It's a start, but...

...this ruling is not the last word, unfortunately.

U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson ruled Monday in Pensacola, Fla., that the Democrats' Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, in particular the mandate that forces uninsured individuals to buy coverage, runs afoul of the Constitution.
"The individual mandate falls outside the boundary of Congress' Commerce Clause authority," Vinson writes in his 78-page ruling, "and cannot be reconciled with a limited government of enumerated powers."

Neither can it "be otherwise authorized by an assertion of power under the Necessary and Proper Clause. It is not constitutional," concluded the Reagan appointee.''

This is good as far as it goes. But as we know, the left will continue to try to push their agenda despite these unfavorable decisions.

What troubles me the most is that too many 'conservatives' are in agreement with the left about health care for those they consider useless. Over at one blog (which shall remain nameless), a discussion is going on in which somebody quotes John Adams' famous line about how our system of government will only be capable of governing ''a moral and religious people.'''  Another commenter adds an 'amen' to that quote -- while he has just finished saying that there should be NO medical care for the aged, only palliative care.

How can someone say 'amen' to Adams' words, referring to our government being for a 'moral and religious people'' while saying 'no medical care for the aged'? What kind of Christian, or in fact what kind of 'civilized' person says that?

This is your brain on libertarianism or 'tough-minded conservatism.'
This is what I meant about many 'conservatives' being crypto-libertarians, having read too many Ayn Rand books in youth.

Nietzsche, Rand et al have done more to destroy traditional values than just about anybody. 'Rand' or whatever her real name,  and her acolytes and admirers have been useful to the left in destroying what is left of our old Christian-based traditional civilization.

There is really not much left to conserve, at this point.
If 'conservatives' (or libertarians in conservative guise) are the alternative to leftism, then we are in real trouble as a civilization. There will be nobody to speak up for the weaker members of society. Conservatives are starting to sound like Ebenezer Scrooge  when he said ''let them die and decrease the surplus population.''

If this is 'conservatism' then I want no part of it. It is not compatible with Biblical Christianity.

Whitness not a 'social construct'

It's a mutation.

In a blog post recently I said that, given the logic of the 'out of Africa' theory, Whites could be considered a 'mutated' form of human. Actually I had never heard a scientist say anything like that before. The only suggestion of such a bizarre idea came from people like Louis Farrakhan and the black 'Muslims' who believe that a mad scientist invented mutant Whites in a laboratory many millennia ago.

Well, now we have the Washington Post quoting 'scientists' as more or less endorsing the Farrakhan theory of races.

''Scientists said yesterday that they have discovered a tiny genetic mutation that largely explains the first appearance of white skin in humans tens of thousands of years ago, a finding that helps solve one of biology's most enduring mysteries and illuminates one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.

The work suggests that the skin-whitening mutation occurred by chance in a single individual after the first human exodus from Africa, when all people were brown-skinned. That person's offspring apparently thrived as humans moved northward into what is now Europe, helping to give rise to the lightest of the world's races.''

Did you notice the last sentence in the first paragraph above? Race is 'one of humanity's greatest sources of strife.' Just forget all you read in history books about the countless wars fought over various other things (territory, resources, greed, envy, women, religion, etc.) Race is the main culprit.

But lest we start to think race is anything more than a 'social construct', the next paragraph cautions us:

''Leaders of the study, at Penn State University, warned against interpreting the finding as a discovery of "the race gene." Race is a vaguely defined biological, social and political concept, they noted, and skin color is only part of what race is -- and is not.

In fact, several scientists said, the new work shows just how small a biological difference is reflected by skin color. The newly found mutation involves a change of just one letter of DNA code out of the 3.1 billion letters in the human genome -- the complete instructions for making a human being. ''

Keep on repeating it often enough, and maybe that will make it true.

Read the rest at the link, if you have a high tolerance for leftist pseudo-science. Maybe 'pseudo-science' is a harsh term for what we see here, but these people, whether they can admit it or not, are allowing their own backgrounds and prejudices as well as  the societal straitjacket called 'political correctness' to color their interpretations of data. Scientists, as we know, are not immune from bias and from peer pressure. Look at the 'global warming' canard, and how strong a hold it has on many ostensibly objective people.

If they really believe that race is a 'social construct' then they should have the courage of their convictions and eliminate the concept of a form of thought-crime called 'racism', and they should oppose affirmative action and every other race-related policy which the Politically Correct faithful defend ferociously.

It rather worries me that this Ms Wang of the National Human Genome Research Institute clearly subscribes to the PC belief system.

If you can make sense of the quote from her at the end, you are cleverer than I am. She seems to be contradicting herself. But she is right about one thing: the 'race is a social construct' crowd do ''sound crazy.'' And for good reason.

Leftist 'scientists' have long railed at people who differentiate in any way between the various races and ethnic groups. The accusation is that such people are practicing 'social Darwinism' or 'racial Darwinism', misapplying Darwin's theory to create a hierarchy of races. Is this idea of Whites as a 'mutation', which in common parlance is a 'freak' or an aberration, not an example of such thinking? As usual, the left contradict themselves, quite brazenly.

Egypt

Over at Man Sized Target, Mr. Roach, in a couple of paragraphs, sums up his thoughts about Egypt. I have to say I agree with just about everything he says.

I second what he says about this country being the primary concern, and I don't think it's up to us to try to 'stabilize' things or 'introduce democracy' or whatever other pretext is used to justify intervention.

Whether or not 'our' government already has a hand in what is going on there, which is possible, we should not meddle further in this situation. If we do, it will no doubt only complicate things.

The real destruction

One of the worst things that the Left has done in their transformation of Western society is that they have killed off traditional values and attitudes in a number of ways.

The most obvious way is by infiltrating and subverting Christianity, either directly, or indirectly, by implanting via education and media ideas that are antithetical to Christianity.
Psychology, with its exaltation of the 'self' and 'felt needs',  and the religion of 'tolerance' are examples.

Reading this thread from Free Republic is a sad experience, as I knew it would be when I read the headline: An uncertain future after jobless benefits expire

The story which is being discussed is that of a 55-year-old man who finds himself still unemployed as his benefits run out. I won't focus on the merits of that particular man or his story, but on the larger issues of 'hard times' and social cohesion.

A commenter says:

Now for all the Freepers and their “Well, the bum should FIND A JOB!!!” Either most are unaware of the true market in some areas of the US, or just willfully ignorant.

11 posted on 01/29/2011 5:04:39 PM PST by autumnraine''

Actually she (I assume it is a she) is correct that the ''the bum should find a job!!!'' theme is the one that is heard most often over at FR or any other Republican/conservative forum or blog.

There have been times in this country when all that was needed to find work was a willingness to work and minimal qualifications.However, such is not the case now. I know of a number of people who have been out of work for a year to two years, despite a solid employment history and experience. Those that have found work have had to accept jobs that were low-paying and physically demanding. This is especially sad when one is a man in his mid-50s and not as strong as he was. And age discrimination is a reality; hardly anyone gets sued for it, but it is known to happen. Over 40 is over the hill, for most employers.

One man I know of found a job after more than a year, only to have that job eliminated after a couple of months. Sure, you may say this is anecdotal stuff, but it is becoming much more common. Jobs are not growing on trees out there, and employers who are hiring can be extremely selective about hiring, given that it is so much an employer's market. Add to the poor economy the factor of a few million (as far as we know) immigrants every year, as jobs disappear, and things look bleak for many people.

The stereotypical 'conservative' will say of the unemployed ''well, they should have saved or invested better when times were good.'' Yes, but savings and other resources get depleted very quickly in these times. Unexpected things can happen. These days, with wages and benefits being cut, and the cost of living growing quickly, money does not go as far.

I can say honestly that I never had to draw unemployment benefits, but that does not mean that I condemn those who do have to draw them. There but for the grace of God, etc.

Yes, initiative, hard work, and personal responsibility are cardinal virtues, and ones that conservatives uphold, or should uphold. By no means do I disagree that those things are important, or even vital. But bad things do happen to good people sometimes. Not everybody who is experiencing hard times is a lazy no-account who deserves his misfortune, which is what I hear conservatives saying all too often.

Do we forget that other things are also 'conservative values', things such as empathy for kinsman, neighborliness, filial piety, civic pride, and so on? What I see all too often among the average conservative or Republican types is 'everybody for himself, the devil take the hindmost.'

What I think is partially to blame here is that many 'conservatives' are not conservative at all in the sense of revering traditional values and preserving our shared past and heritage. Instead, they tend to react against the excesses of the Left and go to the opposite pole. If liberals/leftists preach about compassion, then the 'right' decides that compassion is just more liberal twaddle. If the left insists that we owe the world a living, (which of course we don't) we go even farther to the 'right' and deny that we even owe anything to our brother, or our kinsman.

Add to this, the fact that in recent years, the libertarian element in 'conservatism' has grown until it eclipses the eternal verities, and leaves us with the 'every man for himself' ethos, the 'every man is an island', I-owe-nothing-to-nobody philosophy.

