’s plan was much more mundane. Iowa, a mainly rural state, is losing population and needs more people to boost its economy.  The governor’s plan had the support of what at the time were called “business and civic leaders”—that is, those who directly profit form the cheap labor that more immigration brings.

But those who don’t so profit—the vast majority of Iowans – didn’t care much for the governor’s plan.  Some 58 percent thought Iowa was already diverse enough and expressed opposition to the proposal.  A more recent poll, released this month by the pro-immigration Des Moines Register, shows that number hasn’t changed and also that some two-thirds of the citizens of Des Moines think their city “has enough racial, ethnic and cultural diversity for their needs and preferences.”

As suggested above, the invocation of “diversity” has become a kind of dogma that is never explained or subjected to scrutiny. It would be interesting to know how one is supposed to decide how much “diversity” is enough and how much is too little.  For that matter, it would be nice to know why “diversity” is a good thing at all.  How exactly does Iowa suffer from not having more “diversity”?  What benefits of civilized life is Iowa lacking today because it is not sufficiently “diverse”?  Alas, no one seems to know, or, if they know, don’t say.''

Spring, 2001, seems so very long ago. That was before 9/11, and it was about, oh, 10 or 15 million immigrants and refugees ago. Have we learned nothing since then?

I suppose we can let the Iowan citizens off the hook, and say they were hoodwinked by their elected officials, but then we have to explain away their voting patterns in the 2008 election. Iowa was one of the erstwhile 'lily white' states that embraced The One. It appears the average Iowan must still be infatuated with their new-found diversity.

Maybe they are a microcosm of America, at least of heartland America in the age of political correctness; it remains to be seen whether they or the country at large will learn from experience, or continue to embrace delusion.

Accusation and counter-accusation

Some of you will have noticed that one of my pet peeves is the favorite Republican mantra: ''liberals are the real racists.''

This meme has been in existence among Republicans for a number of years now, but it seems to have become a frequently-resorted-to phrase since the last presidential campaign, especially.

Do a search on the phrase 'liberals real racists' and you will get many, many hits. Too many to read through, as I found when I searched on that phrase.

It is pretty obvious to me that the phrase was cooked up by some Republican 'wit' who had just been called the r-word (racist, not Republican) by some liberal/multicultist. It amounts to the schoolyard retort, ''I know you are, but what am I?'' It is just about as intelligent.

The end result of this accusation being flung at lefties and diversity cultists is that now we have twice as many White folks calling each other ''racist!" back and forth, endlessly. Way to go.

It surely must amuse the diversities that Whites are now calling each other their favorite term of abuse. Now they can take some time off, and let us call each other the 'r-word' while they sit back and watch and laugh.

We are doing their job for them. They don't need to race-bait anymore; we are doing it to each other.

I decided some years ago that I won't use the word 'racist' or 'racism' except in an ironic sense. I won't write it here without scare quotes. So you won't find me joining in the counter-accusations against our lefty/multicultist foes. I can think of many other names, mostly unflattering, that fit them, but I can think of no good reason to join in the race-baiting.

First, I think it serves no useful purpose. Do the people who employ that tactic think it will shock some leftist or politically correct brainwash-ee into an epiphany? Do we think it will shame them into admitting that they harbor racist thoughts?

If a leftist were brutally honest with himself, he would admit that by claiming that Whites are congenitally bigoted against nonwhites, then he himself must be just as guilty as the Republicans whom he loathes. White privilege makes us all guilty, according to the leftists and nonwhites. So by that line of thought, liberals and 'conservatives' are equally guilty of the 'White original sin.'

But are liberals or progressives 'racists' as most people understand that word? If their definition is true, if 'racist' means anybody who 1) notices race and/or 2) believes the races differ in some intrinsic way, then what do we call the liberals who see the races as different in ways that flatter nonwhites, and who believe that all the problems of nonwhites, being caused by Whites, must be rectified by Whites?

I understand that Republicans and 'colorblind conservatives' are trying to make the case that the do-gooder Whites who are perpetually tending to nonwhites are being paternalistic. Paternalism can be interpreted as meaning that nonwhites are incapable of taking care of themselves, or even of defending themselves verbally. For example, liberals will jump to the defense of nonwhites when they sniff out any hint of 'bigotry' from a fellow White. They will argue in the name of the nonwhite as if that nonwhite cannot defend himself. I suppose this is their rather deluded idea of chivalry - which in its true form calls for defending the weak and the lame and the halt. But I think it bizarre that they haven't noticed that nonwhites can and do defend themselves loudly, vociferously, and stridently. Why White liberals imagine that they need to act as lawyers for their favorite victim groups, (mascots, as Thomas Sowell put it) is beyond me.

The liberals' client groups are certainly able to speak up for themselves; they are not weak at all in that sense. And they have the media 110 percent on their side; the media, being made up of leftists of one stripe or another, does little but defend the perceived downtrodden victim groups. It is a leftist fallacy that 'minorities' are 'underserved populations' or that their 'voices are excluded from the public discourse.' That notion is laugh-out-loud funny.

But does paternalism imply a sense of superiority, or a dominant/subservient relationship between the person helping and those being helped? I don't think so. I think that most leftists have convinced themselves that they are the possessors of something called 'White privilege' which makes them the beneficiaries of many un-earned benefits. They think these benefits are taken directly from nonwhites and given, unjustly, to us. So they think they are righting a wrong.

If they want to be self-abasing altruists who are willing to serve others at their own expense, that's their choice -- but where it goes badly wrong is when they enshrine that altruism in public policy, making it the law of the land. And where it goes really, really wrong is when they force the rest of us, essentially, to participate in this racial self-abasement and penance.

You cannot coerce people into loving their neighbor, or even liking their neighbor.

As for the allegation made by the Republicans that 'liberals keep minorities on the plantation; they keep them dependent, they don't want them to succeed', this is carried to absurd lengths. For example on Free Republic, whenever some social scientists' list of 'the ten worst cities' is posted, and the worst cities are all, ahem, 'diverse', the FReepers solemnly insist that ''all those cities have Democrat government. That's why they are crime-ridden, bankrupt, corrupt, and unlivable.'' On some blog or other, when a picture of the infamous ruins of Detroit was posted, the 'colorblind conservatives' lived up to their epithet by intoning that 'that's what happens when you elect Democrats.' Some of them even blamed the Katrina disaster on 'Democrat rule.'

According to that school of thought, if only Democrats would stop creating welfare dependency and bad schools, nonwhites would be able to prosper and become exemplary citizens everywhere. If only nonwhites could learn that 'conservatism' would cure all their ills, they would be fine.  Unfortunately no one, apparently, has told them about the conservative panacea, so they remain shackled by the liberals -- who are the real racists. QED.

Mind you, I think welfare dependency and social pathologies are exacerbated by liberal policies, but to believe that they alone are the cause of the 'achievement gap' or the social gulf between the races is silly. This denies the possibility of innate differences of ability and potential as an explanation.

