Ron Paul in Fort Collins, Colorado

Ron Paul showed up here in Fort Collins today, and said this:

Hatsune Miku's Lightsaber Duel

There are right-wing blogs and there are right-wing blogs, but not very many of them have this sort of thing.  If you like Star Wars, Japanese silliness, and/or semi-erotic animated cartoons, you should like this. If not, go read National Review Online or something.

On the Road to Hell with Obama and the Bishops

As we all know by now, Obama has ordered the Catholic Church to relegate Christianity to the back burner and instead get with his socialized medicine program or suffer the consequences. They don't like it. Story HERE. Now, the Catholic Church is an important component of Western Civilization, and always has been, so of course its concerns are completely irrelevant to Obama's Zeitgeist, especially when they impede the destruction of Western Civilization, Obama's number one priority. Of course, the Church is welcomed when it's willing to help with the destruction of civilization, as in the immigration controversy. The popular position of the Catholic Bishops and the Church hierarchy in general is in favor of open borders. Naturally, this popular position is not supported at all by basic Catholic teachings, as I show HERE, but the Church is a human institution, and as capable of decadence and corruption as any other. It's well to keep those basic teachings in mind, before you're overcome with schadenfreude because of your irritation with that decadence and corruption. You have to keep in mind that Obamaism is the enemy, and the Church is, basically, a good guy who is frequently duped into self-destructive impulses, like so many Western institutions have been.

So there's two ways to look at this.  Read both of these to get a balanced feel for what the situation is:
Pat Buchanan — Obama Sandbags the Archbishop
Vox Populi — Selective and belated protest

Honor Killings in Canada

I'm sure we've all heard about the conviction in the honor killing case in Canada by now, but its implications are being danced around by the commentariat.  Here's the Toronto Star trying to put a politically correct spin on it. And one comment I hear over and over, phrased in different ways, is that this was hardly an "honor" killing, or that there is no honor in killing, etc. And this is from people who claim to celebrate diversity and multiculturalism. The thing about multiculturalism is that cultures are different, and no, it's not about tacos and sombreros or felafel and burnooses or sushi and kimonos. Or moon pies and bib overalls, for that matter. These cute dietary and sartorial variations are the least significant of cultural differences, thought every time I complain about illegal immigration some immature dink shouts, "You eat spaghetti, don't you?"

Well, honor killing as it occurred in this case is a rather more significant manifestation of cultural differences, and before you bring up the Muslims you know who don't murder their daughters, I hasten to tell you that I realize quite well that Muslim culture is no more monolithic than Christian culture is. I frankly don't know in which Muslim subcultures honor killings are most popular, but considering some of the other stomach-turning practices one finds in Afghanistan, it's a good bet that they're big on honor killings.  At least this particular Afghan is.

Now, I'm certainly not a multiculturalist, in the sense of the word that is generally accepted, that all cultures are equal, la dee dah, and we must welcome them all and kiss their asses and so forth. On the contrary, I like my own Western Culture and prefer it to all others.  Indeed, Western Culture to me is the measure of all other cultures. But I'd never say that honor killing isn't honor.  No, I'd say that honor killing is not honor by Western Cultural standards.  Get the difference? Honor killing is honor in that little bubble of Third-World savage culture that Mr Shafia brought to Canada with him. Which is why he shouldn't have been allowed in to begin with.

Unlike liberals and neocons, I wouldn't dream of galloping off to Afghanistan to tell the Afghans how to run their affairs. They can do whatever they please.  If they feel like asking my advice, I'd recommend that they leave off some of the nastier things they do, but they don't want my advice or anybody else's. But also, unlike liberals and neocons, I wouldn't dream of inviting savages to move in next door and expecting them to change their ways. If you don't want anybody brewing beer, don't invite Germans to immigrate. If you don't want honor killings, don't invite people from honor killing cultures to immigrate. This isn't rocket science, is it?

I guess, in a broad sense, I am a multiculturalist. Not in the touchy-feely way that considers all cultures of equal value, or even that all cultures have a right to exist. But in the sense that it isn't my responsibility to change other people's cultures if they keep them out of my face, and even that it's a little   hubristic for me to think I'm so smart that I know how to change them for the better anyway.  There are a lot of cultures I don't like at all, but as long as they agree not to bother me, I'm certainly willing to refrain from bothering them.  Of course, wanting to move into my country with some hideous batty culture is bothering me. That's where libertarian nationalism diverges from hippy-dippy libertarianism.

Partly that's an ethical stance — that, for all I know, some repugnant custom in some benighted place is so essential a factor in the culture as a whole, that changing it would result in even worse things.  And partly, it's just practical — We in the West have limited resources, and they should be spent taking care of our own people, not wasted trying to force other people to live in the way we'd prefer.

This attitude, I think, is basic to Libertarian Nationalism — live and let live on the international level. And insist on appropriate behavior on the part of immigrants or visitors. To disagree with these conclusions would require abandonment of rationality. Can anybody point out a flaw in any of this logic?  If you think you can, by all means, please comment.

Red Tails in the Sunset

"Red Tails" has bombed. Nobody seems to want to see it. And that's a mercy. It's not an honor to the Tuskegee Airmen to outrageously exaggerate their accomplishments, but a dishonor. It's a cliché in fiction, especially movies, to take Black soldiers and other servicemen, who by all accounts served responsibly, and make superheroes out of them. At a certain point, such preposterous exaggerations result in skepticism about everything accomplished by Blacks in any field. When you're told over and over that Martin Luther King, for example, was a great theologian, when in fact he was a plagiarizing fraud, you begin to think that everything you've heard about any Black religious leaders was probably  made up, too. It's like the Affirmative Action paradox. Time was, an American Black with a college degree was almost certainly worthy of respect — think of Tom Sowell — because before Affirmative Action, everybody had to accomplish a certain amount of learning about something to get a bachelor's degree. But any Black below a certain age with a college degree can't be counted on to be educated at all.  Chances are, the degree is in something totally meaningless, like Black Studies or sociology, and even if it's a degree that sounds worthwhile, in the back of your mind you wonder if the skids were greased to keep the quota machine running. Just how educated do you think Michelle Obama is, really?
Anyhow, the idea was that if a lot of Blacks got college degrees, they'd get a lot more respect.  Of course, the opposite is the result. Everybody catches on to the phoniness sooner or later.

