Polite Kid

In a recent post, I discussed the fact that the psychological worldview, as presented by the popular culture and the old media, has become a widely accepted, very influential belief system. It's also insidious in that most people have absorbed many of the core beliefs of this worldview without even being aware of it. Anybody who watches shows like Oprah, or reads any of the best-selling 'self-help' books, or who undergoes therapy or counseling for life problems, has taken in a good deal of the beliefs of the psychological worldview. Anybody who has taken social science courses in the last several decades has also imbibed some of these beliefs.
Many of those who have unconsciously adopted these beliefs also call themselves 'Christians', and may in fact be regular worshippers at a church. The pastor at their church may also preach messages full of the humanistic ideas with which the psychological belief system is saturated. This is particularly true these days, because so many churches are caught up in this 'seeker-sensitive' movement, with its idea that people (nonbelievers, casual 'seekers', spiritual shoppers) must not be made to feel 'bad about themselves.'
Most of the mainline churches today have embraced the messages of 'diversity', egalitarianism, race-denial, and ''social justice''.
Most of these established religious groups promote open borders and one-worldism -- although most people with even a rudimentary education should be familiar with the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, and the idea that a one-world system is not in God's plan.
Those who have not even examined the facts are quick to condemn Christianity for the Babelizing of the Western world, yet how can anyone, with a straight face, presume that the church, any church, exercises that much influence over people, much less over the world's political system? No, all the commonsense evidence points to the fact that the world system is instead setting the tone, leading the way, while the churches follow along. Granted, the churches are wrong in this. They are derelict, having lost their way. They are quite literally the 'salt which has lost its savor', of which Jesus warned, worthy only to be discarded.
And if the churches are guilty of going along with the world political system, they are wrong because they are not being true to themselves, and to the message they are supposed to be preaching.
However, if the political establishment and the ovine followers who make up most of the citizenry are not being misled by the church, who is leading them towards the multicultist Babel?
I've said that most people in our society owe more to the pop psychology cult, and humanism generally, than to Christian teaching. I can just hear someone say: what does psychology have to do with politics or world affairs? It's just about people's individual lives and problems, not about politics or society. Well, think again.
Clearly, societies both help and hinder human growth. Because nourishing environments can make an important contribution to the development of healthy personalities, human needs should be given priority when fashioning social policies. This becomes increasingly critical in a rapidly changing world threatened by such dangers as nuclear war, overpopulation and the breakdown of traditional social structures.
Many humanistic psychologists stress the importance of social change, the challenge of modifying old institutions and inventing new ones able to sustain both human development and organizational efficacy. Thus the humanistic emphasis on individual freedom should be matched by a recognition of our interdependence and our responsibilities to one another, to society and culture, and to the future.''
[...]
"As the world's people demand freedom and self-determination, it is urgent that we learn how diverse communities of empowered individuals, with freedom to construct their own stories and identities, might live together in mutual peace. Perhaps it is not a vain hope that is life in such communities might lead to the advance in human consciousness beyond anything we have yet experienced."
[Emphasis mine]
Notice the emphasis on 'social change' ''modifying old institutions and inventing new ones...' -- all the leftist concerns. It could have been written by some leftist politico as well as by a social scientist. They are hand-in-glove.
In my personal experience (and yes, it's anecdotal) most leftists are immersed in psychological jargon and thinking. Very few ''progressives'' are Christians, even liberal Christians. Most, in my experience, are secular and nonbelieving, or else involved in New Age practices. That latter topic in itself is worthy of a whole post, with New Age thinking very focused on the idea of a 'one world' government and a blending of all races into some 'highly evolved' hybrid race. I say this as someone who was once very involved in this kind of thing. I know it from the inside, and I have friends who are still part of that subculture.
Marilyn Ferguson who wrote the bestselling Aquarian Conspiracy, said
There are legions of [Aquarian] conspirators. They are in corporations, universities, and hospitals, on the faculties of public schools, in factories and doctors' offices, in state and federal agencies, on city councils, and in the White House staff, in state legislatures, in volunteer organizations, in virtually all arenas of policy making in the country."
That is probably more true now than it was when she wrote it, 20-odd years ago.
What has this got to do with the psychological worldview? It intersects with the New Age philosophy. The latter is a blend of a hodgepodge of various Eastern religions (Hinduism, Taoism, ''Native American'' spirituality/shamanism, etc.) and the Western humanistic tradition of which psychology is a part.
What these systems have in common is the focus on the self, on self-actualization (whatever that means), and they both tend to promote the notion that Western morality, which emphasizes individual responsibility and a defined system of right and wrong, is ''negative'' and backward, un-evolved.
New Age beliefs (although those involved often shun that label) blend seamlessly with the beliefs promoted in psychology, particularlly 'transpersonal psychology'.
There is an emphasis on 'not judging' or not excluding anybody -- except Christians of course, because they are too 'separative' in the words of Alice Bailey, who wrote a number of New Age/occult books which are considered authoritative by many. Anything that separates, as Christianity does, is bad, according to this worldview.
Psychology as it is understood by most people has done more than any other philosophy to popularize the idea of nonjudgmentalism as the greatest virtue. The idea is that we are not to put moral judgments on people, or anything people do -- unless it can be considered racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or species-ist. Then we are free to judge and condemn at will.
Otherwise, moral relativism prevails.
The idea that it's bad to be 'negative' about anything is also a very popular idea which is attributable to psychology and the social sciences. It's also an idea that is part of New Age thinking, which emphasizes 'positive thoughts'. (This system does not account for actual evil, or consider that being negative about some things is the only appropriate response.)
These ideas have wide exposure, especially among women who watch Oprah and other such shows. I allude to Oprah often as being a promoter of this kind of thing. She is a perfect example as she claims to be a Christian, yet publicly says she believes other 'paths' and religions are equally valid and true. She also promotes many New Age authors and their books, one recent example being Eckhart Tolle, a European New Age guru who has apparently taken in some gullible Christians.
I see evidence of the influence of such ideas all around us, especially when I converse with women, or when I read popular magazines or newspapers, or watch TV. It is part of the air we breathe these days. It baffles me to think that some people believe Christianity is so influential as to take the blame (or credit) for anything in our society, good or bad. Christianity is very much marginalized these days, and the thinking I've outlined briefly here is what dominates the 'purpose-driven' churches and the 'seeker-sensitive' churches, which are everywhere.
Christians who read their Bibles know that Jesus Christ is 'the same yesterday, today, and forever.' So riddle me this: how is it that old-time Christians did not believe in open borders, miscegenation, one-world government, and 'nonjudgmentalism', while today's ''Christians'' are perfectly comfortable, in too many instances, with all of the above? Christianity has not changed; today's Christians are thoroughly confused and lost, in many cases.
The fault is not in the Bible or in Christianity. The fault is in the insidious worldview, based on humanism, based on the false notion that 'man is the measure of all things', which has captured the Church as well as the rest of our society. And the fault, insofar as it lies with Christians, is that they do not read their Bibles or develop and exercise discernment. They simply take in the world's poisons and don't even realize it.
Some are being led astray by popular authors and 'teachers' who are in turn peddling the trendy ideas of the world, not the truth. These false shepherds are to blame, but so are the gullible 'sheep' who follow them.
We can see the havoc that the influence of psychology has played in our judicial system, where every criminal is portrayed as either ''mentally ill'' or as a victim of society, or a victim of bad parenting. Everybody is a 'victim' these days, especially the worst among us. Many people have lost all concepts of evil these days; the obsession we have with trying to 'understand' and 'reach out' to everybody, even heinous criminals, is a very detrimental trend to our societal well-being.
We see this carry over to our attitudes about things like illegal immigration; the people who consider themselves 'enlightened' are oh-so-careful to try to understand and empathize with illegals, saying things like ''well, I would do the same if I were in their shoes. I don't blame them.'' The drive to 'understand' and explain away all illegal behavior, or just plain bad behavior, has no limits. We have to re-learn to judge and discern, and not simply understand and empathize and tolerate anything.
As Alexander Pope wrote in his Essay on Man:
Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
If it was true in Pope's time, it is even more rife now, this 'pitying and embracing' of bad behavior. We can't be judgmental; who are we to judge? We have to understand and reach out.
If we truly care about rescuing our society, and averting its impending demise, we need to look at the real dangers which beset us and which have rendered us a weak and morally slothful people, a 'nonjudgmental' people who are scared stiff of offending anyone.
And while it's easier to zero in on easy targets, and hard to deal with an amorphous target like a hazy belief system with no visible insitutions to blame, it's also less honest.

