Killing Bad Guys to Make Room for Worse Guys

Everybody's elated that Gadhafi is dead.  Even the ones who question the legality of it all are quick to add to the chorus of delight that he's dead.  Back when the Shah of Iran was overthrown, there was also an orgasm of self-righteous satisfaction that Iran had gotten rid of its oppressor and was going to be nice and democratic.  Then, when Saddam Hussein got his, the reaction was pretty much the same.  And now we have Gadhafi.  There are two levels to think on here.  First, did these guys deserve overthrowing/death?  The answer is that most political leaders can be said to deserve whatever they get, inasmuch as they mostly have to do pretty evil things to get and retain their jobs in the first place.  So after that it's just a beauty contest.  Did Stalin deserve death more than Papa Doc?  Napoleon?  Olaf Palme?  Idi Amin?  So forget the "deserving" part.  The second, more important question is, is Gadhafi's (or whoever's) death a good thing in general?  That one's harder.  In Libya's case, you have to ask if the "new" Libya is going to be better for the Libyan people and the world in general than Gadhafi's Libya was.  We can't answer that one yet.  There are hints — Steve Sailer has pointed out that while polygamy has been discouraged and minimized in Libya during Gadhafi's regime, it's now poised for a comeback!  Now, if you're a good multiculturalist, you may rejoice.  But if you have any damn sense at all, you'll see that as a regression, that will be horrible for Libya and at the very least a damn nuisance for the rest of the world.  And for the United States, as such upheavals create instability at the least, and more streams of refugees and crazy foreign policy from the new guys in charge.  As I've said before, our foreign policy should reflect our interests, not our ideology or moral code.

But when you base your foreign policy on Jimmy Carter-esque morality, you find yourself patrolling the streets in your batshit-crazy-mobile, looking for dragons to slay, and it's hard to find any country, especially in the Third World, that isn't behaving reprehensibly enough to warrant some kind of invasion.  And there you have neocon foreign policy, of which Obama is an enthusiastic advocate.  Invade everybody, make them all hate you as much as possible, and then invite them to immigrate.

If the neocons had been around 1200 years ago, they'd have been agitating to overthrow Charlemagne because he was so authoritarian and repressive.  Of course, in his day Europeans needed authoritarian oppression to become civilized people and give rise to the birth of Western Civilization.  And you know what?  Most of the Third World needs the exact same thing.  Our attitude towards guys like Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi and Castro should be based on (a) do they make their countries behave responsibly on the international scene and (b) are they good for US interests in general?  If either answer is no, our policy should be to ignore them if they're not much of a problem, or, if they become too much of a problem, to scare hell out of them till they start behaving better, and do it sub rosa if possible.  Overthrowing always risks trading the devil you know, for the Satan waiting in the wings.

Demography is Destiny — Pat Buchanan

I seem to be riffing on Pat Buchanan a lot lately.  This is probably because Pat is the only talking head or columnist these days who is cutting to the chase and talking about what the real problem is — demography.  All the values most of us share have a common origin — Western Civilization.  And Western Civilization is two things: the congeries of morés and views of reality that are peculiar to the peoples of European Christendom, to include the Christians and the skeptics and the scientists and the philosophers of that area, and the White Race, which can be thought of as that subrace of the Caucasian race that developed in Europe and nearby, related nations.  The two are more or less coterminous, although some nonWhites or at least nonEuropeans have become a part of it all over the centuries.  Both those parts are dwindling. The White race isn't reproducing fast enough to maintain its numbers.  The one nonWhite nation that has come closest to becoming an actual part of Western Civilization, Japan, is also dwindling.  The White race in Europe and around the world is shrinking — with one exception, as Pat Buchanan points out — Albania is slowly growing.  Of course, though White, the Albanians are overwhelmingly Muslim, and as such, are not members of Western Civilization, despite their race.

Now, if you're a healthy-minded White person, this should worry you.  All the ideas and ideals you hold dear are in danger, because, frankly, very few nonWhite people are in any way interested in the things you hold dear, and if anything, are looking forward to their demise.  AND, if you're a nonWhite person who is a member and advocate of the values of Western Civilization, it should worry you, too.  If you're African, or Chinese, or Mestizo, or whatever, and you like the individualism and progressivism of Western Civilization, you, too, should regret the dwindling of the very people who made it all possible. If you really favor individualism and rationalism, you should revere the people who originated and maintain those modes of thought.  None of this is to say that there aren't plenty of psychotically suicidal White people who are so mentally twisted that they reject Western values (while enjoying their benefits) and are at least as dangerous to civilization as resentful nonWhites are.  They are the enemy, too, and being essentially traitorous, are much less worthy of respect than are the nonWhite enemies who are at least advocates of their own people, no matter how misguided we might consider their attitude to be.

But enough out of me. Read what Buchanan has to say HERE.

Scott Adams on Fairness

Cartoon by BALOO

Some of the words used in political discussions don't belong in that context at all.  One of my personal bugaboos is the talk about a "moral" foreign policy.  Morality doesn't fit into that concept anywhere, much as theological terminology isn't of any use in algebra, and the rules of poetry don't help with medicine.  Scott Adams takes this notion a bit further, and says that one word you hear a lot, "fairness," not only is misleading in politics, but is actually a rather illusory concept, at least when used bluntly without definition.  Come to think of it, "fairness" may be the first concept a toddler learns to use as a weapon, and lord knows a toddler's concepts are pretty illusory.  Read Scott's latest HERE.

Occupy Wall Street, Freud, and Bad Eagle

I pride myself in seeing hidden meaning in things, particularly words, but hiding in plain sight is a much deeper meaning in the phrase "Occupy Wall Street," that went right past me.  But it didn't go past Bad Eagle.

Pat Buchanan: What should conservatives conserve?

Cartoon by BALOO

Political terms, particularly for ideologies, can lose or change meaning over time, sometimes with amusing results.  My understanding is that in most of the world, "liberalism" still means a belief in economic liberty and laissez-faire, where in America it now means the exact opposite.  "Communism" really has little to do with a commune system, and "socialism," etymologically speaking, could mean practically anything, but mostly it means a welfare state with economic affairs either run by, or tightly regulated by, the government.

