0 comment Sunday, November 30, 2014 | admin
Why I am not a Republican
Jerome Corsi writes about his disaffection from the Republican Party, and about his differences with the Jed Babbin, the new editor of Human Events. Babbin, it seems, chided Corsi for his series of articles outlining the North American Union plan. Babbin derided the idea of the NAU as 'black helicopter conspiracy themes.'
Corsi says:
These Human Events articles were widely popular, in some weeks last year constituting as many as two or three of the 10 most read articles published that week on the Human Events website.
Yet, today, Babbin has even removed my name from the list of columnists published on Human Events and I�ve transitioned to becoming a full-time staff reporter at WND.''
So now Corsi is no longer with Human Events, because he wouldn't toe the line and soft-pedal the NAU story? The apologists for the supposedly non-existent -- or benign -- NAU seem to be very determined to stop discussion on the subject, or, failing that, to whitewash the project. Those who write about it or who take a negative view towards the NAU are likely to be assailed by name-callers on the big GOP webforums. I've blogged about this before; supposedly the White House and/or the RNC have assigned operatives to go on the internet and quash any criticism of the NAU. That seems to be overkill if the project is really a figment of some paranoiac's imagination, or if it is merely a benign trade agreement, as claimed.
So Corsi has been a target, as the most visible and vocal journalist raising questions about the plan.
Corsi laments the fact that the Rockefeller Republicans have assumed control of the party, and Human Events, under Babbin's editorship, will become increasingly a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
I also tried to explain to Babbin my view that right now, the Republican Party is controlled by what used to be called the "Rockefeller Wing."
Like David Rockefeller himself, the Rockefeller Wing involves millionaires and billionaires who run multi-national corporations.
Rockefeller Wing Republicans are already beyond borders in their determination to advance their multinational corporations for unbridled profit, whether or not U.S. sovereignty and the middle class are destroyed in the process.
I have reflected that Howard Phillips was probably right when he urged Ronald Reagan to form his own, new political party.
I�m not sure the moral Christians belong in the same party with the Rockefeller Republicans.
At any rate, George W. Bush in his second term seems determined to destroy the Reagan coalition once and for all.
[...]
We would be better off without a Republican Party if having a Republican Party means we continue compromising U.S. sovereignty under this false banner of one-sided trade agreements that have nothing to do with legitimate "free trade."
If Human Events under Babbin�s editorial direction is to become an apologists� forum for Republican Party true believers, so be it. ''
Corsi mentions the fall-back argument used by Babbin and the others that failing to support the GOP will guarantee a Hillary presidency. That empty argument is all they have, and they think that it will suffice to scare many conservatives into voting GOP, even if it means voting for a globalist, CFR candidate -- which, as Corsi mentions, all of the so-called top tier candidates are.
I am positive that the GOP leadership and their true believer followers are thrilled that Hillary is the likely nominee, because the threat of Hillary in the White House is the only 'argument' they have to convince conservatives to vote for whichever of the pathetic 'top tier' candidates is opposing her.
Sorry, GOP, but I agree with Corsi and with Richard Viguerie that this is not enough. A vote for any of the preferred GOP candidates is a vote for more globalism and a vote against real conservative policies. If that is all the Republican Party is able, or willing, to offer us, then the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness.
A political party is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, and if the GOP no longer stands for conservative ideas and traditional America, then it needs to go, and make way for a real conservative party.
Jerome Corsi writes about his disaffection from the Republican Party, and about his differences with the Jed Babbin, the new editor of Human Events. Babbin, it seems, chided Corsi for his series of articles outlining the North American Union plan. Babbin derided the idea of the NAU as 'black helicopter conspiracy themes.'
Corsi says:
These Human Events articles were widely popular, in some weeks last year constituting as many as two or three of the 10 most read articles published that week on the Human Events website.
Yet, today, Babbin has even removed my name from the list of columnists published on Human Events and I�ve transitioned to becoming a full-time staff reporter at WND.''
So now Corsi is no longer with Human Events, because he wouldn't toe the line and soft-pedal the NAU story? The apologists for the supposedly non-existent -- or benign -- NAU seem to be very determined to stop discussion on the subject, or, failing that, to whitewash the project. Those who write about it or who take a negative view towards the NAU are likely to be assailed by name-callers on the big GOP webforums. I've blogged about this before; supposedly the White House and/or the RNC have assigned operatives to go on the internet and quash any criticism of the NAU. That seems to be overkill if the project is really a figment of some paranoiac's imagination, or if it is merely a benign trade agreement, as claimed.
So Corsi has been a target, as the most visible and vocal journalist raising questions about the plan.
Corsi laments the fact that the Rockefeller Republicans have assumed control of the party, and Human Events, under Babbin's editorship, will become increasingly a mouthpiece for the Republican Party.
I also tried to explain to Babbin my view that right now, the Republican Party is controlled by what used to be called the "Rockefeller Wing."
Like David Rockefeller himself, the Rockefeller Wing involves millionaires and billionaires who run multi-national corporations.
Rockefeller Wing Republicans are already beyond borders in their determination to advance their multinational corporations for unbridled profit, whether or not U.S. sovereignty and the middle class are destroyed in the process.
I have reflected that Howard Phillips was probably right when he urged Ronald Reagan to form his own, new political party.
I�m not sure the moral Christians belong in the same party with the Rockefeller Republicans.
At any rate, George W. Bush in his second term seems determined to destroy the Reagan coalition once and for all.
[...]
We would be better off without a Republican Party if having a Republican Party means we continue compromising U.S. sovereignty under this false banner of one-sided trade agreements that have nothing to do with legitimate "free trade."
If Human Events under Babbin�s editorial direction is to become an apologists� forum for Republican Party true believers, so be it. ''
Corsi mentions the fall-back argument used by Babbin and the others that failing to support the GOP will guarantee a Hillary presidency. That empty argument is all they have, and they think that it will suffice to scare many conservatives into voting GOP, even if it means voting for a globalist, CFR candidate -- which, as Corsi mentions, all of the so-called top tier candidates are.
I am positive that the GOP leadership and their true believer followers are thrilled that Hillary is the likely nominee, because the threat of Hillary in the White House is the only 'argument' they have to convince conservatives to vote for whichever of the pathetic 'top tier' candidates is opposing her.
Sorry, GOP, but I agree with Corsi and with Richard Viguerie that this is not enough. A vote for any of the preferred GOP candidates is a vote for more globalism and a vote against real conservative policies. If that is all the Republican Party is able, or willing, to offer us, then the Republican Party has outlived its usefulness.
A political party is only a means to an end, not an end in itself, and if the GOP no longer stands for conservative ideas and traditional America, then it needs to go, and make way for a real conservative party.
Labels: Globalism, Gop, Nau, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates, Spp, Third Party
0 comment Wednesday, November 12, 2014 | admin
Democrats are the real homophobes
Senator Larry Craig has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion for trying to solicit an undercover cop in an airport bathroom. Welcome to the judicial system of America. The irony is, if anyone invaded anyone�s private potty time, it was the cop thrusting his badge under Craig�s stall. Is it a crime to have Restless Leg Syndrome or to touch the bottom of a stall divider? No, the crime today is being a Republican who champions family values.
The charge of hypocrisy is practically tripping off the tongues of those stalwart supporters of Bill Clinton. They criticized anyone who would look into the private lives of public officials yet now are condemning Senator Craig for keeping his alleged private life in the closet. At least he did not act out his alleged private life in a real public place, like the oval office. It will be interesting to see what Ted Kennedy�s response will be and if he calls for Craig to step down even though he never felt a similar compunction after leaving a young woman to drown in his car,dining on eggs benedict while the fish dined on her. It will be interesting to see if Hillary, who demands that President Bush come clean, stop hiding evidence and evading the truth when she herself has developed at least 500 new ways of saying "I don�t recall."''
[...]
So the only conclusion that we can draw from the obvious outrage by the liberal democrats demanding that Craig step down, is that they don�t think gays should serve in the Congress. At least they don�t they don�t think Republican gays should serve since they had no issue with Barney Franks running a prostitution ring out of his house, or Gerry Studs [sic] having sex with an under-aged page. And the argument that Democrat spokesmen give is that these guys got reelected. Great, then let Larry Craig stay in office and let the voters in his state decide if HE should be reelected or not. And if they reelect him, then the people of Idaho, like the people of Massachusetts have said that congress is a big tent, or that they forgive Larry for any alleged indiscretions.
But please, drop the hypocrisy line. It just doesn�t fit here. And if liberals insist that he resign, they better be knocking on Ted Kennedy�s door, suggesting that murder is a lot worse than tapping a foot in a bathroom stall.
And tell Hillary that lying under oath is a lot worse than running your hand under a stall divider. But if the claims of hypocrisy continue, it will only serve to show that the Democrats are the biggest hypocrites when it comes to equal rights for all people. By calling for Craig to resign, they are saying that no matter what your sexual preference, regardless of whether you are open about it or not, gays are not allowed and not welcome in congress and will be run out on a rail from this elite body . . . oh, unless they are Democrats. Hmmmm...did someone say hypocrisy?''
The Larry Craig story is the kind of thing I really like to refrain from commenting on. The nature of the charges, involving sleazy trysts in a public lavatory is just unseemly, and I would shy away from discussing this kind of thing even if it involved heterosexual behavior.
But when I read political commentary, such as that in the above-linked piece, I have to comment on the political aspects of this sordid episode.
First of all, I am really annoyed by the Republicans who will seize on an episode such as this one, involving homosexuality, as a pretext for pointing the finger of accusation at liberals/Democrats. I realize that, apparently, some people find the urge to gleefully turn the accusations of 'bigotry' back on the liberals too much to resist, but all the same, we should resist it.
And I don't think conservatives should be trying to shift the blame away from Craig's behavior, or excusing it because the Democrats are just as bad or worse. What kind of defense is that? None at all. It's much the same as a child, when caught doing wrong, protests that 'Johnny did it first.' Two wrongs don't make a right.
What the writer seems to be saying is that we should seize on the opportunity to catch the Democrats/liberals at their own game and call them homophobes, and thus possibly make hay of the scandal, and snag some votes from "the gay community" by proving our non-homophobic bona fides. Thanks but no thanks. Nothing doing.
I remember reading the same kind of thing during the hearings for some of Bush's minority nominees; whenever the Democrats criticized a minority nominee, some Republicans latched onto that as proof that "the Democrats are the REAL racists." This to me is a very unproductive strategy, and it involves a certain amount of cynicism. It is based on the idea that if we 'catch out' the Democrats in some act of 'bigotry' based on race or on sexual preference, then we can poach lots of votes from the 'minority community' or the 'gay community' or whoever. And we can be, at least temporarily, in a morally superior position to the Democrats/liberals, who usually lord it over us in matters involving political correctness and pandering rights.