Labels: Christianity, Death Of The West, Globalism, Liberalism, Moral Agnosticism, Moral Relativism, One World, Politics, Pop Psychology, Societal Decay, Therapeutic Society, Transnationalism

Apropos of our discussion the other day about the roots of the counterculture and also the subject of advertising propaganda, I was looking through some old images and found some interesting ones.
The first is an Insurance Company ad, above, from 1952. The text is not legible in this smaller-sized image, so I will quote it here:
There are moral alternatives to war. We do have a choice. We can choose plowshares over swords...and thereby diminish the danger of a final and all-destroying war.
Most of the world's people -- nearly two-thirds of the human race -- are hungry. Remove this hunger and we remove most of the explosive possibilities in the world.
We, here in America, have crossed the threshold into the world of plenty. In the past ten years we have had twice as much new food as new people -- and our population has grown at a rate faster than that of India!
This American pattern of plenty gives us a platform from which we, in decency and humility, can help build a true brotherhood of man, living together peacefully in a prosperous world. Now, for the first time, we can help a hungry world feed itself. We will achieve peace only if we carry out this moral responsibility -- wholeheartedly, with the same vigor with which we have waged wars. It is up to us.
If we start now -- in politics, in economics, in social organization -- we can make abundance blossom for all the world.
Let us embark on the crusade toward creating PLENTY -- Pattern for Peace.''
The above is said to be ''From a recent address by Murray D. Lincoln, President of Farm Bureau Insurance Companies.''
I can understand how, in 1952, war-wearied Americans might be eager for some proposal or policy which would guarantee that there would be 'no more wars.' But is it true that poverty and hunger cause all wars, or that 'feeding the world' would guarantee peace? Did World War II happen because of poverty or want? Or World War I?
So, since this ad was printed, we've had more than half a century of trying out these utopian do-gooder policies. I wonder how many billions we've spent on 'foreign aid' or hunger relief efforts via the UN since then? And how much good has it done? Have our efforts and our dollars ended hunger or brought stability and peace?
Look at the picture in the ad. Back in 1952, few Americans would have proposed bringing the world here for us to feed them in our land, but does the picture not seem to imply that we will all cohabit together in America? The White man at the plow looks as though he's the one in harness to do all the hard work.
This picture, with its 'we are the world' motif, reminds me very much of the picture below, which actually appeared 9 years later, on the cover of the April Fool's Day 1961 version of Saturday Evening Post.

Everybody knows Norman Rockwell as the quintessential American heartland painter. He was particularly known for his magazine covers, most notably the Saturday Evening Post covers. We always associate him with rather corny middle American nostalgia, with his images of freckle-faced, red-headed boys and girls, the kind who used to be called 'all-American boys' and girls. (Today, of course, Barack Obama and the exotics who appear in our commercials are held up as truly American.) But when I first saw this illustration, called 'The Golden Rule', by Rockwell, I was rather taken aback, because it seemed so out of step with the work we associate with him. I wondered if it was not painted during the early 70s, when the diversity obsession set in. But no, it was painted in 1961, during an era in which America was still very American. Remember, the 1965 Immigration Act was still four years in the future when that picture was painted.
And of course, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' is the Golden Rule, but at some point, the politically correct commandment became do unto The Other at the expense of your own. Open your gates and doors wide to the entire world, no questions asked.
Here we are, 47 years on, and America is starting to look very much like that 'Golden Rule' painting, with those famous 'all-American' Rockwell faces surrounded by people from the four corners of the globe. Was this a prophetic painting? Or a prescriptive one, like the Farm Bureau Insurance Ad?
Was this 'pattern for peace' or a pattern for PC?
In any case, it seems this campaign to change our thinking about ourselves and our role in the world has been going on for a long time; it's only accelerated recently and become more obvious to us.

Labels: Advertising, Globalism, Mass Immigration, Multiculturalism, One World, Political Correctness