But most of us feel that "conservatism" does indeed have something to do with the idea of conserving something.  And indeed it does.  At least if you're careful to distinguish between conservatives and neoconservatives.  A bit like the distinction between ants and anteaters.  Neoconservatives aren't conservatives.  So if conservatives are those who want to conserve, what is it that the want to conserve? Now, I'm a conservative, though, because of the neocon confusion, I've decided to call myself a libertarian nationalist, and what do I want to conserve?  I want to conserve the American People in particular, with its heritage, values, and the Western Civilization it bears.  Generally, I want to conserve that Western Civilization, throughout Europe, America, and the world, both because it's my own civilization, and because it's demonstrably superior to most all other civilizations in history.

But Pat Buchanan says it all better, and with more specifics, than I do.  His latest column on just what we should conserve is HERE and HERE.

Quick post

Just a quick post to let you know I haven't disappeared.  I'm crazy-busy helping a friend move.  During the hiatus, if you want some incendiary posts, I recommend you visit
http://isteve.blogspot.com/
and
http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/

Guess Who?

Guess who said this:

"America is not only for the whites, but it is for all. Who is the American? The American is you, me and that. When we go to America we will become Americans and there is no a race or nationalism called America and the Americans are those Africans, Indians, Chinese, and Europeans and whoever goes to America will become American...American is for all of us and the whole world had made and created America. All the people all over the world had made America and it shall accordingly be for all of us. I will never feel ashamed when I claim for my right in America and it will not be strange when I raise my voice in America." 

Give up? Voilà!

Freikorps Freakout Syndrome

Lots of interesting stuff today, and I'm just now making it to the keyboard to talk about it.  Well, the Crazy Old White Guy so many of us held our nose and voted for is still at it, trying to make us regret it. He just threatened Vladimir Putin with Kadhafi's fate.  Cato he's not.  He is just plain nuts.  Steve Sailer points out that Kadhafi was pretty much a pissant nobody compared to Putin, that he was not overthrown by the Sons of Liberty, but by NATO, and that Putin has control of rather more scary weapons than anybody in Libya has or could ever hope to have.  I'll add here that for all his warts, Putin seems to have the interests of Russia in mind.  We're not used to politicians like that, and we have trouble understanding them.  We have politicians like Obama and McCain, who have anything but American interests in mind.  The person we do have who ought to be a politician is Pat Buchanan, who, oddly, considers that our foreign policy should be arranged for the benefit of America, not Bhutan or Ecuador or Israel or Uganda.  How nutty can you get?  As I keep yammering over and over, less fluently but just as sincerely as Buchanan, sending troops all over the place and trying to pick fights with everybody from Yemen to Russia is not in our interest, but guarding our own borders and cleaning up our domestic messes would be.  Which makes me a right-wing nut, just like Pat Buchanan, and I can't help feeling proud.

So why are we doing all this stupid stuff?  Adventuring and superheroing around the world while we fall apart at home?  Here's a theory — if you keep the military busy, and happy, and overseas where it's hard to vote (remember Gore's attempt to toss out military ballots in 2000?), they're not sticking their noses into politics, where they'd pretty much overwhelmingly be considered dangerous right-wing racists and homophobes, etc.  In short, they'd certainly be on the wrong side of Obama's glorious revolution, and might turn into a Freikorps.  Not my insight.  This comes from a commenter on the blog of the guy I link to obsessively, Steve Sailer, who calls himself "Neanderthal Liberation Front," or NLF, and who has coined the term "Freikorps Freakout Syndrome," for this fear of military people in general and vets in particular by our Ruling Elite.  I think he's right.  He says that at least one reason Buchanan wants the troops home is precisely because he wants them participating in domestic politics, rather than overthrowing comic-opera third-world dictators, where they'd be a powerful rightist force, not at all what our elites want.  NLF says, in part:

If US 'empire' ends, American soldiers would not return as 'defeated men' as Germans and Russians did in WWI. But many would be angered by social changes in America: open borders, gay agenda, affirmative action, Wall Street, free trade and loss of good working class jobs, etc. With American Rightist energies no longer diverted or channeled at outside villains, it could focus on liberal villains. Thus the Freikorp Freakout Syndrome among Jews.

NLF, you're invited to comment all you like here at Ex-Army.  And do guest posts if you don't have a blog of your own.

Scott Adams, Free Will, and Learning

Cartoon by BALOO

Scott Adams reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut sometimes, in that he sneaks profound notions into the conversation by using very simple language.  We're used to such ideas being introduced with twenty-dollar words, so that we'll know we're in the presence of a great intellect.  Or, more to the point, twenty-dollar words are often used to make dopey ideas seem profound.  So it's deceptive either way.  Well, do read what he has to say HERE and then come back.....  Rather intriguing, no?  Well, there's two ways to look at what he has to say here.  First, it can be viewed as a self-help mantra, and as such, a damn good one.  It's hard to imagine a better piece of advice about self-management.  Second, you can read it as an actual description of reality.  In that sense, it's more debatable.  First off, to a very large extent, you are your DNA.  Your DNA, as Adams says, defines the boundaries of your playing field, and that's no small thing.  What you can learn is limited by your DNA.  Your dog can't learn to talk no matter how much he'd like to or how hard he tries.  If Adams decided to retire, and advertised for somebody to keep Dilbert going just the way it is, he might find a handful of people on Earth who could learn to do it, but the vast majority of humanity couldn't even figure out how to try.  But past that minor quibble, his mantra is true.  Most of us have known, or even been, young punks who have been totally transformed by military service.  Their learning made them into something different than they were before.  Indisputable.
Now, then.  If his "learning" principle is valid, does it contradict his denial of free well elsewhere?  I would say no, because one's decision to learn something is still a decision, whether the decision is arrived at through actual free will or through mechanical chemical reactions.  His principle is valid either way.

Kurt Vonnegut said, "Be careful who you pretend to be, because that's who you are."  Scott Adams says, you are who you learn to be.  Good advice all around.

Ann Coulter gets this one right!

Awhile ago, Ann Coulter got the Amanda Knox controversy totally wrong, and I blogged about it HERE. But the thing about Ann Coulter is, she's very witty and fluent expressing her opinions, her wrong ones as well as her right ones.  But, more often than not, she is right, or mostly right, and that inspires my post here.  We on the real right, formerly known as conservatives before the Trotskyite neoconservatives took over, and now most accurately called "paleoconservatives," have always despised Wall Street.  Wall Street being  the term used to refer to the money guys — not industrialists, manufacturers, or the like, but the ones who make money from money, often in a dishonest way, even using the force of government to cheat other people out of their money.  I don't want to call these weasels "capitalists," because capitalists are traditionally people who use capital for enterprise, not those who manipulate capital to make money without making anything else at all.  A lot of people don't understand that distinction — as a paleoconservative, or, as I prefer to put it, a libertarian nationalist, that distinction is crucial.  I'm very, very much in favor of free enterprise, and very, very much against crony capitalism.  Despite her neocon credentials in most repects, Ann Coulter seems to understand that distinction, too, and points out that you can hate Wall Street and still be a staunch free enterpriser.  Her column is HERE.