Do we really want to get into a 'more-politically-correct-than-thou' contest with the Democrats? Once we start playing that game by their rules in earnest, it will be hard to turn back; we will be just a pale imitation of the liberals. Republicans and 'conservatives' are already farther down that path than we were say, ten years ago, and do we need more political correctness in this country? Do we need another pandering party full of sycophants like the Democrats, who are beholden to 'special interest groups' of every description? It seems to me that conservatives (which category I realize does not include all Republicans) should stand apart from that kind of thing. The last thing this world needs is more name-calling and politically correct censorship.
All the back-and-forth about who is more hypocritical is just silly. And joining in the childish game of 'gotcha' with the Democrats is demeaning.
What is wrong for members of one party is wrong for both. The kind of behavior of which Craig is accused is not appropriate for an elected official, and at the very least, it is an indication of bad judgment, as well as poor self-control. Not qualities we want in elected officials who wield power and who should be honest, trustworthy, responsible, self-controlled people.
If we make it OK for people to do this kind of thing just because they are of our preferred political party, we are just adding to the sum of irresponsibility and lack of morality in our society. We are helping to define deviancy downward. Now for people who are simply party loyalists first, last, and always, maybe there is nothing wrong, in their minds, with that. But for anyone who stands for traditional principles and mores, this kind of thing is not acceptable. Ever.
For the liberals, politics is everything, and they will excuse or overlook or defend the worst kinds of behavior in a political ally. But this is what we might expect of moral relativists and nihilists. If we excuse bad behavior or even criminal conduct by those on 'our' side of the aisle, we are truly being hypocrites, because conservatives are traditionally on the side of law and order and principle. We should not want to be the political cynics the liberals show themselves to be.
Labels: Morality, Party Politics, Senate
0 comment Friday, November 7, 2014 | admin
I've been looking at the coverage of the Constitution Party nomination of Chuck Baldwin, and it's much as I expected.
Surprisingly, though, the Fox News coverage (see the video here) was rather fair and even-handed.
But here, the headline seems biased:
Constitution Party chooses talk-show host over Keyes for presidential nomination
Meeting in Kansas City on Saturday, the Constitution Party tapped talk show host Chuck Baldwin over former ambassador Alan Keyes as its 2008 presidential nominee.
The pick was seen as something of an upset, given Keyes� higher national profile. Known for his fiery stemwinders, Keyes is a two-time GOP presidential candidate who abandoned the Republican Party this month to join the Constitution Party, which stands for limited government and is committed to ending abortion and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.
But Baldwin�s roots in the Constitution Party run deeper. He was the party�s 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and party members said his stands were more in line with party thinking.
Still, the two waged a fierce battle in the days leading up to the vote, described as the most contentious in the party�s 16-year history. Baldwin wound up winning easily, 384-126. The Missouri and Kansas delegations basically split their votes between the two.
"They just rejected the most qualified man to be president," said Tom Hoefling of Lohrville, Iowa, who is Keyes� national political director. "Chuck Baldwin will have no impact on this election whatsoever."
And Keyes would have an impact?! Keyes, who has already run twice for president, and who couldn't even make a go of his cable TV show, or talk radio?
I see that the Freepers are reacting to this news with their usual knee-jerk responses. About 25 percent on the thread I read are conservative enough to recognize that Baldwin is the real deal, while another 25 percent seem to think Keyes is by far the better man (Keyes has a small cult among Freepers, some of whom are still looking for their personal black conservative hero), while close to 50 percent on the thread are already sneering and jeering.
The Constitution Party can't win; Baldwin, they say, is an unknown (unlike the household name, Keyes, I take it) and the CP is full of 'fruit loops' and losers.
At least reading the discussion over there, I am reminded once again just why I want nothing more to do with the Republican Party.
The mere fact that so many people in both parties, but especially, it seems, on the ''right'' are so quick to declare all third parties as hopeless causes, and as havens for 'nutjobs' and crazies, explains very well why we now have two dysfunctional parties with a strangehold on our political system.
As long as there are so many diehard party loyalists who think that straying from our two divinely-ordained political parties will result in the end of the world, we will never find our way out of the maze we are in.
At what point will these hard-heads and dimwits realize that the system as it is ain't working -- or at least, if it is working, it is not working for the American people? If our present sorry state of things does not break people of their dependency on the two-party system, nothing will.
We all just witnessed a combination of our malevolent media and obtuse citizens reject the candidacy of a good man, Ron Paul. For many months, since Ron Paul first announced his candidacy, we've heard the news media ridicule and dismiss him, on those rare occasions when they deigned to notice him at all, and we've heard every village idiot in the country proclaim 'no third party can win. You're throwing your vote away if you vote third party.' Or this one: ''if you vote third party you are just helping to elect a Democrat, and it will be your fault when [Hillary/Obama] is in the White House''.
This kind of ''thinking'' is what will guarantee that our situation only goes from bad to worse. This stubborn cluelessness is what has allowed our two monopolistic parties to flout the will of their constituents, and to go rogue. The political classes know that they don't even have to pay attention to the will of the people; they know that there are enough docile, knee-jerk loyalists who think they have 'nowhere else to go' who will vote for them and continue contributing to their candidacies and to the Party, regardless of their defiance of us and their open contempt for us.
Is there a chance that we can learn from the experience with Dr. Paul's candidacy and avoid letting the media and the obstructionists among us marginalize Chuck Baldwin's candidacy too? This may well be our last chance to stand up for traditional American principles before the demographic tidal wave washes away the last real vestiges of our political power. There is a lot at stake in this election, and yet I see a state of torpor among many in this country, or a kind of passivity born of resignation and cynicism. I see too many people who are beaten already, who are convinced that nothing we can do will make a difference, so why even try?
There are so many who have been thoroughly convinced that the two-party system is inevitable and forever; we can't change it, so we are foolish to try.
With such defeatist attitudes, of course these lugubrious predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can't change things precisely because people have been convinced that we can't.
Either we try to rekindle the old American can-do spirit and the spirit of independence of mind, or we just give up and shuffle off the stage of history, leaving it to the invading hordes and their multiculturalist collaborators.
We have another chance now; let's make the most of it.
Surprisingly, though, the Fox News coverage (see the video here) was rather fair and even-handed.
But here, the headline seems biased:
Constitution Party chooses talk-show host over Keyes for presidential nomination
Meeting in Kansas City on Saturday, the Constitution Party tapped talk show host Chuck Baldwin over former ambassador Alan Keyes as its 2008 presidential nominee.
The pick was seen as something of an upset, given Keyes� higher national profile. Known for his fiery stemwinders, Keyes is a two-time GOP presidential candidate who abandoned the Republican Party this month to join the Constitution Party, which stands for limited government and is committed to ending abortion and bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.
But Baldwin�s roots in the Constitution Party run deeper. He was the party�s 2004 vice-presidential candidate, and party members said his stands were more in line with party thinking.
Still, the two waged a fierce battle in the days leading up to the vote, described as the most contentious in the party�s 16-year history. Baldwin wound up winning easily, 384-126. The Missouri and Kansas delegations basically split their votes between the two.
"They just rejected the most qualified man to be president," said Tom Hoefling of Lohrville, Iowa, who is Keyes� national political director. "Chuck Baldwin will have no impact on this election whatsoever."
And Keyes would have an impact?! Keyes, who has already run twice for president, and who couldn't even make a go of his cable TV show, or talk radio?
I see that the Freepers are reacting to this news with their usual knee-jerk responses. About 25 percent on the thread I read are conservative enough to recognize that Baldwin is the real deal, while another 25 percent seem to think Keyes is by far the better man (Keyes has a small cult among Freepers, some of whom are still looking for their personal black conservative hero), while close to 50 percent on the thread are already sneering and jeering.
The Constitution Party can't win; Baldwin, they say, is an unknown (unlike the household name, Keyes, I take it) and the CP is full of 'fruit loops' and losers.
At least reading the discussion over there, I am reminded once again just why I want nothing more to do with the Republican Party.
The mere fact that so many people in both parties, but especially, it seems, on the ''right'' are so quick to declare all third parties as hopeless causes, and as havens for 'nutjobs' and crazies, explains very well why we now have two dysfunctional parties with a strangehold on our political system.
As long as there are so many diehard party loyalists who think that straying from our two divinely-ordained political parties will result in the end of the world, we will never find our way out of the maze we are in.
At what point will these hard-heads and dimwits realize that the system as it is ain't working -- or at least, if it is working, it is not working for the American people? If our present sorry state of things does not break people of their dependency on the two-party system, nothing will.
We all just witnessed a combination of our malevolent media and obtuse citizens reject the candidacy of a good man, Ron Paul. For many months, since Ron Paul first announced his candidacy, we've heard the news media ridicule and dismiss him, on those rare occasions when they deigned to notice him at all, and we've heard every village idiot in the country proclaim 'no third party can win. You're throwing your vote away if you vote third party.' Or this one: ''if you vote third party you are just helping to elect a Democrat, and it will be your fault when [Hillary/Obama] is in the White House''.
This kind of ''thinking'' is what will guarantee that our situation only goes from bad to worse. This stubborn cluelessness is what has allowed our two monopolistic parties to flout the will of their constituents, and to go rogue. The political classes know that they don't even have to pay attention to the will of the people; they know that there are enough docile, knee-jerk loyalists who think they have 'nowhere else to go' who will vote for them and continue contributing to their candidacies and to the Party, regardless of their defiance of us and their open contempt for us.
Is there a chance that we can learn from the experience with Dr. Paul's candidacy and avoid letting the media and the obstructionists among us marginalize Chuck Baldwin's candidacy too? This may well be our last chance to stand up for traditional American principles before the demographic tidal wave washes away the last real vestiges of our political power. There is a lot at stake in this election, and yet I see a state of torpor among many in this country, or a kind of passivity born of resignation and cynicism. I see too many people who are beaten already, who are convinced that nothing we can do will make a difference, so why even try?
There are so many who have been thoroughly convinced that the two-party system is inevitable and forever; we can't change it, so we are foolish to try.
With such defeatist attitudes, of course these lugubrious predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We can't change things precisely because people have been convinced that we can't.
Either we try to rekindle the old American can-do spirit and the spirit of independence of mind, or we just give up and shuffle off the stage of history, leaving it to the invading hordes and their multiculturalist collaborators.
We have another chance now; let's make the most of it.
Labels: Constitution Party, Gop, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates, Third Party
0 comment | admin
I don't even know where to begin with this piece.