The sad fact seems to be that the Left with their excess of sentimentality and faux charity have discredited charity and kindness for too many conservatives. With their 'brotherhood of man' claptrap, they have produced the opposite reaction on the right, the idea that nobody is my brother. 'I am a rugged individualist who asks nothing and offers nothing to others', seems to be the motto of the tough-minded 'conservative.'

My recent post about the Great Depression asked whether we would be able to survive such hard times in our era. I think most of us would agree that we probably wouldn't. We lack the communal spirit, and too many have hardened their hearts toward their fellow man. I acknowledge that it's true that the Left has abused and perverted the innate altruism of our people, to the extent that many of us (including myself, I admit) feel cynical at the left's manipulation of our emotions when they guilt-trip us about the bleeding Third World.

During the Reagan Administration and later, when the 'homeless problem' first became a big issue, there was talk about people suffering from 'compassion fatigue' towards the homeless. For myself, I know that I used to sympathize with the rare panhandler who would approach and ask for money. Actually, in the old days, even the few beggars had some pride, in that they would not ask a woman for money, or at least not a young woman as I was then. But I was at one time quite moved by their obvious condition and would try to help. But as the numbers of beggars, most of them quite brazen and obnoxious started to multiply, I quickly became jaded to their pleas. I don't like feeling that way, but it seems there is a limit to the amount of sympathies that we can extend to strangers. And that is probably how it should be. We need to emphasize personal responsibility, but there has to be some balance with concern for our neighbors and kinsmen, the latter first, of course.

What the Left has done is that they have exhausted our normal feelings of compassion, in many cases. Their excessive use of guilt and sympathy for the underdog has produced something of a backlash, or an overload, at least among some of us.

I often think that liberals are immune from this condition because they themselves do not feel guilt; they see us, the non-liberal normal people, as being rightfully guilty, while they see themselves as the 'good guys', the virtuous ones who are never guilty of things like racism or xenophobia or sexism or homophobia or whatever other social sin they have dreamed up.
Their 'compassion' is often just a show, not a genuinely felt emotion. It's been shown that liberals are not the best givers of charity.

And I notice that all the lefties who cry crocodile tears over the poor illegals are not taking said illegals into their own homes to house and feed them.

There has been much talk of the 'Cloward-Piven Strategy',  apparently due to Glenn Beck's belaboring that subject on his TV show. What that strategy is said to be is an effort to destroy capitalism by overloading the government's resources. Maybe what they are doing to our character is something like this; they weary us and wear us down, asking us to care for the poor and downtrodden, the underdogs and victims of the world. They spend untold amounts of money in an effort to fix all the world's woes, and things only get worse. They are not only stripping us of financial resources, but I think they have, wittingly or not, stripped many 'conservatives' of their old-fashioned values of neighborliness and old-fashioned charity, in every sense of that word.

And in so doing, they have created a living caricature of the hard-hearted conservative who sneers at his neighbor's misfortune and washes his hands of any kind of civic responsibility. This is the stereotype that the left has always used to discredit conservatives, and it is now being translated into reality more and more. This does not help anybody but our enemies.

Am I proposing that we become like gushy liberals, weeping crocodile tears over the 'victims' of the world? Hardly. I am just reminding us that the old America once had a proper balance between the emphasis on personal initiative and the realization that we are all in this together, and we can't sustain a society based on the atomized invididual who looks out for number one only.

Our parents and grandparents maintained something of a balance, but we seem to be losing that, or have already lost it.

The left, I think, wants it that way. They want a society in which people care only about self, or at most their own spouse and children, a society in which people neither know nor trust their neighbors, much less form bonds with them.

I see some very troubling signs on the right, what with many 'conservatives' ever more willing to jettison the old as ''too costly'' -- without even considering the consequences of, say, stopping all social programs cold turkey. There are lives involved; real human beings, who matter more than abstract principles.

I see a danger that many on the right are becoming ideologues in the same sense that Libertarians and Leftists are ideologues -- devoted to abstract ideas rather than to what works in reality, or to what the real-life consequences of ideas are.

Even among ethnopatriots, I see a mere handful who seem to care about all our folk, and not just about those who agree 100 percent with us politically. I see quite a few who can't say anything good about their people, and that is not promising for our future. If we don't like or care for each other, what's ethnopatriotism about?

We seem to have been trapped into repudiating some of the old verities, into thinking that any kind of community is 'communism' and any kind of altruism is manipulation, or that any kind of interdependence is 'slavery'.

This is the worst thing, really, that the leftists have done. In corrupting our culture, by distorting or weakening our better qualities, they have done real damage. Can we undo it?

Charlie Louvin, 1927-2011

I just heard of the passing of Charlie Louvin, who died a few days ago at the age of 83.

Charlie, along with his brother Ira, was a legend in country music, although, sadly, he probably isn't known by many of today's country music fans. The Louvin Brothers were a very influential duo for later country musicians, with their unique harmonies and distinctive style.

There are a number of Louvin Brothers videos on YouTube, but I chose this one. I am partial to the song and to the performance in this old TV clip.

Diversity's side effects

The Boston Globe, in an op-ed piece, discusses some of the seamy side of holy Diversity.

The 'mainstream' media write about this issue a lot. And I suppose it's good that they do so, but it's bad that they often write about it in a rather less than honest way.

Generally, they do all they can to play down any racial aspects to these stories, although it's obvious to even the most dense reader that these horror stories involve 'diversity'.

''IN NEWARK, 20 young women and girls from West Africa were discovered working in hair-braiding salons for 14 hours a day with no pay. Their employer ruled over the victims, some as young as 10, with beatings, sexual assaults, and voodoo curses. Closer to home, five people were indicted in Quincy for operating brothels in rented apartments using immigrant women kept in a state of debt bondage with threats of deportation. In Danvers, a 13-year old runaway girl was offered to a group of men at a Motel 6 by a woman living at the hotel with her son.''

But as with all cases involving 'human smuggling', the illegals who enter the country this way are counted as victims and given special visas to stay in this country, ostensibly so they may testify against their 'victimizers.'

''Human trafficking is the fastest-growing illegal industry in the United States, second only to drugs. Federal authorities believe most trafficking rings are supplying forced labor — for domestic work, agriculture, manufacturing, hair and nail salons, and strip club dancing. But prostitution is close behind, and there can be a thin line between sweatshops and brothels.

Coerced prostitution is increasingly popular among criminal gangs because of its grim utility. An illegal gun or drug can only be sold once. But a girl’s body can be — and is — sold over and over again.''

The last two paragraphs quoted above play up the 'coerced' aspect of this situation. I have no doubt that there are such cases, where someone is forced into this kind of life, but I also believe that in cases of illegal immigrants, people may often agree to work for those who smuggle them into the country, in exchange for the latter's 'services.' But then the payment that is exacted may be something other than what was expected, or they may be forced to continue working indefinitely, under threat of being turned in to authorities. It seems entirely possible to me that many young women are aware of the 'work' they will be doing in this country, though maybe they are unaware of how little freedom they will be given.

I do find it a little surprising that the Globe op-ed questions the usual 'prostitution as victimless crime' attitude, as it is now viewed by many people, even by self-professed conservatives.

However, I think it is a way of life into which many young women enter with their eyes wide open. There are women who, lacking a moral grounding, see nothing immoral about it. I know a young woman who professes Christianity who tells me that some of her friends have become strippers and she sees nothing wrong with that; it's just a career choice where there is money to be made. Some young women see prostitution as just that, too, a way to earn a lucrative living.

So it may be possible that some of these enslaved young women were looking for 'economic opportunity' in this way.

And many of the people who are caught in raids on these kinds of activities are allowed to stay  and may never have to return home.

But in a sense, isn't this whole picture what the illegal immigrant (and even legal immigrant) dream is about? Do whatever you have to do, legal or not, moral or not, to get to the streets paved with gold -- the ''better life'' we so often hear about?

Once upon a time, the 'American dream' meant something a lot more high-minded and honorable.

Thoughts about the 'replacement' agenda

There is an interesting piece from Occidental Observer, titled 'British Genetics, 101.' Now, I'm aware that not everyone here is very interested in the genetics of Britain, but in the comments 'ethnonationalist' states that the effort to replace the British population with an amalgamation from many countries is not directed at 'the White race' per se.

He says

What is going on in Britain is genocide against the native English population.
If it were a “White genocide”, than Poles, Bulgarians, Irish, Lithuanians, etc. would not be permitted to immigrate to England.''

I've wondered about the rationale behind the importation of many White immigrants to not only the UK but also Ireland. If it is indeed all about an anti-White agenda, then why would this policy be pursued? On the face of it, it does seem as though the effort is to introduce  many disparate genetic strains into the UK, and it does seem as though the immigrants are mostly from the Third World. But where do the Eastern Europeans fit into this agenda?