I saw part of a discussion on Cavuto's show about this story:
Obama plan: paint roofs white to save the world
Steven Chu, who directed the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and was professor of physics and molecular and cell biology at the University of California before being appointed by President Obama to be the U.S. Energy Secretary, says white paint is what's needed to fix global warming.
Chu, who according to the federal agency's website, successfully applied the techniques he developed in atomic physics to molecular biology and recently led the lab in pursuit of new alternative and renewable energies, has told the London Times that by making paved surfaces and roofs lighter in color, the world would reduce carbon emissions by as much as parking all the cars in the world for 11 years.
The DOE says Chu's areas of expertise are in atomic physics, quantum electronics, polymer and biophysics. According to the Times, he was speaking at the St. James' Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, in which the Times partners for media events, when he described his simple and "completely benign" � "geo-engineering" plan.
He said building codes should require that flat roofed-buildings have their tops painted white. Visible sloped roofs could be painted "cool" colors. And roads could be made a lighter color. ''
My first reaction to this story was incredulity, followed by uneasy laughter. Are they serious? It seems like something out of The Onion, but they are serious.
The FReepers discuss the WND story here, and Rush Limbaugh's comments are quoted:
They don't want to stop at roofs. Making roads and roofs a paler color could have this effect. "It was a geo-engineering scheme that was 'completely benign' and would keep buildings cooler and reduce energy use from air conditioning." How much paint is this going to take, by the way? How much of a footprint does paint manufacturing leave? Here's the real question about this. I need a scientist to answer this for me. I understand how clouds at altitude can help reflect the heat. But I want to know how something white on the surface of the planet, where does that reflected heat go? If the road is white, and the heat reflects, aren't you going to boil if you happen to be walking on it in the summertime? Where does this reflected heat go? Are we being told here that reflected heat is not damaging at all but direct heat is? It seems to me if we had global warming wouldn't we want dark roofs to absorb the heat? Yeah, it may be cooling your house a little bit, but� This is all such gobbledygook.''
I'm no scientist, but it all sounds rather silly to me, and a few practical questions come to mind for me, as well as for some of the FReepers.
Commenter T Minus Four says
Oh for the love of Mike! Think of the epic paint fumes and the billions of dirty brushe, plastic drop sheets, cans and buckets clogging up the land fills. And who�s going to pay for all the paint? That stuff ain�t cheap. I am also unaware of any paint that will stick to asphalt shingles.
Wonder if white roofs will raise the cost of heating homes?
Don�t these people ever think past the ends of their noses?
Wow, think of the run on Lowes. Side note: do you ever wonder what all the people in a hurricane zone did with all the millions of sheets of plywood that were bought last hurricane scare?''
Another says
Anyone who has studied the GW hoax knows that part of the claim of those who support the GW propaganda is that it is manmade structures REFLECTING heat that gets trapped by the atmosphere and adds to the GW.
Painting roofs white would only (theoretically) increase this effect.''
That occurred to me, too.
And this:
Houses in the south had mostly white shingles on the roof, pre air conditioning, and they still do in Florida. So, this thinking is nothing new.
Trouble is, if reflective surfaces cooled the environment as a whole, and not just the surfaces, the Sahara wouldn�t be quite so hot, now would it?''
I am not a total unbeliever in ''climate change'', which I now understand to be the preferred term for what we are observing in our environment, but call me a global warming agnostic. I just think that the jury is out; there is some evidence that we are not in a ''warming'' phase but entering a cooling phase.
I do know that there is much that we don't know about long-term climate trends; we do know that the earth has always gone through cycles where climate is concerned. The people who lived at the time of the Ice Ages may have believed that the earth was going to freeze forever, and never warm up again. Why should we believe that the ''global warming'' trend will be long-term or irreversible?
While it's prudent to anticipate the worst and prepare accordingly, and to try to do all that is humanly possible to forestall any destructive trends in the environment, there is a limit to what is in fact humanly possible. If there is a dangerous warming trend underway, how do we know that any efforts we make will be enough to reverse it? And the length of time required to see any real change as a result of our human efforts is more time than we have -- if in fact the global warming believers are correct. Even if we returned to a much more primitive 'environmentally friendly'' lifestyle, which in fact would cause great economic and cultural disruption, if not chaos, we might not be able to reverse any warming trend.
The news media periodically run these alarmist stories about rising sea levels, melting glaciers and icebergs. They warn that we will have ''many millions of climate refugees'' who will have to be evacuated to Western countries to escape the flooding. What a handy coincidence that the only places for safety, apparently, will be in our countries, and the only 'climate refugees' will be the usual economic migrants and mendicants who are now looking for a chance to emigrate here.
Well, since it seems that the globalist plan is to resettle these people among us anyway, why not add the urgent 'global warming' refrain to the same old song?
If human beings are causing 'global warming', presuming there is a warming cycle going on, it would seem that we lack the time and the luxury of being able to effect the kinds of sweeping, disruptive changes that would be needed to even hope to reverse things.
Human beings have lived through climate changes in the past. European men in particular survived Ice Ages and have lived in every kind of climate, surely it does not befit us to react hysterically to the prospect of yet another climate cycle. Long ago my lefty anthropology teachers taught us that what differentiated human beings from other species was the ability to make cultural and technological adaptations to varying environments. If that's true, I have faith that at least some of us will survive any scary ''global warming'' scenario.
I am concerned not about a man-made global warming process, which may or may not be happening, but about a man-made transformation of the earth that involves moving populations en masse from the Third World to our world. I am worried about man-made global shrinking; the world was a much more hospitable and happy place when it was bigger. It's getting too small these days.

Labels: Climate Change, Global Warming, Globalism, Mass Migration, One World

Another episode in the 'just one big family' series.
According to the news media, Henry Gates and the Cambridge policeman who arrested him, James Crowley, are distant kin -- both being descended from the 4th century Irish king, Niall of the Nine Hostages.
It seems to me that this is reminiscent of the campaign-era stories in the mainstream media which trumpeted 'Obama distant kin to Presidents' or 'Obama's Irish roots', all transparently intended to further convince readers that race is just skin-deep, and that we're all just one big family, one race, 'the human race.'
How that line fits with the whole storyline in these headlines: 'A historic first! America's First African-American President!' A Milestone! Moving beyond race! -- I don't quite understand.
I've read conflicting stories on Gates' alleged European ancestry, and it's all as may be. I question how these 'experts' in the article can say with certainty that 'x' number of men today descend directly from a 4th century individual. Do they have his DNA, or just DNA from those who think they are descended from him? It all sounds rather iffy to me, but I am not a genetics expert.
I do know something about genealogy, and I know that once you get back in time that far, the recorded information is pretty sketchy. If you come from a prominent family in Europe, one that has maintained careful records down through the centuries, there is more solid evidence of descent, but this kind of record-keeping was mainly limited to the more prominent families, in which ancestry and descent and family lineage were all-important because of lands, titles, and status in society. I just don't quite buy how it's possible to claim this kind of lineage without something more solid than the say-so of a researcher, and I have my doubts; is Niall's DNA available for comparison? My doubts are confirmed by the linked article.
The biggest caveat of this research is that without testing DNA from Niall�s remains, it is impossible to say with 100% certainty that Niall is the ancestor (and some argue that there never was a real Niall). For instance, Mrs. Niall could have only reproduced with the friendly neighbor, or a large fraction of the men with the signature Y chromosome could be descended from Niall�s promiscuous uncle George (I don�t know if there was an uncle, or if his name was George - it�s just an example).
I've expressed my skepticism here before about the validity and reliability of some of these DNA testing companies, which for a fee will pinpoint what your ancestry is down to fine details. Do we really possess complete enough samples to make such exact claims? For example, remember the story of Oprah claiming she learned of her Zulu ancestry, which was later contradicted by other testing. Would any American of black ancestry descend from just one tribe? Was there not considerable blending of several West African tribes among black slaves?
I'm skeptical on this whole subject, but open to being corrected.
In so many of these media stories about some famous figure's purported noble ancestry, there seems to be a political agenda at work, sometimes publicity, to make the celebrity or politician more glamorous by asserting his descent from some famous or infamous historical personage. It's just hype, in other words.
In even more cases, the media jumps on any opportunity to push their ''one planet, one people'' trans-racial propaganda. Look! We are all just kissin' cousins anyway, so let's all join together. Race is an illusion, we're all mixed and mingled hopelessly anyway, so embrace it.
Sorry, but this does not resonate with me. In reading some of these genealogical stories during the campaigns, I learned I was (likely) kin to Howard Dean, John Kerry, and John Edwards. I say likely, because if the family trees given are correct, I am probably distant cousin to these people though that does not make me feel all warm and fuzzy towards them.
As I recently quoted Proudhon as saying 'if everybody is my brother, I have no brothers', that applies here; if we are all cousins, then kinship is pretty meaningless. It's hard to love people in the abstract, on that kind of scale. We are not made for that kind of attenuated, stretched-thin 'brotherly love.' It has to be limited in scope or it is not love at all.
What racial lessons are we supposed to take from this latest absurd story about Gates and Crowley and their supposed common ancestor, Niall of the Nine Hostages? That Gates is an Irishman? To believe such is to stretch the definition of Irishman beyond recognition. Gates clearly bears grudges against his White ancestors and kin, and probably feels little fellow-feeling for medieval (or modern) Irishmen. That illustrates how race is not just a matter of mind, but a primal identification; blacks who are half White, as Gates is said to be, still feel and think black. And those on the left and on the right who would like that to change are dreamers. Having some White ancestry, particularly if it is further back in the family line, does not change one's essential identification.
Certainly the multicultists would like to deconstruct the whole notion of nationality and ethnicity, at least where European-descended peoples are concerned. And this serves that purpose. As I don't trust those who write these stories, nor the motives of the left, I can't take this story seriously. Beware of the multicultural agenda.