For more on the "Red Tails" disaster, including the strange claim that the Tuskegee Airmen won the war, check out what Paul Kersey has to say today HERE.

Ron Paul and Immigration

If you've read this blog much, you'll know that I consider illegal immigration the biggest problem we've got.  It's bigger than the economic crisis and actually a big cause of it. And I also consider most legal immigration no better than the illegal kind, since we seem to have few or no standards about who we admit as immigrants. Now, Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum have all expressed their opposition to illegal immigration, but they don't mean a word of it.  They're liars — on a lot of issues, but especially this one. They're all three in thrall to the elite, who want as many illegals in this country as possible, first for the cheap labor, and second, to help suppress traditional Americans, whom they dislike intensely, because they're so hard to order around. Which of the three is the worst, we'll never know. We can only judge which one sounds the worst.

Now, Ron Paul has his flaws, but being in thrall to the elite is definitely not one of them. The elite hate Ron Paul, because he opposes, one way or the other, just about everything they want.  Another thing about Ron Paul is that he has reputation for, and a record of, honesty. If he says he wants the border secured, the chances are pretty damn good that, once in office,  he'll do his best to secure it. And he has said that.  In fact, here's his immigration policy from his website at http://www.ronpaul2012.com :

A MATTER OF NATIONAL SECURITY

A nation without borders is no nation at all.

It just doesn’t make sense to fight terrorists abroad while leaving our front door unlocked.

Unfortunately, for far too long, neither major political party has had the courage to do what is necessary to tackle the problem.

Instead, we’re presented with so-called “solutions” that involve amnesty proposals or further restricting Americans’ civil liberties through programs like REAL ID.

Ron Paul opposes both of these schemes and believes they will only make illegal immigration and the problems associated with it worse.  He has been proud to see states exercising their Tenth Amendment rights and protecting their citizens by refusing to comply with the unconstitutional REAL ID law.

While the federal government neglects its constitutional responsibility to protect our borders, it continues to push mandates on the states to provide free education and medical care to illegal immigrants at a time when the states are drowning in debt.   This must not be tolerated any longer.

Like most Americans, Ron Paul also understands just how valuable legal immigration is to our country.

Immigrants who want to work hard, obey our laws, and live the American Dream have always been great assets.

COMMON SENSE REFORMS

If elected President, Ron Paul will work to implement the following common sense reforms:

* Enforce Border Security – America should be guarding her own borders and enforcing her own laws instead of policing the world and implementing UN mandates.

* No Amnesty - The Obama Administration’s endorsement of so-called “Comprehensive Immigration Reform,” granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, will only encourage more law-breaking.

* Abolish the Welfare State – Taxpayers cannot continue to pay the high costs to sustain this powerful incentive for illegal immigration.  As Milton Friedman famously said, you can’t have open borders and a welfare state.

* End Birthright Citizenship – As long as illegal immigrants know their children born here will be granted U.S. citizenship, we’ll never be able to control our immigration problem.

* Protect Lawful Immigrants – As President, Ron Paul will encourage legal immigration by streamlining the entry process without rewarding lawbreakers.

As long as our borders remain wide open, the security and safety of the American people are at stake.

As President, Ron Paul will address immigration by fighting for effective solutions that protect our nation, uphold the rule of law, and respect every American citizen’s civil liberties.

Good stuff.  I like it.  If I found it on Romney's website, or Santorum's, or Gingrich's, I wouldn't pay much attention, because, as I said, they're liars.  But it's on Ron Paul's, so I take it seriously.

Finally, here's the best summary I've found of Ron Paul's statements and voting record on immigration:
http://faithandheritage.com/2012/01/race-immigration-and-ron-paul/

Pious Baloney on Immigration

FROM BALOO'S CARTOON SITE

I'm supporting Ron Paul, looking forward to going to the caucuses soon and voting for him, and to me, the most important issue is illegal immigration. A lot of people have been complaining that Ron Paul is ambiguous on immigration, and I'm one of them. But I continue to support him for other reasons, and as far as immigration is concerned, he has questioned the validity of birthright citizenship in the past, and of the four remaining Republicans, he's the only one who isn't in the pay of our elite rulers, who are all for open borders.  So I'll vote for him and hope for the best. I'm pretty sure we'll get de facto if not de jure amnesty from any one of the other three.

But never mind illegal immigration. Did you notice the big competition between Mitt and Newt about who loves immigration the most? Why is being pro-immigration such a wonderful thing? Most Americans, and certainly most Republicans, are anti-immigration, for very good reasons, which I've been citing on this blog for quite some time now. Why are these guys trying to get Republican votes by assuring the voters that they'll bring in more and more immigrants to an already overburdened nation to either take the voters jobs or go on welfare, and in the case of the more ingenious of them, both? And on top of that, just about all new immigrants become Democrats as soon as they cross the border. Seems like a funny policy for any Republican.  Are they illogical, evil, or somehow insane? Me, now, like most Americans, I'm anti-immigration. That is to say, some immigrants might be okay with me, but they have to prove that they'll give more than they take. That they'll live right and contribute more to our economy than they'll consume from it. And they have to prove that they won't screw up our society and culture any more than it already is. That would cut the wave of immigration to a trickle, just the way it ought to be.

To figure out the motivations of these jokers, especially Romney and Gingrich, read this analysis by Kevin MacDonald.

Remaking the World

BALOO'S CARTOON SITE

I know I've said this before, but people differ. They differ in appearance, temperament, language, religion, values, and all sort of ways. But there are human universals, and one of those is that people mostly don't like being told what to do. They especially don't like being told what to do by people who differ from them — the more they differ, the more they hate being ordered around. Even when they're getting good orders, they resent them, and resist them even when it seems perverse to do so. We in the West like the idea of limited government and democracy. It took us a lot of time to get that way, but that's the way we are. It may startle my liberal and neocon readers, if there are any, to learn that most of the human race isn't at all interested in limited government and democracy. They can't comprehend the first, and are suspicious (often rightly) of the second.