I know that the official story is that they are 'guest workers' who will go home once they earn some money. And apparently quite a few do return home but a great many stay. And regardless of whether they are of the same race as the natives of the British Isles, they are a different people with a different religion and culture. English (or Irish or Scots or Welsh) are not interchangeable with Poles or Lithuanians.

it does seem that ethnonationalist is right on this score. And it does seem that the English, the ethnic English, are the target because the other groups in the UK are encouraged in their nationalistic aspirations, while the English are not even treated as a legitimate ethnic group. One can be 'British' because it is an inclusive identity; immigrants can get a British passport or citizenship and call themselves 'British' while being Pakistani or African or Caribbean. But no one can be English except by blood, so it is a 'discriminatory' identity, too exclusive for the multicultists. In a way it's analogous to the way the label 'American' can be promiscuously applied to people from everywhere, and is therefore rendered  meaningless.

And as to the main subject of the article by Dodgson, it does provide some interesting information about the genetic makeup of Britain, and it somewhat questions the prevailing myths about Celtic vs. Germanic origins.

In any case, the race-replacers efforts to gaslight people into believing 'Britain has always been multiracial' are based on lies, obviously.

In response to a question

Several months ago, a commenter (was it Margrave?) asked me if I knew of any good sources which would explain the system referred to as 'Jim Crow.'  I said I didn't know, offhand, of a good source. Books in print which do not hew to the politically correct point of view are few and far between, as are online sources, though there may be some on archive.org.

However I was looking over this web page from Spirit Water Blood which reproduces a long exchange involving the late Dennis Wheeler, who was a great defender of the South, and in letter #3 from Wheeler, about halfway through the letter, he mentions 'Jim Crow' in the context of Reconstruction. The whole page is worth reading for those interested in the issues discussed.

If anyone has any other sources that they think worth mentioning, please offer them.

Leftist derangement syndrome

Here's another instance of that inflammatory quote attributed to Margaret Sanger.

Just as I said, this is being picked up on as a Republican talking point, and it is being widely used.
I am no fan of Sanger nor a believer in abortion, but does family planning always equate to abortion?  Was Sanger even talking about abortion here? Again, as with every time I have seen this quote used, there is never a link to an actual instance of it. Even if it were linked to an online source, can we be sure it is not being wrested out of context so as to be used to spread this inflammatory rumor? Could she not simply have been warning that there was a tendency toward black suspicion of White motives and susceptibility to wild rumors of plots by Whites?

Do we really think family planning advocates were fomenting some kind of 'final solution' back in the early 20th century? It sounds like the ''right'' now believes the "genocidal Whites" meme so beloved of the anti-White left. Is this not irresponsible as well as self-hating on the part of Whites?

A comment on that blog refers to Sharpton as a 'racial arsonist' but is not this kind of rhetoric, especially without a specific quote in context, a kind of racial arson of itself?

I think the anti-abortion, 'respectable' right is suffering from leftist derangement syndrome, and is now becoming unhinged just as the anti-White left has for years. Won't somebody call them out on this issue?

Confused and confounded

We discuss 'diversity' frequently in terms of the 'diversity' which is engineered change via mass immigration for the most part, today.

Michele Bachmann's speech about diversity, which I blogged about last night, referred to the 'diversity' that's always been part of America, according to the offical PC party line.

She is right, in a way, although not in the sense that she implied. She seemed to be saying that we've always had many races and faiths here, just as with our imposed diversity of today. We haven't.

It's true that there were American Indians since the beginning, and African-descended people since the 17th century with the first slaves in the colonies.

I fully expect that we will soon start seeing more fairy-tale history like that in many British 'historic' dramas, like the awful cable TV series about Merlin, King Arthur, et al, or like the Robin Hood series which had Moslems and blacks in Sherwood Forest. Soon our TV dramas and 'documentaries' will have Hindus and Sikhs and Somalis at the Alamo or on the Oregon Trail.

It troubles me that many people start to believe this stuff because they know no better, and because apparently it makes them feel good to think we have always had 'diversity' because it is our 'greatest strength.'

No, the diversity we had was mainly of the Northern/Western European variety, at the beginning. We all know that the English colonized this country, as well as smaller numbers of Swedes and Germans as well as the Dutch, who founded New Amsterdam (later New York.) The Welsh and the Scots were part of the English colonies for the most part.

The Cajuns of Louisiana were a special case in that most of them came to the Louisiana Territory in the 18th century, while it was under French control. So they never 'immigrated' to America, but came from Canada and other places within the French territories to Louisiana.

I count them as 'old stock' though most people consider that this means only the previously-named colonists.

The European-derived 'diversity' that we had in this country worked pretty well, despite the strains that occurred later on when large numbers of people from other countries began to arrive.

Even the peoples of British Isles ancestry seem now to be more divided than ever. Is it because the whole world is re-tribalizing? That might be a good thing, but it is still causing divisions within the ranks of Americans of colonial stock. Not one day goes by that I don't read divisive comments about English or Anglo-Saxon Americans. I can't count the number of comments I've read over several years by people of Scots or Irish descent, bemoaning their victimization at the hands of the English. Yet that was all long, long ago, and nobody today experienced it firsthand, any more than those descended from slaves experienced slavery.

We talk about secession as a solution to the deep rifts between North and South, but what about the other rifts among White Americans of British Isles descent? Can we all form our own little mini-states or fiefdoms?

In the UK, the Scots and the Welsh have their own nationalist movements, and are allowed to do so, but the English, seen as always the oppressors, are not allowed to have their own nationalist movement or ethnic status. Is that the way we are going here?

In this country, most of us who are not descended from recent immigrant stock are an amalgam of different Northern/Western European ethnicities. How, then, can we divide up along ethnic lines? And where is our place in the world if this country breaks apart? Where do those of mixed European ancestry fit in?

Even some pro-Whites say that 'American' is not a nationality or a people, only a civic identity, like 'British' in the UK. So where do we fit in the world, and if we try to continue as a unified American people, how can we put all the rhetoric of resentment and victimhood aside? It seems our people have been poisoned by all the decades of victimhood and grievance-mongering, so that many White Americans have picked it up and joined in the chorus of complaint.

The South has heretofore had a very strong identity, and the very reason for that is that there was, until recently, less 'diversity' there. Much of the South received few immigrants, especially those from very disparate cultures and peoples. There was a commonality of culture, and little dividing up along ethnic lines (Scots-Irish or 'Celtic' vs. Anglo-Saxon). Now that division seems to be growing. Can it be overcome?

It has to be, I say, or we don't have much on which to build.

But how is it to be done? It does not help that many people do not know basic history and simply believe whatever popular ideas or canards are out there. The divisions that seem so important to many Southerners seem to have been fueled in great part by David Hackett Fischer's ''Albion's Seed" which seems to be viewed as gospel by those who cite it.  I think his book is the one most often cited for the idea of the 'Celtic South', and I think it is oversimplified, though that idea is promulgated through one (or more) of the Southron partisan groups.

How can we get past this oversimplified preconception? It won't be easy, because it is firmly entrenched, and it seems to be an emotional perspective that does not base itself on facts.

Other ethnic identities under the European category are also becoming more nationalistic. As I said, though, this may be good in an abstract sense, but it undermines any unity that we once had as majority Americans, and those of English ancestry are odd men out because we are seen as 'only' generic Americans with a non-identity. This is ironic considering that Englishmen founded this country, and expressly did so for their 'posterity', who are now the red-headed stepchildren in the land our forefathers created.

I am probably waging a losing battle at trying to fend off these divisions, and I do whatever I can by writing about this neglected subject. I try especially  to find and to cite older sources so that we can see things from a clearer perspective than that of the 20th and 21st centuries, which seem to be a time of confusion, in all senses of that word.

'Who done it?'

Remember those pictures of the 'ruins of Detroit'? I first saw them several years ago, but for some reason the link is turning up on many 'mainstream' sites lately.

Does this seem like progress, the willingness to face what demographic changes mean for a city -- or a country? Think again.

Look at this posting, and read the comment thread. Only a couple of people on that thread mention the unmentionable.

Political correctness is as dominant as ever, I am afraid. The ability to deny reality is much more persistent than even I thought.

Now, how did the 'worse is better' people say it would work? They said that the worst case scenario in the last election would result in mass awakening.

Still waiting...

Diversity to the right of me, diversity to the left of me...

Michelle Bachmann, who is heralded as one of the rising stars in the Republican Party, tells us all about our country's history and meaning.

If you don't want to view the whole speech, the pertinent parts come at about 9:15 on the video.

"How unique in all of the world, that one nation that was the resting point from people groups all across the world," she said. "It didn't matter the color of their skin, it didn't matter their language, it didn't matter their economic status."

"Once you got here, we were all the same. Isn't that remarkable?" she asked.

Speaking at an Iowans For Tax Relief event, Bachmann (R-MN) also noted how slavery was a "scourge" on American history, but added that "we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States."

"And," she continued, "I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers [forebears? VA] who worked tirelessly -- men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country."

Among the other gems of wisdom she offered: "...we are a self-correcting country" and we are ''still continuing and perfecting" and ''equality is what they [our ancestors] came here to be about.''