Labels: Dna, Genealogy, Media Bias, Multiculturalism, Multiracialism, Nationality, One World, Political Correctness

In a recent blog entry, titled In their words, I simply posted a number of quotes from various individuals, all of which spelled out the rationalizations for internationalism, and for this 'global governance' agenda which is being forced on us. The very last quote in that post was by Samuel Zane Batten, from a work of his called The New World Order.
Batten was rather an interesting character; he was not the originator of the ideas he promoted in the New World Order; he was merely writing on a theme which was being sounded from various quarters, even as early as the latter part of the 19th century when he wrote some of his works.
It is notable that in his work ''If America Fail', he delineates the idea of America as 'proposition nation', which was an idea which was already in play. If the country had deemed it useful to admit millions of people of disparate origins, as was the case since the mid-19th century, then it was necessary to remake the image of America to accommodate and rationalize the presence of so many aliens. So the 'proposition nation' and Israel Zangwill's ''melting pot'' were pressed into service as a justification for altering this country.
Batten, in If America Fail, says
''America is not a country merely, not primarily a form of government. America is a gospel, an ideal, The Mission of America a faith, a spirit, a state of heart, a set of principles, a trinity of ideas, an interpretation of the kingdom of God, the far-off goal of history.''
At this point, Batten addresses the question of why nations decline and fall. His recounting of the cycle of nations recalls the work of Sir John Glubb about which I posted recently.
''There are causes and conditions which make nations great and strong; and there are conditions and causes which weaken and destroy nations. What are the causes which have destroyed nations in the past? This question is not easy to answer for the reason that the records are incomplete. Many nations have perished, leaving only a name and a memory. Of some of these nations and peoples we have no written record; all that remains are a few fragments like the fossils of some long-perished mastodon.''The first cause he cites is prosperity, or luxury.
''There is another aspect of this question which we may notice. The growth of luxury always leads to social vices which rot the moral fiber of a nation and cause national decay. For one thing the blight of luxury is felt earliest and most fatally in the home. In the early history of Rome the family life was held in high honor, the marriage bond was respected, and for five centuries divorce was unknown in the Roman world. But the time came when all this was changed.
Under the Empire marriage came to be regarded with disfavor and disdain. Women, as Seneca says, married in order that they might be divorced; and were divorced in order that they might marry. There were noble Roman matrons, he tells us, who counted the years not by the consuls but by the number of their husbands. As might be expected, to have a family was regarded as a misfortune, and all kinds of methods were used to prevent the birth of children. The rich and aristocratic, intent only on their own pleasure and gratification, chafed under the restraints of marriage and grew reluctant to rear children. The poor and servile classes, imitating their superiors, became unwilling to marry and found a family. This suggests the next cause.
The time was when men divided the race into two great classes, the superior, made up of the cultured and the prosperous, and the inferior, made up of the uncultured and the slow-witted. It has been assumed that these two classes possessed very different powers and capacities, that the so-called superior were made of finer clay than these so-called inferior persons. The anthropologist and sociologist of our time no longer accept any such classification as this. In fact the scientist seriously maintains that there is as much real capacity in one race as in another.''
In this area of his thinking, Batten seems to be a curious ''missing link'' between the old, race-conscious thought and the new, increasingly egalitarian, one-world mindset. He wrote a good deal about the Anglo-Saxon origins of this country in some of his works, praising the accomplishments of the founding stock. He acknowledges differences among nations and races of people, but he then reassures us that the races are equal in capacity.
''It is true that the characteristics of one may differ greatly from another; but this is a question of aptitude and not of capacity. Further than this, the sociologist seriously maintains that capacity is practically the same in all classes of people; that there is as much real capacity in what we call the submerged tenth, as in the emerged tenth. It is not a question of capacity but of opportunity.
We believe in the value of man as man; we believe also in what is called the democracy of birth and the essential equality of all men. But the fact remains that men do not possess the same traits and qualities; and further, some qualities and characteristics make for national progress and strength, while certain other qualities and strains make against national progress and vigor. These qualities are not abstract or impersonal, but are always incarnated in persons.
There are persons possessed of unusual forethought, great vigor of mind and body, with initiative and self-control. We shall not call those who do not possess these qualities inferior classes and lesser breeds; but we do say that these are superior qualities so far as the race is concerned; and we do say that no people can be great, progressive, strong, enduring, unless it develops and contains a large number of persons possessing these qualities.
A people rises or falls, it grows or declines, as the proportion of people possessing these qualities increases or decreases. We may illustrate this principle from the experience of Greece and Rome. In ancient Greece there was a time when the family was honored and men and women considered it an honor to raise children. Then Greece advanced to the front rank and rose to the highest greatness. But with prosperity came luxury, and with luxury came a love of pleasure and a softness of temper. In the patrician families the birth-rate declined, and the race was drained of its finest qualities.''
Here, he touches on the theme of declining birth rates as a sign, if not a cause, of the fall of nations.
''The same process is seen in Rome with hardly a change of terms. The greatness of old Rome was built upon the family; so long as the family remained intact and it was an honor to rear children, Rome ruled the world and was invincible. But as the family declined and patricians no longer were willing to bear the burden of children, the foundations of the Empire were undermined and the beginning of the end had come.
In vain did Greek philosophers construct in imagination ideal states where only the best members should have offspring to be supported and reared by the public wisdom and at the public cost. In vain did Roman emperors bestow special privileges on fathers of three children or more. The duties and responsibilities of family life fell into disfavor among many of the best men and the ablest and most attractive women. The stock deteriorated and the fruits of centuries of magnificent civilization were cast away.
The conclusion is certain; the decline of a nation is due in large part to the fact that the proportion of the people with certain necessary superior qualities decreased, and the proportion of people without these necessary survival qualities increased.
It is not possible here to consider all of the causes that have produced these changes and have brought a decline of the better strains. The time was when men explained it, or thought they had explained it, by saying that the stock ran out and the people died of old age. But these things are themselves results and do not touch the causes; in fact they are the very things to be explained.''
[Emphasis mine.]
It is interesting that he uses terms like ''the better strains'' and ''superior qualities.'' Of course he would be shouted down as a bigot and an elitist and a hater if he used such loaded terms today. Although he carefully avoids calling certain people, or groups of people superior, he does allow that some possess ''superior qualities'', although one might take away the impression that he sees these ''superior qualities'' randomly distributed across human populations, and this is not evident according to our common sense and our powers of observation.
At this point, he uses the familiar argument that any differences in circumstances or ability are due to 'social and economic causes.'
''Today it has become very evident that the causes of these changes are largely economic and social. First, note the economic cause of race decline. In every nation, soon or late, as we have seen, there has arisen the problem of land monopoly. The land fell into the hands of a few; the soil was over-worked; the cost of living rose higher and higher; the people left the farms and crowded into the cities; the social pressure became intense; the more prosperous and luxurious classes were unwilling to bear the trouble of raising children; the social pressure greatly reduced the birth-rate among the middle classes.
As a consequence the less provident, the more shiftless classes, taking no thought for tomorrow, following impulse only, were the only people that produced many children. In this way the vigor and stamina of the nation were reduced, and a steady national decline began. That is to say, the economic pressure meant a proportionate decrease in the more vigorous, thoughtful, successful, and progressive stock, and a proportionate increase in the less provident, less thoughtful, less self-controlled and successful people.''
It sounds very much like he is making eugenic arguments. Nowadays, most 'conservatives' have knee-jerk response to the idea of eugenics, as if it is not simply common sense to choose a mate of sound health and character, and to want our children to do likewise. The ''conservatives'' who jeer at eugenics (because it conjures up associations with Margaret Sanger and Hitler) can't actually believe dysgenics is preferable. But much of the reproduction in our day is in fact dysgenic, in exactly the way that Batten says in the following paragraphs:
''The other cause is more social and personal. The prosperous and successful classes were unwilling to bear the burden and strain of a family, and so they ceased to have their proportion of children. In all times one fact appears with monotonous iteration: In the so-called upper classes, the nobility, the people of culture and ability, there has been a decline in the birth-rate and number of children. In this way there was a decrease in the number of forceful personalities, men of foresight and ability, men of self-control and self-reliance. This then is the result of it all: With the decreasing number of children in the more successful, more restrained classes, and the increasing number of children in less successful and more shiftless classes, there has followed a decline in the national strength and cohesion.
However powerful a society may seem to be, it is doomed if it so organizes itself as to breed the wrong sort of people and to favor the survival of the least desirable at the expense of the more valuable. Any society that does these things is a failure � a failure in the degree in which these results are attained.
No people can prosper and grow and endure where the less vigorous and less successful outpropagate the more vigorous and more successful. Historians and sociologists have named many causes, poHtical and economic, to explain the decadence of nations. Slavery, civil war, foreign conquest, bloated armaments, lust of gold, loss of martial spirit, the decay of religion, the decline of the national strength, these have all been summoned to ac- count for their fall. But beyond all, more insidious than all, more fatal than any, in large part the cause of all other causes, is a wrongly selected birth-rate leading to the proportionate decline of the more thrifty and stronger stock and the proportionate increase of the more thriftless and weaker strains.
We may state the law of national progress or decline in the following terms: If from any cause there be a proportionate decrease in the number of people with marked qualities of thrift, vigor, initiative, and ability, and a proportionate increase of the people with the traits of shiftlessness and weakness, there follows an inevitable decline of the national life. If by economic and social conditions children be made too heavy a burden on the more desirable elements of the population, there is a danger that the thrifty and the far-seeing members of the community will postpone marriage, and when married restrict the number of their offspring. Thus while the weak and careless elements grow at an increasing rate, the good stocks of the people check their rate of growth or even diminish in number, and the selective deterioration of the race is hastened in two ways.''
In our age of massive migrations of peoples from the Third World, we see exactly what he describes in action. It's uncomfortable for many people to acknowledge this because there is just no denying that the 'careless elements' are in many cases immigrants and those of the Groups Who Must Not Be Criticized.
Batten's viewpoints, in many cases, would be condemned today for their political incorrectness, but in the long run, he was very much a part of the move towards the multiracial/multicultural, ecumenical, egalitarian One World system.
In fact he was one of the Founding Members of a group called the Brotherhood of the Kingdom, which more or less developed what Christians now refer to as the Social Gospel movement. That movement was in great part a forerunner of the Civil Rights revolution, which has now brought us to our present situation.
Again, this is another example of how the ideas that shaped our present dystopian world order started long, long before the 1960s. It all came out in the open then, whereas it had bubbled beneath the surface for many decades prior to that fateful era.