George W. Bush had that famous phrase about 'soft bigotry of low expectations', which was just a more florid way of saying 'liberals are the real racists.' The idea behind that phrase about the soft bigotry is that if we expect nonwhites to become top achievers, they will, eventually. It's all a matter of positive thinking and 'encouraging their potential and boosting their self-esteem.' Yes, compassionate conservatism, as it styled itself, had a great many presuppositions in common with old-fashioned liberalism.

The 'colorblind', compassionate conservatives share this presupposition with the left: that it is Whitey, ultimately, who is keeping the black folk down. They just disagree on which Whitey is doing this: is it the mean, bigoted, hateful Republican r-words, or is it, rather, the paternalistic Democrat r-words?
Notice the agreement with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al that is implicit here? Whites calling each other racists simply cements the belief that all Whites are, in fact, racists, whether they admit it, or especially, if they deny it.

Now we have the Tea Partiers, in many cases, jumping through hoops to prove just how really, really NOT racist they are, all the while pointing the finger at the left, who are again accusing the right. This has all become the theatre of the absurd.

When we descend to this tactic of name-calling, of tu quoque, of "he did it first!", when we descend to using the increasingly meaningless word 'racist', we are further debasing the language, not to mention further degrading what passes for political dialogue in this country.

And above all, this tactic does not work; it is going nowhere.

This constant use of the word 'racist' does nothing but keep the racial kettle on the boil; it puts nonwhites at the center of everything -- which in a sense they are. But it puts them in the coveted position of having their favor and approval courted by both sides.

Moreover, in the eagerness to prove who is the 'real racist' Republicans are digging themselves deeper into the PC hole. They will probably follow up on all the talk by pandering even more, as if appointing Steele was not pandering enough. Next, in the ''who's the real racist'' contest, it will be necessary to offer an affirmative action presidential candidate. That is in the cards, unless the Republicans get off this merry-go-round.

'The only palliative'

It seems to me that one of the sources of greatest division between the person who relies on public opinion or popular trends to determine his morality and the rest of us is that the former group of people believe in the 'evolution' of human beings in terms of morality and standards. What was good enough for our fathers: the eternal verities, the traditions, the old landmarks, none of these things is held in any regard by those we call 'liberals' or leftists or progressives. Their basic assumption is that WE (or at least the liberals of today) are the greatest generation; we have more understanding, are more enlightened, more true, more perceptive, and more 'sensitive' than our forebears, who were little better than the cavemen of popular lore, at least in matters of morality and practical matters. The older generations were sexist, narrow-minded, puritanical, repressed, judgmental, rigid, exclusivist, ''anal'' to use the hideous modern jargon. And it goes without saying, above all, that they were 'racist' and xenophobic and homophobic. And anti-Semitic.

I will offer just this one general piece of advice to those who believe that our generation is the last word on morality and enlightenment. Read old books; go to older sources for a needed balance or a corrective to today's popular morality and ideology.

C.S. Lewis wrote, in the Introduction to Athanasius on the Incarnation:

''Every age has its own outlook. It is specially good at seeing certain truths and specially liable to make certain mistakes. We all, therefore, need the books that will correct the characteristic mistakes of our own period. And that means the old books.

All contemporary writers share to some extent the contemporary outlook—even those, like myself, who seem most opposed to it. Nothing strikes me more when I read the controversies of past ages than the fact that both sides were usually assuming without question a good deal which we should now absolutely deny. They thought that they were as completely opposed as two sides could be, but in fact they were all the time secretly united — united with each other and against earlier and later ages—by a great mass of common assumptions.

We may be sure that the characteristic blindness of the twentieth century — the blindness about which posterity will ask, "But how could they have thought that?" — lies where we have never suspected it, and concerns something about which there is untroubled agreement between Hitler and President Roosevelt or between Mr. H. G. Wells and Karl Barth.

None of us can fully escape this blindness, but we shall certainly increase it, and weaken our guard against it, if we read only modern books. Where they are true they will give us truths which we half knew already. Where they are false they will aggravate the error with which we are already dangerously ill.

The only palliative is to keep the clean sea breeze of the centuries blowing through our minds, and this can be done only by reading old books. Not, of course, that there is any magic about the past. People were no cleverer then than they are now; they made as many mistakes as we. But not the same mistakes. They will not flatter us in the errors we are already committing; and their own errors, being now open and palpable, will not endanger us. Two heads are better than one, not because either is infallible, but because they are unlikely to go wrong in the same direction. To be sure, the books of the future would be just as good a corrective as the books of the past, but unfortunately we cannot get at them.''

I would make one small objection to one thing Lewis says. He says there is nothing magic about the past, and that people were 'no cleverer' than they are now. I would say, with a few reservations, that they were 'cleverer' than we are now; they were certainly better-educated and more well-read, more versed in the classics, including the Bible, at least in certain eras. Our generation has been shockingly dumbed down. And no, in some ways they of the past were not any better than we are; as a Christian, Lewis would agree that in every age, people are sinners, we are born fallen.

However the Bible clearly says that some generations are worse than others. Mankind takes one step forward occasionally, but then tends to take two (or three) steps back. We are in one of those eras which has taken several giant steps backward.

The Bible tells me, as does my own power of observation, that people are 'waxing worse and worse' as we move through history.

In any case, each age, as I've said before on this blog, has its particular blind spots, and we need the corrective of the witness of people in other ages, who perhaps saw certain things with more clarity than we.

We need to have a word from past generations in order to understand ourselves and our world. If we get all of our information from our equally confused peers, or from the dishonest media and the opinion-makers, we will be the blind being led by the blind.

Once in a while on this blog I delve into some old book from my shelves, or I find an obscure old book in a used book store that I like to share with you. I think it's essential food for not only our minds but our spirits. Let's not lock ourselves into a house of mirrors where we see nothing but our own reflection; it's better to seek a glimpse of the wider world, of other vistas, of that 'other country' that is the past.

What's in a word?

The word ''racist'' is used a lot. A great deal. Considering that the word does not even appear in my 1936 Webster's Dictionary, that word seems to be indispensable to modern life.

What does it mean? Why did it apparently need to be invented or coined? Some credit (or blame) Leon Trotsky for the word's invention, some blame others on the left. I am not sure who first used the word, but the main thing is, what does it mean now?

If I asked several random people what it meant, I would probably get varying answers; most people would probably mention something about 'hate' since that is another seemingly indispensable word in the 21st century English vocabulary. However I think that not only would there be varying definitions among individuals, there would be different definitions according to race and ancestry. I would wager that most blacks would define the word much more broadly and inclusively than Whites, and the same would probably be true of minorities generally.

However if these following examples indicate anything, it appears the word 'racism' is becoming more and more broadly and subjectively defined. For instance, 'future time orientation' is racist, according to Seattle School Dist.