It makes you feel as though you've gone through the looking-glass. Sure, the PC Republicans have been doing this kind of thing for a while, this playing of the race card, this ''who's the Real Racist'' game. But this is beyond that. Heaven knows the Democrats are low enough, but this bizarre competing as to who is the ''real racist'' or who is the real friend of African-Americans is just childish, and all it does is leave America with two pandering, race-card playing, politically correct parties, instead of one. And one is too many.
The GOP is becoming one huge embarrassing joke.
But there's one bright ray of hope: when this piece was posted at Free Republic, the first couple of comments were negative. Maybe some out there are not hopelessly mired in trying to outdo the Democrats at their own game.
From one of those comments:
''Yet this piece mirrors the Marxists' tactics in attempting to put Southerners, Democrats, especially white people, people of color, and everyone else at odds.
To call this screed historically accurate is beyond a stretch. There are shreds of truth woven in with ridiculous distortions.
Textbooks? Feh!
To blame the 'scientific' view of the relative intelligence and other characteristics of the races on Democrats demonstrates a real lack of knowledge of the development of scientific thought. The writer should obtain a copy of Ackerman's Natural History (1848), written before Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and get a handle on what everyone learned in Anthropology thought.
Compare and contrast with The Bell Curve and see how that works out.
The bottom line is that the New Left has used historical distortion and identity politics to twist the fabric of American culture over a few decades into the current 'devil take the hindmost' political attitude held by the current party in power in DC.
If Republicans in general and Conservatives in particular cannot get beyond that methodology in order to gain and maintain control of the Federal Leviathan to rein it in and put it on a massive weight loss program, then nothing will really change and this nation will continue down the road to ruin, just driving on the other side of the center line.
5 posted on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:15:05 AM by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
Maybe there are others who are weary of this schoolyard taunting, this using of the race card by both parties. It's beyond ridiculous, and it's damaging to the country.
It makes you feel as though you've gone through the looking-glass. Sure, the PC Republicans have been doing this kind of thing for a while, this playing of the race card, this ''who's the Real Racist'' game. But this is beyond that. Heaven knows the Democrats are low enough, but this bizarre competing as to who is the ''real racist'' or who is the real friend of African-Americans is just childish, and all it does is leave America with two pandering, race-card playing, politically correct parties, instead of one. And one is too many.
The GOP is becoming one huge embarrassing joke.
But there's one bright ray of hope: when this piece was posted at Free Republic, the first couple of comments were negative. Maybe some out there are not hopelessly mired in trying to outdo the Democrats at their own game.
From one of those comments:
''Yet this piece mirrors the Marxists' tactics in attempting to put Southerners, Democrats, especially white people, people of color, and everyone else at odds.
To call this screed historically accurate is beyond a stretch. There are shreds of truth woven in with ridiculous distortions.
Textbooks? Feh!
To blame the 'scientific' view of the relative intelligence and other characteristics of the races on Democrats demonstrates a real lack of knowledge of the development of scientific thought. The writer should obtain a copy of Ackerman's Natural History (1848), written before Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, and get a handle on what everyone learned in Anthropology thought.
Compare and contrast with The Bell Curve and see how that works out.
The bottom line is that the New Left has used historical distortion and identity politics to twist the fabric of American culture over a few decades into the current 'devil take the hindmost' political attitude held by the current party in power in DC.
If Republicans in general and Conservatives in particular cannot get beyond that methodology in order to gain and maintain control of the Federal Leviathan to rein it in and put it on a massive weight loss program, then nothing will really change and this nation will continue down the road to ruin, just driving on the other side of the center line.
5 posted on Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:15:05 AM by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
Maybe there are others who are weary of this schoolyard taunting, this using of the race card by both parties. It's beyond ridiculous, and it's damaging to the country.
Labels: American History, Gop, Pandering, Party Politics, Political Correctness, Race Card, Race-Baiting, Republicans, Stupid Party
0 comment Saturday, November 1, 2014 | admin
In my recent piece called 'In the Country of the Blind...', I wrote about the tendency of Americans to be followers: followers of fads, trends, and above all, followers of dubious individuals. This need to follow all too often seems to center on some individual who is apparently 'charismatic' in the eyes of his fans or disciples.
As I was writing that piece, Glenn Beck was foremost in my mind, although there are certainly many other figures who have gained wide popularity in this country based on perceived charisma with a little snake-oil in the recipe.
On an article at American Thinker, which tends to be favorable to the brand of 'conservatism' endorsed by Beck and Fox News, there were two comments by the same individual expressing a lonely skepticism toward Beck and the rally. The comments tied in very much with my message here. I will quote from those comments.
''But there are not a few people who become histrionic if Beck's motives are questioned. Why? Isn't he just a man like the rest of us? Or am I wrong, and he has become a god? The point at issue is (or should be) this: When it is considered an outrage to apply reasoned criticism to an American public figure (even one so revered, so adulated, so "funny," so "adorably pudgy," and so adamant that he is "on the side of the little guy--even though he wouldn't waste a micro-second of his off-air time on the average Joe Shmoe American, then we've got a problem. And the problem is this: we've put peronalities before principles.''
Personalities before principles. That parallels something I said in my earlier post on this subject. And the tendency to reject any criticism of the personalities we admire is not a good thing.
This is the stuff of which cults are made of. It is not worthy of thinking people.
And in a later comment on the same thread, the reader says
''We've become a nation of televidiots. We sit down on our sofas and watch the TV talking heads, like the dolts on MSNBC, an assortment of unspeakably rotten attention whores, BTW. We listen to "talk radio" maestros who daily inform us of their luxurious lifestyles--their golfing, their jets, the famous and "important" people they mixed with over the preceding weekend. In other words, we get our info--ALL our info--second hand. That's not good. Our nation was founded on the premise that there would be an informed citizenry that would inform ITSELF. It's about doing our own heavy lifting in the intellectual realm--our own reading, our own internet research, our own townhall discussion groups. Once we make a commitment to sojourn in that realm we'll have a different view of these Pied Pipers who are reaping exhorbitant wealth by opportunistically using the current onslaught of the Left (a very real onslaught against the very foundations of our Republic) to make gazillions of dollars from selling books, and from astronomical speaking-engagement fees (and don't forget the revenue from show advertisers). This sort of thing sullies the unsung efforts of those who are genuinely and selflessly working hard to stem the tide of the leftist assault--it makes the conservative movement look like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers. I have an uncanny feeling that the Left is actually not really that worried about Mr. Beck's impact on their agenda.''
[I have left the spelling in the quotes as it appeared on the original post.]
I can only agree with what this commenter says. I think his words get to the heart of this servile and gullible streak in Americans.
In the last paragraph of the second comment, he says that the conservative movement looks ''like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers.'' That is the gullibility that I mentioned. In a way, though, perhaps this says something good about the basic character of many of these conservatives, in that honest, decent people are usually somewhat gullible, and trusting to a fault. I suspect it's easier to dupe heartland Americans than it would be to gull cynical city-dwellers. That's always been the stereotype of the heartland American: the 'country cousin' who is taken in by some sharp city-slicker.
But in today's more dangerous world, we can't afford that kind of gullibility and blind trust of anyone. Perhaps I've absorbed more cynicism than I would like to, but that's what life experience does to you, unless you live in some kind of Pollyanna bubble into which bad people and bad experiences never intrude.
The comments quoted above stated that Glenn Beck is not perceived as any kind of threat by the Left. Surely they must have enough sense -- mustn't they? -- to see that he venerates the same idols and bows down to their altars. Sometimes I wonder if their outrage towards him is feigned, as if to further cement his popularity with the naifs on the right. If the left attacks someone, surely they must be the real thing, right? Beck must be the conservative savior if the left hates him so much.
I do believe there is such a thing as controlled opposition, and that much of what is acted out on cable 'news' networks is so much pro wrestling drama. The two sides trash-talk and threaten and intimidate each other but behind the scenes they are all probably great friends. Rush Limbaugh's recent wedding is an example of this kind of thing, and yet Rush has his zealous defenders if anyone criticizes him, just as Beck. Or Ann Coulter, or any other such 'entertainer' on the political scene.
One more factor enters into this, in addition to the too-trusting nature of many Americans: the dearth of leadership. Where are our leaders? I can't think of any of the major political figures who inspire me; as Yeats said in The Second Coming:
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Where are our 'best' people? Not on the political scene. There are a few who seem to have integrity, but they are lacking in the 'passionate intensity' that real leadership would demand in this time of trouble.
We've discussed leadership on this blog before, and the lack of leadership is more glaringly obvious now than it was a few years ago when I lamented it. Ron Paul has come and gone, having been a disappointment to many who put too much faith in him, and each betrayal or disappointment disillusions a few more people.
But as long as there is a void of leadership, the snake-oil peddlers and hucksters and charlatans and false messiahs -- and the 'one-eyed men,' the blind leaders of the blind, will step in to fill that vacuum.
And maybe the leaders that we need will not be in the political realm at all. It isn't all about 'Democrats vs. Republicans' or left vs. right, or Islam vs. Christianity or whatever Fox News says it is.
The best thing that could happen to the American populace would be to stop watching television and stop partaking of the 'mainstream' media, including Hollywood movies. That is the source of the ignorance or false information that has become so rife in this country. It should be obvious to even the most slow-witted that the media are not informing or entertaining us, but shaping our minds, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, and shaping them in a way that may be the end of us, ultimately.
Every day I hear of somebody else dropping their cable or satellite TV service -- yet too many still devour the propaganda willingly. However even turning the TV off will not help if people do not care to inform themselves and cultivate some independence of mind, and a habit of examining what people in 'authority' tell us. That is also part of the message of the comments I posted above.
Long ago, the left liked to spout the phrase 'Question Authority.' Of course, that was in a time in which authority tended to be conservative. I wonder if the left at that time would have anticipated how quickly their kind would come to BE the authority in our society, to be the establishment and the entrenched orthodoxy. They still like to think of themselves as the brave dissenters and principled rebels. That's no longer true; it's the right, especially the politically incorrect right, that are the true dissidents and the upholders of truth.
If we fall prey to the con men and the false pied-pipers of the ''right'', who will be left?
As I was writing that piece, Glenn Beck was foremost in my mind, although there are certainly many other figures who have gained wide popularity in this country based on perceived charisma with a little snake-oil in the recipe.
On an article at American Thinker, which tends to be favorable to the brand of 'conservatism' endorsed by Beck and Fox News, there were two comments by the same individual expressing a lonely skepticism toward Beck and the rally. The comments tied in very much with my message here. I will quote from those comments.