It sounds like she studied history under Condoleezza Rice. Ms Rice often alluded to America past as being an imperfect thing which we are now working at fixing or perfecting, thanks to the innovations of liberalism and cultural Marxism, of course. This is in no way a 'conservative' or traditional point of view. It is nothing more nor less than a variation on the usual liberal/leftist theme of how the Founding Fathers just didn't get it like we do; we, fortunately, have 'evolved' way beyond those Neanderthals of the colonial era.

Our colonial ancestors did not come here in search of equality; they wanted mainly freedom to worship or freedom from an overbearing government.

I do resent Michelle Bachmann's implications, too, that 'diversity' was a part of the colonies; it was not. The Jamestown colonists were mostly English, and the New England colonists were all English. The 'diversity' came along later, and it was a fateful decision to introduce 'diversity.'

I can't speak for Ms Bachmann's ancestors, whose provenance I don't know.

And as to limited government and lower taxes, she apparently does not understand the connection between  'social justice' policies and high taxes/big government.

If this is the kind of 'conservatism' that the Republicans have to offer, then we are up the creek without the proverbial paddle.

Blogroll additions

I've added a few more new links to my blogroll.

First, our friend YIH has started blogging again.

I have just recently found the blog Phinehas Fury - A Kinist Blog.

Likewise, Faith and Heritage. See especially  the post called A Biblical Defense of Ethnonationalism.

Again, if any of you have blog links you'd like to call to my attention, post them here. For that matter, if you have links to news stories or blog pieces you'd like to post, feel free. The only caveat is that if you post more than two links in a comment, it will likely get caught in the spam filter.

Surnames in America

The National Geographic website has an interesting map showing the most common surnames in  the United States. It's an interactive map, and you can zoom in on your area or whatever area you like to see the most common names there.

Above the map, there is a link to the blog entry which accompanies the map.

It's  glaringly obvious that certain parts of the country are increasingly Hispanic, as the name distribution illustrated by the map indicates.

This census bureau list of the most common surnames shows that a great many Spanish surnames have entered the list, names that were not that common a decade or so ago. This is a testament to the rapid increase in the Latino population.

It does seem obvious from the lists that names originating in the British Isles predominate. However it's evident that not all are English; many of the common names are Welsh or Scots in origin.

Welsh names in the list: Williams, Jones, Davis, Evans, Morgan, Rice, Vaughn.

Scots names include Jackson, Wilson, Campbell, McDonald, Murray, Armstrong, and I am sure many others.

Irish names are fairly well-represented, as expected, but more so in certain areas of the country, not evenly distributed in most cases.

There are a number of German names like Schmidt and Hoffman, and Scandinavian names like Hansen and Larson. There are, of course, Scandinavians surnamed Johnson and Anderson, the latter of which may also be Scots.

My mother's maiden name is on the list, but about halfway down, not exactly one of the most common. Her family name, one of the old New England names, is no longer one of the common names in New England; it seems most of the old-stock colonial English names have been crowded out by immigrant-stock names, earlier, Irish or French names, but now probably Hispanic or other.

I think most of the bearers of the Jefferson name, like those surnamed Washington, are slave descendants, as with many of the common names like Anderson and Williams and Jones.
The name Jefferson is, however, only number 106 among common black surnames.

Despite the fact that hardly anybody today claims Anglo-Saxon heritage anymore, the names are still there. So I suspect there are more Anglo-Saxons genes in this country than many think -- but dwindling in proportion as we become outnumbered.

What about you, readers? How does it look from where you are, and are your ancestral names on the list?

Which generation is least politically correct?

Recently Howard Dean said that older Whites, typified by the Tea Party participants, are the group that has the biggest 'problem with diversity'. He said that this was more or less the 'last gasp' of what I term the old America.

Now, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, he of the 'leg tingle', echoes Dean's remarks.

MATTHEWS: It means—it’s significant. I think older Americans, older white people still have a problem with this guy. [Obama - VA]

{snip}

MATTHEWS: And I think that’s a generalization and I’ll stick with it. I think younger people do not see race as an obstacle. I don’t think—I think, they’re much more non-judgmental. In fact, about ethnicity, they just say that’s not relevant—In fact, they say it’s irrelevant and don’t even notice it, whereas older people notice it all the time.''

So is it true, that older White people are 'more racist'?

According to Pew Research, if we look at the voting patterns by age we see that

In the last three general elections - 2004, 2006, and 2008 -- young voters have given the Democratic Party a majority of their votes, and for all three cycles they have been the party's most supportive age group. This year, 66% of those under age 30 voted for Barack Obama making the disparity between young voters and other age groups larger than in any presidential election since exit polling began in 1972.

[...] Among voters ages 18-29, a 19-point gap now separates Democratic party affiliation (45%) and Republican affiliation (26%). In 2000, party affiliation was split nearly evenly among the young.

Young voters are more diverse racially and ethnically than older voters and more secular in their religious orientation. These characteristics, as well as the climate in which they have come of age politically, incline them not only toward Democratic Party affiliation but also toward greater support of activist government, greater opposition to the war in Iraq, less social conservatism, and a greater willingness to describe themselves as liberal politically.''

From another source:

 ''But the election of 2008 was historic for another reason — students who cast a vote in Tuesday’s presidential election (or mailed in an absentee ballot) were part of the largest ever group in their age bracket to support a single candidate, and the second largest youth voter movement in American history.

Between 22 and 24 million young Americans ages 18–29 voted, resulting in an estimated youth voter turnout (the percentage of eligible voters who actually cast a vote) of between 49.3 and 54.5 percent, according to an exit poll analysis released Nov. 4 by CIRCLE, a nonpartisan research center at Tufts University. This is an increase of 1 to 6 percentage points over the estimated youth turnout in 2004, and an increase of between 8 and 13 percentage points over the turnout in the 2000 election. The all-time highest youth turnout was 55.4 percent in 1972, the first year that 18-year-olds could vote in a presidential election.

Sixty-six percent of young voters cast their ballot for Barack Obama, the largest-ever showing for a presidential candidate in this age group.''

Here, you can see the election results by age group in a visual representation

Looking at another measure of racial attitudes, the attitudes toward racial intermarriage differ. This might be the most telling question.

From my own experience I would say these polls and the voting patterns indicate that Dean and Matthews are right; though what they would call 'racism' or 'bigotry' is simply the remnant of the former majority attitude on racial distinctions. The fact that the succeeding generations have all become steadily more liberal in these matters shows the success of the generations of indoctrination via the media and the educational machine, and all institutions of society, including much of what is left of the Christian church.

There are some who stubbornly claim that it's the oldsters who are liberal old hippies while the younger people are realists. Sorry, but the sources I link here, plus my own eyes and perceptions say just the opposite.

For some people it's handy to blame our elders for all that they find wrong with the world, but there is just no evidence that the older generation is guilty of being the liberal monolith that some say they are.

Of course, there are younger people who are exceptions, and who have old-fashioned politically incorrect attitudes, but they are just that: exceptions, just as are the extremely liberal older people everybody claims to know. In my neighborhood and town, the geezers are the most conservative in all areas of life, and the least conformed to the politically correct doctrines.

That's why many of the cultural Marxists will be dancing on the graves of the last of the 'geezer' generation.

We need more like this

A misguided effort

This story, of the abortionist arrested in Philadelphia, is generating discussion around the right-wing and pro-life blogs.

The photos of those arrested, including Gosnell and his wife, are at the link. What a cast of characters.

Readers will have noticed that I don't blog much about abortion. It seems an exercise in futility, given that both sides are hardened in their positions. Just about everyone has strong feelings one way or the other on that subject. But the feminists and leftists and some on the ''right'' insist that women have a 'right' to choose -- though they don't agree on what a woman is 'choosing' when she goes to an abortionist. To pro-life people, what she is choosing is ending the life of her child, ending a human life, the life of a boy or girl, who would have grown into a man or woman with a name and a personality and a soul. The pro-aborts (who insist on styling themselves 'pro-choice') deny to themselves and to others that a 'fetus' or 'embryo' is fully human. I don't want to spend futile hours trying to convince people otherwise; they simply 'choose' to deny the humanity of the aborted children, and they won't be convinced.

This gruesome story out of Philadelphia should convince people that abortion is cruel, a dirty business. Instead, though, what I think the pro-abortion people will do, in true leftist fashion, is to use this as an argument for government health care (''then there would be more oversight and better conditions," etc.) or they will argue that if abortion were not legal, this kind of thing would be universal, with 'back-alley butchers' providing abortions to poor women in 'need' of their services.

As it is, some of the articles I've read emphasized that these people 'targeted' minority women and immigrants. So it is being implicitly tied to race. That is a bad tactic for lots of reasons.

First of all, it's evident from the pictures that many of the principals involved, the people whose pictures are shown in the Daily Mail article, are not White, apart from three of the women. It seems more than absurd to make this a case of 'targeting minorities and immigrants.'

And yet, I am sorry to say, there is already considerable anti-abortion propaganda promoting the notion of a 'black holocaust', a concerted effort to abort black babies in particular. I blogged about that misguided campaign a couple of years ago, and it seems to be gaining momentum. On various newspaper comment sections on this news story of the abortion clinic, people are repeating the stories of black children being the target of a campaign to reduce their population. The 'g' word, 'genocide', is even being used.