Labels: Creeping Liberalism, Egalitarianism, Globalism, Multiculturalism, National Character, One World

Tim Heydon discusses the relationship between rising food prices, globalization, and the 'popular uprisings' in Egypt, Libya, and elsewhere in the Arab world.
Presuming that the 'popular uprisings' are just that, and that they were not fomented by outsiders as many have speculated, it is thought that rising food prices on staple foods provoked the unrest. As we are seeing rising food prices here (along with rising prices, generally) this is something we have to think about.
Heydon says in his piece that
"Globalisation depends on the specialisation or division of labour and Ricardo�s theory of Comparative Advantage. New Labour positioned this country into the Global economy as specialising in financial services. Hence its love affair with the City which has brought us to such disaster, and its total lack of concern for the export of our manufacturng [sic] industry and the huge increase in the population of an already crowded country.''
I surmised some time ago that the idea behind globalizing is in part the idea that the various regions (I started to say, 'nations', silly me) are to specialize, and this, in order that we not be self-sufficient and self-sustaining. I think I wrote on this blog that this forced interdependency, even when it comes to basic foodstuffs, is a way of making us hostages, in a sense, to each other. If we are all dependent on people on the other side of the world for the necessities of life, we are very vulnerable, at the mercy of people (the Chinese, for instance) who are surely not our friends or well-wishers.) I think this forced interdependence is a diabolical idea, in all sense of that word. But Heydon believes that is a part of what is going on.
And as he says, that's why our manufacturing capacity has been destroyed or offshored for the most part, with no seeming regrets among our overlords.
A friend and I were talking recently about the utter insanity of our getting seafood from the other side of the world instead of from local waters, while presumably much of our locally-caught seafood goes to who-knows-where. Read the packagaging labels at your local supermarket; very few food products (or non-food products) are made here. Most products say, at best, 'Distributed by..' someplace in another U.S. state, perhaps, but very little says 'Product of the USA', as it should. We are taking a gamble when we eat anything, really, given China's record of pushing toxic products of all kinds onto the passive world. For the latest instance of that, Time.com reports on the toxic metal contamination of Chinese rice
''The polluting effects of China's rapid industrialization are hardly news. But the industrial clusters cropping up in the nation's farm belts present new problems. Food safety in China in the past few years has primarily been framed as a problem of corruption in the supply chain, as was the case in the melamine scandal, or the overuse of pesticides, insecticides and chemical fertilizers in agriculture. Crop contamination by heavy metals from nearby industry that soak into the soil did not start this year � in fact the rice samples used to determine the 10% contamination rate were taken back in 2007 � but the scope of the problem is just beginning to be fully comprehended.''
Most people, rather than being justifiably alarmed by the many instances of contamination, simply shrug their shoulders and go on buying the stuff. Maybe among the adulterants in the food products is something that makes us passive, docile, and stupid.
I'm only half-joking when I say that.
Along with the artificial population explosion in the UK and our country, via mass uncontrolled immigration, we are in a bad way when it comes to being able to feed ourselves and be self-sufficient. But the idea is that we not be self-sustaining, and that either our ''own'' political classes, and/or the people in China who control our flow of goods, will have power over us by that fact.
This can hardly end well. Now, as the price of gas threatens to hit $5 a gallon soon, prices will surely continue their upward climb.
What next? Do our political classes think they can control and use this crisis that they have engineered, or will it backfire on them?
Heydon concludes by saying that an era of scarcity will put paid to this globalizing experiment that is under way. Another way to look at that is that we need to regain some kind of control over our own lives by producing what we need for ourselves, as was our forefathers' intention. We can't wait for this experiment to fail completely before we decide to work towards more sovereignty over our own lives and more self-sufficiency.