Götterdämmerung according to Pat Buchanan

Pat Buchanan is essential.  He might reject the term, but I'm going to call him a philosopher, because I see a philosopher as someone who has a holistic view of things. We have plenty of pundits and talking heads, many of whom are very good at analyzing portions of the All, but Buchanan is the only living public person who tries, quite successfully, to grasp the whole picture.  Oh, he isn't perfect.  I could spend all day criticizing the things he's said, and things I disagree with him about.  On the other hand, I can't think of anybody of his stature I disagree less with, and, for that matter, a lot of my disagreements are about trivialities.  Buchanan understands what Western Civilization is, what Europe is, what the United States is, and how current trends are affecting it all.


He knows that the West in general and the United States in particular isn't a set of ideas that spring out of nowhere, but the organic outgrowth of a people and culture.  The idea, for example, of representative republican government didn't come out of India, or Korea, or Syria, or Ethiopia, but out of Europe.  It's a development of the idea of the sovereignty of the individual, which has its roots in the Greek philosophers and the early churchmen.  Indeed, L. Neil Smith says that the sovereignty of the individual is Western Civilization.  Buchanan also knows that diversity isn't strength, or anything to brag about at all, but a formula for strife and disintegration.
I'm about to download or buy Buchanan's latest book, Suicide of a Superpower, so I haven't read it yet.  But, till I get around to reviewing it, here's a review by Steve Sailer, and another by John Derbyshire.

More Idiocy from Joe Biden

This is a big day for liberal idiocy.  First Susan Sarandon, and now this.  Obama's new Jobs Bill will help prevent, rape, murder, holdups, and who knows what all?  Maybe it'll even put an end to entropy.  Just ask intellectual icon Joe Biden.  Read the transcript HERE.

Susan Sarandon Calls the Pope a Nazi

Not long ago, Hank Williams, Jr. made a perfectly reasonable statement and was fired for it because he used the word "Hitler," I suppose.  No other explanation is really possible.  On the other hand, limousine liberal twit Susan Sarandon called Pope Benedict a Nazi, and it would seem that it was perfectly acceptable for her to do so.  Could there conceivably be some sort of double standard at work here?  Isn't it interesting how un-newsworthy this story is?  I'm sure many of you are hearing about this for the first time here. Would it be appropriate for all Catholics to boycott all Susan Sarandon movies?  I think so.  And for that matter, I think everybody else should, too.

Politically Incorrect Casting in Japan

Every now and then the controversy over race and casting comes up.  Not all that long ago, for reasons good and bad, there were hardly any actors of the appropriate race easily available to portray Japanese roles.  That's why we got ridiculous situations like Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's, and Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon.  It's fair to say here, though, that Rooney's role was meant to be ridiculous, and Brando was trying to play it straight.  And then we have Mr. Moto.  I've heard it said that Peter Lorre even convinced Japanese viewers that he was actually Japanese.

Well, I have mixed feelings about this kind of stuff.  On the one hand, why not give a good actor a chance in any role?  On the other hand, why not try to cast as accurately as possible?  On the third hand, it's only entertainment, and sometimes mismatched casting is funny and entertaining in itself.

And here's the switcheroo — Japan has filmed a sort of cockamamie Roman epic with Japanese actors.  Read about it HERE.

Of Sow's Ears and Silk Purses

Cartoon by BALOO

"Things are what they are and not something else." 
I found that quote in a Robert B. Parker novel, and I'll have more to say about that in a future post, but it's a pretty fundamental idea that we keep losing sight of.  It's a little reminiscent of A=A, which I think Aristotle first brought up, and Ayn Rand popularized comparatively recently.  All this is hard to argue with, but it's routinely forgotten by some of our most prominent intellectuals.  Here's a specific case of its application:

"You can't make a first-world country out of third-world immigrants."

Our anointed leaders in the MAG (Media, Academia, Government) think saying things like that is just awful, no matter how intuitively true it is.  You can't fill country A with people from country B and expect it not to turn out pretty much like country B was in the first place.  What is now the United States was a completely different place before 1492. When it filled up with European colonists, it turned into something very like a European country.  It lost all the structure and culture that it had when it was dominated by Amerindians.  Throughout the parts of the world colonized by Europeans, you find European-type countries today — New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Argentina.  And the more Europeans who came, the more European the said countries became. This is true generally, not just of European movements. Haiti is more like an African country than anything else.  Colonists change things, and colonists who are extremely different change things extremely.

So, first-world nations have to be very careful that any immigrants they accept are the right kind of people. They should not be third-world people, who bring with them all the defects of the third world.  Crossing a border doesn't change a person.

Pat Buchanan has been giving the same warning for years.  Here's his LATEST.  And it's also HERE.

Immigration vs. Colonization

Cartoon by BALOO

If you move to Ruritania, learn the Ruritanian language, adapt to the Ruritarian laws and customs and morals, and try your best to become a Ruritanian in every meaningful way, including renouncing your previous citizenship elsewhere, you're an immigrant.

But if you move to Rurtiania, and don't bother learning Ruritanian, but insist on continuing to speak English and insist that everything be translated for you, and that the schools instruct your kids in English, and if you continue to follow the laws of the United States, and the customs and morals of America, ignoring those of Ruritania, and have no intention of actually becoming a Ruritanian, and keep your US Citizenship, you're a colonist.


America used to get a lot of immigrants.  Now we still get a few, but the vast majority of people moving here are colonists.  And this is true of the Western World in general.  The treason lobby used to say that these people were eager to become Americans, or Brits, or Frenchmen.  Well, it's hard to maintain that pretense any more, so now it's more common to say that they fit right in and enhance our "diversity," which is supposed to be a desirable thing in itself.  It isn't.  And we're further assured that, even if these colonists do insist on maintaining their language, customs, and native citizenship, that won't affect the rest of us, who can go on being American, British, or whatever.  Another lie.  When a country gets enough foreign colonists, it begins to lose control over itself and its identity fades away.  Just ask Tecumseh.

And if you think I'm exaggerating, take a look at what's happening in Switzerland.