Watermelon is a symbol of racism

Mr. Potato Head is racist

"Lord of the Rings" is racist

The word ''niggardly'' is racist.
 
Golliwogs are racist.


Criticizing Islam is racist. Of course.

Criticizing illegal immigration is racist, as we all know, and criticizing legal immigration is even worse.

And it is true that anything which is associated exclusively, or predominantly, with White people is 'racist.'

I remember the time when the word was not in the vocabulary of most people. During the early days of the Civil Rights era, the word that was bandied about to describe those who opposed forcible integration was ''prejudiced'' or ''bigoted.''

We can split hairs on the word ''prejudice''; it means ''an opinion about someone or something that is not based on reason or experience.'' That is the standard, traditional definition, and as such, it does not include the 'realist' opinions held by older generations of Americans. Their realism was based on history, observation, real life experience, and statistics. It was not, as some would have it, based on fanciful pre-conceived notions or irrational ''hate''.

Maybe the fact that the word 'prejudice' is not truly fitting in this context led to the popularizing of the neologism, 'racism.'

It came to be established, via the constant use of this word, that a negative assessment of someone of another race was a particular and unique kind of sin or, more properly, thoughtcrime. Somehow it was deemed more immoral or 'hateful' to criticize those of another race, and even more so if one chose to associate with those of one's own group.

At first, when the word 'racism' was used, it was used to describe the most egregious behavior towards those of other races, such as harassing, threatening, or attacking them without provocation, ''just because of their skin color''. Over time, the word became more and more loosely and liberally used, so that today it is absurdly applied to all kinds of ideas or products or words or attitudes. And worst of all, it is arbitrarily and subjectively defined and applied. Since none of us can anticipate every instance of behavior or speech that will be labeled ''racist'', we cannot be sure when or if we will be ambushed with that word, and of course the accusation is always assumed to be true, once having been made. Why? Because it is a given that 'Whites are racist' and that minorities don't lie about such things -- to even hint that they are capable of it is to be ''racist.'' So if you protest or deny it, you are making your accuser a liar -- and that's racist. You cannot win. Heads he wins, tails you lose.

The news media, the entertainment media, textbooks, web pages, all of them represent the acceptable, politically correct, anti-White perspective. There are a few isolated exceptions, but the fact that most of the information and discussion in our society excludes all but the PC point of view makes it certain that people begin to buy into it. This is most true of young people, because they have not known any world other than the racially-charged, obsessively anti-White world of today. Their perceptions of the past have been manipulated by Hollywood movies, TV programming, popular books, music, schools -- everything, in other words.

Most Americans would probably agree with the statement that America had a ''racist past.'' But what exactly do they understand by that phrase? Do they mean the Hollywood version of American history, things like Harper Lee's 'To Kill A Mockingbird', or Mississippi Burning, or any number of other movies with a PC message? Or do they simply think it means that yes, the races were separated in the past, especiallly in the South? Quite likely they think of slavery, and are convinced that slavery was 'an abomination', as someone on AmRen (a 'race realist') said recently. Those kinds of opinions are not uncommon even there. I think it's the old White guilt thing, or perhaps the desire to 'be fair' and concede something to the other side in the name of conciliation.

In any case, whether slavery was 'an abomination' or not, it is in the past. No White American of today is guilty of keeping slaves, and no black or other American of today has been a slave.

I see no reason to yield any ground to the other side, whether to minority partisans who want to accuse and condemn, or to White 'progressives' (read: renegades) who side with everyone but their own people. It makes us look weak; it is not appreciated by the other side. They are not impressed by our attempt at magnanimity or conciliation or self-examination. They simply see it as weakness or as an admission of guilt on our part. And having found that inclination in us, they exploit it to the hilt.

So I would exhort everybody to stop the self-condemnation or accepting guilt. Some will say: ''I don't feel personal guilt, but I know our ancestors did some pretty bad things." Really? Why not give the benefit of the doubt to your forebears? None of us would probably exist today if our forebears had been as PC as many of us are. How can we judge or condemn them? They had a hard row to hoe; they faced many hard choices. Our colonist and pioneer forebears grew up in a very different time in which today's obsessions and taboos were unknown. Universalistic, sentimentalist notions about human nature did not work in their hard-scrabble world. Their world was blessedly free of the ideas of Marx, Rousseau, Freud, and other such 'founding fathers' of today's insanity.

Let's give them some credit. I believe in honoring my fathers and mothers. I refuse to cast blame on them as a way of appeasing anybody.

The next time somebody uses the word ''racist'', I think it might be a good exercise, or a useful tactic perhaps, to challenge that word, asking for a precise definition. The word ''racist'' in the beginning was applied to people who acted out against minorities, who committed illegal acts: harassment, assault, threats of harm, murder. Those things are crimes already and should be prosecuted as such. Whoever does those things is already reprehensible; we don't need a special label to describe their criminal acts. In fact, many on the right deplore the idea of ''hate crimes'', under which laws people are punished more severely for their intentions or thoughts or attitudes toward certain groups. Punish wrongdoers for their acts, as the law prescribes, but not for their thoughts, feelings, or attitudes, or opinions. The idea of 'racism' is the prototype of the so-called 'hate crime' idea.

The 'race card' is mean to single out and punish certain people who hold politically incorrect ideas about certain groups of people.  It is also meant to intimidate the White public at large, to demonstrate to them the dangers implicit in speaking too honestly. It's a weapon that is being used to corral us and keep us in our place. We learn to censor or to guard what we say, or to keep our mouths shut lest we incur the consequences of being a heretic on the subject of race.

I think the word 'racist' should be used to describe only people whose behavior or acts physically harm, or threaten harm to another. However, we already have laws against such behavior.
As far as using certain taboo words or displaying certain symbols, those things should not be punishable by law. In this country we have movements to ban the Confederate Battle Flag as a ''symbol of hate''. In the UK, Moslems have complained about the Union Jack and the St. George's flag, as well as the cross in general. This kind of totalitarianism had its inception in the 'race card' mentality; if one is of a protected group, one can single-handedly censor someone else, or silence them, or prohibit them from displaying certain symbols.

As for the word ''hate'' which is another favorite word in the leftist lexicon, it too is overused and abused. Every time someone criticizes or expresses disapproval of certain protected groups, the word ''hate'' is immediately called into action. I think it should fall under ''Godwin's Law"; the first person to call ''hater'' is automatically the loser in the debate. It is, like ''racism'', just used to silence and intimidate and label someone whose ideas threaten the left or their minority clients.

The word 'prejudice' is one that applies to our enemies more than to our side; likewise the term 'bigot' which simply describes a closed-minded, rigid, narrow person.  Minorities, feminists, gays, are all groups who often hold bigoted opinions about straight, White Americans, most especially Christians and Southrons. Yet the professional victims cannot see these qualities in themselves, so full of their own self-righteousness are they.