Labels: Economic Depression, Globalism, Localism, One World, Trade Dependence

These Are Not Negotiable
''...it is incumbent upon us to very seriously and thoughtfully examine those principles that we absolutely will never cede or surrender. We have already surrendered much of the freedom that was bequeathed to us by our forefathers. We are now to the point that we must define those principles that form our "line in the sand" and that we will not surrender under any circumstance. Either that, or we must admit to ourselves that there is nothing�no principle, no freedom, no matter how sacred�that we will not surrender to Big Government.
Here, then, are those principles that, to me, must never be surrendered. To surrender these liberties to Big Government would mean to commit idolatry. It would be sacrilege. It would reduce us to slavery. It would destroy our humanity. To surrender these freedoms would mean "absolute Despotism" and would provide moral justification to the proposition that such tyranny be "thrown off."
[...]
God separated the Nations (Genesis 11). Therefore, it is absolutely necessary that we Americans maintain our independence and national sovereignty. We simply cannot (and will not) allow ourselves to become part of any hemispheric or global union.''
Many of you may have read this piece already, or discussed it elsewhere. It's by Chuck Baldwin.
He lists what he considers the absolutely essential principles, the ones we would never compromise or give up, as free people.
He starts out, wisely I think, with the right to bear arms. I think many of our Founding Fathers considered this right basic, and the only sure means of guaranteeing our other freedoms.
Please read the whole piece, and the list of Pastor Baldwin's essential principles.
On further considering the list, I think the last right, that of living as an independent and sovereign people, is central.
Pastor Baldwin mentions, importantly, that in the Christian view, the nations are and must remain separate, not blended together as in the arrogant attempt to unify the world at the Tower of Babel. The nations are meant, at least in part, as God's checks and balances. If the world were unified under one system, and that system were, or became, corrupt and tyrannical -- which would be likely -- there would be no alternative, no escape, no haven of refuge.
This is the way things are shaping up in our time: as this proposed 'global governance' takes on the air of inevitability, where will any dissenter go to opt out of such a regime? My ancestors were able to flee to this continent and build a new society here. And even now, where can we go to flee the global multiculturalist regime? Its tentacles are everywhere. There is nowhere to go.
One more reason why our sovereignty, or any people's sovereignty and independence are important to freedom: it is only by means of a kindred population of equally freedom-loving people that you and I can hope to enjoy any degree of liberty. Our Founding Fathers stated that only a people who were essentially moral, sharing common ideas of God-given rights and freedoms, could even establish, much less maintain a free republic like our original America.
Introducing a mixed multitude of people from drastically different stocks, people with differing priorities and different proclivities, disparate ideas of how to live together, guarantees the failure of liberty and freedom.
Only by having a closely-connected group of people with a common store of traditions, and agreed-upon beliefs about rights and freedoms and morals, can we have a free and peaceful home. We cannot have a mixed-multitude nation (otherwise known as ''diversity'') and have our sovereignty and independence.
On my list, if I were to make one, I think I would put Pastor Baldwin's last item as the first.
What about you?

Labels: Ethnonationalism, Freedom, Globalism, Liberty, Multiculturalism, Nationalism, One World, Sovereignty

We are in the midst of a great transition from narrow nationalism to international partnership. - Lyndon B. Johnson
"Sept. 11th must spur us to launch a new era of American internationalism. Let's not squander this opportunity." - Robert Kagan, January 2002
"There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization." - Oscar S. Straus
"As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education and world-mindedness can produce only rather precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism." - Sir John Huxley, father of the U.N. education program
"It is, if people will but think steadfastly, inconceivable that there should be world control without a merger of sovereignty, but the framers of these early tentatives toward world unity have lacked the courage of frankness in this respect. They have been afraid of bawling outbreaks of patriotism, and they have tried to believe, that they contemplate nothing more than a league of nations, when in reality they contemplate a subordination of nations and administrations to one common rule and law." - H.G. Wells, The Salvaging Of Civilization
"We are at present working discreetly with all our might to wrest this mysterious force called sovereignty out of the clutches of the local nation states of the world. All the time we are denying with our lips what we are doing with our hands." - Arnold Toynbee, "The Trend of International Affairs Since the War", International Affairs, Nov 1931
''I think the subject which will be of utmost importance politically is mass psychology. ... Various results will soon be arrived at [including] that the influence of home is obstructive ... in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can reach the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment. ... Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen. ... Educational propaganda, with government help, could achieve this result in a generation. There are, however, two powerful forces opposed to such a policy: one is religion; the other is nationalism.'' - Bertrand Russell, 1953, The Impact of Science on Society
"Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissonance and stress." - Thorstein Veblen
"The root of the problem is very simply stated, if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort of federalism, as the states of the American Union, for instance, are organized, there would be no international war as we know it...The main obstacle is nationalism." - Norman Angell
"It is our clear duty to strain every muscle in working for the time when all war can be completely outlawed by international consent. This goal undoubtedly requires the establishment of some universal public authority acknowledged as such by all and endowed with the power to safeguard on the behalf of all...." from Vatican II document, 'Pastoral Constitution On the Church In the Modern World', 1965
"�You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no third worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast immanne, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars���It is the international system of currency that determins the totality of life today��There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT & T and Dupont, Dow, Union Carbide and Exxon. Those are the Nations of the world today��..We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations��our children, Mr. Beale, will live to see that perfect world in which there is no war and famine�.one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit�..all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused." - from the movie 'Network', 1975
"The old order passes from view; the new world rises upon our vision....We have vindicated the right of social control....There must be developed a national spirit of service....Society must break the stranglehold of capitalism....The natural resources of the nation must be socialized....The state must socialize every group....Men must learn to have world patriotism. World patriotism must be a faith....There is no more justice for the claim of absolute sovereignty on the part of a nation than on the part of an individual....The only alternative is World Federation...with a world parliament, an international court, and an international police force....Men must have an international mind before there can be a world federation. They must see and affirm that above the nation is humanity. Internationalism must first be a religion before it can be a reality and a system." - Samuel Zane Batten, 'The New World Order'