Slick Willy Just Keeps Getting Slicker

Cartoon by BALOO

I'm almost exactly the same age as Slick Willy, and from pretty much the same kind of semi-disfunctional redneck background.  I was a bright kid, like him, and did well in school.  But at a certain point, we parted company.  While he pulled every trick he could think of to get out of military service, I just went out and joined up, so as not to be associated with the draft-dodging contingent.  I also along the way developed an aversion to ass-kissing, which he, on the contrary, made his life's work and came to be very skillful at it.  I'm sure I had the same tomcat drive he's always exhibited, but I also got the notion somewhere that a civilized person should limit his behavior to socially-responsible forms, an idea I'm sure Clinton would laugh at.  I also tend to be kind of self-effacing, not a Clintonian trait. In short, he was a counter-culture maggot, and I decided not to be. He bought into every scrap of the Zeitgeist and rode it to success, if you think being an immoral slug in high office is success.  Unlike Henry Clay, he much preferred being President to being right.  I'm sure that, to his thinking, being "right" implies far too much moral rigor, him being one of those moral relativity guys.

Jim Goad just attended a big Slick Willie Appreciation Society Foofraw, and has written very entertainingly about it.  Warning:  His prose can get a little vulgar, even X-rated.  So if you think you can take a little of that, go HERE to read it.

Only in Japan — "Squid Girl."

I've been getting all too serious lately, what with Western Civilization and Obama invading Africa and all, so it's time for something silly.  And I always turn to Japanese anime for silliness.  There is, believe it or not, an entire cartoon series based on a girl with a squid on her head, where her hair ought to be.  You can read all about it HERE.  And here are some clips.

Western Civilization

A few posts ago, I blogged about "The Decline of the West," and whenever I mention Western Civilization on this blog or anywhere else, I get questions like "What do you mean by Western Civilization."  Sometimes, it's a sincere question wanting me to clarify what I'm referring to, but more often it's a sarcastic rhetorical question from some punk, young or otherwise, who's been marinating in multiculturalism all his (or her) life, and is meant to trivialize the very idea that there's something unique about the West, and that everybody and every culture is worthy and wonderful and it's racist or something to suggest otherwise.  Well, I disagree with L. Neil Smith about a few things, but he definitely has his teeth into what Western Civilization means.  This essay was originally posted at the "Libertarian Enterprise."

The Air I Breathe 

                                                      by L.Neil Smith lneil@netzero.com

Listening to her whine about the Amanda Knox verdict, it is clear that Ann Coulter is not only a typical conservative who believes the cops can never be wrong, but a barbarian, as well—and an enemy to Western Civilization.
—L. Neil Smith

A while ago, a reader pointed out to me that I often mention the concept of Western Civilization in my writings, the importance of preserving and extending it, and the ways in which it's threatened by various ideas, individuals, and institutions whose activities must be countered.
My reader wanted to know what I mean by "Western Civilization"; I discovered I had always assumed everyone knows what it is—hardly a safe assumption in an era where what passes for academia dismisses everything Western Civilization ever accomplished as the trivial, cruel, and exploitive product of "dead white European males"—as if Aristotle, Maimonides, Bartolome de la Casas, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Michael Faraday, and Thomas Edison were nothing more than sleazy grifters, bilking innocent Third World widows and slum-orphans out of the stunning concepts and brilliant inventions which they, in fact, had originated while gouging out their fields with a hand-held wooden plow or pounding tapioca in a hollow stump.
Sure, we've had our Inquisition, our slaughter of the Albigensians, and our Sand Creek massacres, but for some peculiar reason, nobody with three letters after his name ever contrasts the dead white European males they despise with the suave, sophisticated Aztecs, who murdered between 30,000 and 60,000 individuals every holiday weekend several times a year, or with the African tribal chieftans who sold their own people to Arab slavers, or with one vicious, dictatorial Emperor after another (including Mao Zedong) under the thumb of whom the Chinese people have suffered and died for twenty-two hundred years.
To me, Western Civilization is nothing, more or less, than the air I breathe, the air my mind breathes. But of what does it consist? Why do I believe that it's any more worth saving than, say, that of the Incas?
Primarily, what I find most attractive and commendable is Western Civilization's predilection—conscious or otherwise, deliberate or not—toward progress, particularly with regard to a rising social and economic importance of the individual. Civilization—in this case meaning "citification"—is a direct result of the development of agriculture, an innovation that was not entirely without its costs (a subject I went into in some detail in my novel Pallas, inspired by a magazine article on the same subject by Jared Diamond). The ten thousand years that have followed have largely been concerned with correcting various damages that agriculture has inflicted on our species.
Step by step, inch by hard-won inch—and not without occasional setbacks—the various people of those cultures in the historic line we call Western Civilization enjoyed greater freedom, rising life expectancies, and living standards, increasing technical and economic progress.
As time passed the curve got steeper. According to the late author and lecturer Robert LeFevre, the average life expectancy at birth for individuals living in London, the most advanced city on Earth, in 1750, was just twenty years, four months. (This expectation increased considerably—as it still does—if a child survived its first five years.) Two centuries later, thanks mostly to the manufacture of iron water pipe and washable cotton clothing, two early products of English capitalism, that number had grown to seventy-two, an increase of three and a half-fold: history's first example of life extension for the masses, and something no king ever accomplished and no commissar ever will.
English capitalism engendered respect for private property, which is the indispensable key to progress and prosperity. America brought a unique political egalitarianism to the table, and a form of social egalitarianism which most folks in the rest of the world still fail to understand.
It all comes to a focus in America, whose bywords are TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"), KYFHO ("Keep your fucking hands off"), and NOYB ("None of your business"). And yet for better or worse, this is the nation that—at the cost of 620,000 lives, tore itself in half, turned itself inside-out, in an effort, or so it was claimed, to put an end to slavery, and later, to accept the grandchildren of slaves as full participants in society. Add an abiding concern for justice (the first thing any American wants to know is who started it) and a store of accumulated knowledge available to absolutely anyone at a modest cost, thanks, in the beginning to "terrorists" like Benjamin Franklin, and "Robber Barons" like Andrew Carnegie.
Western Civilization is not without enemies, although (or, far more likely, because) it feeds, clothes, and houses more human beings at a higher level of quality, than any other civilization in history. It is impeded by the constant negative drag of religiosity. It is eroded by the caustic self-hatred of leftists. A pursuit of private interest is centrally important and yet historically, gods and governments have either been parasitic to the process or have actively gotten in its way. Nonetheless, each day we hear these obstructionists and saboteurs claim—ridiculously—that they are the ones responsible for its success.
The system is such an unreservedly spectacular success that it is also awash, to its detriment, in limousine liberals and millionaire Marxists willing to spend staggering amounts of time and money trying to pull in the gangplank so nobody else can get a ride on the treasure ship.
Western Civilization is presently under the most brutal attack it has ever suffered. Its many enemies, all over the world and within its borders will do absolutely anything to being it down. Paranoia and mistreatment of others—especially those who fled here from those uglier environments—won't help it. Nor will irrational and costly wars.
Infantile whining that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights won't enforce themselves (of course they won't, and nobody ever expected that they would), and an overly fastidious reluctance, especially on the part of lace-panties libertarians too good to dirty their hands with politics, to maintain civilization, won't help, either.
What is Western Civilization? The undeniable triumph, ten thousand years in the making, of the individual, in a society of self-governing individuals, deeply rooted in a respect for knowledge and tradition, yet continually looking to a new and even better future, a system that cherishes institutions of private property, individual achievement, and equality before the law, whose only operational boundaries are purely ethical ones, and to whom, beyond that, not even the sky is the limit.