I keep hearing that the 'race card is maxed out', and indeed it is; it has been for a long time, but many people are just now noticing it. The left is morally bankrupt but somehow just by inertia they seem to keep going. At some point we have to stop running, we have to stop conceding to them. We have to defend our forefathers, our heritage, and ourselves against their constant nagging, badgering, and accusing. When will we finally do that?

Immigration and our history

I've written a lot about the effects of the present wave of mass immigration, legal and illegal, on our country and our culture and our future. I've written a little about the history of immigration to this country, and the many misconceptions about it which have been successfully implanted by the left-wing media and academia. For instance, the idea that ''we are all descendants of immigrants'' or ''this is a nation of immigrants'' and ''this country has always welcomed immigrants from everywhere.'' Then we have the more malevolent myths, such as the widespread idea that the old-stock Anglo-Americans were mean-spirited ''nativists'' who held unfounded prejudices toward certain immigrant groups, or perhaps all immigrant groups, irrespective of origin.

As someone whose ties are to the South, I have particular concern for the effects of mass, unchecked, Third World immigration on the South. Why do I worry more about the South? Well, it's not only because that is where my primary sympathies and affections lie, but because the South has, heretofore, been somewhat shielded from the disruptions of large numbers of immigrants. The South has maintained a much more stable demographic than many parts of this country, with the majority of inhabitants, at least up until the latter part of the 20th century, being descendants of old-stock colonists. The South was primarily settled by people of British Isles descent, with a scattering of Germans and French Huguenots. Of course since the 1600s there have been people of African origin in the South, but the White populace has remained mostly a people of Anglo-Saxon/Celtic origin. There are exceptions like the Cajuns of Louisiana, but then they were brought into the United States with the Louisiana Purchase; for the most part they did not come to the U.S. as immigrants, and although they keep a considerable part of their culture, they are also very American and very much a part of the South.

Even as late as the 1960s and 70s, most of the South remained as it had always been, but that era saw the beginning of an influx of people from the Northern states, who had come to find work in various industries: aerospace, the oil industry, and various other occupations. It seemed that by the late 70s and 80s, every other person you met in parts of Texas was from the North. Although many of these people were happy additions to the South, some of them brought very liberal ideas with them, and slowly the  effect on local politics and culture began to be noticeable in some areas with a lot of Yankee newcomers. I suppose I had better  add the usual disclaimer here: I don't ''hate'' Yankees; my own Mother was one.

But even the influx of many Northerners, with their different culture (and yes, there are two different cultures, Northern and Southron) and different ideas, was benign compared to the recent wave of immigrants from the Third World.

Did you all know that Nashville, Tennessee was the home of the largest Kurdish community outside Iraq? To most Americans, the name Nashville calls up associations with the Grand Ole Opry, and 'Music Row.' But now, I am told by relatives, the cab drivers there are mostly African immigrants, and the city is now one more multicultural bastion.

The South has a rich history, and a distinctive culture and way of life since the beginning. Will this survive mass immigration?

One other aspect of immigration has been fateful for the South: the role of immigration in the War Between the States. This is something we don't often hear discussed. But I have long heard it said by Southerners who cherish our way of life that in effect, mass immigration provided the manpower and 'cannon fodder' that enabled the North to win the war.

In an effort to find more information on the role of immigrants in the War Between the States, I did internet searches, and found page after page of results. But oddly there was not one webpage among those search results that offered the South's point of view, or a pro-Southron side of the story. I have heard that the search engines are now cleansing out the politically incorrect web pages and blogs; it seems to be happening.

This web page tell us that ''only'' a third of the Union troops were non-native born:

''Thus, only under one-third (1/3) of all troops were non-natives distributed approximately as follows:

German c. 200,000

Irish c. 150,000

British c. 150,000

Canadians c. 50,000

others c. 75,000 (mostly European)

Comparing the percentage of native and immigrant troops to the total population of the North (c. 21,000,000) reveals that the per capita percentage total enlistments from both groups is approximately equal. Thus, we can assert that the foreign troops did their fair share of service in their adopted land for the cause of Union.
[...]
The contribution of the foreign born immigrant troops to the cause of the Union was decisive in securing victory over the Confederacy. The loyalty and patriotism of these new Americans, with a few exceptions, never flagged. Their efforts helped insure a united country and a secure future for the nation.''

[Emphasis mine]

The article is very pro-diversity and pro-immigration:

''America is a land of great diversity, and nothing is more diverse than the myriad of origins of its people. We are an immigrant nation whose ancestors sought opportunity in a new homeland. As if to demonstrate their belief in an eventual united people and hope for the future, they wholeheartedly supported the Union cause in the Civil War. This support was paid in both blood and sweat, for these recent arrivals fought and died in every battle and engagement of the war, and they who stayed at home provided the labor to clothe, feed and supply the armies. By their deeds did these newly arrived prove their devotion to the cause of Union. Without their considerable contributions, it is very doubtful whether the Union could have been preserved.''

Looking at this history in a very frank way, it appears that mass immigration was used as a weapon against the South.

For the writer, it is a given that preserving the Union was worth any amount of bloodshed, and any amount of suffering on the part of the South. And holy diversity, of course, must be part of this grand Union. Actually this is the party line expressed in just about all of the articles and web pages I perused on this subject.

This writer says that population, industrial capacity, and railroads were decisive in the Union's prevailing. He also believes that the North had 'better leadership', but I daresay most Southron people would disagree with that opinion.

Still, the author does mention the role played by mass immigration in the outcome of the war.

The outcome of that war has been devastating to the South, with the effects continuing to this very day. In the past, I've said that we are now experiencing yet one more phase of Reconstruction. I know others have said similar things about our situation. However, most people today, North and South, could not tell you what 'Reconstruction' was, nor do they have any idea how  it parallels what is happening today.

The destruction of our history, both North and South, has had a very deleterious effect on us; the dumbing-down of our schools and media have had the desired effect of making us a people without a memory.

We can't unscramble the egg; we can't undo what was done a century and a half ago, although it looks as though history may be about to repeat.

I will leave you with a couple of quotes from the Diary of Mary Boykin Chesnut, a Southron lady who lived through the War Between the States. Of the North, she said:

''How contradictory is their attitude toward us. To keep the despised and iniquitous South within their borders, as part of their country, they are willing to enlist millions of men at home and abroad, and to spend billions, and we know they do not love fighting per se, nor spending money.''

And of the surrender and aftermath, she said:

Dr. Boykin and John Witherspoon were talking of a nation in mourning, of blood poured out like rain on the battle-fields-for what? "Never let me hear that the blood of the brave has been shed in vain! No; it sends a cry down through all time."

Whose side is he on?

From an ABC News story, linked at the Free Republic forum, we read that civil rights leaders are up in arms because Glenn Beck has planned a rally on the anniversary of MLK's famous speech.