Labels: Globalism, Internationalism, Nationalism, One World, Quotations

Obama, the self-described 'global citizen' pontificates to 200,000 mesmerized Europeans, and shows his one-world leader aspirations:
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another. The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.''
[Emphasis mine]
Would these 'new walls' that Obama tells us 'cannot stand' include the walls of nationality? Race? Evidently so, as he talks about how the wall 'between races and tribes; natives and immigrants, Christian and Muslim and Jew' cannot stand, and that ''we'' must tear them down.
Does this not sound very troubling? I find it so. He is virtually announcing this new borderless, 'trans-racial' world in which neither race and kinship nor faith mean anything anymore. All divisions will apparently be seen as 'hateful' and bigoted and such divisions will be in essence outlawed.
We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.''
These are all half-truths; the walls have come down in Berlin but the West did not win; the old divisions have only been replaced with new ones, with hostile 'immigrants' within all European countries. The sectarian strife in Northern Ireland may have quieted somewhat, but it has not been eliminated. And we all know what a horrible travesty the end of apartheid was in South Africa; the country is far worse than it ever could have been under apartheid.
So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.
That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And this is the moment when our nations - and all nations - must summon that spirit anew.'''
It sounds as though we are being prepared to accept some kind of union with the EU; the first (forced) step will be the NAU, which will then be united with our supposed 'partners' in the EU. But the people who are in control of the EU are no friends or partners to Americans; they are all globalist cosmopolitans with no national loyalties or allegiances.
I wondered, when I heard about this speech in Berlin, what is Obama doing there? Is he running for President of the world? Evidently so.
Read the rest of Obama's overblown and cliched speech at Free Republic, here, if you must.
Here is one German take on the speech, from Spiegel Online:
Anyone who saw Barack Obama at Berlin's Siegessäule on Thursday could recognize that this man will become the 44th president of the United States. He is more than ambitious -- he wants to lay claim to become the president of the world.
It was a ton to absorb -- and what a stupendous ride through world history: the story of his own family, the Berlin Airlift, terrorists, poorly secured nuclear material, the polar caps, World War II, America's errors, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, freedom. It's amazing one could even pack such a potpourri of issues into sentences and then succeed in squeezing them all into the space of a speech that lasted less than 30 minutes.''
And here, more gushing Obamadulation:
The speech of a global citizen," "perfect performance," an "homage to Berlin" -- After Thursday's big Obama show at Berlin's Siegessäule, German politicians seem quite impressed by the US candidate's performance. "This will strengthen the trans-Atlantic bridge," said veteran politician Edmund Stoiber.''
We might write these reactions off as being typical liberal/leftist journalistic infatuation with Obama, but there were some 200,000 Europeans gathered to pay obeisance to him. Sometimes it seems as if what is happening in our world now is some kind of bad dream, or a movie in which everybody is under some kind of delusion. What is wrong with these Europeans? Here in the USA, we have all been horsewhipped with racial guilt for 50 or so years; what is wrong with Europeans that they are likewise afflicted with guilt and a need to abase themselves?
I don't believe Obama when he refers to himself as part of the American 'we'. I don't buy it when he talks about America as his country, and I don't believe him when he talks of his 'love' for America as he does here:
But I also know how much I love America. I know that for more than two centuries, we have strived -- at great cost and great sacrifice -- to form a more perfect union; to seek, with other nations, a more hopeful world.''
I actually don't believe he even understands the meaning of forming 'a more perfect union'; I doubt he has ever really read what any of the Founding Fathers said or wrote. A more perfect union does not mean a utopia, and it does not mean a union between our country and the European Union or Canada or Mexico or anyone else.
Our allegiance has never been to any particular tribe or kingdom''
Speak for yourself, Mr. Obama. You surely don't speak for us there. Our country was neither conceived nor established as some kind of international dumping ground or a 'trans-racial' Tower of Babel. We were originally a nation of people of common descent and a common Christian faith. Read the documents.
-- indeed, every language is spoken in our country; every culture has left its imprint on ours; every point of view is expressed in our public squares.''
And if 'every language' is spoken in this country, that is not to our credit; it betrays the treasonous nature of 'our' leaders who have refused to protect us from foreign invasion and who are in fact actively working to reduce the founding stock of this country to an enfeebled minority.
As for 'every culture' leaving an imprint on ours, that is a ludicrous bit of hyperbole, not worthy of anybody who claims to be intelligent and informed. And every point of view is most assuredly not expressed in our public squares; only that which is politically correct and consistent with what our secretive elites want to be expressed. Viewpoints like mine are decidedly neither heard nor welcomed in the public squares.
What has always united us -- what has always driven our people; what drew my father to America�s shores -- is a set of ideals that speak to aspirations shared by all people: that we can live free from fear and free from want; that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose and worship as we please.''
Again, we were united at the beginning by common origins and a common faith and culture. We were never united by a 'set of ideals' based on universal aspirations. This is all false. And the idea that we can speak our minds and assemble with whomever we choose is also hollow rhetoric.
Back when Obama first announced his candidacy, he spoke of 'remaking America.' I found this alarming and ominous at the time, but so many on the 'right' insisted Obama was just a rather well-spoken young African-American man who was lacking in experience, nothing more and nothing less.
If I could believe that, I would not feel quite so discouraged about the fate of this Republic.
My one consolation is that I don't confuse the Republic with my nation. The nation is the people. The nation will always be the people. Nations are always, by definition, rather exclusive clubs. Nations are based on birth, not on ideas or ideals or 'aspirations' or any other such high-flown words.
It's time to mend the fences within the nation, and strengthen the walls Obama says should be torn down. Our walls, in case he hasn't noticed, have long since been trampled down, and our sorry leaders refuse to build them up again. But not all walls are made of stone or concrete; some walls are made by nature, and some walls cannot be torn down by governmental command.

Labels: Babelism, Globalism, Leftism, One World, Politics, Presidential Candidates, Transnationalism

Often among ethnonationalists, Russia is cited as the only hope for the future. I am always wary of this romanticizing of Russia. I realize many people are disenchanted with, if not downright bitter towards, the United States, and are prone to glamorize Russia. Beware; this is what the old lefties used to do, in their disillusionment with their country, and some eventually learned to their chagrin that the USSR was not the people's utopia they wanted desperately to have it be.
A few months ago, Medvedev and Putin mad statements condemning what they termed 'xenophobia'. So it is not surprising that now, Medvedev has made a speech praising multiculturalism and slamming nationalism.
''The president also said those linked to igniting interethnic hatred will be banned from educating youths.[...]
National accord starts from school, he believes, being the place where 'the basics of a person's view of the world' are laid.
[...]
Illiteracy is the basis of almost all conflicts, and especially interethnic ones, he says.
[...]
Multiculturalism not a failure
The president has pointed out the example of the United States.
'Nobody can insult anyone for their ethnicity, a punishment will follow inevitably. Sometimes people laugh at it, but I think it is better this way than to allow insults', he said. 'Tolerance can't be excessive,' he added."
Reuters quotes him as saying "If we talk about the failure of multiculturalism, then entire cultures can be destroyed, which is a dangerous thing...'
I don't think Russia is any kind of promised land, or a last bastion of 'Western White culture.' I think it is still true to say, as Churchill did decades ago:
"I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma..."
To most of us non-Russians, it is. Culturally they are very unlike us in most respects. I haven't been to that country but I have had considerable contact with people from that country.
It may be that things will change, but I don't believe we can count on that. However, to complete the quotation from Churchill,
"... perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest."
Do the ordinary Russian people perceive that multiculturalism is not in their 'national interest'? I am not informed enough to answer that, but it is obvious that their current regime is on board with the globalist agenda, like most of the 'leaders'.