Our ruling elite either doesn't know that people differ or are lying about it, because they constantly assure us that everybody outside the West want to become just like us, and are prevented by doing so only by our weakening reluctance to let them move in and live with us, or for those who stay put, by a few nasty dictators whom the people hate, because they're preventing them from becoming Just Like Us. So what we must do, first of all, is open our borders up so they can come here and assimilate — Lord knows they're eager to assimilate, though it make take them a few generations to give up female genital mutilation and honor killings and polygamy and witchcraft.  And second, we must draft all our boys and stride around the world, removing the Saddam Husseins and Qadafis and maybe even the Chavezes and what's left of the Castros, so the people of these benighted places can immediately become Just Like Us. How's that working out so far?

And even if that sort of thing did work, why should be be compelled to bring it about? Why is it the responsibility of our troops and taxpayers to make sacrifices to try to drag people into the 21st Century when they're perfectly content to remain in the 12th? Actually, it's not. No matter what deep thinkers like Obama and Bush and McCain and Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson have to say, it's not our responsibility and a pretty stupid idea anyway.

Pat Buchanan has been thinking about this for a long time, and has come to the same conclusion, and I couldn't think of a better way to illustrate his essay than by reproducing Baloo's latest cartoon, above. (Ron Paul seems to think the same way.) Pat's essay is HERE.

Paul Gottfried on Ron Paul

The Irrepressible GOP Conflict

by Paul Gottfried

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ELIZABETHTOWN, PA -- The Republican presidential candidate who is the most divisive is Ron Paul. Pat Buchanan observes (http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48685) that Paul is the only candidate whom his rivals, and most emphatically Gingrich, would never vote for, even if the Texas Congressman were the Republican presidential nominee.

        Paul loudly scolded Gingrich for packing away millions as a politician and lobbyist and then pretending to be "against Washington." He also mocked the former Speaker as a "chicken hawk," for incessantly advocating war after having avoided military service himself. In return, Gingrich has called Paul a phony Republican, whose isolationist views put him on the far left.  Paul later went after Rick Santorum for having enriched himself in the Senate while pretending to despise big government. The former senator then responded forcefully: "Ron Paul is disgusting."

        Note the accusations that Paul has been flinging around are no more abrasive than what Gingrich and Romney have been hurling at each other. According to Buchanan, Paul's invectives do not even seem unusual in the current "GOP war of all against all." What makes them particularly offensive is that Paul is frontally challenging the GOP establishment. Moreover, though he'll probably never come near the Republican presidential or vice-presidential nomination, the Texas congressman may force what is called in the history of science a "paradigm shift."

        Such establishment GOP columnists as George Will and Charles Krauthammer have made this observation, that Paul can exert a powerful influence over the party to which he is only accidentally linked, if he can force Republican leaders to accept at least some of his ideas. Will and Krauthammer think that such conservative-libertarian concerns as scaling back the federal bureaucracy and pursuing a more "sensible" and less ideologically driven foreign policy can be transmitted to the party at the national level, even if Paul will not be the nominee. They also insist, together with Republican strategist Ed Rollins, the GOP leadership must learn to treat Paul with respect. Otherwise they'll face a third party candidacy that could cost them the presidential race.

        All of this may be wishful thinking. Paul and the other candidates are operating in different political universes. While these other candidates favor the same foreign policy as the one advocated by McCain and Bush and while they are unlikely to make much of a dent in existing social programs, Paul would turn things around dramatically. Unlike the others, he would not be providing a Bush-third term or the McCain presidency that we missed in 2008, but a program of massive dismantling of the federal bureaucracy, including and perhaps especially the Federal Reserves, and a sharp shift away from the liberal internationalism that is the staple of the Republican foreign policy.

        Those whom Paul has attracted to his banners are typically younger voters; and in both Iowa and New Hampshire, well over forty percent of his votes came from independents. He will undoubtedly do worse in the South, where the voters are overwhelmingly GOP establishment types and big fans of the military and defense industries. (Things military seem to be the overriding consideration of Republican voters in the South.)

        But between now and next summer's GOP convention in Tampa, Paul will be amassing primary votes from across the country; and in Western states, he is likely to do better than among instructed party regulars in South Carolina.  It is not the value-candidates, Santorum and Gingrich, who represent the real break with the GOP establishment. These candidates in office have behaved like party-line Republicans, while being ceaseless advocates of an aggressive, human rights-based foreign policy. The significant fissure is between Paul and the other candidates, who would support each other but never Paul in a presidential race.

        Paul is running for a cause rather than to decorate his resume (which is what Romney and Gingrich seem to be doing). But he can only advance his cause if two things happen.

        --One, he does not end his campaign with the GOP convention but is willing to launch a third party candidacy and to continue running for the presidency until the election in November.

        --Two, Paul must also hope that the probable GOP candidate Romney comes a cropper and that the loss can be clearly ascribed to his third-party presidential run.

        Any other outcome will not help Paul's cause.  A win for Romney would put back in the White House the old faces from the last Bush's presidency, together with most of the same policies. Buchanan has aptly compared the GOP to the Bourbon dynasty in France, which when it returned to power after the French Revolution had allegedly neither forgotten nor learned anything. Unless the GOP suffers defeat at the hands of those on the antiwar, small-government right that it will do nothing to accommodate, its leaders will continue to behave like arrogant Bourbons. 

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It may be republished or forwarded only if this copyright information is included.

Paul Gottfried, Ph.D., is the Raffensperger professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania.

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Of Cluelessness and Curmudgeons

Have you ever noticed that curmudgeons just about always turn out to be right? Not phony curmudgeons, liberals playing curmudgeons on TV, like the late Andy Rooney and the guy whose name I can't remember right now on CNN or someplace with his "File."  And phony curmudgeons in politics, like Newt, who says, or hints at, what all we curmudgeons know full well about food stamps, that they're abused and a total waste of money. That while he's planned to expand the Federal Government and all its spending a few more trillion here and there.

Curmudgeons are annoying, like economists, because they insist on boring old reality, and are eternally skeptical of castles in the air.  They're always saying depressing things like "all politicians are crooks," and they even more depressingly turn out to be right 90% of the time. Other depressingly true things they say are:

Welfare makes people lazy. 
If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns. 
Partying punk college boys should be in the Army.  Or the Marines. Be good for them.
The Government taxes the middle class to give handouts to the poor and the big shots.
Men and women think differently, and that's a good thing.
Traditional morality works.  That's why it's traditional.
You should be proud of having a job, instead of living off other people.
To hell with the Middle East. We should mind our own business and let the idiots kill each other.
Immigrants are usually a pain in the ass.  If they don't want to assimilate, send them back home.