When will Beck learn that it does not pay to kowtow and pander? I can only take a perverse satisfaction in the criticism coming his way.

Read the FReeper thread; it will make you discouraged, at least if you agree with me that the FReepers, like many Republicans, have gone way off the PC deep-end since, oh, say January 2009.

As to Beck, I've blogged a little about him in the past, and for a very brief time I caught his show when he was still on about the Founding Fathers. But I noticed that he included MLK amongst the Founding Fathers, and that he constantly harped on the 'inclusive' theme.

The FReepers' comments show that most of them now accept MLK as some kind of hero to us all; I wonder what they would say if reminded about the attitude of Ronald Reagan, another hero of theirs, when the MLK holiday was proposed. He at first opposed it although he cited 'cost concerns' in doing so, and later he reversed himself and spoke glowingly of MLK, as you will read in the linked article.

There was, as I recall, considerable opposition to the holiday, with the late Sen. Jesse Helms, (so hated by the left even today) being the foremost critic. But I remember that even mainstream newspapers published letters which were vehemently critical of the proposed honor, citing MLK's Communist affiliations and divisive activities as the reasons. This, of course, is scarcely remembered by todays 'colorblind conservatives.'

But now, as you see, the FReepers hail MLK as an icon and a hero of 'freedom and equality', apparently not cognizant of the obvious fact that his activism increased 'freedom' only for, say, 12 percent of the population at the expense of the other 88 percent. Similarly with Rosa Parks; she, too, has joined the FReeper pantheon of American heroes.

Beck is the most prominent voice these days exhorting 'patriotic Americans' to the belief that 'liberals are the real racists' and that 'patriotic Americans' should honor black advocates alongside the real founders of our nation. Beck is leading more and more gullible people along the politically correct path, while pretending to speak the language of the so-called 'far right'.


From an AmRen thread, there was this remark about Beck:

He says some pretty harshly liberal things when it comes to racial matters. For example, a couple of nights ago on the O’Reilly Factor he was going on about how much blacks suffered during the “Civil Rights” era, yada yada yada… But maybe its just that thinly-veiled facade he puts on to avoid scaring mainstream-thinking Americans off the first time they hear him. You know, people who are really racists but don’t know it hear him and think “Oh, he says some really great things! But, he’s kinda racist, isn’t he?” So he says some liberal racial nonsense to calm their fears, but perhaps deep down he really thinks like us?''

And another:

''I appreciate the comments that are critical of Beck. One minute he can be right on, Truth roaring through him, and then, voila, look again—he’s kowtowing to the “noble savage.” How childish are his mood swings and effusive breakdowns.

Moreover, will Beck be pointing out that the “I Have a Dream” speech is largely plagiarized, even though it appears in every damned high school and college English textbook in this country? Google Archibald Carey’s 1952 RNC Convention speech.

Lastly, maybe Beck will have the backbone to question why King’s wife has had FBI surveillance tapes of MLK sealed till 2027, nearly sixty years after the phoney’s death. I feel sorry for Glenn Beck and Andrew Breitbart. They put themselves out on the front lines, and when they catch fire from the left (especially minorities), they instantly turn into Darkies’ Best Friend. They are childish and weak.''

One more comment

''Before people start trashing Glen Beck they need to realize that this man has single-handedly brought the Obama administration to it’s knees exposing all the corruption, anti-white and anti-American Marxist garbage that has infested the white house and the Democratic party like some plague.

Beck took a lot of heat for saying “Obama hates white people” on one of his shows. The first time I saw the video of King Samir Shabazz shouting out to kill all white crackers and white cracker babies was on the Glen Beck show and he showed that video at least four times during the program, after which the Black Panther Party threatened to see him at the 8/28/10 rally. So nobody is going to tell me he has no courage. They need to look at themselves and ask the question “what have I done lately?”.

I’m not crazy about the way Glen has been sucking up to MLK and has joined in the “poor black plight” thing either but he has a reason for doing so and it will be all clear to us down the road. In the meantime we need to look at and appreciate what he has done so far to open people’s eyes.''

The last AmRen comment, as well as the first, illustrate the one school of thought regarding Beck: the notion that he is 'really one of us' but that he just has to 'play the game to keep his job' or that he is pulling a fast one on his Fox News bosses, toeing the PC line while secretly giving a wink to the 'racial right' listening out there in the audience.

The last comment exhorts us to, essentially 'trust' Beck, to put our faith in him, knowing that whatever he is doing, it is for our good, the good of our cause, ultimately.


For one thing, the idea that some media figure (whether it's Beck, or Pat Buchanan, or whoever) ''has to'' say politically correct things is irksome to me; if they ''have to'' say certain things and they ''can't say'' other things which are too impolitic -- then they are pretty useless to our cause. The one thing that is needed is the ability to speak the truth, and not be cowed by PC.

Has Beck ''opened people's eyes''? Has he really brought the regime to its knees, as the first comment says? I've seen no sign of that.

I have serious doubts about his 'opening people's eyes'; I haven't noticed any great stampede away from political correctness since Beck started his FoxNews show. Incidentally, he had a very different tack when he was with Headline News; he was all about counterjihad then, always truckling to 'moderate Muslims' and so forth. It was only with his move to Fox that he suddenly became some kind of born-again patriot/champion of Middle America.

Although a lot of people have noted the increase in politically incorrect comments on newspaper articles regarding racial issues, it's a little foolish to credit Beck with any epiphanies that have taken place. If anything, he is only attempting to draw more minorities into the GOP, or towards his brand of 'conservatism', while at the same time, probably carrying out a mission of keeping White conservatives on the GOP reservation, and keeping them within acceptable bounds. It's all right to be a Tea Party conservative, the message seems to be, as long as you make obeisance to MLK and be sure to be 'inclusive' towards blacks and other minorities. It's all right to be a 'patriot' and honor our Founding Fathers as long as you bow towards the altar of MLK or Parks.

Somebody commented here once that Beck represented 'controlled opposition', and another commenter called him a 'Judas Goat.' Maybe those labels are too strong, maybe not. I tend to think that at best, he is a guy doing a job, reading from a script, and wanting to keep his position in the compromised media. I don't know how much of a believer he is in political correctness but he is not 'one of us', an ethnopatriot or ethnoconservative. I think it's rather wishful thinking to believe he is on 'our side.'

Reminiscing

Nostalgia is something I like to indulge in now and then; it seems it's good to remind ourselves of what we once were, despite all the madness which fills the news lately.

Over at Chronicles, Clyde Wilson wrote a piece about things he missed from the past. There's a fairly long thread with reader's additions to the list of things, and it's good to look back now and again.

In the spirit of that piece, I will add a few things I remember -- and miss -- from my early life.


Sleeping on the screened-in porch in the hot summer. It seems there was no concern about security or safety then, and we never heard of trespassers or burglars in our neighborhood.