[ Suggested additional reading:
The History of Western Civilization by Harry Elmer Barnes
"... my favorite historian"—Robert Anton Wilson
Dead Tree at Amazon.com:
Volume 1
Volume 2
An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Western World (3 Volumes) by Harry Elmer Barnes
Dead Tree at Amazon.com
A History of Freedom of Thought by J.B. Bury
serialized in TLE:
beginning in Issue 601
at Project Gutenberg
HTML
ePUB
Kindle
Plucker PDAs
UTF-8 Plain Text
or Dead Tree at Amazon.com
The Idea of Progress by J.B. Bury
at Project Gutenberg
HTML
ePUB
Kindle
Plucker PDAs
UTF-8 Plain Text
or Dead Tree at Amazon.com
History of the Idea of Progress by Robert Nisbet
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Cultural Marxism

Did you ever notice how oddly puritanical, in a sense, communist regimes are? They always seem to prohibit the things that leftists in free countries advocate vigorously. They tend to outlaw, and severely punish, homosexuality, for example. The Communist Chinese government, I'm told, is quick to punish pornographers. The Romanian communists banned abortion.  Most all communist countries banned Western "decadent" art forms.  It's also a bad idea to try to deal drugs in most Marxist states. Why, then, when they're not in power, do they cheer for all these things?  Fact is, they don't want all these things for their own sake, but because they perceive them as destructive of the underpinnings of society.  So of course they push for them, because they want society destroyed.  In fact, you can make the case that many of our leftists are much more interested in destroying than in building.  If you destroy religion, you see, you can replace it with Marxism.  If you destroy the family unit, you can replace it with public school propaganda and welfare.  If you destroy any concept of morality, the populace becomes ripe for communist morality.

So most leftist efforts these days aren't spent on trying to make the West adopt communism directly, but to wipe out everything else that might prevent or oppose communistm.  This process is called "cultural Marxism," and it's all over the MAG (Media, Academia, Government) and permeates our whole culture.  It takes the form of feminism, welfare rights, open-borders immigration, and all the other enthusiasms of the left.  They usually call it "tolerance" or "anti-racism."

They turn everything on its head, you see, and refer with contempt to "bourgeois morality," rolling religion, ethics, self-reliance, morality, fair play and responsible behavior of all kinds into one ball and call it evil or old-fashioned or oppressive.  They dress all this up with appealing terminology and penetrate the very institutions that they wish to destroy.  They make it sound all intellectual and academic.  They're good at that because so many of them are academics themselves.

Paul Gottfried knows all about cultural Marxism. He says the term describes what's going on with the Obama administration far better than "socialism" does.  Read what he has to say HERE.

Occupy Wall Street in what sense?

I haven't written anything about "Occupy Wall Street" because it's hard to see where it's going.  Like the Tea Party movement, it clearly has a lot of elements and it's clearly being co-opted by the Democrats just like the Tea Party has been co-opted by the Republicans. Obviously, there are people involved who are exasperated with the big shots with all the money and want to do something about it, but don't, of course, know how to do it.  They think the left is on the side of the angels, when it's actually right there on the side of the Fat Cats like it has been for years.  Sure, this movement is making some of the Fat Cats nervous, but think of it this way:  If you're a mob boss, what's the best way to deal with other mob bosses threatening your monopoly? Turn them in to the cops.  Keep the cops busy hassling your rivals.  Is that what's going on?  A number of the protestors are just hippie types, young and old, playing at opposition to authority.  A large number of them seem to be strongly in favor of reelecting Obama, apparently unaware that he's a corporate puppet whose campaign was heavily financed by Wall Street. See why I've been avoiding writing about this?
Best I can do, really, is give you a couple of good links.  Gavin McInnes was actually there at the protest, and wrote THIS. Kevin MacDonald takes a scholarly look at it all HERE. The always compelling "Elvisnixon" has THIS.  "The Golem" chimes in HERE, finding flaws in the Occupiers and the Tea Party both. Steve Sailer reacts THUS. And maybe best of all, here's the word from OneSTDV.

Best Steve Jobs Cartoon So Far

Lots of very predictable, unimaginative Steve Jobs cartoons out there, but this one is a zinger, and the best I've seen so far.  It's by Matt Bors.

Obama Apologizes for Killing Terrorist.

A guest post from "The Colonel"
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Shocking! Obama Apologizes to Slain Terrorist’s Family

October 11, 2011

Friends,

Here is the State Department's official transcript of a State spokeswoman answering questions about a condolence call made by our government to the family of a terrorist WE KILLED along with Awlaki in Yemen. Is it now our policy to apologize for the terrorists we kill? Please explain this to the thousands of American families whose children have died at the hands of these Muslim terrorists around the world. And then explain it to me. We must end this lunacy in 2012.

Thanks,

Alan

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QUESTION: There are reports out of North Carolina that the family of Samir Khan on Thursday received a – what they’re calling a condolence call from the State Department. First question on that would be: Was there, in fact, a call? Second would be: Can you describe the nature, or would you, in fact, call it a condolence call? And the third would be: Why on Thursday? Why not do it any earlier?

MS. NULAND: I’m just – I have some background here, but I can’t find it. Yes, we did make a call to the family of Samir Khan. I believe the first call was on October 3^rd, so I believe that since then I had said here that we had not been in contact. If I did say that, then it was incorrect, our information was incomplete, and that call was to express our sympathy with the family. And then I think we had a follow-up on October 7^th, but let me get you the full information on that.