I was actually working on a post about that issue over the last couple of days. It seems to have been put on my heart, as it were, to speak out against that.

Herman Cain, the new idol among the Free Republic faithful, has said

"I absolutely would defund Planned Parenthood -- not because I don't believe in planning parenthood, [but because] Planned Parenthood as an organization is an absolute farce on the American people," he notes. "People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No -- it was a sham to be able to kill black babies."

The meme that is circulating is that Margaret Sanger, the feminist who was the foremother of the 'Family Planning' movement, was part of a plot to eliminate the black race via family planning/abortion. A quote is being passed around (with no link to back it up; I have searched for it and it does not turn up on the web) which has Sanger mentioning this diabolical plot, as if to admit it. Something does not quite ring true about it, but it seems to appeal to many on the right, as it fits like a glove with this talking point that ''liberals are the REAL racists", and of course Sanger and Malthus are arch-villains among many Republicans.

The quote from Sanger seems to be drawn from a biographical work written by Ellen Chesler

Yet all the evidence is that Sanger was not a 'racist' by any standard definition; she apparently was friends with, and worked with W.E.B. DuBois and other prominent black leaders. Sanger is certainly not a heroine of mine, but there is no evidence that she had genocidal plans towards nonwhites or anyone else. If anyone has a link showing the quote or the context, it would be appreciated.

As far as wanting to discourage reproduction by certain people (the poor, criminally inclined, and mentally impaired) this was commonplace in Sanger's day, and the fact is much of the effort at encouraging sterilization was aimed at White people, too, as witness all the literature written at the time about 'backwoods' families like the pseudonymous Jukes and Kallikaks, who were White people with criminal proclivities, mental aberrations or chronic alcoholism.

The idea that these proponents of eugenics were out to eliminate blacks or other minorities is far-fetched, except to those who see 'Whitey' as being genocidal by nature. Apparently some Republicans have no scruples about promoting that idea -- as long as it is liberals who are being labeled as genocidal racists.

This is just wrong. If I am to believe liberals want to eliminate anybody, I would say it is European-descended people, not minority races. To say otherwise is to turn reality on its head.


A number of people have been promulgating this idea; examples here. And it isn't just the liberal Christian clergy; a Republican congressman from Arizona introduced a bill (which did not pass) which insinuates some kind of racial plot in the abortion industry, using the term 'race selection abortions.' From that bill:

2) RACIAL DISCRIMINATION FINDINGS-
[...]
(C) A ‘race-selection abortion’ is an abortion performed for purposes of eliminating an unborn child because the child or a parent of the child is of an undesired race. Race-selection abortion is barbaric, and described by civil rights advocates as an act of race-based violence, predicated on race discrimination. By definition, race-selection abortions do not implicate the health of mother of the unborn, but instead are elective procedures motivated by race bias.

(D) No State has enacted law to proscribe the performance of race-selection abortions.

(E) Race-selection abortions have the effect of diminishing the number of minorities in the American population and therefore, the American electorate.

(F) Race-selection abortion reinforces racial discrimination and has no place in a civilized society.''

However, the Guttmacher Institute which keeps statistics on these kinds of things says:

This much is true: In the United States, the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, have been waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is the result of aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.

The Issues4Life Foundation, for example, is a faith-based organization that targets and works with African-American leaders toward achieving the goal of "zero African-American lives lost to abortion or biotechnology." In April, Issues4Life wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus to denounce Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) and its "racist and eugenic goals."

The group blamed PPFA and abortion providers in general for the high abortion rate in the African-American community—deeming the situation the "Da[r]fur of America"—and called on Congress to withdraw federal family planning funds from all PPFA affiliates.

These activists are exploiting and distorting the facts to serve their antiabortion agenda. They ignore the fundamental reason women have abortions and the underlying problem of racial and ethnic disparities across an array of health indicators. The truth is that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy. This applies to all women—black, white, Hispanic, Asian and Native American alike. Not surprisingly, the variation in abortion rates across racial and ethnic groups relates directly to the variation in the unintended pregnancy rates across those same groups.

Black women are not alone in having disproportionately high unintended pregnancy and abortion rates. The abortion rate among Hispanic women, for example, although not as high as the rate among black women, is double the rate among whites. Hispanics also have a higher level of unintended pregnancy than white women. Black women's unintended pregnancy rates are the highest of all.''

I would think that if there were any suspicion that there is a racial agenda in abortion the Guttmacher Institute would be the first to denounce it, being as liberal as they seem to be.

I fear that there is an eagerness on the part of the pro-life groups to find some strategy that works to combat abortion. Perhaps they think they can grasp this race-baiting issue and turn people against abortion on the basis that it is directed against blacks. I think this is an ill-advised tactic to use, although I fear that many of today's Christians have become so politically correct that they actually believe that there is such a plot against blacks, immigrants, or other such oppressed groups.

To believe this, however, is to believe the worst about our people. And despite all the anger I may direct towards leftists, I cannot bring myself to believe that they are plotting against blacks or immigrants, or that Whites are in general so diabolical that they would concoct such a plot on a wide scale. Considering how Afrocentric our society has become in my lifetime, it beggars belief to say that there is some huge conspiracy to practice 'race-selection' by abortion.

I think it is an ill-conceived propaganda effort to try to discredit family planning and abortion. And although I oppose abortion, this is an immoral way to try to combat it. It amounts to accusing people with very flimsy evidence, or no evidence at all. It is attributing motives of which there is no solid proof. It may very well be 'bearing false witness' which we are enjoined not to do, as Christians.

Given the fact that minority groups have many ongoing rumors about some plot against them by White people (for example, AIDS was supposedly invented to target blacks and gays, etc.,) it is reckless and irresponsible to foment yet another rumor of machinations by Whites against blacks.

This could easily get out of hand and cause great damage.

And for White ''conservatives'' to stoop to accusing fellow Whites of these horrendous plots is troubling. We have enough division and conflict over racial matters without White people accusing each other of heinous plans and deeds, fueling more animosity and mistrust.

I have just about zero respect for leftists; those who are 'useful idiots' for the progressive cause, I occasionally feel pity for. However I will not recklessly accuse my kinsmen, absent any real proof of the charges. I will not have this on my hands, if these rumors cause harm to others.

Playing the game

Peter Wilson at American Thinker tells us about an exhibit, now at the Boston Museum of Science, called "RACE -- Are we so different?"

You know what the answer is, at least as given by the people who designed this exhibit to program schoolchildren and other gullible people. Wilson says

''Even a sympathetic reviewer in the Boston Globe admits that "there's a wearying didacticism to the show," and it's no surprise that the didactic lessons about race are all slanted toward the left.''

He cites a Boston Globe writer who is "surprisingly critical":

One can support affirmative action, for example, and still wonder about the presence of a display called "Affirmative action: undoing inequality.'' That's not science or even sociology; that's politics. Right or wrong, some people think affirmative action furthers inequality. Another display is called "White -- the color of money.'' It shows stacks of dollar bills whose height corresponds to the relative wealth of whites, Asians, blacks, Latinos, and "others'' in US society. A section on discrimination and real estate has two street signs, "Privilege Place'' and "Racism Road.'' It's like an MSNBC production of "Sesame Street.'' Tendentiousness is no less tendentious for being in a good cause.''

The exhibit seems to be just what you'd expect. And it may be coming to your town, so beware of your children being press-ganged into attending this exhibit, if you have children in public school.

The depressing part of this piece is the content of the comments following, ostensibly from conservatives. I suppose if I had to sum up the tenor of most of the comments, the theme that runs through it, implicitly, is that ''I'm willing to be colorblind so why won't these liberals and minorities play the game along with me?'' That's actually a very common refrain among many Whites these days. They don't seem to disagree about the 'race is a social contract' fraud, and they don't want to return to the pre-politically correct terms of debate. No, they just want everybody to play by the rules of the 'colorblind game', as if it could all work if only we all pretended together.

This attitude informs what we see happening with the Republican Party, the Herman Cain fan club among the Tea Partiers, and MLK's cult on the right.

In the dark

I've only touched on this subject a time or two, in passing. But as someone who is intrigued by unanswered questions and deliberate obfuscation, I am curious as to what the real story is. And, as always, I am interested in what others are saying in online discussions of this.

I find the reactions to this issue rather maddening, for example, the people who invariably pop up wherever this is being discussed, saying that ''this is all a non-issue; you conspiracy-mongers are crazy" or ''you are being duped and used; this is just meant to bait you into following this down a rabbit hole, and making all conservatives look crazy."

The really ironic response is this frequently-heard one: ''this is a big waste of time! Why do all you people spend your time on this?" Meanwhile the people who write those dismissive comments are themselves spending time endlessly saying 'this is a waste of time. Give it up.' Evidently, it is not a waste of time to chide others about wasting time. And why does anybody object to others trying to solve a mystery? What's it to them?