The milkman, and the fruit-and-vegetable man who drove a horse-drawn wagon through the streets, calling out ''cantyloupes, cantyloupes, watermelons, home-grown tomaters...' Of course the best watermelons were the ones given to us by cousin Zack, from his patch. My grandmother, when she gave us children watermelon, simply gave us all spoons and half a watermelon, and let us dig in, out in the back yard. We loved doing that.

There was also the bread man, who delivered not only bread but sweet rolls and other baked goods to our door. You paid him at the end of the month, as with the milk man.

Actually, though, for quite a while we got all our milk from my aunt's husband, who brought us a gallon of raw milk from his cows every day.

Dr. Wilson mentions getting a soft drink from the 'cold water of an old-fashioned drink box.' I remember those coolers; at Miss Viola's store, the bottles always had sort of rust stains on them because of the minerals in the (very hard) water.

Old-fashioned soda fountains, where you got a coke for a nickel. The coke was mixed at the counter, by combining the flavored syrup with the carbonated water, served in a glass, and sipped through a paper straw.

Drive-in hamburger places, with carhops. I realize there are still a few such places left, but not many, seemingly. The hamburgers were made to order, not made up in advance, and left under a heat lamp, as in fast-food places of today. The burgers came wrapped in waxed paper, and in my childhood they cost about 15 cents.

Drive-in movies. They were not just 'passion pits' for the teenagers but places where the whole family could go, and enjoy a double feature. Incidentally, do double features (let alone triple features) still exist? Not that movies these days are worth watching, anyway.

Dime stores, where you could buy a little of everything, most of it under a dollar or two in price, and some things actually costing only a dime.

Penny candy. Certain candies, like peanut patties, which seem to have been sold mostly in the South. Also fried pies; people in the North seem not to know what a 'fried pie' is.

Dr. Wilson mentions women wearing dresses, a subject we were discussing recently on the 'old America' thread. I miss not only the dresses but I would like to see hats make a comeback. When I was a child, to be well-dressed, man or woman, you really needed a hat. Women needed white gloves, and the purse and shoes had to match. I know most people of today think that kind of thing was constricting and oppressive, but it gave life a certain elegance. Special occasions were more special because we put on our best for them.

I remember, too, that the older gentlemen would doff their hats in the presence of a lady. Yes, I know there are not many ladies left these days, in fact lady has become a dirty word with the feminist crowd, but life was more genteel back then, and the word 'lady' was a compliment.

The word 'gentleman' used to mean something as well; nowadays whenever some police spokesman (I mean spokesperson) is being interviewed for TV news about an arrest, they refer to the perpetrator or the accused as a ''gentleman'' --"I saw the gentleman wielding a knife..." how absurd. Criminals are not ''gentlemen''; the word should be reserved for those who merit it.

What memories do you all have of the past, of your childhood?

Just to let you know...

For whatever reason, the "Comments" link that should be displaying at the bottom of each entry is not showing. But if you want to leave a comment, or view comments, click on the post title and you should be able to comment.

I am still working on getting this corrected. Sorry for any inconvenience or confusion.

Vanished Americans

''Let us not become vanished Americans.''
It's a little corny, but that was the concluding sentence of a piece I posted here on this date in 2007. Every August 18, since I began this blog in 2006, I've written a little piece on Virginia Dare, whose birthday this is. Virginia Dare, as I am sure most of you who read this blog know, was the first English child born in North America. Those of you who know the story will remember that Virginia along with her parents, Ananias and Eleanor Dare, who were part of the Roanoke Colony in the late 15th century, disappeared. Their fate is not known for certain, unto this day.

As I wrote in the 2007 piece,

... I wonder if we in a sense are not the lost colony of our time; will future archeologists and historians wonder what happened to us and our colony? Will they ask what happened to those European interlopers who lived here for 400-some years, and then vanished, along with their way of life?

Some may think this hyperbole, but if present demographic trends continue, we will one day be quite outnumbered, as those 113 or so English men and women and children were outnumbered by the Indians. Numbers matter. History has lessons for us, if we can decipher them and heed them.

But for the time being at least we are still here, and there is still hope for us. Let's not become another footnote in history like the Lost Colony. Let us not become the Vanished Americans.''

I'd like to encourage you to read James Fulford's annual piece on Virginia Dare over at the namesake webzine, VDare.


Nicholas Stix's piece on Virginia Dare, from his blog, is worth reading if you have not yet seen it.

The lesser of evils

I realize it's one of life's most futile endeavors to try to understand the sub-species of people called variously "liberals" "Democrats" or "progressives". I am convinced they don't even understand themselves. It is no news to anybody who pays attention that they hold a confused mass of contradictory beliefs and that they refuse even to acknowledge the inherent contradictions in what they profess to believe, especially when their beliefs are compared with their actions.

Examples? I could give you many, and I am sure any of us could come up with different examples. But here's one, discussed recently by Steve Sailer, and discussed in the past on this blog: liberals claim to 'care' about the environment and population issues, yet they ardently advocate for mass immigration. Another: they decry and disparage White people who have large families while championing some of the most overly-fecund groups of people on the planet. You want more? They preach tolerance while shouting down and threatening those whose views are different.

Still, here I am trying to unravel their tangled ideas and make some sense of them.

I realize anecdotes are not proof of anything (unlike liberals, who belief anecdotes alone can prove their points or refute opponents' points) but anecdotes can illustrate patterns.

A friend and I were puzzling over the behavior and statements of two people we know, both of whom are Democrats and both of whom, predictably, voted for the present regime. Both are also women, but one is an elderly lady of 80 or so, while the other is a relative youngster at 50.

The commonality between these women, besides having voted for ''hope and change'', is that they are both White -- and both have some very politically incorrect beliefs on race. The octogenarian lady, understandably, given her age, uses some very politically incorrect language; she tends to be very blunt and salty, and prolifically uses the 'n-word.' The younger woman is a little more steeped in the PC pieties which have saturated our media (and our minds) for the last few decades. Yet recently she surprised me by offering an unsolicited opinion that when it comes to marriage and reproduction, people should 'stay with their own kind.' This rather took me by surprise, knowing that this woman voted as she did, and considering that she and I don't usually discuss these 'controversial' topics. Her burst of candor was provoked by her recently learning that a family friend had married interracially and had two biracial children of the union.

The older lady, I would suspect, would agree with her rather bluntly. Yet both of these women voted not just for a black president, but they support the multicultural/diversity agenda promoted by the political party they've chosen.

How can we explain this?

I've noticed this pattern with other Democrat/liberal people -- usually with women. A past co-worker of mine was quite the Democrat partisan, and a typical dilettante liberal, involved in every sort of hippy-dippy liberal/lefty/New-Age-y cause, but she too would say these very politically incorrect things on race. After returning from a day-long outing to Chinatown, though she loved her 'diversity', she announced it was wonderful to be back among her own kind. She also informed me that she would no longer hire Asians because she had had an Asian immigrant employee who quit without notice.