''But there are not a few people who become histrionic if Beck's motives are questioned. Why? Isn't he just a man like the rest of us? Or am I wrong, and he has become a god? The point at issue is (or should be) this: When it is considered an outrage to apply reasoned criticism to an American public figure (even one so revered, so adulated, so "funny," so "adorably pudgy," and so adamant that he is "on the side of the little guy--even though he wouldn't waste a micro-second of his off-air time on the average Joe Shmoe American, then we've got a problem. And the problem is this: we've put peronalities before principles.''
Personalities before principles. That parallels something I said in my earlier post on this subject. And the tendency to reject any criticism of the personalities we admire is not a good thing.
This is the stuff of which cults are made of. It is not worthy of thinking people.
And in a later comment on the same thread, the reader says
''We've become a nation of televidiots. We sit down on our sofas and watch the TV talking heads, like the dolts on MSNBC, an assortment of unspeakably rotten attention whores, BTW. We listen to "talk radio" maestros who daily inform us of their luxurious lifestyles--their golfing, their jets, the famous and "important" people they mixed with over the preceding weekend. In other words, we get our info--ALL our info--second hand. That's not good. Our nation was founded on the premise that there would be an informed citizenry that would inform ITSELF. It's about doing our own heavy lifting in the intellectual realm--our own reading, our own internet research, our own townhall discussion groups. Once we make a commitment to sojourn in that realm we'll have a different view of these Pied Pipers who are reaping exhorbitant wealth by opportunistically using the current onslaught of the Left (a very real onslaught against the very foundations of our Republic) to make gazillions of dollars from selling books, and from astronomical speaking-engagement fees (and don't forget the revenue from show advertisers). This sort of thing sullies the unsung efforts of those who are genuinely and selflessly working hard to stem the tide of the leftist assault--it makes the conservative movement look like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers. I have an uncanny feeling that the Left is actually not really that worried about Mr. Beck's impact on their agenda.''
[I have left the spelling in the quotes as it appeared on the original post.]
I can only agree with what this commenter says. I think his words get to the heart of this servile and gullible streak in Americans.
In the last paragraph of the second comment, he says that the conservative movement looks ''like a raft of suckers being led by huckster carnival barkers.'' That is the gullibility that I mentioned. In a way, though, perhaps this says something good about the basic character of many of these conservatives, in that honest, decent people are usually somewhat gullible, and trusting to a fault. I suspect it's easier to dupe heartland Americans than it would be to gull cynical city-dwellers. That's always been the stereotype of the heartland American: the 'country cousin' who is taken in by some sharp city-slicker.
But in today's more dangerous world, we can't afford that kind of gullibility and blind trust of anyone. Perhaps I've absorbed more cynicism than I would like to, but that's what life experience does to you, unless you live in some kind of Pollyanna bubble into which bad people and bad experiences never intrude.
The comments quoted above stated that Glenn Beck is not perceived as any kind of threat by the Left. Surely they must have enough sense -- mustn't they? -- to see that he venerates the same idols and bows down to their altars. Sometimes I wonder if their outrage towards him is feigned, as if to further cement his popularity with the naifs on the right. If the left attacks someone, surely they must be the real thing, right? Beck must be the conservative savior if the left hates him so much.
I do believe there is such a thing as controlled opposition, and that much of what is acted out on cable 'news' networks is so much pro wrestling drama. The two sides trash-talk and threaten and intimidate each other but behind the scenes they are all probably great friends. Rush Limbaugh's recent wedding is an example of this kind of thing, and yet Rush has his zealous defenders if anyone criticizes him, just as Beck. Or Ann Coulter, or any other such 'entertainer' on the political scene.
One more factor enters into this, in addition to the too-trusting nature of many Americans: the dearth of leadership. Where are our leaders? I can't think of any of the major political figures who inspire me; as Yeats said in The Second Coming:
The best lack all conviction
While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Where are our 'best' people? Not on the political scene. There are a few who seem to have integrity, but they are lacking in the 'passionate intensity' that real leadership would demand in this time of trouble.
We've discussed leadership on this blog before, and the lack of leadership is more glaringly obvious now than it was a few years ago when I lamented it. Ron Paul has come and gone, having been a disappointment to many who put too much faith in him, and each betrayal or disappointment disillusions a few more people.
But as long as there is a void of leadership, the snake-oil peddlers and hucksters and charlatans and false messiahs -- and the 'one-eyed men,' the blind leaders of the blind, will step in to fill that vacuum.
And maybe the leaders that we need will not be in the political realm at all. It isn't all about 'Democrats vs. Republicans' or left vs. right, or Islam vs. Christianity or whatever Fox News says it is.
The best thing that could happen to the American populace would be to stop watching television and stop partaking of the 'mainstream' media, including Hollywood movies. That is the source of the ignorance or false information that has become so rife in this country. It should be obvious to even the most slow-witted that the media are not informing or entertaining us, but shaping our minds, thoughts, attitudes, and emotions, and shaping them in a way that may be the end of us, ultimately.
Every day I hear of somebody else dropping their cable or satellite TV service -- yet too many still devour the propaganda willingly. However even turning the TV off will not help if people do not care to inform themselves and cultivate some independence of mind, and a habit of examining what people in 'authority' tell us. That is also part of the message of the comments I posted above.
Long ago, the left liked to spout the phrase 'Question Authority.' Of course, that was in a time in which authority tended to be conservative. I wonder if the left at that time would have anticipated how quickly their kind would come to BE the authority in our society, to be the establishment and the entrenched orthodoxy. They still like to think of themselves as the brave dissenters and principled rebels. That's no longer true; it's the right, especially the politically incorrect right, that are the true dissidents and the upholders of truth.
If we fall prey to the con men and the false pied-pipers of the ''right'', who will be left?
Labels: Celebrity Culture, Conservatism, Media Figures, Party Politics, Populism, Propaganda, Republicans
0 comment Tuesday, October 21, 2014 | admin
From what I have seen in the video here, there is hardly a dime's worth of difference between these young people and the ones who storm the stage to harass and silence politically incorrect speakers on campuses. The only difference might be that these people are better-groomed and better-dressed, but still knee-deep in PC.
At the link there is a lengthy discussion going on around the video from CPAC, with the young ''conservatives'' rebuffing Jamie Kelso, and displaying an incredible level of ignorance in their 'arguments' against him.
There seems to be a consensus among many pro-White Americans that the Republican Party, and what is roughly called the 'conservative movement' is either useless or is in effect on the opposing side, along with their Democrat soul mates in political correctness.
However there is still a persistent idea that we can use the GOP as a vehicle for advancing our interests. I think everybody who has read this blog for any length of time knows where I stand. I started out as a more-or-less mainstream 'conservative' or Republican, although I had lost the veneer of political correctness long ago. My 'old American' realist upbringing kicked in and I began to wonder how and why American Whites seemed to have so little in common with our near ancestors. Even my parents generation, and maybe yours, dear readers, held what we now call 'racial realist' attitudes. So why did the 'conservatives' stop conserving, and start mimicking the liberal left, whom they claim to reject wholeheartedly?
Conservatives who don't want to conserve their own people, their own ethnicity, and don't consider their progeny or the future, are no conservatives by any definition I understand.
The Republican Party seems to want to preserve the material goods of life only, and all the hue and cry about 'smaller government' is only to that end. American conservatism has long since lost its soul, or sold its soul.
The 'Tea Party' candidates have proven to be as easily compromised as any other Republican, despite their pandering to the populist sentiments that have surfaced recently.
Personally I think the GOP is impervious to any efforts of White citizens to influence it away from its present policies.
Right now the party is busy recruiting 'diversity', and enlarging the 'big tent' so that one and all may be included, regardless.
Come one, come all, and bring your political correctness and ethnic grievances along.
Some say that this CPAC gathering was not representative of the party as a whole. Some social conservatives in the GOP objected to the pro-gay slant, but in general this seems to be the direction the party is going. Social conservatives are being marginalized, and seem to be fewer in number every year, as the older generations die.
But if you spend enough time on Republican forums on the internet you will see how very politically correct most 'mainstream' Republicans and conservatives have become, especially on racial issues. Most of the FReepers cling to the idea that 'legal immigration: good' while only illegal immigration is bad. Why? Because to state that all immigration should be halted, if only temporarily, is to invite a charge of racism. Some of those on these Republican forums and blogs will become like a pack of baying hounds when they scent anything that resembles 'racism' or anti-Semitism.
We see the behavior of these young people, who are likely from fairly prosperous backgrounds; they have been conditioned to attack when certain taboos are violated. Carleton Putnam in his 'Race and Reality' referred to 'hypnotism' in this connection, and watching some of these PC-saturated people in action makes one think they are under some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion, so quickly do they react to certain triggers. In any case, these are not thinking young people, but knee-jerk liberals, despite their Republican patter.
I don't believe it's an either/or situation, where we must choose between working with these indoctrinated liberal Republicans or simply accepting our demise. Those are not the only two choices.
And if we are in such a dire state that we are forced to try to work with people to whom we are anathema, then we are in such a desperate state that it's far too late for the gradual approach. And in fact I think we really don't have the leisure to use the gradual subtle approach, from within.
This is a subject that has come up before, and I will say the same thing I said to my readers of an earlier time: the point that must be understood is that we don't need to 'win over the masses' or attain a majority of people who agree with us. No great movement of history was ever driven by a majority. It has always been a relatively small group of people, highly-motivated, that has been behind the great movements and causes.
Unfortunately we seem to have a very highly-motivated group of people opposing us, and most unfortunate is the fact that they have enormous amounts of money and the media on their side, as their lackeys. It is hard for a few people to go up against this group of mostly unknown elites and the masses who follow their lead. But numbers don't always guarantee a win; there are any number of times in history in which the few have prevailed over a formidable many.
And again, this politically correct multicultural tower of Babel is an edifice that is built on lies, and is buttressed by lies upon lies. It is in conflict with human nature; it requires constant effort to keep it from collapsing of its own weight.
It takes the expenditure of a lot of energy to keep it standing. It apparently takes a lot of conditioning via the media and via peer pressure to maintain it. The fact that these people who are the power behind the scenes seem to feel the need to double down on the propaganda may mean that they are feeling uncertain of their success.
One more thing: this multicult monstrosity is very costly in terms of money; imagine how much has been spent and is being spent to construct it and to keep up the false façade.
To think that we have to hitch our wagon to the Republican Party is folly; as if that party is not decaying and crumbling along with the system of which it is a part.
I have hopes for the A3P, but we will see where that goes. And before somebody pipes up to tell us that 'no third party will ever succeed' -- I say that is the kind of thing that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if it is accepted as some kind of certainty. The future is not known; there is a first time for everything. And again, the Republican Party (the party of Reconstruction, by the way) began as an upstart third party.