You get the picture. Ornery old coots. Rednecks. Whatever. Point is, people who tell you the truth are the most irritating people in the world. People far prefer the anti-curmudgeons, who tell you that all your problems will be solved if you'll just give them power and money. The ones who tell you that intentions are everything, and results are, well... never mind results.

Curmudgeons are called damn fools, of course, because they're perceived as discouraging progress, when what they're actually doing is warning about the con men who promise progress. Lord Melbourne put it very succinctly:

What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.


I found this great quote over at Takimag, in an essay on anti-curmudgeon politics, symbolized by the Obama, who never heard a utopian dream he didn't want to borrow Chinese money to finance.  It's another great piece of work by John Derbyshire.  Read it HERE.

Noxious Newt

Hey, AAAAAbott!

Not very many candidates could make Mitt Romney look good by contrast, but Newt manages it. It's hard to find words to express what an abomination he is. Despite all his "Reagan conservative" talk, he's a hard-core liberal in every meaningful sense. On immigration, if you put together everything he's said and done over his career, he's an open-borders fanatic every bit as much as Obama is. Don't fall for his current phony talk on immigration. With Newt, we'll get more amnesty than with Obama. His foreign policy doesn't deviate from the basic madness we've experience starting with LBJ. Borrow money to give to foreigners, ignorantly interfere in every trouble spot in the world (if one isn't handy, make a trouble spot), and after you've screwed up a given country, like Iraq or Somalia, invite refugees to immigrate here and go on welfare.  What else?  Plenty of affirmative action to mess our economy and culture up some more, encourage Israeli bad behavior by guaranteeing their budget and their safety, pick fights with places we have no quarrel with, like Russia, and, most important of all, tax hell out of the middle class and give the money to the underclass. If you think Newt will take people off food stamps, you're kidding yourself.
Newt, even more than most politicians, is an accomplished phony, saying or hinting at things he doesn't believe and has never believed, and he wants to be President, not to change anything, but for the prestige of the thing.  Much like his Democrat doppelgänger, Bill Clinton, at base he wants to be Prom King. Elvisnixon goes into more detail HERE.

Diversmocracy

How about that word?  It's a combination of diversity and democracy, the two most wonderful words in the world. You can justify anything with one or the other or both. We often hear that diversity is strength. Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn't.  The kind we're getting in the US these days is definitely not strength.  It's actually weakness.  But suppose we assume that it is a strength, and that democracy is strength, too.  So they should be compatible, even complimentary.  The more democracy you have, the more diversity, and vice-versa.  Take an ancient democracy, like Iceland.  What it needs is a few thousand immigrants from Somalia or Cambodia or something.  Then it would really be democratic.

Anyhow, the deep thinkers all think that both democracy and diversity are wonderful, fantastic things, which is why they were so enthusiastic about deposing evil dictators like Saddam Hussein and Quadafi and Mubarak.  Now that they're overthrown, and everybody can vote, they'll vote to increase their diversity, won't they?  You know, inviting in Christians and Jews and Hindus and such to make their countries more diverse. Oddly and shockingly, that isn't exactly what's happening.  If you didn't know better, you might think that the opposite is happening. Just goes to show that, compared with politically correct theory, reality is disappointing and should be shunned.

Steve Sailer takes a look at this perplexing phenomenon, with special reference to the Arab Spring, HERE.

Robert E. Howard vs. Margaret Mead et al

It's been a long time, and I really need to reread some of Robert E. Howard's great Conan the Barbarian stuff. If you haven't read him, you should. It's good, basic sword-and-sorcery material, sort of begun by Edgar Rice Burroughs and continued by Howard and Fritz Leiber and others. To jog your memory, Conan was originally portrayed by the Goveranator, and there's a new movie out that I don't know much about.  But this is about the written version.
Conan existed in prehistory — not a terribly long time ago, but before recorded history, and it's a barbaric world of warriors, slaves, wizards, and weird religions.  It's fun.  And I'd never thought of it before, but a prominent anthropologist has pointed out that Howard's version of recent prehistory is probably pretty accurate, while the established academic world of anthropology is not accurate, saturated as it is with politically correct theories about what people are like.

The prominent anthropologist is Greg Cochran, and his essay is HERE.

Ron Paul Action Figures — An Idea Whose Time Has Come!

You heard it here first!  Buy them HERE.

Newt or Chameleon?

If you've been groping around for a clear, unambiguous reason to oppose Gingrich, I've got a doozie for you. It's a question of loyalty and allegiance.  The New York Times this morning informed me that Newt had just gotten a gift of $5 million for his campaign from Miriam Adelson, wife of Sheldon Adelson, super-billionaire casino owner, both of whom seem to be examples of "dual citizenship." Dual citizenship, as I've said before, is a sort of legalized bigamy, where you implicitly swear allegiance to two countries, which is quite a trick. Now, if you were a dual citizen of, say, Luxembourg and Tonga, there might never be much of a conflict over your loyalty, as there's never much contact or rivalry between the two countries.  But if you're a citizen of both the US and Israel, what is your position when the two countries' interests conflict?  And yes, Virginia, they conflict.  Israel gets billions in US foreign aid, it's been caught numerous times spying on us, and on one occasion, tried to sink a US Navy ship. When people tell you there's no conflict, because the interests of the two countries coincide, they're blowing smoke.  Was it really in the interest of the United States to have its sailors "attacked with cannon, rockets, and bombs"?

Newt has famously said that Palestinians are an "invented people," which is odd, because I've met Palestinians.  I never actually poked them or anything, but they seemed to be actual people.  Okay, what he meant was that there is no "Palestinian People" as a nation. Of course there isn't.  There also isn't any "North Montanan People" as a nation, but if Canada occupied northern Montana, and tried to drive the natives out, they'd pretty soon begin to identify themselves as a people, wouldn't they? Note that Newt doesn't call illegal aliens an "invented people."  On the contrary, he calls for giving them legal residence if they've managed to elude the law long enough.  Also note that Newt has called for giving Jonathan Pollard clemency.  I've mentioned Pollard before.