In my recent post 'Silence gives consent' I discussed how it seems that many people do not really, deep-down, believe in this multicultural, anti-White order that we have. They may give lip service to it, but the multicult propagandists don't seem to have succeeded in completely overwriting all of the innate natural preferences people have, regarding race and ethnicity, or in erasing the traces of the old cultural order, which allowed people to take note of the obvious differences among groups of people -- and to act accordingly. There are still some vestiges of these things even among liberals; whether you believe it is innate or learned, it's still there.

I suppose the FReepers and the rest of the colorblind conservative crowd would seize on the above anecdotes as more proof that 'liberals are the real racists' and 'Democrats are the haters, not Republicans.' No, I don't believe it's that simple, and moreover I think it's high time Republicans stopped trying to outdo the Democrats at currying favor with minorities and proving their lack of 'racism.'

Do these 'racist' liberals realize that their words don't fit their professed beliefs, and that it is bizarre to vote for a party or an ideology that would actually condemn them for even having taboo thoughts about race? Or is it understood somehow that if you vote the correct way, you get a free pass on certain politically incorrect statements because you are not a Republican or 'conservative'? Maybe that's the deal; in much the same way, blacks can freely use the 'n-word' while Whites are raked over the coals for even saying anything that remotely sounds like the n-word -- remember the furore over the word 'niggardly'? And we've all seen examples of lefty celebrities getting a pass on saying taboo things, while a Mel Gibson or a Dr. Laura are pilloried and all but run out of town.

I am left with just one plausible explanation as to why certain White people who seem to be somewhat racially aware still side with non-Whites politically, and support a political  agenda that is anti-White to the core. The only explanation that might begin to make some sense of it is that the right, whether the Republican Party or conservatives in general or White Christians are portrayed as being so odious and so reprehensible that the only 'decent' thing to do is to vote Democrat. Somebody has done a very good job of villainizing the right, and the traditional order of things in this country.

There are people who voted for the current order of things who are not the brainwashed 'mad-dog liberals', as Cambria Will Not Yield calls them. They are not the true-believer ideologues or the nihilists that make up many of the so-called 'anti-fascist' young radicals. They are just people, often passive or uninformed, who have been persuaded that White 'conservatives' are a bigger danger to this country than any other group of people.

And though the statement I'm about to make may step on some toes, the fact is, the right can at times be its own worst enemy. When I was a liberal I believed, as liberals/leftists universally believe, that the right, including the not-that-conservative Republicans, are the champions of big corporations, big business, globalism, fat cats, and so on. There is something to this; all too often, the Republican Party is dominated by the Country Club 'respectables' who care only about their financial interests and the good opinion of their peers. There is too little regard for the salt-of-the-earth people of this country among many 'conservatives.' Therefore some rather well-intentioned but not very perceptive people have deluded themselves into thinking that the Democrat Party is for ''The People'' or ''the working man.'' Such of course is not the case; they, too, are the party of the elites and the 'fat cats' and the globalist predators, but they have managed to fool many people into buying the notion of their  compassion.

I can only think that many people are still Democrats only because they have come to be convinced that the Democrats truly are the lesser of the evils. Whatever negative views they hold about the favored victim groups, their negative opinions of the Republicans are stronger.

Comments, again...

Those wanting to leave a comment may notice that a new commenting system has been added, which is the Intense Debate system, as used on WordPress;  I hope it will work well for us here.

As of now the comments made under the Blogger system will remain visible on the older posts but new posts will use the Intense Debate system. 

Masters or...

We all know that much of Europe is under the same cultural and demographic assault as we are. This case, which is reminiscent of the Tony Martin case in the UK some years back, shows that there is still in France a kernel of belief in the basic right of self-defense.

For those who don't recall the Tony Martin case in Britain, Tony Martin, in attempting to defend himself after repeated home invasions, shot two trespassers in his home. He served prison time for doing what most of us here in America take for granted, simply defending his own life and property, in his own home.

Another case along these lines was the Joe Horn incident in Pasadena, Texas, a couple of years ago, about which I wrote on this blog. Texas of course has the 'castle doctrine' which allows homeowners to defend themselves with deadly force when called for. The grand jury refused to indict Mr. Horn, who was luckier than the hapless Mr. Martin in the UK and, apparently, than René Galinier in France, the septuagenarian who was arrested for shooting burglars.

Although a group called the Ligue du Midi ('League of the South') is campaigning to free Mr. Galinier, things don't look good for him, according to zazie's comments on the discussion thread at Gallia Watch.

My sympathies go out to this man, who is of a generation which was brought up under the old traditions, in which self-defense was understood to be a right of free people. Men like Mr. Galinier and Tony Martin in the UK are unfortunate casualties of this 'new order' of things in which we, the rightful peoples of the Western countries, are asked to 'go gently into that good night,' to lie down and passively surrender when confronted with a threat to our existence. These men just haven't learned, I suppose, that the old rules have been rendered null and void, and the new rule is that it is 'racist' to defend your property and your very life, if those who are trying to take them from you are members of some 'victim' group. Mr. Galinier's burglars were Roma gypsies, apparently, as were Mr. Martin's. Joe Horn's confrontation was with two illegal Latin Americans in the act of burglary.

I can only hope that cases like this will wake up the 'silent majority' in Europe, the people who still remember the sane old days, in which men were men and still had the right to defend themselves without fear of prosecution -- or is it persecution? -- by the ideologues in charge of most Western governments now.

Tiberge at Gallia Watch posts the logo of the Ligue du Midi, with the French motto translated as 'Masters in our house.' Something for us to think about.

“The peaceable part of mankind will be continually overrun by the vile and abandoned while they neglect the means of self-defence. The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms like laws discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside.... Horrid mischief would ensue were one half the world deprived of the use of them; . . . the weak will become prey.”

-Thomas Paine, "Thoughts on Defensive War", Pennsylvania Magazine, July 1775

Comments

I am just now noticing some of the comments on the posts from a week or more ago, so if I haven't acknowledged or replied to a comment, it's not that I am ignoring you all; I just now noticed the older comments. I appreciate them.

I rather miss the old Haloscan comment system we used to have; it put the recent comments at the top of my page, so that if someone posted on an older thread, I would see that post and could respond. But for now, until or unless I find another commenting system, we are stuck with this one, where the comments on older threads may go unnoticed. So bear with me please.

Silence gives consent

In a recent comment, Glenn W provided a link to this online discussion from a few years ago. The subject was something called 'The Preference Cascade.' Just as Glenn W said, it seems to be an interesting idea or theory.

The discussion thread at the above link devolves, unfortunately, into a discussion of the possibility of 'democratizing' the Islamic world, and for the record, of course I disagree that we can 'democratize' any alien country or 'modernize' them; people and nations are not blank slates. In any case, that's tangential to this discussion.