And those of us who are Christian know that there is one other factor to be taken into consideration when pondering the future: God. Atheists and 'halfway-house Christians' as CWNY calls them may scoff, but God is not dead 'nor doth he sleep', as Longfellow wrote. He will have something to say about all this before it is over. In fact, Christians know that we have a glimpse of the direction of the future, and we know what the ultimate outcome will be. It's hubris to imagine that we hold everything in our hands.
Still, we are not to be passive observers, but active doers of what is right, and speakers of the truth.
At the link there is a lengthy discussion going on around the video from CPAC, with the young ''conservatives'' rebuffing Jamie Kelso, and displaying an incredible level of ignorance in their 'arguments' against him.
There seems to be a consensus among many pro-White Americans that the Republican Party, and what is roughly called the 'conservative movement' is either useless or is in effect on the opposing side, along with their Democrat soul mates in political correctness.
However there is still a persistent idea that we can use the GOP as a vehicle for advancing our interests. I think everybody who has read this blog for any length of time knows where I stand. I started out as a more-or-less mainstream 'conservative' or Republican, although I had lost the veneer of political correctness long ago. My 'old American' realist upbringing kicked in and I began to wonder how and why American Whites seemed to have so little in common with our near ancestors. Even my parents generation, and maybe yours, dear readers, held what we now call 'racial realist' attitudes. So why did the 'conservatives' stop conserving, and start mimicking the liberal left, whom they claim to reject wholeheartedly?
Conservatives who don't want to conserve their own people, their own ethnicity, and don't consider their progeny or the future, are no conservatives by any definition I understand.
The Republican Party seems to want to preserve the material goods of life only, and all the hue and cry about 'smaller government' is only to that end. American conservatism has long since lost its soul, or sold its soul.
The 'Tea Party' candidates have proven to be as easily compromised as any other Republican, despite their pandering to the populist sentiments that have surfaced recently.
Personally I think the GOP is impervious to any efforts of White citizens to influence it away from its present policies.
Right now the party is busy recruiting 'diversity', and enlarging the 'big tent' so that one and all may be included, regardless.
Come one, come all, and bring your political correctness and ethnic grievances along.
Some say that this CPAC gathering was not representative of the party as a whole. Some social conservatives in the GOP objected to the pro-gay slant, but in general this seems to be the direction the party is going. Social conservatives are being marginalized, and seem to be fewer in number every year, as the older generations die.
But if you spend enough time on Republican forums on the internet you will see how very politically correct most 'mainstream' Republicans and conservatives have become, especially on racial issues. Most of the FReepers cling to the idea that 'legal immigration: good' while only illegal immigration is bad. Why? Because to state that all immigration should be halted, if only temporarily, is to invite a charge of racism. Some of those on these Republican forums and blogs will become like a pack of baying hounds when they scent anything that resembles 'racism' or anti-Semitism.
We see the behavior of these young people, who are likely from fairly prosperous backgrounds; they have been conditioned to attack when certain taboos are violated. Carleton Putnam in his 'Race and Reality' referred to 'hypnotism' in this connection, and watching some of these PC-saturated people in action makes one think they are under some kind of post-hypnotic suggestion, so quickly do they react to certain triggers. In any case, these are not thinking young people, but knee-jerk liberals, despite their Republican patter.
I don't believe it's an either/or situation, where we must choose between working with these indoctrinated liberal Republicans or simply accepting our demise. Those are not the only two choices.
And if we are in such a dire state that we are forced to try to work with people to whom we are anathema, then we are in such a desperate state that it's far too late for the gradual approach. And in fact I think we really don't have the leisure to use the gradual subtle approach, from within.
This is a subject that has come up before, and I will say the same thing I said to my readers of an earlier time: the point that must be understood is that we don't need to 'win over the masses' or attain a majority of people who agree with us. No great movement of history was ever driven by a majority. It has always been a relatively small group of people, highly-motivated, that has been behind the great movements and causes.
Unfortunately we seem to have a very highly-motivated group of people opposing us, and most unfortunate is the fact that they have enormous amounts of money and the media on their side, as their lackeys. It is hard for a few people to go up against this group of mostly unknown elites and the masses who follow their lead. But numbers don't always guarantee a win; there are any number of times in history in which the few have prevailed over a formidable many.
And again, this politically correct multicultural tower of Babel is an edifice that is built on lies, and is buttressed by lies upon lies. It is in conflict with human nature; it requires constant effort to keep it from collapsing of its own weight.
It takes the expenditure of a lot of energy to keep it standing. It apparently takes a lot of conditioning via the media and via peer pressure to maintain it. The fact that these people who are the power behind the scenes seem to feel the need to double down on the propaganda may mean that they are feeling uncertain of their success.
One more thing: this multicult monstrosity is very costly in terms of money; imagine how much has been spent and is being spent to construct it and to keep up the false façade.
To think that we have to hitch our wagon to the Republican Party is folly; as if that party is not decaying and crumbling along with the system of which it is a part.
I have hopes for the A3P, but we will see where that goes. And before somebody pipes up to tell us that 'no third party will ever succeed' -- I say that is the kind of thing that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy if it is accepted as some kind of certainty. The future is not known; there is a first time for everything. And again, the Republican Party (the party of Reconstruction, by the way) began as an upstart third party.
And those of us who are Christian know that there is one other factor to be taken into consideration when pondering the future: God. Atheists and 'halfway-house Christians' as CWNY calls them may scoff, but God is not dead 'nor doth he sleep', as Longfellow wrote. He will have something to say about all this before it is over. In fact, Christians know that we have a glimpse of the direction of the future, and we know what the ultimate outcome will be. It's hubris to imagine that we hold everything in our hands.
Still, we are not to be passive observers, but active doers of what is right, and speakers of the truth.
Labels: Ethnopatriots, Free Speech, Party Politics, Pc, Republicans, Third Parties
0 comment Monday, October 20, 2014 | admin
Some of you will have noticed that one of my pet peeves is the favorite Republican mantra: ''liberals are the real racists.''
This meme has been in existence among Republicans for a number of years now, but it seems to have become a frequently-resorted-to phrase since the last presidential campaign, especially.
Do a search on the phrase 'liberals real racists' and you will get many, many hits. Too many to read through, as I found when I searched on that phrase.
It is pretty obvious to me that the phrase was cooked up by some Republican 'wit' who had just been called the r-word (racist, not Republican) by some liberal/multicultist. It amounts to the schoolyard retort, ''I know you are, but what am I?'' It is just about as intelligent.
The end result of this accusation being flung at lefties and diversity cultists is that now we have twice as many White folks calling each other ''racist!" back and forth, endlessly. Way to go.
It surely must amuse the diversities that Whites are now calling each other their favorite term of abuse. Now they can take some time off, and let us call each other the 'r-word' while they sit back and watch and laugh.
We are doing their job for them. They don't need to race-bait anymore; we are doing it to each other.
I decided some years ago that I won't use the word 'racist' or 'racism' except in an ironic sense. I won't write it here without scare quotes. So you won't find me joining in the counter-accusations against our lefty/multicultist foes. I can think of many other names, mostly unflattering, that fit them, but I can think of no good reason to join in the race-baiting.
First, I think it serves no useful purpose. Do the people who employ that tactic think it will shock some leftist or politically correct brainwash-ee into an epiphany? Do we think it will shame them into admitting that they harbor racist thoughts?
If a leftist were brutally honest with himself, he would admit that by claiming that Whites are congenitally bigoted against nonwhites, then he himself must be just as guilty as the Republicans whom he loathes. White privilege makes us all guilty, according to the leftists and nonwhites. So by that line of thought, liberals and 'conservatives' are equally guilty of the 'White original sin.'
But are liberals or progressives 'racists' as most people understand that word? If their definition is true, if 'racist' means anybody who 1) notices race and/or 2) believes the races differ in some intrinsic way, then what do we call the liberals who see the races as different in ways that flatter nonwhites, and who believe that all the problems of nonwhites, being caused by Whites, must be rectified by Whites?
I understand that Republicans and 'colorblind conservatives' are trying to make the case that the do-gooder Whites who are perpetually tending to nonwhites are being paternalistic. Paternalism can be interpreted as meaning that nonwhites are incapable of taking care of themselves, or even of defending themselves verbally. For example, liberals will jump to the defense of nonwhites when they sniff out any hint of 'bigotry' from a fellow White. They will argue in the name of the nonwhite as if that nonwhite cannot defend himself. I suppose this is their rather deluded idea of chivalry - which in its true form calls for defending the weak and the lame and the halt. But I think it bizarre that they haven't noticed that nonwhites can and do defend themselves loudly, vociferously, and stridently. Why White liberals imagine that they need to act as lawyers for their favorite victim groups, (mascots, as Thomas Sowell put it) is beyond me.
The liberals' client groups are certainly able to speak up for themselves; they are not weak at all in that sense. And they have the media 110 percent on their side; the media, being made up of leftists of one stripe or another, does little but defend the perceived downtrodden victim groups. It is a leftist fallacy that 'minorities' are 'underserved populations' or that their 'voices are excluded from the public discourse.' That notion is laugh-out-loud funny.
But does paternalism imply a sense of superiority, or a dominant/subservient relationship between the person helping and those being helped? I don't think so. I think that most leftists have convinced themselves that they are the possessors of something called 'White privilege' which makes them the beneficiaries of many un-earned benefits. They think these benefits are taken directly from nonwhites and given, unjustly, to us. So they think they are righting a wrong.
If they want to be self-abasing altruists who are willing to serve others at their own expense, that's their choice -- but where it goes badly wrong is when they enshrine that altruism in public policy, making it the law of the land. And where it goes really, really wrong is when they force the rest of us, essentially, to participate in this racial self-abasement and penance.
You cannot coerce people into loving their neighbor, or even liking their neighbor.
As for the allegation made by the Republicans that 'liberals keep minorities on the plantation; they keep them dependent, they don't want them to succeed', this is carried to absurd lengths. For example on Free Republic, whenever some social scientists' list of 'the ten worst cities' is posted, and the worst cities are all, ahem, 'diverse', the FReepers solemnly insist that ''all those cities have Democrat government. That's why they are crime-ridden, bankrupt, corrupt, and unlivable.'' On some blog or other, when a picture of the infamous ruins of Detroit was posted, the 'colorblind conservatives' lived up to their epithet by intoning that 'that's what happens when you elect Democrats.' Some of them even blamed the Katrina disaster on 'Democrat rule.'