Well, it's clear that Newt is more like a Chameleon. He talks up American patriotism, but is all for amnesty for illegals, and considers Israel a far more important country than little old US.  Lots of links on all this, so here they are:
New York Times
Steve Sailer
Huffington Post
Coteret
South Jerusalem
And if you read that last one, you'll see that Romney and Santorum are only marginally better than Newt on this issue, if at all.  Another reason to support Ron Paul.

Newt the Brute

Well, at this point, Newt is ahead in the polls in Florida. Romney supporters argue that Newt can't beat Obama, or at least isn't as likely to as Romney is. They say that while Newt can galvanize the right, he's too hard-core in his rhetoric to win back the swing voters who went for Obama before.  I think I heard Ann Coulter suggest that very argument. Newt supporters, of course, try to say the opposite, that Newt can run better against Obama than Romney can.  And they base this, I'm sure, on his ability to dominate a debate. Because they keep saying that — they are eager to see Newt beat up on Obama just like he's been beating Romney up.  Well, two problems with that — Romney is exactly the kind of guy viewers enjoy seeing beaten up.  He's handsome, elegant, rich, etc., the kind of guy people viscerally think ought to be brought down a peg or two.  Would the feel the same about Obama, or would they sympathize with him even as Newt pounds on him?  Definitely more likely than sympathizing for Romney.  And when you think about it, there's no law that says Obama has to debate Newt in any case.  He might refuse.  Remember when McCain stopped campaigning because he just had to run back to Washington to vote to waste more money?  Obama could do the same, citing all the "emergencies" he has to deal with, and saying he just doesn't have the time to indulge Bad Boy Newt. It very well might work.

I've heard two really good descriptions of Newt today.  One was from a talking head on Fox, I don't remember which one, who said Newt looks like "an angry Captain Kangaroo."  The other, less funny but more informative, from Matt Parrott HERE.

News Flash! — Rand Paul Detained by TSA!

Story HERE.— And Obama thinks it's JUST FINE.

Feminism Again

CARTOON BY BALOO

My recent post on "Feminine Fascism" caused a bit of a reaction. I've been using the term "feminism" in its broadest sense (accidental pun, there) to mean a pro-woman philosopy which can include everything from thinking girls should be educated all the way to crazy-assed feminism of the type we're usually confronted with.  Seems that my definition is too broad, as just about everybody who reacted considers the bad parts of feminism to be the fundamental building blocks of it.  I submit. I will no longer use the word to mean anything other than what it popularly means — a psychotic, self-destructive hatred of men and masculinity on the part of ditzy females and the even crazier men who agree with them.  Okay?

Coincidentally, I just read a related post by the unique Robert Lindsay, who calls himself a leftist, but who is remarkably free of some of the left's most popular blind spots.  One is the dogma of intrinsic human racial equality.  Another is that he thinks feminism is corrosive and evil.  Read his post HERE.

A New Mission for the Mossad?

Well, somebody has gone on record as, if not straight-out recommending that Obama be assassinated, at least calling for considering it.  As an option on the table, so to speak. What kind of whacko would write such a thing and actually print it in a newspaper?  Must have been some KKK idea, right?  Some neo-Nazi outfit of the kind Eric Holder considers so scary.  Not that?  Well, maybe it was some radical Black organization, and... Wait a minute. Obama is Black. So Limbaugh, maybe?  Nah. For all his faults, he doesn't think that way.  Well, it must be some crazy Muslim group in some Jihad cell somewhere, upset about Obama's promiscuous bombing and otherwise interfering all over the Muslim world. But, no, it's not that either.  Give up?  It's a piece in the Atlanta Jewish Times, by its publisher, Andrew Adler. If you don't believe me, read about it in the Jerusalem Post, HERE.

You'd think Adler would be handcuffed and thoroughly interrogated by now, wouldn't you?  Well, to find out more about this bizarre incident, and to have it put in historical context, read what Kevin MacDonald has to say HERE.

Late-breaking news:  Vox Populi is commenting on this incident HERE.

Third Position Feminism

I've blogged before about how damn silly feminism is, and how it's really not at all what it started out to be. Currently, it's nothing but a branch of liberalism/Marxism, and has nothing to do with women or their rights, but is all about breaking down Western society. So, you might say that feminism started out as a reasonable movement to remove unreasonable legal and social limits on women's rights, and slowly and surely turned into the ridiculous mix of communism and touchy-feely ditziness it is today.

But there was a point of time in history when there was a feminist movement that made sense, that appealed to female strengths instead of female weakness. Its intentions were to further a fuller participation in public life by women, without wrecking their special position in society and reducing them to pathetic victims. It recognized the existential necessity for feminine virtue in civilization's survival. It wasn't the man-hating crap we have to listen to from the current crop of "feminists," not one of which is good enough to shine Annie Oakley's high-heeled boots.

Sounds like an all-American version of feminism, doesn't it?  Well, it wasn't. The truth may shock you.  Read about it HERE.

Mean Old Newt

The Eyes of Newt

Well, Newt surprised everybody tonight, including himself.  And it's clearly because of his Mussolini-style debate performance.  Now, a big chunk of people have decided that it's either Newt or Mitt, and that's what spurred this.  I think they want Obama to be yelled at by Newt, not gently chided by Mitt. And News demonstrated that he can be nice and mean. Not that I'm knocking that. I like mean in a good cause. Evidently they don't care about his personal life — they were taught that such stuff doesn't matter by Slick Willy — and it's ambiguous enough, and his Ex is weird enough, that they feel free to discount it. Even the evangelicals went for him over Romney, having decided first that Mitt is too moderate, and second, that Catholics aren't as scary as Mormons. An aside: It just hit me that of the four remaining candidates, three, I think, are from Pennsylvania. Odd, but not significant. Correct me if I'm wrong. Another thing about this primary is that it gave Ron Paul the opportunity for a damn nice little speech to his supporters just now.  I can't find it on YouTube yet, but try to hear it if you get the chance.

Well, Newt's about to speak, and I don't want to miss it.  If I had to make a prediction right now, it looks like Newt as the nominee, and maybe President.