Because the original link which provoked the forum post is no longer good, I can't view the article in question, but a search on the term 'preference cascade' led to a wiki about Timur Kuran, who seems to have been the originator of the idea.

''Professor Kuran has written extensively on the evolution of preferences and institutions, with contributions to the study of hidden preferences, the unpredictability of social revolutions, the dynamics of ethnic conflict, perceptions of discrimination, and the evolution of morality. His best known theoretical work is Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification (Harvard University Press), which deals with the repercussions of being dishonest about what one knows and wants.
[...]

Preference Falsification

In articulating preferences, individuals frequently tailor their choices to what appears socially acceptable. In other words, they convey preferences that differ from what they genuinely want. Kuran calls the resulting misrepresentation “preference falsification.” In his 1995 book, Private Truths, Public Lies, he argues that the phenomenon is ubiquitous and that it has huge social and political consequences. These consequences all hinge on interdependencies between individual decisions as to what preference to convey publicly. A person who hides his discontent about a fashion, policy, or political regime makes it harder for others to express discontent.

One socially significant consequence of preference falsification is thus widespread public support for social options that would be rejected decisively in a vote taken by secret ballot. Privately unpopular policies may be retained indefinitely as people reproduce conformist social pressures through individual acts of preference falsification.

In falsifying preferences, people hide the knowledge on which it rests. In the process, they distort, corrupt, and impoverish the knowledge in the public domain. They make it harder for others to become informed about the drawbacks of existing arrangements and the merits of their alternatives. Another consequence of preference falsification is thus widespread ignorance about the advantages of change. Over long periods, preference falsification can dampen a community’s capacity to want change by bringing about intellectual narrowness and ossification.

The first of these consequences is driven by people’s need for social approval, the second by their reliance on each other for information.

Kuran has applied these observations to a range of contexts. He has used the theory developed in Private Truths, Public Lies to explain why major political revolutions catch us by surprise, how ethnic tensions can feed on themselves, why India’s caste system has been a powerful social force for millennia, and why minor risks sometimes generate mass hysteria.''

The theory is applied to the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe, which is the subject that immediately comes to mind in examining this theory. In a blog post of mine a few years ago, I wrote about the example of the sudden and largely non-violent fall of the Eastern European regimes back in the 90s. Few of us then had any clue that those regimes were so precarious; few predicted how precipitately they would crumble. The Wikipedia article continues:

''Unanticipated Revolutions

The fall of East European communism in 1989 came as a massive surprise. Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1978-79 stunned the CIA, the KGB, the Shah of Iran that it toppled, and even the Ayatollah Khomeini, whom it catapulted to power. The Russian Revolution of 1917 stunned Lenin, the deposed Romanovs, and foreign diplomats stationed in St. Petersburg. No one foresaw the French Revolution of 1789, not even the rioters who brought it about. In each of these cases, a massive shift in political power occurred when long-submerged sentiments burst to the surface, with public opposition to the incumbent regime feeding on itself. Preference falsification explains why the incumbent regime appeared stable almost until the eve of its collapse. People ready to oppose it publicly kept their opposition private until a coincidence of factors gave them the motivation and the courage to bring their discontents out in the open. In switching sides, they encouraged other hidden opponents to join the opposition themselves. Through the resulting bandwagon process, fear changed sides. No longer did opponents of the old regime feel that they would be punished for being sincere; genuine supporters of the old regime started falsifying their preferences, pretending that the turn of events met their approval.''

The theory is discussed later in the article in the context of inter-ethnic conflict, but lest we think Kuran is a pro-nationalist, it appears he thinks that ethnic division is a 'false preference'. And lest we have any doubt about his politics, it appears he and none other than Cass Sunstein have, together, developed a theory about 'availability cascades'.

“Availability cascade” is a concept that Timur Kuran developed jointly with Cass Sunstein, initially through a 1999 article entitled “Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation.” An availability cascade is a process of collective belief formation whereby an expressed perception triggers reactions that make that perception seem increasingly plausible through its rising availability in public discourse. The driving mechanism ordinarily involves a combination of informational and reputational motives. Individuals endorse the perception partly because they base their own beliefs on the apparent beliefs of others. The other motivation is social acceptance, which individuals achieve through preference falsification.

Kuran and Sunstein observe that availability entrepreneurs — activists who aim to control the content of public discourse — engineer availability cascades to further their own agendas. Their availability campaigns may do great harm. Many popular scares about innocuous products and insignificant dangers have been driven by campaigns that combine the spread of misinformation with the intimidation of doubters. Once public discourse turns in favor of the initiated agenda, fear feeds on itself, as expressed perceptions of danger shape the perceptions of others, and doubters silence themselves. Episodes of mass hysteria have lasting consequences for public policy and the law.''

[Emphasis mine.]

I am sure they did not intend this to be applied to the left's way of ''controlling the content of public discourse'', but it's obvious that is what is being done.

But the theory itself can be wielded by our side as well as by the Left, and we have the advantage, as I've said in the past, of human nature on our side. Their way, the Left's way, the globalist/internationalist One Worlders' way, has to go against the grain of human nature, and millennia of tradition.

Regardless of the source of the idea of 'preference cascades', there is obviously much that is true, and above all, useful in it.

I remember the era when things began to drastically change; the leftist revolution that came to a head in the late 60s was in the works for a long time. But it happened gradually enough that it was allowed to succeed, and one day it seemed we woke up in a different world. But here's a question I have: when the older people who were alive in the 60s and 70s suddenly started acquiescing to the new order of things, such as the ''sexual revolution'' and the new racial order, were they just finally dropping all pretence of belief in the old ways, or were they simply adopting a pretence of belief in the new-and-improved America? Did they have any fixed principles or firm beliefs, or are many people simply malleable, willing to go whichever way the wind blows? A few years ago, I wrote that many older Americans of that era were giving mere lip service to the old ways, while in their hearts they were happy to drop the facade of honoring the old morality and the traditional ways.



In a way, this subject ties in with the theme of the 'remnant', to which I've alluded now and then.
Perhaps it is true that the majority, not being given to serious thought or examination of their true beliefs, is simply content to be manipulated, to swim with the current, to go whichever way the tide of fickle public opinion (influenced by propaganda, however) turns. As such these people of no fixed principles are followers, not leaders, and the most we might hope for is that they will not hinder our side, though they will not likely help us either.

Back in 2008 I believed that we could give the current system a push and it might fall of its own weight.

And back in 2007 I wrote that

I simply think the status quo can't continue much longer; the stresses are becoming intolerable, much as the tectonic stresses, like those along a fault line, are building up, and the energy will have to be released somehow; before a seismic event results. ''

I still think that, but I think Kuran's theory is right on this point: every time one of us conceals our true beliefs, every time we hesitate to express our true opinions and feelings about the state of our world, we stifle truth; we aid and abet this false system that has such a stranglehold on us.