According to that school of thought, if only Democrats would stop creating welfare dependency and bad schools, nonwhites would be able to prosper and become exemplary citizens everywhere. If only nonwhites could learn that 'conservatism' would cure all their ills, they would be fine. Unfortunately no one, apparently, has told them about the conservative panacea, so they remain shackled by the liberals -- who are the real racists. QED.
Mind you, I think welfare dependency and social pathologies are exacerbated by liberal policies, but to believe that they alone are the cause of the 'achievement gap' or the social gulf between the races is silly. This denies the possibility of innate differences of ability and potential as an explanation.
George W. Bush had that famous phrase about 'soft bigotry of low expectations', which was just a more florid way of saying 'liberals are the real racists.' The idea behind that phrase about the soft bigotry is that if we expect nonwhites to become top achievers, they will, eventually. It's all a matter of positive thinking and 'encouraging their potential and boosting their self-esteem.' Yes, compassionate conservatism, as it styled itself, had a great many presuppositions in common with old-fashioned liberalism.
The 'colorblind', compassionate conservatives share this presupposition with the left: that it is Whitey, ultimately, who is keeping the black folk down. They just disagree on which Whitey is doing this: is it the mean, bigoted, hateful Republican r-words, or is it, rather, the paternalistic Democrat r-words?
Notice the agreement with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al that is implicit here? Whites calling each other racists simply cements the belief that all Whites are, in fact, racists, whether they admit it, or especially, if they deny it.
Now we have the Tea Partiers, in many cases, jumping through hoops to prove just how really, really NOT racist they are, all the while pointing the finger at the left, who are again accusing the right. This has all become the theatre of the absurd.
When we descend to this tactic of name-calling, of tu quoque, of "he did it first!", when we descend to using the increasingly meaningless word 'racist', we are further debasing the language, not to mention further degrading what passes for political dialogue in this country.
And above all, this tactic does not work; it is going nowhere.
This constant use of the word 'racist' does nothing but keep the racial kettle on the boil; it puts nonwhites at the center of everything -- which in a sense they are. But it puts them in the coveted position of having their favor and approval courted by both sides.
Moreover, in the eagerness to prove who is the 'real racist' Republicans are digging themselves deeper into the PC hole. They will probably follow up on all the talk by pandering even more, as if appointing Steele was not pandering enough. Next, in the ''who's the real racist'' contest, it will be necessary to offer an affirmative action presidential candidate. That is in the cards, unless the Republicans get off this merry-go-round.
This meme has been in existence among Republicans for a number of years now, but it seems to have become a frequently-resorted-to phrase since the last presidential campaign, especially.
Do a search on the phrase 'liberals real racists' and you will get many, many hits. Too many to read through, as I found when I searched on that phrase.
It is pretty obvious to me that the phrase was cooked up by some Republican 'wit' who had just been called the r-word (racist, not Republican) by some liberal/multicultist. It amounts to the schoolyard retort, ''I know you are, but what am I?'' It is just about as intelligent.
The end result of this accusation being flung at lefties and diversity cultists is that now we have twice as many White folks calling each other ''racist!" back and forth, endlessly. Way to go.
It surely must amuse the diversities that Whites are now calling each other their favorite term of abuse. Now they can take some time off, and let us call each other the 'r-word' while they sit back and watch and laugh.
We are doing their job for them. They don't need to race-bait anymore; we are doing it to each other.
I decided some years ago that I won't use the word 'racist' or 'racism' except in an ironic sense. I won't write it here without scare quotes. So you won't find me joining in the counter-accusations against our lefty/multicultist foes. I can think of many other names, mostly unflattering, that fit them, but I can think of no good reason to join in the race-baiting.
First, I think it serves no useful purpose. Do the people who employ that tactic think it will shock some leftist or politically correct brainwash-ee into an epiphany? Do we think it will shame them into admitting that they harbor racist thoughts?
If a leftist were brutally honest with himself, he would admit that by claiming that Whites are congenitally bigoted against nonwhites, then he himself must be just as guilty as the Republicans whom he loathes. White privilege makes us all guilty, according to the leftists and nonwhites. So by that line of thought, liberals and 'conservatives' are equally guilty of the 'White original sin.'
But are liberals or progressives 'racists' as most people understand that word? If their definition is true, if 'racist' means anybody who 1) notices race and/or 2) believes the races differ in some intrinsic way, then what do we call the liberals who see the races as different in ways that flatter nonwhites, and who believe that all the problems of nonwhites, being caused by Whites, must be rectified by Whites?
I understand that Republicans and 'colorblind conservatives' are trying to make the case that the do-gooder Whites who are perpetually tending to nonwhites are being paternalistic. Paternalism can be interpreted as meaning that nonwhites are incapable of taking care of themselves, or even of defending themselves verbally. For example, liberals will jump to the defense of nonwhites when they sniff out any hint of 'bigotry' from a fellow White. They will argue in the name of the nonwhite as if that nonwhite cannot defend himself. I suppose this is their rather deluded idea of chivalry - which in its true form calls for defending the weak and the lame and the halt. But I think it bizarre that they haven't noticed that nonwhites can and do defend themselves loudly, vociferously, and stridently. Why White liberals imagine that they need to act as lawyers for their favorite victim groups, (mascots, as Thomas Sowell put it) is beyond me.
The liberals' client groups are certainly able to speak up for themselves; they are not weak at all in that sense. And they have the media 110 percent on their side; the media, being made up of leftists of one stripe or another, does little but defend the perceived downtrodden victim groups. It is a leftist fallacy that 'minorities' are 'underserved populations' or that their 'voices are excluded from the public discourse.' That notion is laugh-out-loud funny.
But does paternalism imply a sense of superiority, or a dominant/subservient relationship between the person helping and those being helped? I don't think so. I think that most leftists have convinced themselves that they are the possessors of something called 'White privilege' which makes them the beneficiaries of many un-earned benefits. They think these benefits are taken directly from nonwhites and given, unjustly, to us. So they think they are righting a wrong.
If they want to be self-abasing altruists who are willing to serve others at their own expense, that's their choice -- but where it goes badly wrong is when they enshrine that altruism in public policy, making it the law of the land. And where it goes really, really wrong is when they force the rest of us, essentially, to participate in this racial self-abasement and penance.
You cannot coerce people into loving their neighbor, or even liking their neighbor.
As for the allegation made by the Republicans that 'liberals keep minorities on the plantation; they keep them dependent, they don't want them to succeed', this is carried to absurd lengths. For example on Free Republic, whenever some social scientists' list of 'the ten worst cities' is posted, and the worst cities are all, ahem, 'diverse', the FReepers solemnly insist that ''all those cities have Democrat government. That's why they are crime-ridden, bankrupt, corrupt, and unlivable.'' On some blog or other, when a picture of the infamous ruins of Detroit was posted, the 'colorblind conservatives' lived up to their epithet by intoning that 'that's what happens when you elect Democrats.' Some of them even blamed the Katrina disaster on 'Democrat rule.'
According to that school of thought, if only Democrats would stop creating welfare dependency and bad schools, nonwhites would be able to prosper and become exemplary citizens everywhere. If only nonwhites could learn that 'conservatism' would cure all their ills, they would be fine. Unfortunately no one, apparently, has told them about the conservative panacea, so they remain shackled by the liberals -- who are the real racists. QED.
Mind you, I think welfare dependency and social pathologies are exacerbated by liberal policies, but to believe that they alone are the cause of the 'achievement gap' or the social gulf between the races is silly. This denies the possibility of innate differences of ability and potential as an explanation.
George W. Bush had that famous phrase about 'soft bigotry of low expectations', which was just a more florid way of saying 'liberals are the real racists.' The idea behind that phrase about the soft bigotry is that if we expect nonwhites to become top achievers, they will, eventually. It's all a matter of positive thinking and 'encouraging their potential and boosting their self-esteem.' Yes, compassionate conservatism, as it styled itself, had a great many presuppositions in common with old-fashioned liberalism.
The 'colorblind', compassionate conservatives share this presupposition with the left: that it is Whitey, ultimately, who is keeping the black folk down. They just disagree on which Whitey is doing this: is it the mean, bigoted, hateful Republican r-words, or is it, rather, the paternalistic Democrat r-words?
Notice the agreement with Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, et al that is implicit here? Whites calling each other racists simply cements the belief that all Whites are, in fact, racists, whether they admit it, or especially, if they deny it.
Now we have the Tea Partiers, in many cases, jumping through hoops to prove just how really, really NOT racist they are, all the while pointing the finger at the left, who are again accusing the right. This has all become the theatre of the absurd.
When we descend to this tactic of name-calling, of tu quoque, of "he did it first!", when we descend to using the increasingly meaningless word 'racist', we are further debasing the language, not to mention further degrading what passes for political dialogue in this country.
And above all, this tactic does not work; it is going nowhere.
This constant use of the word 'racist' does nothing but keep the racial kettle on the boil; it puts nonwhites at the center of everything -- which in a sense they are. But it puts them in the coveted position of having their favor and approval courted by both sides.
Moreover, in the eagerness to prove who is the 'real racist' Republicans are digging themselves deeper into the PC hole. They will probably follow up on all the talk by pandering even more, as if appointing Steele was not pandering enough. Next, in the ''who's the real racist'' contest, it will be necessary to offer an affirmative action presidential candidate. That is in the cards, unless the Republicans get off this merry-go-round.
Labels: Anti-White, Liberalism, Party Politics, Political Correctness, Racial Division
0 comment Tuesday, October 14, 2014 | admin
A while back, I read this piece called The GOP: A house divided by Darvin Dowdy. It seemed to me that there is a lot of truth in the blogger's assessment of the state of the Republican Party, and more importantly, conservatism and the country at large.
The GOP has divided like some amoeba on a glass slide under a microscope.
There are the Globalists that continue to warn the various GOP candidates and politicians that they will damage their political careers if they take the side of those wanting to seal the border and strictly enforce existing immigration laws. They blame the discontent by GOP voters on the Iraq War, run-away federal spending and scandalous behavior by elected GOP politicians. They delight in pointing to the downfall of those who have taken strong enforcement first stances. J.D. Hayworth lost his congressional seat in Arizona after taking a tough stance on the border. George Allen of Virginia lost his senate seat, some say for the same reason. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. And in the current presidential race the campaigns of both hard line border enforcement candidates, Hunter and Tancredo appear to be sinking like a rock. Their fundraising efforts a total joke. Or so these geopolitical elitists would want us to believe.