Jessica Lynch and the Tuskegee Airmen

Everybody lies, Dr. House tells us, and that's a good rule of thumb.  But not everybody lies about everything all the time. The thing about Jessica Lynch is that she told the truth. After a bunch of lies were made up by the Government, making her out to be something between Xena Warrior Princess and Emma Peel, she revealed that she'd done nothing heroic — nothing that wasn't to her credit, but nothing heroic. Now, it's understandable that the military has a tendency to shade the truth to put its people in as good a light as possible. I was in the Army myself, and I understand about keeping morale up. And in this particular lie, there was the added incentive to make female troops look just as good, if not better than, your usual White male heterosexual, because you know what mediocre soldiers they make. So Jessica deserves some kind of award for refusing to go along with the baloney.

But compare her story to the neverending story of the Tuskegee Airmen.  They're burying one of them right now, and I've heard about 27 times on various news outlets today about how he went to fight Naziism and then came home to fight racism. Whose morale is that supposed to further? Well, nobody's. It's designed to remind us terrible White people that even when we're getting ourselves killed fighting other White men to eradicate racism in Europe, we're, at base, just as bad as Hitler. So we should be ashamed.

I'm not, though. I'm annoyed. I've been hearing the Tuskegee story for decades now, and it turns out that a substantial part of it is phony. Blacks, or any nonWhite for that matter, are never just okay at anything — soldiering, science, engineering, being President — they're always the best. As opposed to all us mediocre Whites. The Tuskegee Airmen were just the best damn pilots who ever lived.  Better than Lindbergh.  Better than Chuck Yeager.  Better than Hanna Reitsch. And to hell with the facts, among which is the fact that they were okay pilots.  Good for them. Difference in these stories is that Jessica Lynch didn't want to benefit from a pack of lies and decided to set the story straight. But the Tuskegee story will continue undisputed, because it's very useful to wreck morale.

For the facts, read what Paul Kersey has to say HERE.

Libertarian Nonsense

A libertarian intellectual.
Note glasses and frumpy
outfit.

What a title for a blog post, eh?  Especially from a self-proclaimed libertarian. Here's the deal. Libertarians have lots of wonderful ideas, and I share the bulk of them. But they have the same problem just about all political groups have these days — they've been contaminated by liberal ideas. Especially that overarching meme that oppresses everybody these days, Political Correctness.  This tends to warp the application of their good ideas.  They think the ideal society is one with minimal or no government, and I agree. However, as I've said many times, you can't make a libertarian society with non-libertarian people.  Some people, individuals and groups, just won't cooperate with such a notion.  American libertarians have a blind spot there, not least because they already live in a society with strong libertarian tendencies in most of the population.  American society is already the most libertarian-oriented one on Earth.

So that's their blind spot, and it's a big one. They simply can't grasp or tolerate the idea that human beings differ in their capacity to live in freedom. And the ones who do grasp it think it can be fixed with education and propaganda. Just give everybody a copy of Atlas Shrugged.  Yeah, translate it into Pashto and airdrop a few million copies into Afghanistan, come back in six months, and it'll have turned into a great big Galt's Gulch.

No, the thing to do is try to make society as free as possible for people who want freedom, and let other societies do as they damn please.  They will anyway.

This 'human equality' notion is a very dangerous one, and it leads to some pretty grotesque public policy. It leads liberals, neocons, libertarians, Christians, etc., to believe that importing millions of Third-Worlders to the United States will work out fine, because it's the idea of America that's important.  Wrong.  It is important, but the idea doesn't cause America, America causes the idea.  Our ideas of freedom took centuries of development, all the way back to Ancient Greece, to bear fruit. You don't transfer these ideas to alien people magically as they cross a border.  They bring their own ideas with them.

One set of libertarian notions that just won't go away are lifted, again, from liberalism, the silliest system of thought yet to come into being.  They think, again, that their 'freedom' notions exist by themselves, in some sort of Platonic Idealism, and reject the idea that they need the underpinnings of traditional morality and religion to function. Again they're wrong.  Oh, a given individual, like me, might be a religious skeptic, but he's been bathed from birth in the social norms that proceed from Christendom, and the underpinnings are there for him, even if he doesn't realize it.

Well, all this rambling is in reaction to a hit piece against Rick Santorum by libertarian Steve Chapman. I personally deplore Santorum, and wish he'd go away, but that doesn't mean that all his ideas are invalid. Fact is, moralitywise, he's right more often than not.  Where he gets loopy is that he wants a more intrusive Government and cheers on the perpetual Orwellian war we're playing at. But when Santorum says the society is sick, he's right.  When he says that traditional morality is better than moral relativism, he's right. And Chapman, like a good liberaloid, suggests that anything that militates against traditional morality is a good thing, and just makes us better. As far as this particular essay is concerned, he definitely belongs in the flaky beige sector. He makes an argument indistinguishable from liberalism. Read Chapman's piece, and then read Paul Gottfried's deconstruction of it HERE.

Political Correctness and Witch Doctors

I rail against political correctness in general a lot, and also against its linguistic forms, where clear old terms like "bum" are replaced by neutral, even attractive terms like "homeless." This twisted concept is central to politics, of course, which often has the purpose of persuading us not to believe our eyes, but other things instead.  And this is often done by warping the language, as Orwell warned us some time back.  And politically correct euphemisms have a way of deteriorating.  When people caught on to what "Marxism" really entailed, Marxists started calling themselves "socialists."  That got a bad reputation, so they turned into "progressives," and when that wore down, they pulled a real linguistic coup by swiping the word "liberal," which a century go meant about what "libertarian" means now, and walking around with that label until everybody caught on to that one, too, and now they've largely gone back to "progressive."

But this sort of linguistic deterioration takes place outside the customary political sphere as well.  I admit I hadn't thought about it, but of course it's invaded other fields, like anthropology.  Yes, there is still an actual science called anthropology, though most of what goes on under that name isn't a science at all.  But I was recently made aware of the fact that you don't say "witch doctor" any more, but "traditional healer" instead, even if the usual practice of the traditional healer is to kill people by cursing them.  I just read a blog post by Henry Harpending about a witch doctor.  He reminds us that our traditional picture of witch doctor is actually a lot more accurate than the current PC notion, and that some quite intelligent Third Worlders still believe in witches and witch doctors, and carry that belief with them when they come to live next door.  And, he doesn't say, but I'll add, that is exactly the sort of thing we import when we take in immigrants from the wrong places.