QUESTION: Okay. Then why – I still think that the first call was still several days after he was killed. Can you explain what – why there was a lag in that?

MS. NULAND: I can’t, except to say that there has been some issue in this case of identifying the appropriate next of kin.

QUESTION: Okay. And so you don’t think it’s inappropriate to call it a condolence call; you said it was expressing sympathy?

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: (Inaudible.)

QUESTION: Oh, yeah. Okay.

MS. NULAND: Well, you can characterize it how you’d like.

QUESTION: Okay. Do you – don’t you see it as somewhat odd that the U.S. Government being responsible for his death would offer a sympathy call (inaudible)?

MS. NULAND: This was an effort to reach out to the family of an American citizen and see if any further assistance was required of us. And my understanding is that nothing else was asked for at that time.

QUESTION: Did they ask for any kind of an explanation of how he died? I mean, I’d --

MS. NULAND: To my knowledge, no.

QUESTION: So what you’re saying is that there were actually two calls.

MS. NULAND: My understanding is that there were two contacts. There was one on the 3rd and one on the 7th. But let me get you the right --

QUESTION: Okay, but when I asked about this last week, both Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday – the first call was Monday, it was asked about on Monday, or was it – yes –

QUESTION: Monday.

QUESTION: Monday. The answer was that you don’t get in touch with them unless they get in touch with you first.

MS. NULAND: Again, I think that I had incomplete or inaccurate information, at least at the beginning part of the week. I think the last time we answered this question was on Wednesday. So we are correcting it now, and in this case I think that we had – when we determined that we had next of kin information, it was at that point that we made a reach-out.

QUESTION: What was the point for the second call?

MS. NULAND: Again, I don’t have it here so let me see if I have anything further to give you on these.

QUESTION: Okay. The only reason I’m asking is that you said that there was no ask. So I’m curious; if there was no ask on the first call, why there would be a reason for a second call.

MS. NULAND: Yeah.

QUESTION: But just to be clear that there weren’t protracted discussions about the circumstances surrounding his death and any U.S. involvement in the attack?

MS. NULAND: To my knowledge, no.

QUESTION: And who made the call?

MS. NULAND: I think they were made from the Consular Office here in the Department.

QUESTION: And to who?

MS. NULAND: To one of the family – the family member who was next of kin. Let me get you some more on that.

Obama’s State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) has contacted the family of al-Qaeda propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to “express its condolences” to his family. Samir Khan a right hand man to Anwar al-Awlaki, was killed along with his jihadist buddy in an air strike in Yemen that took place on September 30.

A Khan family spokesman even went so far as to say he felt State was not only apologetic for killing Khan, a terrorist enemy of America, but for not giving its condolences sooner. By way of background, Khan was an American citizen who maintained an anti-American web site while he lived in Charlotte, North Carolina. Two years ago, he left for Yemen to help produce Inspire, an English language blog. In an early introductory essay, Khan described himself as “proud to be a traitor to America.” He was also the author of Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom.

This man was a self identified enemy of America whose death should be celebrated, not apologized for.

It's a Jungle Out There

Cartoon by BALOO

Or over there.  As I said in my last post, "Obama Invades Africa," the Dark Continent remains dark.  Darker than you might think. Breath-takingly dark. Edgar Rice Burroughs, never having been there, wrote the place up as a virtual utopia compared to the reality, but he's still regularly denounced as a racist. I haven't been able to bring myself to look at the current Disney version of Tarzan, by the way.  And I really don't think I have to — I can guess that it's hideously politically correct. We are led to think of Africa (and in this post, I'm referring to sub-Saharan, or Black, Africa) as a place of nice little villages for the most part, living in harmony with nature, and all that good stuff, till a bunch of evil Whiteys showed up and bollixed everything up, inventing slavery, yadda yadda yadda.  If you listen to NPR, you'll think of Africa as sort of a New Hampshire-ish place of nice electoral politics, blooming democracy, and a lot of  clever agricultural and social experiments set up by local bright boys and wise, idealistic young Peace Corps volunteer types.

You can also get a nice, happy view of Africa from the very readable Mma Ramotswe novels about Botswana, which might be indeed the most admirable place in Africa.  The author, Alexander McCall Smith, pointedly isn't writing novels about his native Zimbabwe.  But in one of the earlier Botswana novels, witch doctoring and child sacrifice is part of the plot, and that might have been a little too realistic for the readership — kind of spoils the tone — and the stories since have been restricted to the usual kind of crime you might find anywhere.  I recommend these books as great reads, but don't let them blind you to the reality.

Here are the facts: Africa still has slavery.  It still practices female genital mutilation.  Genocide is more of a rule than an exception there.  Everybody hates everybody.  It is a savage place, and the savagery is only increase when we send in state-of-the-art weapons for them to kill each other with.  And it has child sacrifice.  Joseph Kony is not exceptional, except maybe he's better at it than others. There is nothing exceptional about the "Lord's Resistance Army." Destroy him and his criminal gang, and another will spring up to take its place, because that's the situation in Africa, and nobody from outside is going to change it.

Never heard of child sacrifice?  I guess it's not newsworthy.  It's hard to tell what's newsworthy.  My wife just pointed out that they took a few seconds on the nightly news to tell us about Obama sending troops to Africa, and several minutes orgasming over the wonderful beautiful fashions that Michelle is walking around in these days.  Got to keep the priorities straight, media.  As for child sacrifice, Nicholas Stix tells us about it HERE.

Obama Invades Africa

Offhand, what do you think the dumbest damn place in the world to deploy US troops would be?  Why guess?  Just watch Obama.  Our modern Clausewitz has picked the absolute craziest, most futile, most counterproductive place in the world, central Africa.  This is completely in keeping with Obama's role as a neocon leader — you're not one of those naifs who think Obama is something other than a neocon, are you?  I already explained the neocon foreign policy principle that American military power must never be used to benefit the US, because that would be immoral.  No, it must be used to benefit somebody else, anybody else.  But Obama has shown himself to be an Über-Neocon.  Not only will sending our troops to Uganda certainly not benefit us, it won't even benefit the Ugandans, because, quite frankly, nothing could benefit the Ugandans.  Now, wait.  Whenever we invade some godforsaken place, we always end up with thousands of new immigrants from that place.  Check out Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia, for example.  So I suppose this idiotic invasion will, sort of, benefit these new refugee-immigrants which the welfare establishment is already smacking its lips over. So if you think that what this country needs is some more immigrants from central Africa, cheer Obama on!