And then there�s our side of the divided amoeba. We don�t really have "advisers" and "strategists" telling us what our next move should be. We live every day with the reality of illegal immigration and its negative, downward pull on our social structure. We�ve observed the illegals banding together, marching in the streets of America. Streets that we as taxpayers have paid to build. We saw them waving Mexican flags and burning American flags. Their monumental ingratitude. We�ve watched our politicians allow these illegal hordes to invade our nation and enjoy rights and privileges that actually accede our own. And when we dared to raise complaints regarding this dangerous and worsening situation these same politicians, that we elected, presented us with disrespect, insults and intimidation. Yet we fight on to maintain and protect our nations sovereignty.
Sadly, we are losing. The globalists controlling our party seem to be gaining the upper hand. Both Hunter and Tancredo are nearly out of cash. The other candidates , good men all, will simply not remain on our side in the long term, in my view. They are making all the correct noises now because they want our votes. But when the battle gets intense they�ll fall back on they�re long proven expertise � the art of compromise.''
This piece was written before Tancredo dropped out of the campaign, but the writer asks where the donors are for candidates like Tancredo and Hunter? That is a good question; why are their campaigns seemingly underfunded? We see the same phenomenon, though, in the case of McCain and Huckabee, who seem not to be raising much money.
So the question begs to be answered � why? Why have the campaigns of Hunter and Tancredo faltered? Certainly its not lack of support. Duncan Hunter recently left the entire GOP pack in the dust in the Texas Straw Poll. No one was even close. He�s also won other straw polls. Tancredo did well in the recent Iowa straw. Why are they so upside down in the fundraising department? Would it be fair to say that their followers are a bunch of dunces who go about waving their flags and emotions in the air? Who are so stupid that they can�t figure out that it takes money to run a campaign? God forbid as I count myself among them. Well the jury is not yet in on that verdict yet. But honestly, something simply doesn�t add up. About 60% of Americans support tougher enforcement of immigration laws. Hunter and Tancredo both have large followings. So where are the donors?
Where the heck are these so called Border Watch groups, I ask? Groups like the Minutemen Project? And U.S. Border Watch? Jim Gilchrist�s Wake Up America? And U.S. Border Control? And these are just a few. There are many more org�s of this nature. But when you visit these sites you see no open support for Hunter or Tancredo. No ads, banners or anything. You can�t tell me that there isn�t a way to, legally, get the word out to their members regarding the fundraising woe�s of these 2 candidates. My gosh the entire Borders/Illegals issue is at stake! Certainly the decision makers within these organizations must have enough snap to know that without enlightened politicians and originalist judges on the bench our cause of U.S. sovereignty is doomed! Many of the org�s have become bogged down in the details and have lost sight of the mission. I ask all who read this to begin some kind of email campaign or other correspondence to these org�s immediately. Especially those who might be members of such groups. Put pressure on them to more aggressively work for our 2 valiant candidates Hunter and/or Tancredo. Withhold your donations to these groups until they regain the correct priorities. Inform them, if they don�t know, of the dire fundraising situation that our 2 candidates face and encourage them to formulate an action plan to help keep these campaigns effective financially. These candidates can not be effective without TV/Radio campaigns and that takes money. ''
Given the fact that most Americans favor controlling our borders and stopping illegal immigration, it is suprising that there doesn't seem to be much financial support for restrictionist candidates and groups. Why is that?
So while the fundraising efforts of our valiant candidates Hunter and Tancredo continue to sink into the quagmire, the globalists that have hijacked "our" GOP are standing around in the shadows having a good laugh at our expense. Snickering at us. Also sinking into the quagmire is our cause of sealing the borders and insisting that our elected officials see to it that immigration laws are strictly enforced. Why should they listen to us? We can�t even keep our own candidates in a liquid financial state. So to all of you who still believe that the notion of national sovereign borders is not an antiquated, obsolete concept, I ask you, do you enjoy the sting of defeat? How do you like being laughed at, rebuked and put back into your place by the elitists?
I also put forth the question � is it too late to reverse this negative trend? Is there still time? I believe there is time but none to waste. I welcome your comments. And who is your least-favorite GOP open borders globalist? ''
Why is it that there is so little money going into the restrictionist cause, seemingly? Do we not believe in the people who are heading up these groups? Given the recent Huckabee/Gilchrist/Simcox stories, it would seem there might be some cause for skepticism now. Will that recent bad publicity lead to further fracturing and weakening of the restrictionist cause? Will Tancredo's dropping out further harm the movement -- especially as it appears there is no 'top tier' candidate to take up the mantle of Tancredo?
It seems as if the Republican Party is more divided now than it has been in my memory, and the divisions are stark and rather bitter in some cases. The liberal wing of the Party is contemptuous of the conservative wing, and expects the latter to obediently go along with the liberal GOP agenda and to expect nothing in return.
The party rank-and-file are being asked to choose between various liberal candidates, each of whom has been anointed as being 'electable', and to simply accept that these choices are the only available options.
It seems to me that this aura of 'electability' is bestowed by the media and the party elites, and that simply the title of 'electable' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. These candidates are 'electable' only if we accept the inevitability of their election -- which too many seem to do. If we say in advance that only these 'top tier' candidates stand a chance, we are taking away the voters' right to choose for themselves. It ain't over till it's over. Neither the biased old media nor the party elites have the right to tell us who can be elected or who can't. If they can make that decision for us, they've essentially taken away our voice in the election.
The GOP has divided like some amoeba on a glass slide under a microscope.
There are the Globalists that continue to warn the various GOP candidates and politicians that they will damage their political careers if they take the side of those wanting to seal the border and strictly enforce existing immigration laws. They blame the discontent by GOP voters on the Iraq War, run-away federal spending and scandalous behavior by elected GOP politicians. They delight in pointing to the downfall of those who have taken strong enforcement first stances. J.D. Hayworth lost his congressional seat in Arizona after taking a tough stance on the border. George Allen of Virginia lost his senate seat, some say for the same reason. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. And in the current presidential race the campaigns of both hard line border enforcement candidates, Hunter and Tancredo appear to be sinking like a rock. Their fundraising efforts a total joke. Or so these geopolitical elitists would want us to believe.
And then there�s our side of the divided amoeba. We don�t really have "advisers" and "strategists" telling us what our next move should be. We live every day with the reality of illegal immigration and its negative, downward pull on our social structure. We�ve observed the illegals banding together, marching in the streets of America. Streets that we as taxpayers have paid to build. We saw them waving Mexican flags and burning American flags. Their monumental ingratitude. We�ve watched our politicians allow these illegal hordes to invade our nation and enjoy rights and privileges that actually accede our own. And when we dared to raise complaints regarding this dangerous and worsening situation these same politicians, that we elected, presented us with disrespect, insults and intimidation. Yet we fight on to maintain and protect our nations sovereignty.
Sadly, we are losing. The globalists controlling our party seem to be gaining the upper hand. Both Hunter and Tancredo are nearly out of cash. The other candidates , good men all, will simply not remain on our side in the long term, in my view. They are making all the correct noises now because they want our votes. But when the battle gets intense they�ll fall back on they�re long proven expertise � the art of compromise.''
This piece was written before Tancredo dropped out of the campaign, but the writer asks where the donors are for candidates like Tancredo and Hunter? That is a good question; why are their campaigns seemingly underfunded? We see the same phenomenon, though, in the case of McCain and Huckabee, who seem not to be raising much money.
So the question begs to be answered � why? Why have the campaigns of Hunter and Tancredo faltered? Certainly its not lack of support. Duncan Hunter recently left the entire GOP pack in the dust in the Texas Straw Poll. No one was even close. He�s also won other straw polls. Tancredo did well in the recent Iowa straw. Why are they so upside down in the fundraising department? Would it be fair to say that their followers are a bunch of dunces who go about waving their flags and emotions in the air? Who are so stupid that they can�t figure out that it takes money to run a campaign? God forbid as I count myself among them. Well the jury is not yet in on that verdict yet. But honestly, something simply doesn�t add up. About 60% of Americans support tougher enforcement of immigration laws. Hunter and Tancredo both have large followings. So where are the donors?
Where the heck are these so called Border Watch groups, I ask? Groups like the Minutemen Project? And U.S. Border Watch? Jim Gilchrist�s Wake Up America? And U.S. Border Control? And these are just a few. There are many more org�s of this nature. But when you visit these sites you see no open support for Hunter or Tancredo. No ads, banners or anything. You can�t tell me that there isn�t a way to, legally, get the word out to their members regarding the fundraising woe�s of these 2 candidates. My gosh the entire Borders/Illegals issue is at stake! Certainly the decision makers within these organizations must have enough snap to know that without enlightened politicians and originalist judges on the bench our cause of U.S. sovereignty is doomed! Many of the org�s have become bogged down in the details and have lost sight of the mission. I ask all who read this to begin some kind of email campaign or other correspondence to these org�s immediately. Especially those who might be members of such groups. Put pressure on them to more aggressively work for our 2 valiant candidates Hunter and/or Tancredo. Withhold your donations to these groups until they regain the correct priorities. Inform them, if they don�t know, of the dire fundraising situation that our 2 candidates face and encourage them to formulate an action plan to help keep these campaigns effective financially. These candidates can not be effective without TV/Radio campaigns and that takes money. ''
Given the fact that most Americans favor controlling our borders and stopping illegal immigration, it is suprising that there doesn't seem to be much financial support for restrictionist candidates and groups. Why is that?
So while the fundraising efforts of our valiant candidates Hunter and Tancredo continue to sink into the quagmire, the globalists that have hijacked "our" GOP are standing around in the shadows having a good laugh at our expense. Snickering at us. Also sinking into the quagmire is our cause of sealing the borders and insisting that our elected officials see to it that immigration laws are strictly enforced. Why should they listen to us? We can�t even keep our own candidates in a liquid financial state. So to all of you who still believe that the notion of national sovereign borders is not an antiquated, obsolete concept, I ask you, do you enjoy the sting of defeat? How do you like being laughed at, rebuked and put back into your place by the elitists?
I also put forth the question � is it too late to reverse this negative trend? Is there still time? I believe there is time but none to waste. I welcome your comments. And who is your least-favorite GOP open borders globalist? ''
Why is it that there is so little money going into the restrictionist cause, seemingly? Do we not believe in the people who are heading up these groups? Given the recent Huckabee/Gilchrist/Simcox stories, it would seem there might be some cause for skepticism now. Will that recent bad publicity lead to further fracturing and weakening of the restrictionist cause? Will Tancredo's dropping out further harm the movement -- especially as it appears there is no 'top tier' candidate to take up the mantle of Tancredo?
It seems as if the Republican Party is more divided now than it has been in my memory, and the divisions are stark and rather bitter in some cases. The liberal wing of the Party is contemptuous of the conservative wing, and expects the latter to obediently go along with the liberal GOP agenda and to expect nothing in return.