So the Governor of the state in question suddenly remembers that the parents (putative parents) were 'his friends'? I seem to remember in Jack Cashill's articles, or perhaps elsewhere, that this governor said he knew the 'father' but did not know of a wife or child. But now he "knew them" both.

And first he said he was sure the documents could be produced, to refute the doubters, then he says 'I can't lay hands on them, but I have learned they are there, written down' or words to that effect. Strange wording -- that the proof is 'written down.'
It all gets curiouser and curiouser, as always when you go down a rabbit hole.

I really don't understand those who are quick to dismiss this out of hand. I don't understand those who are content to just repeat what the MSM says, and say 'well, I believe he was born where he says he was born.' Believe, based on what? This attitude seems to me to be Bill O'Reilly-esque, this proclamation that one 'believes' something which has not been established with any certainty -- just because. Incidentally, BOR is one of those who says that he 'believes' in the official birth story, as do Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, and other such stalwarts.

As for me, I don't have a 'belief' on this issue; I am simply interested to see what does turn up. It does seem to be to be generally true in life that where someone goes to great lengths to conceal something or at least to make the facts hard to determine, that there is in fact something being concealed. What it is, I don't pretend to know. I do know that the mainstream media lies and conceals, as do those in authority when they believe it is justified.

Another argument used by the scoffers is that 'this is all a red herring; it is not important. What's important is his deeds, and this is a distraction that keeps us from focusing on the important things.' I just don't see that this is true. One can care about both issues. And anytime our electeds are concealing things, especially when those things involve issues of the Constitution and our rule of law, that is important. We are allowing a precedent to be set in which we will no longer 'vet' our candidates as to their eligibility. And the question of nationality by birth is important; our Founding Fathers were explicit that dual citizens or those not natural-born could not serve as our highest public official. And for good reason.

Even if an 'official' document just handily turns up in Hawaii, there are all those other documents which have not been made public. Is that just an act of defiance toward us, or a demonstration that we are not the repository of power in this supposed representative Republic anymore? Of course we are reminded every day that we are not; we have been made irrelevant as far as the powers-that-be are concerned.

I am glad that somebody is following this issue and trying to bring the truth to light. Would it make any difference, though, if the truth is established? It would assuredly not deter the blind followers; people like that need deprogramming, as with cult members. And would anything be done? Probably not, but isn't it best to know the truth, and to at least try to ensure that the law is not to be openly flouted by those who are elected to enforce and execute it? The cynical side of me knows that our laws and our Constitution are already irrelevant, as we see what is happening with our one-time 'borders' and so many other violations. But we don't want to reach such a peak of cynicism that we just turn a blind eye and shrug, as we fall into utter lawlessness.

Our offensive heritage

The photo above encapsulates the situation in our country, the erstwhile 'United States of America,' in 2011. The picture shows the statue of George Washington in Columbia, SC, hidden by a box during an NAACP rally.

The NAACP put a box around the statue so as not to 'offend' attendees of the rally.

I've often said that the impostor 'America' of today is not the country of which Washington was the revered father. MLK is the father (or as somebody (perhaps James Edwards) put it, the 'baby daddy' of today's 'America.' The picture attests to that fact. Washington is being (or has been) deposed and another put in his place. How long before the statue is pulled down, making it more or less official?

Meanwhile, in the various comments around the internet on this event, there are any number of self-professed conservatives claiming MLK as a 'conservative' and exalting him as one who would never dishonor George Washington or engage in divisive rhetoric. This is so far off from reality that I am seriously starting to wonder if people are not literally being brainwashed to repeat the party line.

Some of you may remember the movie The Manchurian Candidate, specifically the original classic movie, (not the PC remake) in which the mention of the name Raymond Shaw elicits the rote line in response: ''Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.''

If you remember that movie, you know that the people who recited that line had been conditioned to repeat it. I wonder if these conservatives have been subjected to similar manipulation to repeat the saccharine twaddle they repeat, praising MLK. I mean this seriously. I know we often say people are brainwashed by the media or the educational system, but we say it metaphorically, to indicate how certain ideas are inculcated into people at every turn. But I haven't usually intended it to be taken literally, until lately, as I see more people reacting like Pavlov's dogs, not thinking for themselves, repeating rote phrases and shibboleths.

It's really disheartening to see and hear people from the South falling under the sway of this kind of thing.

Any 'old Americans' who still remain are truly a shrinking remnant.

Robert E. Lee, b. January 19, 1807

THE SWORD OF ROBERT LEE

Forth from its scabbard, pure and bright,
Flashed the sword of Lee!
Far in the front of the deadly fight,
High o'er the brave in the cause of Right
Its stainless sheen, like a beacon light,
Led us to Victory!

Out of its scabbard, where, full long,
It slumbered peacefully,
Roused from its rest by the battle's song,
Shielding the feeble, smiting the strong,
Guarding the right, avenging the wrong,
Gleamed the sword of Lee!

Forth from its scabbard, high in the air
Beneath Virginia's sky--
And they who saw it gleaming there,
And knew who bore it, knelt to swear
That where that sword led they would dare
To follow--and to die!

Out of its scabbard! Never hand
Waved sword from stain as free,
Nor purer sword led braver band,
Nor braver bled for a brighter land,
Nor brighter land had a cause so grand,
Nor cause a chief like Lee!

Forth from its scabbard! How we prayed
That sword might victor be;
And when our triumph was delayed,
And many a heart grew sore afraid,
We still hoped on while gleamed the blade
Of noble Robert Lee!

Forth from its scabbard all in vain
Bright flashed the sword of Lee;
'Tis shrouded now in its sheath again,
It sleeps the sleep of our noble slain,
Defeated, yet without stain,
Proudly and peacefully!

-Fr. Abram Joseph Ryan

Just another politician

I had heard about Sarah Palin's Facebook posting on Saint MLK's day, though I didn't read it. I had no trouble believing that it was as bad as people said, because I had been noticing the pattern with her, the evidences that she is as politically correct and egalitarian as most of the Republicans.

But James Edwards links to and quotes from the Facebook page, and it's obvious that she is just another politician.

Either she is playing the game and reading from the approved script, or she has always been one of the politically corrected politicians, and she is expressing her own beliefs now. And either way, she is not what she has been presented to be, that is, a down-to-earth unspoiled outsider. She is just one more of the political breed which controls our sorry political scene now.

To be honest, I have not followed her Facebook page or Twitter updates, still this is not a surprise to me. It's not as though there were no previous signs of her leanings.

Neither are the brain-dead comments from her followers that James has posted on his blog. This is the state of 'conservatism' and the Tea Party. I think I am fully justified in saying that I was not wrong to sense that the Tea Party would become fully PC and just another variety of 'respectable conservatism.' MLK day shows us where people stand.

One of the comments quoted on James's blog says

Contrary to popular belief, Dr. King was very politically conservative and a registered Republican voter. The man dedicated himself and gave his life in the case of racial inequality. Too many people these days have the incorrect impression that connects him to the radical and racially divisive hard left socialist democrats that are trying convert our country into their idea of a social utopia without regard to the basic rights of the people and undermine the US Constitution.

Dr. King worked within the principles and framework of the Constitution to bring needed changes. He stood for what was right and put his life on the line for it, for this reason, I hold him in the highest respect.

As with any human being, yes the man had his flaws. But we should all remember it’s his message that’s the most important.'

Interestingly the TakiMag article on MLK by Paul Gottfried says that conservatives have tried to recast him as a free-market conservative and a believer in meritocracy. He mentions correctly that it has become more difficult to point out some of the unflattering facts without being condemned for it. I have definitely noticed this trend even in the last few years. The FReepers, for example, are just as likely to fawn over MLK just as they do over Herman Cain (who is race-baiting today) or Thomas Sowell or Allen West.

I can remember a time when the FReepers were a much harder-line group of people, not the PC respectable squishes that they have become. And there used to be some very intelligent and informed FReepers; it must be that most of them were of the generation that is now passing on. Given the trends, things look bleak for us, unless we start breaking through the propaganda.

If there is to be any hope from within the system, it will have to come from somewhere other than the Republican Party, which is hopelessly compromised and corrupted, but from where the hope will come, I don't know.

I am somewhat heartened by this but I know there are those who think he is just another political aspirant. In any case, the talk is that he may run for governor, not President, and I think that's where things need to happen, on the state and local level. Washington D.C. may be a lost cause, but fortunately it isn't America.

The common factor

It's interesting that this story has emerged now; it's been known for a while that these things happen.
I posted about such incidents a couple of years ago, but I think the fact that the issue is getting coverage in the  mainstream media is something new.

No, not in war, but in the Peace Corps. An investigation by ABC's 20/20 claims that "More than 1,000 young American women have been raped or sexually assaulted in the last decade while serving as Peace Corps volunteers in foreign countries," and that some of the victims say "the Peace Corps has ignored safety concerns and later tried to blame the women who were raped for bringing on the attacks... Jess Smochek, 29, of Pennsylvania was gang raped in Bangladesh in 2004 by a group of young men after she says Peace Corps officials in the country ignored her pleas to re-locate her." These attacks have happened in Benin, Bangladesh, Haiti, South Africa, Georgia, and many other places.