But read his post HERE and think about it.

The Wisdom of Israel

Cartoon by BALOO

My last post and some others have led this blog to be characterized as "Anti-Israel" or "Anti-Semitic." It's not, really. My attitude towards Israel is pretty much the same as my attitude towards any other foreign country. My first question is whether its behavior coincides with American interests or not.  That applies to Russia, China, Japan, Mexico — everybody. My judgment is that, for the most part, Israel's behavior has not coincided with our interests for whatever reasons, and, on the contrary, has been instrumental in getting us involved up to the neck in a bunch of stupid wars and other interference in the Middle East.

But that's not all there is to it. You can look beyond any country's effect on your own country, to other factors about it. And if you're really looking beyond, you can objectively judge those factors and maybe learn something from them. For example, you can look at our late adversary, the Soviet Union, and see that it wore itself out, and probably destroyed itself, by stretching its resources too far and trying to extend its empire to very inappropriate places like Afghanistan.  And we can certainly learn something from that, can't we? Anyhow, the point is that we can examine these things without reference to whether a given country is a "friend" or "enemy."

And, as some wise fellow once said, a country has no permanent allies, just permanent interests, so it's worth taking a look at Israel and seeing if there's something we can learn from them. It's a pretty unlikely place, after all, a brand-new country, younger than I am, which had virtually no presence in the area in any way before WW I, and now it's pretty much a prospering success.  How did they do it?  Well, they did have a lot of help getting started, and that's another story, but what interests me is their concept of what Israel is.  It's a homeland for Jews, both ethnic and religious. Its foreign and domestic policies are based on that fact. It's a country for and by Jews, not for the benefit of anybody else whatsoever. A lot of countries feel analogously. Japan is for the Japanese, both North and South Korea are for Koreans, Iran is for Iranians, Nepal is for Nepalis, etc.  But Israel is special in that it had to build itself almost from scratch on that principle.

To generalize, any given country/state exists for the benefit of the people of that country/state — Not for mankind or some other abstract purpose.  We in the West have forgotten that.  It varies, of course.  Some Eastern European countries are a bit more sane in that respect, but in Western Europe and its offspring — The US, New Zealand, Australia, etc. — seem to have come to the suicidal conclusion that their countries exist for the benefit of everybody except themselves. And it's indeed a suicidal conclusion, because they're destroying themselves with it.

I dissent.  The United States exists for the people of the United States, and its policies, foreign and domestic, should and must be formulated to further the interests of those people.  Not for anybody in the Middle East, or the Far East, or Latin America, or for some damn pseudo-country in the Caucasus.  And not for the interests of illegal aliens, or legal ones for that matter.  Our immigration policy should ask one question: is an immigrant beneficial to the American people?  If not, no immigrant. Not "refugees" from Somalia or Cuba or some other awful place, unless it's clear that they will benefit us (and they almost never do).  No more Obama cousins or Palestinian psychiatrists or psycho mass-murderers from the Third World anywhere. How hard is this?  Other countries outside the West understand this implicitly. Israel really understands it.

Recently, John Derbyshire had a conversation with a Rabbi who understands this principle very well, and knows that it applies to all people.  Read about it HERE.

Allies

To make a long story short, we don't have any allies.  Oh, there are a few countries that are likely to cooperate with us when our interests coincide, but that's rare and intermittent.  Actually, it's fair to say that hardly any country has allies, at least with its current definition in the media, which seems to be the same as "friends."  On the other hand, we do have a lot of countries that are willing to accept gifts from us, which is another popular definition of "Ally."

And another definition of ally is a country that you gladly allow to push you around, and are willing to fight to protect whether they'd reciprocate or not.  A lot of countries have fit those last two definitions over the years.  The first was the UK, which I don't believe has ever done anything for us, but which we decided to bail out of World War I, and later, Act Two of what was basically the same war.  Since then we've had allies in the form of South Vietnam and South Korea — I'll give the latter a bit of a pass, because it actually assisted us in the Vietnam War.

But, again by those last two definitions, the country that fits best is Israel.  Very very willing to accept gifts from us, eager to push us around with AIPAC and other groups, and extremely happy to let us protect them, to the extent of declaring any enemy of theirs, like Saddam Hussein, etc., our enemy, too.

Indeed, they're such a staunch ally, we don't even mind when they try to sink our ships, spy on us, steal and sell our nuclear secrets, and systematically destroy any American politicians who don't march in lockstep with the Israel Lobby.  With allies like that, you need enemies?

Well, here's the latest revelation.  Seems they like to have Mossad agents pose as American agents.  Steve Sailer deals with that HERE.

Hideous, Awful Newsletters and Ron Paul

Ron Paul attempts to resuscitate the
Constitution, a well-known racist document.

We all by now know about the wretched Ron Paul newsletter that seemed to imply that there might just be a slight tendency out there for nonWhites to behave differently than Whites.  A totally whacko idea, of course, since the whole spectrum of political thought, from the neocon Trotskyites to the liberal Stalinists assure us that EVERYBODY IS EXACTLY EQUAL AND THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO IT AND ANY DIFFENCES YOU SEE ARE IMAGINARY OR LIES OR BOTH AND THEY'RE CAUSED BY WHITE RACISM ANYWAY.  Got that?  You have to get that right if you want to be employed or respected or not arrested.

Well, still worse writings from the past have emerged.  You can read about them HERE.  Do be sure to read all the way to the end.  It's all very enlightening.

Venture Vultures

Rick Perry and Newt seemed to be channeling Mao himself last night, in their implication that capitalists making money is some sort of distasteful thing.  Especially Perry, with his "vulture capitalists sitting on a tree limb."  Thing about vultures is, by and large, they eat things that are already dead, allocating resources that are no longer being used for new uses.  Kind of icky, but part of the ecological system.  This is really irritating, because Newt certainly knows better, and I expect Perry does, too.  Sometimes it's a good idea to stop doing things that waste money, so the money can be put to efficient use.  Allegedly, that's what Romney was doing.  I'm no expert in the workings of such things, but I understand the principle.  When you reject the principle, you end up with the bailout principle, which states that it's just awful when something goes out of business, so awful that you should take money away from businesses that do make money, through taxation, and hand the money to the inefficient businesses so they can keep on doing the same things that waste the money. As our leftie pals are fond of saying, that's not "sustainable." That's Solyndra and stuff like that.