Africa is a savage place.  The bad guy Obama says he wants to kill, Joseph Kony,  is just one bad guy.  Just about everybody with the power to be a bad guy in Africa is a bad guy.  Genocide is just routine in Africa, and that seems to have been the case for just about forever.  It didn't do Somalia any good when we invaded it, and it won't do anybody else in Africa any good either.  You can't improve Africa.  Britain, France, Germany, and Belgium, all of them tried to straighten sub-Saharan Africa out, and it's worse now than when they started.

If you're not convinced that this is crazy, check out what Steve Sailer has to say.

Oh, just talked to my son about this on the phone.  He says he's been keeping count, and this is Obama's War Number Six.  Shall we put him in for another Nobel?  Further blogging on this HERE.

The Decline of the West

Many years ago, I struggled through Spengler's Decline of the West. (Note that the link takes you to an abridged paperback, but the full text hardback, in two volumes, are also available there.)  Quite some time ago, Spengler saw things developing that would lead to the weakening of Western Civilization and its eventual fall and replacement by something new.  That was during the devastation of World War I, described by Poul Anderson as "Western Civilization cutting its own throat," but before the even greater catastrophe of World War II.  Well, read it (it's probably at any good library) if you have some free time.  It's sobering.  Many years later, Francis Parker Yockey wrote sort of a sequel, Imperium, which is also worth a read.

The West is galloping to a decline now.  Spengler thought of the West as a cultural unit, the countries of Western Europe and it's colonies.  He excluded Russia, and thought of it as a separate culture, and has some interesting arguments supporting that.  Some definitions of the West are even narrower, some broader, including Russia and even Japan. But everybody agrees that the West is a culture separate and distinct from Islamic Culture, which Spengler regarded as the last great culture before the West.  And one clear demonstration of the Decline of the West is the current infiltration of the remnants of Islamic civilization into the West, not to mention other groups.

I tend to regard Russia not as something separate.  I know Russian culture and history varies from that of Western Europe, but not by very much.  And, indeed, within that narrow Western European group there are also variations, some quite profound. There are a lot of differences between Sicily and Iceland, not to mention Australia and Uruguay, colonial parts of the West.

How is this "West" declining?  At one time, the West was militarily supreme.  It's still pretty tough, but most of the power of Europe itself has waned, and the big military strength of the West now resides in the United States.  Another factor is the decline of Christianity in the West, which was always, despite schisms between Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant, a big unifying factor.  And then there's our birth rate, which declines while nonWesterners colonize the West through immigration.  For a dramatic example of that, read Camp of the Saints.  And now we have one financial crisis after another, throughout the West.  Not a little bit of the reason for this is the drain on Western resources by the Third World.  This drain takes the form of trillions of dollars spent directly on foreign aid and military operations in nonWestern regions, most particularly the Middle East.  Our old Islamic adversary is now weakening us through transfer of funds.  And another part of the drain is Western money spent on caring for immigrants, who soak up more trillions in the form of welfare payments and crime.

The only prominent person who has taken up the responsibility of keeping us informed about our decline is Pat Buchanan.  His latest column deals with the fall of the New World Order, which was supposed to keep Western Civilization going, and has failed miserably.  Read it HERE.  Or HERE.

Boycott ESPN

Received in email: On October 3, 2011 country music legend Hank Williams Jr. appeared on Fox and Friends and gave some politically incorrect commentary. While on the air, he committed the unpardonable sin of using the word “Hitler” within one contiguous paragraph of the word “Obama,” calling the golf summit between Obama and Senator Boehner as ridiculous as a hypothetical one between Adolf Hitler and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. ESPN execs – whose viewers undoubtedly like Hank better than Obama – first pulled his opening song “Are You Ready for Some Football?”, which had run on Monday Night Football since 1991, then fired him. Well, Hank Jr. is not willing be silenced and this week produced a song in which he calls for patriots to turn off ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Let’s stand up for this patriotic American and for FREE SPEECH which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. We are asking you to switch off ESPN Monday Night Football. Please sign the petition below and share with your friends to show your support for Hank Williams Jr. and Free Speech! http://boycottespn.org/

Diversity is a lot of things

Quark, a diverse fellow

You have to be careful watching Star Trek, like any TV show, because the biases of the writers can seep into your head without your realizing it.  I've googled for this, but still haven't found it.  I remember somebody using the phrase "unity in diversity" somewhere on the show, about Starfleet or the Federation or something.  "Unity in Diversity" is a slogan, of course, and like all slogans, it's not sufficient in itself, but has to be interpreted before you can understand it fully.  Indeed, "diversity" has to be defined and explained before it really means anything clear.  Anyhow, whether I actually heard the phrase or dreamed it, it's definitely one of the messages of the show.  In the Original Series, we saw that the Enterprise was made a much stronger ship by the presence of Spock, a non-human alien. (Well, he was half human, but that actually didn't come up often, and we mostly just thought of him as a Vulcan.)  This message was muted a little by the fact than there were enemy races out there, like Klingons and Romulans, and that diversity definitely did not result in unity.  But the next series, Star Trek — The Next Generation, got a little more diverse, what with Worf the Klingon being right there on the ship and working with everybody else, and also Deanna the half-Betazoid being an essential part of the crew.  There were still diverse enemies out there, though, most notably the Ferengi, who should have evoked indignant protests from Abe Foxman, but I guess the message was too subtle for him. Then we moved on to DS9, and we had a Trill, a Bajoran, Ferengi, and old Worf again, all a part of another unity.  Still on the outside were the creepy Cardassians and a few others here and there.  We won't talk about Voyager, because I remain convinced that the whole series was all a holodeck fantasy programmed by Janeway, who was actually a Spacegirl Third Class who worked as a file clerk on some big ship, so she could pretend to be a Captain.

All this was meant to entertain, of course, and you have to admit that all these funny-looking races are more interesting and dramatic than a ship full of boring old humans would have been. But it was also, naturally, a metaphor for human diversity, which is our current secular dogma. And as such, it inserted the diversity is strength meme into the subconscious of all the Trekkies.