 When I blogged about the subject a while back, I got one very nasty, bullying-style comment from someone who found my blog piece objectionable, and hateful towards Third Worlders, according to him. Interestingly, the comment was posted from a government facility. The tone of it was rather creepy. But that's the nature of lefties; they become nasty and hateful while deploring other people's ''hate". And when your ''hate'' is nothing but facts, backed up by links -- well, that does not stop the left from attacking.

This piece from Alternative Right is about women in the armed forces, specifically the decision to put women into combat units. I think that one point made in the article, the fact that all our institutions have been infiltrated and co-opted, is a very valid one. Most of us on the right have thought, traditionally, that the military was a last bastion of the 'old America' but we see that this is not the case, and has not been for some time.

This story from the UK has been much discussed lately, though, like the Peace Corps story, it has been known for some time, but ignored by the controlled media.

What is the common thread here? Of course leftism and political correctness drive much of the hypocrisy on these issues. But a very important part of these problems is feminism, which of course is part of the leftist subversion of Western society. 

The insidious thing about feminism is that it has pervaded all segments of society; even ''conservative'' or right-wing women -- and men, often -- support feminism, and even more, without realizing it, implicitly endorse feminism and egalitarianism in all its forms. Many uninformed people on the right think it is somehow part of the 'American way' to erase all differences between people, whether racial or gender or any other innate difference.

In discussing the shooting death of a female police officer, the FReepers are divided over whether women should be in such roles, though at least one good comment is offered.

To: AbolishCSEU

You are right. Even conservatives have bought into the feminist outrage at the very idea of there being any limits at all on a woman doing exactly what suits her fancy. PC has hit us all hard. - Women ARE built different than men, they don’t have the upper body strength to do certain jobs. A former military officer told me that he had women under his command and that when his company got the order to “bug out”, the women couldn’t do the heavy lifting to accomplish a bug out. They’d just ignore the order to do so, and call it done. In combat, sadly, calling it done isn’t getting it done. It’s foolish and costs lives.

26 posted on Sunday, January 02, 2011 5:31:40 PM by Twinkie

I don't know who Twinkie is but she (I am assuming it is a she) makes good sense, unlike some others on that thread who spout the egalitarian party line with the best of them.

Women are different than men, and as 'Twinkie' implies, there should, accordingly, be limits on what they do, and where they go. Is this unfair? It's simple common sense.

The girls who traipse off to the Third World in some do-gooder cause, and who thus come to harm, as well as the young rape victims in the UK, and the women in the military -- all have been taught the feminist dogma that women can do anything a man can do, except beget children. ''I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman!"
Obviously women are not invincible, and women who knowingly enter into dangerous situations based on naivete and ''colorblindness'' may come to harm by having been taught that they are 'strong women' who can handle anything.  And besides, everybody is the same under the skin, right?

Feminism taught that girls as young as 12 or 13 were entitled to be called ''women'' and entitled to make their own sexual choices . Young girls like those in the UK incidents likely come from 'broken homes' or homes with an absent father. Their mothers, in turn, are probably self-centered feminists who are out pursuing their own ''choices'' while their daughters go unsupervised and unguided, easy prey for the predators. Girls who are living a loose lifestyle (to use an archaic term) are vulnerable to many dangers. Girls who are out meeting grown men, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, will end up compromised at some point, bereft of inhibitions while intoxicated to insensibility, a sure recipe for disaster.

Yet women continue to insist that women should have a ''right'' to do these things: to impair themselves with drugs or alcohol, to consort with people who are a danger, to wander the streets alone (or with other females) at all hours, in bad areas -- all in the name of 'equality' and 'freedom.'

The same attitude leads young women to go into countries which are known to be dangerous, and to put themselves in risky situations -- to show that they 'trust' people, and to show their 'tolerance' -- but they too seem to think, like Helen Reddy, that they are ''invincible''.

Feminism, more than many other aspects of liberalism, has really dug in deeply into our society. It will be hard to challenge that, but it's something that has to be done.

Why so few women?

Yesterday's post about Marine Le Pen reminded me of a subject I had meant to post about, that is, the question of why there are not more women who are ethnopatriots, at least judging by the relative dearth of female bloggers and writers who are pro-White.

Every now and then, somebody raises that question, and I suppose there is no definitive answer to it. The obvious answer, of course, is that women seem to be naturally more liberal, based on the tendency of many women to be 'feeling' types, acting based on emotion rather than on 'thinking'. A good many women in my experience say they just don't care much about politics per se. There is the old saying that politics is war by any other means, so it makes sense that women are not as politically oriented as men, generally.

If women abstained from politics because of their oft-state lack of interest in, or understanding of, politics, we might be better off, because women do tend to vote liberal in many instances. However at least in this country there is evidence that married women are more conservative in their politics, while younger single women are liberal. Do young  liberal single women develop into conservatives after becoming mothers and having a broader experience of life? Or is it simply a matter of the younger generations being more liberal generally?

However, I know a couple of women who admittedly know nothing about politics (such as what the labels 'liberal and conservative' mean, for example, or how our system works) but who nonetheless have very vociferous opinions about public figures. One of the women I am thinking of here simply states that she 'hates' certain politicians without being able to explain why, when I ask her. She just knows she hates someone, based on seeing their face on the news or in the newspaper. And people like this vote.

But as for the predominance of males among ethnopatriots, the usual answer offered (and I've offered it a time or two) is that males are more territorial and more suspicious of outsiders. Women can be catty towards each other but many seem to feel more protective of, say, immigrants because they perceive them as rather needy or even childlike. More women tend to want to nurture these people and help them. I believe it is almost always women who are behind this fad to import Third World babies. In my town, this is the latest fashion. I have been seeing more and more young White couples, often with two or more children of their own, with a Haitian or African baby in a stroller. This past summer when I was out garage sale-ing with a friend, we encountered two sales being held for the sake of raising funds to go to Haiti and bring back a baby, or to pay adoption fees.

The men who go along with this are essentially doing just that: going along.

Some of the most bleeding-heart women I know are people who seem incapable of perceiving anyone as an enemy or a threat, at least, not people who are perceived as 'victims', such as the illegal Latin Americans who are settling in, here in this town.

Many women just don't want to talk about 'unpleasant things' and would prefer to live on a pink, fluffy cloud.

I've always been a little atypical of women in some respects, though I can recognize the typical female traits in myself in many ways. But I don't understand why so many women have no 'mother bear' instinct to protect their young and to preserve their children's future. The old pioneer women surely had that instinct. Where has it gone?

On a different note, I have noticed lately that on some of the ethnopatriot blogs and HBD blogs, there are a few female names popping up amongst the comments. Is this a trend? It's very noticeable in a couple of places.

And of course there have been notable exceptions to the rule among the few female regulars who post here, and certain female bloggers like Sarah, Maid of Albion. But I think they are still the exception.  Mind you, I am not counting women who are just 'conservative' with no seeming ethnopatriot tendencies. There are conservatives who are still not exactly on our side.

Is there any way to change this?

A sign of hope, or not?

It seems that nationalist parties in Europe and here all share the same tendency to try to play to the politically correct audience, to disavow 'xenophobia' or 'racism' in order to reach a greater number of people.

I've said so often here that this is not the right approach, for reasons which I am sure are obvious to most of my readers.

The UK Daily Telegraph had an article back in December about Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean Le Pen, of the National Front Party.

''The 42-year-old is seen as a potentially dangerous threat to President Nicolas Sarkozy if chosen to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen in a mid-January party congress almost 40 years after he founded the party.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Miss Le Pen, said: "The progressive Islamisation of our country and the increase in political-religious demands are calling into question the survival of our civilisation.

We are fighting against Islamism, not Islam", she said. "

It seems I've heard this song before. 'Islamism, not Islam, is the problem.' Our former president and many others said that frequently.

I do understand that she has spoken out rather bluntly against Moslems blocking streets with mass prayers, and that she has taken some flak for that, though it appears many French people agree with her.

''Her outburst received high French backing. According to an Ifop poll, some 54 per cent of sympathisers of Mr Sarkozy's conservative UMP party backed Miss Le Pen's controversial comparison, while it received the support of 39 per cent of all French.

In line with other Right-wing populist parties from the Netherlands to Italy, her words have clearly struck a chord beyond the FN's traditional electorate, with analysts predicting she could woo chunks of France's lower-middle classes hard-hit by the economic crisis.''

However she has also somewhat removed herself from her father's controversial statements about the Holocaust or about the Nazi occupation of France.

If I recall correctly, during an earlier campaign, she was behind the image-makeover which involved multicultural campaign posters, featuring a 'diverse' group of French citizens.

The Telegraph article concludes by saying she could be a ''highly dangerous threat'' in next year's elections. And the Telegraph is the 'conservative' paper in London?

It's always the same old story: some patriotic or nationalistic party arises, tries to position itself somewhat to the center and avoid charges of 'racism' or 'hatred', and still ends up being described by the media as a 'threat' or 'extremist' or other such loaded words.