The only question to be asked is whether Romney did what he did honestly and ethically.  If he did, he was doing something very worthwhile.  If he was dishonest or unethical, he was doing wrong, just like an unethical/dishonest teacher or plumber or shoeshine boy is doing wrong.  It's not the teaching or the plumbing or the shining or the venture-capitaling that's a bad thing, it's the way it's done.

Obviously, society should keep an eye on people's ethics, whether through government oversight or other private constraints.  And equally obviously, you have to especially watch out for big chunks of money, because whether they're in the hands of venture capitalists or unions or anybody else, these chunks can be used to corrupt people. So you have to watch capitalists closer than you have to watch shoeshine boys.

We expect Joe Sixpack to behave in such a way that's good for society, or at least not detrimental to it, so we have laws that constrain his behavior.  Sometimes we have too many or not enough, but we have them because society does have a responsibility to protect itself, and one way to do that is to minimize bad behavior through laws.  It's pretty simple, really, because on Joe's level everybody pretty much agrees about evaluating what's good or bad for society in his behavior.

When we get to high finance, it's more complicated.  It can look really bad when you have a nice little factory that everybody likes and it's taken over by some guy in a silk hat who ends up closing it and making money by doing so. It's hard to see that sometimes that's a good thing for society in general, because the efforts required to keep the factory going are worth more than the factory's products, and wealth is diminished in general.  Joe's decisions to do things like stop eating in a restaurant and buy groceries instead to save money are very understandable and clearly praiseworthy, and it's hard to argue that it's "unfair to the restaurant," and he should continue wasting his money by patronizing it.

There's a movie about this subject from way back, Other People's Money, that's worth a look. Ironically, when I looked at it on IMDB, there was a "Staples" ad.

But, as a wise man once said, the problem with capitalism is capitalists, and just like any other class of people, some of them are crooks and need to be punished.  The fact that the class includes crooks doesn't mean that the class should be abolished, which is the Marxist view.  One of the first groups to get a handle on this was the Fascists in Italy, who had the theory that the "classes" of society, which they meant in the economic sense, shouldn't be mutually destructive, but cooperative, and it was the government's job to effectuate that cooperation.  This means that workers and owners both had the responsibility to behave in such a way that was good for society in general, and the workers and owners were both to be prevented from damaging society.  Who can argue with that?  That's why, when I stared this blog, I called it "Fasco-Libertarian," but nobody got the connection, so I changed it.  One big way, BTW, that capitalists damage society is by encouraging illegal immigration, so they can get cheap labor and make money, while society in general pays the costs of that illegal immigration.  That's why I'm in favor of really big punishments for anybody using illegal labor.

Well, I only know so much about this, and I've told you just about all I can.  HERE'S more on the subject by a wiser man, Pat Buchanan.

The American Third Position Alternative

I'm still hoping that fate will somehow get Ron Paul nominated by the Republicans.  I just watched the debate, and I really wish Ron Paul could talk as well as Gingrich can.  Everything Paul said was clearly correct, but Gingrich knows how to sound like he knows what he's talking about, even when he doesn't. Paul talks over himself too much, and talks too fast.  He should answer foreign policy questions in the "historian" manner, like Gingrich, slow down, and start from the beginning, and keep it simple.  The problem is that too many Americans are convinced that Iran and other MidEast countries are a real threat in the manner that the Soviet Union was.  The trick is to show them that's not the case, and then you talk about saving money on the military. Anyhow, if all this falls to pieces, the good news is that we have a candidate waiting out there that we can all happily vote for.  The is from the American Third Position website:

PRESS RELEASE

LOS ANGELES — Jan. 12, 2012: The American Third Position has unanimously nominated Merlin Miller, a West Point graduate and veteran independent filmmaker, as our presidential candidate for the 2012 election. Dr. Virginia Deane Abernethy, Professor Emerita at Vanderbilt University, has been chosen as his running mate for vice president. The American Third Position (A3P) is a rapidly growing political party and the sole representative for traditional white Americans and the restoration of our Republic.

A3P is uncompromising in its position that the present political system unquestionably favors the two entrenched parties. Through mass manipulation and corruption, the “Republocrats” have effected their continuation in power. They have also succeeded with their “divide and conquer” tactics that adversely affect white Americans. The current presidential regime, along with all of the regimes in recent memory, has ruined the ideals and institutions of America’s Founding Fathers. If existing government social policies continue, white Americans are projected to become a minority in the U.S within a few decades. This has already happened in a number of states.

The American Third Position party believes the time has come for a strong political party that explicitly advocates the interests of white Americans. The character of a nation depends on those who comprise it. A country is the product of its people; if you change the people you inevitably change the character of the country. Each nation has the right to maintain the identity upon which it was founded. Our slate of candidates is morally, ethically and intellectually above those offered by the Democrats or Republicans. Critically, we are lobbying for a proportional representation electoral system at the local, state and national levels.

First and foremost A3P proposes a moratorium on immigration and the immediate deportation of illegal immigrants. Similar plans were enacted by President Roosevelt during the Great Depression (1930’s) and by President Eisenhower in the 1950’s. Many European countries have significantly reduced the number of Third World immigrants as well. Additionally, we support fair trade over so-called free trade; private enterprise over government expansionism; sound environmental and energy policies; and an “America First” foreign policy, including the cessation of all military intervention and economic aid abroad.

Visit A3P at www.American3rdposition.com for information. The executive leadership is William Johnson, Esq. (Chairman), Don Wassall, Esq., Kevin McDonald, PhD., Dr. Virginia Abernethy, Tomislav Sunic, PhD, James Kelso, Dr. Adrian Krieg, CMFGE, Alexander Carmichael, Esq. and James Edwards. Contact: William Johnson, Esq. at (213) 621-3000.

AMERICAN THIRD POSITION
9811 W. Charleston Blvd., Suite 2-441
Las Vegas, NV 89117

National Office: (213) 621-3000
www.american3rdposition.com
Email: admin@american3rdposition.com