This is the sort of thinking that leads to the decision that a nice, peaceful country that works well like Denmark would be improved if a bunch of Muslims immigrated.  That what Lewiston, Maine really needs is a bunch of Somalis to make life interesting.  That bussing kids across town into forcibly integrated schools will make them all more educated and all-around better people.  That what Postville, Iowa would be enhanced if a gang of Lubavitchers were to move in and take over, and in turn, import a bunch of illegal aliens to depress slaughterhouse wages. Rather than burden you with links I pick out, I invite you to google the key words and find out more about these Adventures in Diversity.

Oh, and this thinking leads to some other things — the notion that even the US Army can only be made better by including people like Nidal Mali Hassan, who no doubt contributed a lot to the Strength of Diversity before he murdered all those people at Fort Hood.  John Derbyshire starts from the Fort Hood massacre, and examines the Diversity Dogma HERE.

Oh, Baloo wants me to remind you that he has lots of Diversity products on sale HERE.

President Vladimir Putin

Found on Facebook HERE.

I heard Limbaugh prattling about "American Exceptionalism" today.  He defined it as "fighting for freedom." This is an attitude liberals and neocons share.  The idea that the United States should never fight in its own interest but always in somebody else's interest.  This started with "liberating Cuba" back in 1898 and has just gotten worse since.  In other words, then, "American Exceptionalism" is all about ignoring our own interest and using up our money and our military's blood fighting for abstract principles of one sort or another usually calling it "freedom."  So instead of dealing with the Mexican border, we're off fighting for the freedom of Afghans, Israelis, Albanian Muslims, Somalis, and what-have-you.  Other countries, not cursed with "exceptionalism," are free to use their resources for their own interests.  And boy, do they ever! How long can we last doing this?  Not much longer, I'd say.

Well, as I've said before, the Russians have a pro-Russian leader in Vladimir Putin.  Wouldn't it be neat to have a pro-American President?  I've been trying to authenticate the quote in this picture, and haven't been able to.  But it certainly sounds like Putin, and if he said it, he was dead right.

Columbus and Steve Jobs

I said awhile back that intelligence involves, at least in part, the ability to detect patterns and relationships.  Well, I just detected a big one on this very blog!  I've been praising Steve Jobs and Christopher Columbus, and in both cases, I've been informed of some pretty strong dissenting views.  I didn't want to illustrate this with the usual devil and angel on somebody's shoulders, so instead I present two incarnations of Hatsune Miku, in her evil and good aspects.  You can judge both Jobs and Columbus for yourself.  As for Columbus, a commenter, "FatJake,"  said:

I respect everyone's right to their own opinion, but I cannot understand how anyone would attempt to justify the actions of this man, much less give him a holiday. Mail carriers and banks should still have to work on Columbus Day, because they still have to work on every other day synonymous with genocidal maniacs (except for Thanksgiving).
http://ux.brookdalecc.edu/fac/history/Tangents/ARTICLESFORTANGENTS/Columbus%27s%20Genocide.htm


I'm very dubious about this source, but in the interest of listening to all sides, I present it to you.

As for Jobs, another commenter sent this dissenting view from The Gawker.  I'll wait while you read it....

Okay, in the first place, it may well be true that Jobs was rude and nasty to employees.  I wasn't there, but it seems like just about anybody who accomplishes anything in business gets accused of this sooner or later, so I take it with a grain of salt.  Maybe you have to be an SOB to run a company.  I don't know.  As for his lack of philanthropy, I applaud it.  Most of the dough Bill Gates has given away has been at best wasted, at worst counterproductive.  And as for his banning certain stuff from being used on his devices, I must say that they're his devices, and it's unAmerican for the Government to ban things, not for individuals.  You might as well say that it's unAmerican for you and me to decide who lives in our houses or drives our cars.

Oh, here's some more dissent on Jobs from the Irish Savant.

The accusation about the sweat shops in China has more legs.  Of course, this couldn't happen without the US Government's permission.  If Jobs influenced the Government to permit him to do this, to change the laws so he could do it, he is rightly condemned.  If, on the other hand, he had no influence, and was faced with the choice of either using Chinese labor or refusing to do it and letting his competitors win, then he had little choice.  Very analogous to the situation where construction companies have to use illegal alien labor because if they don't, their competitors will, and they go out of business.

Well, that's all I have to say about it.  The rest is up to you.  I link, you decide.

Columbus Day

Cartoon by BALOO

I forgot to write about Columbus Day yesterday, though I think today, the 12th,  is actually the right day. But I forgot about it because nobody much talks about it any more.  Columbus is now mostly a bad guy in popular culture, because he's one of the big icons of Western Civilization, and Western Civilization itself is pretty much a bad guy these days.

The usual narrative is that Native Americans, whom I prefer to call Amerindians, for purposes of conciseness and unambiguity, were a bunch of nice guys, living in harmony with nature and all that, and then a bunch of evil White guys showed up and spoiled everything.  No, the Amerindians were a bunch of jerks, like everybody else, with their virtues and shortcomings.  In fact, making any generalizations about a human group that stretched from Patagonia to Canada is pretty silly.  Might as well talk about Eurasian culture or the Eurasian people.  Yes, the Amerindians are a Race of Man, or more usually a subset of the Mongolian Race, but that's about a general as you can get about them.  Oh, you can say that they were neolithic, which is true of their most advanced peoples, at least, but that covers a lot of ground, all the way from nomadic hunters on the US plains, to farmers in the Eastern US, to the big empires and cities in Mexico and Peru.

And since the West was way ahead of the Amerindians in technology and organization, for the most part, the Amerindian cultures were pretty much wiped out.  And the diseases Europeans brought with them may have wiped out the majority of them before they'd ever heard of Europeans.  There's a lot about this theory in Charles Mann's 1491.  It's fairly certain that a huge number were destroyed that way.  Anyhow, because of all this, there's a lot of ignorance about just what they were like, and most of us got our ideas about Amerindian people and culture from movies and westerns on TV.  Those of us brought up on Tonto and Cochise were a little bit shocked by Mel Gibson's politically-incorrectissimo Apocalypto.

Well, Columbus was a great man, just like it used to be taught in school.  He was a risk-taker, a visionary, an intrepid explorer, and he initiated the spread of Western Civilization to the entire Western Hemisphere, which, despite nonsense you hear from liberals, was a good thing.  Sensible Amerindians, who aren't pets of the liberal establishment, will tell you so.  A good example is David Yeagley, aka Bad Eagle.

Columbus isn't, or shouldn't be, just a White icon.  He's a human icon, a symbol of the best of humanity. It's time to bring him back to the center and give him the credit he deserves. James Edwards writes about the Importance of Columbus Day HERE.