It seems obvious to me by now, as it is to most of you, that doing the politically correct maneuvers, trying do distance oneself or the party from 'extremism' does little to deflect the vilification by the media and the mainstream politicians. And does being politically correct do any good with the electorate? I think that many right-wing voters, here and elsewhere, become disenchanted and disgusted when they see politicians and parties toeing the PC line. I know I feel that way, just as I indicated in the posts about the GOP's attempts to be all things to all people. So I suspect that these kinds of tactics turn off many of the natural constituents of such parties, and all in quest of a 'minority' or 'diversity' vote or in hopes of attaining mainstream respectability.

It's a vain hope anyway, as history seems to indicate.

The same story is being played out in the UK too, as the BNP seems to have fizzled and the EDF seems to be a 'multicultural' party. I don't quite see how they merit the name 'English' if they believe that foreigners are included under the rather specific name 'English.' I mean, 'British' is the more inclusive term, because it involves a civic identity, while one can be English only by blood.

The Scottish nationalists, too, seem sold out to multiculturalism, as you can see by the images posted on the SNP website. They are in favor of full membership in the EU, which to me seems inconsistent with real nationalism; it seems that nationalism should have sovereignty and independence as a goal. But the Scots nationalists are rather left-of-center and this, to me, is inimical to ethnonationalism, favorable to multiculturalism.

The problem is, almost everybody in Western societies is influenced to some degree by liberalism, Political Correctness/Cultural Marxism, with the exception of a few of us who by sheer cussedness have resisted the indoctrination, or who have seen through it.

At times it's reasonable to wonder if all these 'nationalist' parties or conservative parties are not just staged opposition, meant to give the dispossessed nationalists the illusion of a voice in government. It's either that, or it's incompetence, or fear. But fear of what? Fear of being called a name, or fear of social ostracism by the trendy people and their liberal in-crowd?

Perhaps Miss Le Pen and her party will be succcessful, and if so I suppose that is a step in the right direction -- if there is still enough time for ethnopatriots to adopt an incremental, 'baby-steps' approach. But there may not be that luxury.

More of the same?

I had never heard of the new RNC Chairman, Reince Priebus. I found this article about him, dating back a couple of years.

Priebus joined the Republican National Committee in 2007. But last fall, he was among the first in the RNC to endorse former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele in a wide-open leadership race.

After Steele staged an upset last month to become the GOP's first African-African chairman, he asked Priebus to lead his ambitious transition effort within the party.

"I am going in an entirely different direction . . . new faces, new voices, new people," Steele said last week at RNC headquarters near the U.S. Capitol.

"This is the first time in a long time that the party can truly rebuild and reorganize itself in a way that the party leaders and the grass-roots members want it to be done," Priebus said..."
[...]
"He is a younger conservative who believes in expanding the base and making it more inclusive," said Ryan, a Janesville Republican.

Like Steele, Priebus says "we need to build bridges without compromising our principles."

They say the GOP needs to catch up to Democrats technologically and energize disillusioned conservatives while competing for young and minority voters and expanding a shrinking geographic base.''

From a more recent piece:

''Given that the individual in question is Reince Priebus, currently seeking the RNC Chairmanship and talking like a conservative, how is it that he seems to have so walked the walk of a typical liberal over the years?

This was only ten years ago, after all. Certainly, there’s nothing wrong with exposing oneself to different peoples and locations and I’m all for the Republican Party reaching out more to minority communities. But whether we do that as stock-in-trade liberals, or present a genuine conservative alternative to the liberal policies of Democrats makes a big difference. So, when one invokes stock phrases like diversity and aligns himself with the NAACP, just what kind of outreach is it Reince Priebus had in mind by attending the University of Miami? Or, just as he talks the talk of conservatism now, is he more a chameleon who says what he has to say to be popular at the time? That’s hardly the type of principled leadership needed for the RNC, especially at such a pivotal time in American history in which the Right and Left are battling to determine the future course of the nation.

    In addition to reputation and placement record, Reince chose Miami because he wanted the opportunity to experience living in a diverse community … He was also a law clerk for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in Los Angeles the summer before his third year.
That would be the same NAACP, by the way, that recently tried to malign the tea party movement as racist. Going from the NAACP to the RNC is quite a leap in ten short years. And the years in between weren’t very conservative, either. As recently as 2003, Reince Priebus was using his legal skills to confiscate land from a small business through the power of eminent domain.''

The comments at RedState are mostly on the cautious-to- skeptical side about him.


It remains to be seen how conservative he will be, but probably no more conservative than the party as a whole, which is not very.

The clueless right

Tell me again that no third party will ever succeed in America.
Tell me again how the Republicans are 'the best we can hope for.'

It seems I've been told that so many times in recent years, but in light of this, how can anybody say those things in sincerity, or without shame?

''Mr. Cain got a jump on other potential GOP 2012 candidates Wednesday when he formed a presidential exploratory committee, which allows him to raise money for a possible White House run. None of the likely frontrunners have taken that step.

The Atlanta radio host and former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza said he plans to spend several months seeing if he can drum up enough support among donors and voters to justify a full-blown campaign.''

The FReepers, who to me represent the 'average' GOP voter, seem beside themselves with excitement about Cain running for President, not to mention Allen West, who also sends a thrill up the collective leg of the FReepers.

However, I am dumbfounded that even the FReepers are still trotting out this old chestnut:

''He will be a powerful put-down to the myth of ‘republicans = racist’

Now that some brave and powerful black conservatives have put their necks on the line - and WON - there will be more who will step forward.

Without being able to use the race card - the libs so long successful lie - a card now maxed out and soon to be canceled - they will be hard put to refute opposition stances.''

Can you believe anyone can say that with a straight face after the last two years of experience? Does the name 'Michael Steele' ring any bells over in FReeperland? What about J.C. Watts? Condoleezza Rice? Colin Powell? Is there anybody I've forgotten?

One more reminder: surely some of you here remember that some Republicans said that same thing about a certain candidate in 2008. If he were elected, surely that would disarm the left and minority voters, because it would put the lie to their claim that this was a 'racist' country, and they would no longer have any excuses about how blacks can't succeed in this country. Therefore there would be no more race card to play. People actually said that. How has that worked out? Anybody noticed?

Maybe it's been a smashing success and I just haven't noticed.

Really, though, what hope is there for the Republican Party in the next election? The other candidates or wannabees -- Romney, Gingrich, Pence, Jeb Bush, 'Huckster' Huckabee -- could there be any sorrier slate of candidates anywhere?

And yet there are still those who say that a third party can never succeed; it will just elect the Democrats yet again. Invariably somebody brings up Ross Perot and how he caused the election of Clinton. But would Poppy Bush have been any better, apart from the sex scandal thing?

Of course a third party will not succeed as long as people keep denouncing the very idea of it, and calling it a hopeless cause. As long as people convince themselves, or let others convince them of that supposed certainty, then no, a third party will never succeed.

People do forget that the Republicans started as a third party.
Just because third parties since then have failed to capture much support does not mean that it can never happen. There is a first time for everything, and if ever there was a time, it is now, for a party that might actually represent the interests of the American majority.

The Tea Party is the great White hope for some people -- but the Tea Party faithful seem to see themselves as the great Diverse hope, apparently, with their ardent courtship of minorities and the 'colorblind' crowd.

Some might say, 'Cain (or West) might be a good conservative gentleman and a wonderful candidate.' Some people put great stock in their success in past endeavors, business or the military. Surely we can see for ourselves the folly of electing a relative unknown, or a candidate without the right kind of experience. Some might say 'why does his race matter? Why shouldn't Republicans run a black candidate?'

No matter how conservative a black candidate might be, for such a man to be President at a time when things have never been tenser amongst the races would mean that such issues would only be further complicated, not soothed, as some people claim. And it would further marginalize Whites within the Republican Party, as political correctness would be reinforced tenfold, with everybody leaning over backwards to show their 'colorblindness' and to be 'sensitive and inclusive.' We would be even more constrained in acting towards our own interests -- which, once again, do not coincide with those of any ''minority community.''

Having Republicans join Democrats in the never-ending quest for minority approval and for the ultimate Black Savior would only mean that we would be that much farther away from any addressing of our needs and interests. End result: we would be more marginalized than ever, if the GOP becomes another haven for politically correct identity politics.

And as others have pointed out along the line, it will become established policy that we should have a black (and later, other minority) president as some kind of gesture of good faith. To elect a White president after two (or more) black presidents would be denounced as a ''big step backward'' towards the bad old days of discrimination and 'White hegemony.' Republicans would not counter these accusations, but would buckle under and try even harder to appear non-racist.

At this point, electing someone as a gesture of goodwill or a statement against 'racism' or as a way of proving how PC we are is just a very bad reason to choose the occupant of the highest office in our land.

Let only the best candidate be chosen. But at this troubled point in our history, having another presidency in which race would be front and center all the time is the last thing we need. It would not pour oil on the troubled waters, but would be more fuel for conflict.