Labels: Cultural Marxism, Ethnonationalism, Globalism, Multicultists, Nativism, One World

What a long way we've come since 1961, when Kennedy appointee Newton Minow of the FCC proclaimed television to be a 'vast wasteland.' The television of 1961 was certainly full of vacuous programming and commercials, but compared to today's TV, it was high art. And bad as it may have been in parts, it was at least mostly entertainment without an 'agenda' or without heavy-handed messages bludgeoning viewers over the head, and without the steady propaganda that is the whole purpose, seemingly, of much of what is on TV in 2008.
You can't watch TV without being aware of the propaganda and the conditioning. The commercials seem as much or more concerned with selling a politically correct message than with selling a product or a service.
Today as I was watching the National Geographic channel I saw this VISA spot, which I've learned is narrated by Morgan Freeman (who else?). It's ostensibly about the upcoming Olympics, but if you haven't seen it, click on the link and watch it. It's short, but they do manage to pack a lot of propaganda into a short spot. If you want to be really discouraged, read the mindless comments following the spot.
In a ubiquitous Vonage commercial, it isn't the globalist agenda so much as the feminist, anti-White male agenda. Vonage seems to heavily favor ridiculing and belittling White males while exalting snarky, superior females. I am sure you've all seen this particular one, which is inescapable on TV these days.
The smug, sarcastic female seems to be a stock character in commercials these days, alongside the inept, awkward, clueless White male.
But the global agenda and the 'we are all the same' message seem to be promoted more heavily than ever in recent months. I've mentioned the History International Channel before, with its obnoxious 'Globalize Yourself' slogan.
For History International, the image makers at ZONA Design, Inc. created and produced a :30 image spot that encourages each viewer to "Globalize Yourself"; To explore the lives, the cultures, the various histories that shape the world we share; To try and better understand the world's peoples as what happens elsewhere on our planet profoundly impacts our daily lives here at home.
[...] To artfully make the network?s point, the ZONA creatives transitioned a series of images from diverse cultures - Russian, Tibetan, Peruvian, Aboriginal - and faces of African, Asian, Muslim and Hispanic men and women, one to the other, in the process weaving a global tapestry. Each day the world seems to be getting smaller so we created a travelogue that we hoped would help viewers make the connection that, as the History International tagline states, what happens over there indeed matters over here,? explained ZONA Creative Director/Designer Zoa Martinez.''
Celebrate diversity. Or else.
And then the BBC has its 'One World' mantra going. A few years ago, the BBC even ran a poll to find out who most people preferred as leader of a one-world government, which they clearly think is the future.
Now the "Beeb," as it is known, recently announced the results of a poll to find out who its audience would choose to head a worldwide one-size-fits-all government. And the winner was: Ex-South African President Nelson Mandela. According to the BBC, about 15,000 people voted worldwide and the contest was an interactive Power Play game modeled on Fantasy Football; participants were instructed to choose a team of eleven to run the world, from a list of about 100 people offered, coming mainly from the left-liberal end of the political spectrum. About half of the participants were apparently American, and for this reason if no other, the runner-up was William Jefferson Clinton. ''
I guess we all know who would be chosen today to head up this 'one-world' regime. And the media can take most of the 'credit' or more accurately the blame for that.
I suppose these propaganda efforts, obvious and overbearing as they are, must be somewhat effective, judging by the way the young are flocking to Obama and cheering 'Go World.'
But to return for a moment to Newton Minow's 1961 speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, if we read what he says, we can see the direction in which the elites were taking us even then.
Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years, this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.
Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today's world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind's benefit, so will history decide whether today's broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or to debase them.''
He concludes:
I urge you, I urge you to put the people's airwaves to the service of the people and the cause of freedom. You must help prepare a generation for great decisions. You must help a great nation fulfill its future.
Do this! I pledge you our help.
Thank you.'
The cause of freedom. It all sounds good. But between the lines, it seems he is talking about the global community, in today's terms, and about the media exercising 'leadership'. The media, though some of them purport to provide strictly entertainment, are now involved in what they think of as 'moral leadership' but which is really social engineering and propaganda. And they believe it is for our good, that they have to enlighten us because we are ignorant and narrow.
It's easy to recommend going TV-free, but the fact is, we still live in a world in which most people spend hours of their lives each day in front of the TV, uncritically absorbing what they see and hear on it. That, in large part, explains the phenomenal rise of Barack Obama, and it explains the political correctness which has infected our society, particularly among the younger and more impressionable.
By all means, keep your children from TV if you can, but it's getting harder and harder to separate oneself from the all-pervasive messages being spewed from television.

Labels: Advertising, Entertainment Media, Globalism, Indoctrination, Media Bias, One World, Political Correctness, Propaganda

Just a quick thought: a friend and I were discussing the fact that most of our produce, and indeed everything we need, seems to have to be imported from somewhere, mainly Third World countries. Meanwhile, we wondered, where do America's farm products go?
On this thread at AmRen, a couple of people raise the same question my friend and I were discussing.
I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who spoke against "foreign entanglements." He must have looked into the future of this country. What have we become? I looked in vain at the market yesterday for produce raised in this country. There was none to be found. Most comes from Mexico, with the Latin American countriesfollowing. Do we no longer produce our own food? Clothing comes from thirdworld countries and looks it. Our appliances come primarily from China. Are we left to be just a supplier of money for those who seek to overcome us? If the present trend continues, we will be strangers in our own land. In many states this has already happened. Yet we continue to elect those who are willing to sell out to the highest bidder. They�ve sold their patriotism and honor at the same time.''
Followed by this response:
I was told by someone in a small market the other day that most of our best produce goes to Japan and Europe because American farmers and corporations can make more money selling the produce there. Then, Americans get to have produce from Mexico and Latin America.
Whether that�s the whole story I don�t know but I have wondered for some time now why there is so little American produce in our grocery stores when we grow so much here in the United States.''
I was reading an old (early 1950s) book I just bought in which they wrote of how our country produced, then, more than half of the world's cotton. Yet, many of the fields that I remember as being cotton fields in Texas during my childhood are no longer growing cotton. Much of the corn grown is not grown for human consumption.
So why is this? Why are we now dependent on other, lesser countries for the things we need for our sustenance? Does someone have a good answer for why this is? I wonder if the first comment I quoted above is correct, and our country is meant, by these globalist web-spinners, to be nothing more than a nation of white-collar serfs
since we seem to manufacture very little and grow little of what we need to eat.
It seems to me as if the plan is to make each region of the world (I won't say 'country' because I think countries are to be made obsolete) to specialize in one area, with each region limited to certain services or products. Obviously we can't have independent, self-sufficient countries, can we? We have to be compelled to depend on each other for vital goods or services, and then we will all learn to live in peace and brotherhood, won't we?

Labels: Globalism, Nations, One World, Self-Determination