The party rank-and-file are being asked to choose between various liberal candidates, each of whom has been anointed as being 'electable', and to simply accept that these choices are the only available options.
It seems to me that this aura of 'electability' is bestowed by the media and the party elites, and that simply the title of 'electable' becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. These candidates are 'electable' only if we accept the inevitability of their election -- which too many seem to do. If we say in advance that only these 'top tier' candidates stand a chance, we are taking away the voters' right to choose for themselves. It ain't over till it's over. Neither the biased old media nor the party elites have the right to tell us who can be elected or who can't. If they can make that decision for us, they've essentially taken away our voice in the election.
Labels: Conservatism, Elections, Gop, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates
0 comment Friday, October 10, 2014 | admin
I've been following the discussion about McCain's picking Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate.
I must admit I was surprised by the choice, though it will have no effect on my own vote.
I have to say I am also surprised by all the buzz generated by the choice, and by Governor Palin herself; she has seemed to impress many people favorably, even on the Democrat side of the aisle, with a number of disgruntled Hillary supporters enthused about the addition of Palin to the ticket.
Predictably the Democrats are calling the choice 'tokenism' and there are the expected personal insults: she is a 'right-wing extremist' and a 'Nazi sympathizer' for having worn a Buchanan button during his visit to her town in 2000. Some Republicans on other forums dislike her because she is 'extreme' on social issues, with some even criticizing her choice NOT to abort her Down's Syndrome child. Some Republicans say she represents the triumph of 'affirmative action' in the GOP, and say that McCain was pandering to feminists by naming her. Though he's shown he's certainly not above pandering to certain constituencies, I think he may have been 'reaching out' not to Republican women, who, one supposes, would be less inclined to seek such pandering, but to unhappy Hillary supporters. He's always fostered the 'maverick' image, and has seemed more often than not to be courting liberals/Democrats rather than Republicans, who he likely thinks will swallow their dissatisfaction and vote for him after all, as 'good Republicans' generally do. I think he knows that many Hillary supporters are quite angry about the treatment their candidate received by the anointed candidate, and I think he is right; there are quite a few who are ready to jump ship and vote GOP this time, which is not a frequent occurrence among Democrats. I know some Democrats, mainly women, who have already threatened to vote GOP, and this may well confirm that decision for them.
So, given McCain's tendency to try to cross party lines and appeal to the liberals on the left side of the aisle, it isn't surprising that he would try to snag some female votes by choosing Palin.
Some argue that Palin is not likely to win many feminist votes, considering her very conservative views on social issues, namely abortion and gay marriage. But that belief is probably based on a misconception about how radical many Democrat 'feminists' are. The extreme left wing of the Democrat Party is its public face, but there are many rank-and-file average women out there whose 'feminism' consists mostly of rather middle-of-the-road ideas about having more women elected to various political offices or about equality in the workplace. Not all who call themselves feminists are as socially radical as those who have the loudest voices in the Democrat Party; not all women have abortion as their number one issue, or gay marriage.
Some of these women are realistic enough to know that legal abortion is not under threat in this country; it just isn't likely that Roe v. Wade will be reversed anytime soon, so all the scare tactics of the left are just rhetoric. Some younger single women may consider abortion very important, but I think there are many more who are not as concerned about it when it comes time to cast their ballots.
I don't know what Palin's positions are on issues that are all-important to me, such as immigration (note that I said 'immigration', not 'illegal immigration') or affirmative action or homeschooling or hate crime laws. I have tried to find information about her positions, but there seems to be little information as to her positions. I would say that since Alaska, until recently, has not had a sizeable immigrant population, immigration and borders are not pressing issues in Alaska. I know that Anchorage has a certain amount of 'diversity' (what city doesn't, these days?) but apart from Alaskan Native issues, I don't think these things are hotly debated in the state as in so many other states.
In any case, I think she will be expected to be on board with the Party line; I would hardly expect her to deviate from McCain on issues like amnesty or affirmative action. She will be a team player; I am sure this is understood from the get-go.
I have to say, though, that this quote from her, cited in the above-linked article, is unfortunate, though typical in the GOP these days:
In an interview last year with this reporter, Mrs Palin lamented the paucity of leadership in the Republican Party, saying it was weighed down with "good old rich white boys". She mentioned no names.''
[emphasis mine]
And as I said, I would not have voted for McCain in any case.
At least, though, there is some excitement and life being injected into this gosh-awful, dead-and-alive election. For months, we've known who the Presidential candidates would be, and the conventions have been a dismal display. I talk to so many people who express disillusionment and alienation, who say they are beyond sick of the campaigns. And these are not partisans, or political junkies, just average people who feel dismayed by the choices on offer. Maybe the presence in the campaign of Governor Palin, who at least seems to be a well-spoken, personable woman, will shake things up and spark some discussion. Her presence might perhaps highlight the sorry state of both parties and their presidential nominees. I know little about her, but she does seem to me to break the mold somewhat, being something other than one more stale beltway hack or corrupt machine politician.
Having said that, I don't share the enthusiasm many people have expressed to me about the 'history-making ' potential of a black President or a woman Vice-President. To me, it should be about character and ability, not about race or sex.
Is Palin good for the GOP in this election? At this point, it appears so. But is the GOP good for us?
Democrat or Republican, it's a wash. On the important issues, we still have nobody representing us.
I must admit I was surprised by the choice, though it will have no effect on my own vote.
I have to say I am also surprised by all the buzz generated by the choice, and by Governor Palin herself; she has seemed to impress many people favorably, even on the Democrat side of the aisle, with a number of disgruntled Hillary supporters enthused about the addition of Palin to the ticket.
Predictably the Democrats are calling the choice 'tokenism' and there are the expected personal insults: she is a 'right-wing extremist' and a 'Nazi sympathizer' for having worn a Buchanan button during his visit to her town in 2000. Some Republicans on other forums dislike her because she is 'extreme' on social issues, with some even criticizing her choice NOT to abort her Down's Syndrome child. Some Republicans say she represents the triumph of 'affirmative action' in the GOP, and say that McCain was pandering to feminists by naming her. Though he's shown he's certainly not above pandering to certain constituencies, I think he may have been 'reaching out' not to Republican women, who, one supposes, would be less inclined to seek such pandering, but to unhappy Hillary supporters. He's always fostered the 'maverick' image, and has seemed more often than not to be courting liberals/Democrats rather than Republicans, who he likely thinks will swallow their dissatisfaction and vote for him after all, as 'good Republicans' generally do. I think he knows that many Hillary supporters are quite angry about the treatment their candidate received by the anointed candidate, and I think he is right; there are quite a few who are ready to jump ship and vote GOP this time, which is not a frequent occurrence among Democrats. I know some Democrats, mainly women, who have already threatened to vote GOP, and this may well confirm that decision for them.
So, given McCain's tendency to try to cross party lines and appeal to the liberals on the left side of the aisle, it isn't surprising that he would try to snag some female votes by choosing Palin.
Some argue that Palin is not likely to win many feminist votes, considering her very conservative views on social issues, namely abortion and gay marriage. But that belief is probably based on a misconception about how radical many Democrat 'feminists' are. The extreme left wing of the Democrat Party is its public face, but there are many rank-and-file average women out there whose 'feminism' consists mostly of rather middle-of-the-road ideas about having more women elected to various political offices or about equality in the workplace. Not all who call themselves feminists are as socially radical as those who have the loudest voices in the Democrat Party; not all women have abortion as their number one issue, or gay marriage.
Some of these women are realistic enough to know that legal abortion is not under threat in this country; it just isn't likely that Roe v. Wade will be reversed anytime soon, so all the scare tactics of the left are just rhetoric. Some younger single women may consider abortion very important, but I think there are many more who are not as concerned about it when it comes time to cast their ballots.
I don't know what Palin's positions are on issues that are all-important to me, such as immigration (note that I said 'immigration', not 'illegal immigration') or affirmative action or homeschooling or hate crime laws. I have tried to find information about her positions, but there seems to be little information as to her positions. I would say that since Alaska, until recently, has not had a sizeable immigrant population, immigration and borders are not pressing issues in Alaska. I know that Anchorage has a certain amount of 'diversity' (what city doesn't, these days?) but apart from Alaskan Native issues, I don't think these things are hotly debated in the state as in so many other states.
In any case, I think she will be expected to be on board with the Party line; I would hardly expect her to deviate from McCain on issues like amnesty or affirmative action. She will be a team player; I am sure this is understood from the get-go.
I have to say, though, that this quote from her, cited in the above-linked article, is unfortunate, though typical in the GOP these days:
In an interview last year with this reporter, Mrs Palin lamented the paucity of leadership in the Republican Party, saying it was weighed down with "good old rich white boys". She mentioned no names.''
[emphasis mine]
And as I said, I would not have voted for McCain in any case.
At least, though, there is some excitement and life being injected into this gosh-awful, dead-and-alive election. For months, we've known who the Presidential candidates would be, and the conventions have been a dismal display. I talk to so many people who express disillusionment and alienation, who say they are beyond sick of the campaigns. And these are not partisans, or political junkies, just average people who feel dismayed by the choices on offer. Maybe the presence in the campaign of Governor Palin, who at least seems to be a well-spoken, personable woman, will shake things up and spark some discussion. Her presence might perhaps highlight the sorry state of both parties and their presidential nominees. I know little about her, but she does seem to me to break the mold somewhat, being something other than one more stale beltway hack or corrupt machine politician.
Having said that, I don't share the enthusiasm many people have expressed to me about the 'history-making ' potential of a black President or a woman Vice-President. To me, it should be about character and ability, not about race or sex.
Is Palin good for the GOP in this election? At this point, it appears so. But is the GOP good for us?
Democrat or Republican, it's a wash. On the important issues, we still have nobody representing us.
Labels: Elections, Gop, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates, Social Conservatism
0 comment Monday, October 6, 2014 | admin
[To my readers - First, let me say I am sorry for the lack of activity here, but this virus I'm fighting is a particularly nasty one; I had thought I was over the worst of it, but then had a setback. It may be a few days before I am back on my feet fully. I hope none of you contracts this ugly virus; it's spread like crazy in my area, and has really hit a lot of people hard.]
Meanwhile, I'm still following the discussion on Sarah Palin, and it appears that the left has decided to spread rumors in an attempt to smear Governor Palin. It seems that their favorite way of smearing a social conservative, especially a Christian one, is to try to find some scandal, a sexual irregularity preferably, so as to throw the 'hypocrisy' charge around.
The rumor that is being spread by the DU mob and the Kossacks is that Palin faked her last pregnancy so as to cover up the fact that it was her teenage daughter who was about to give birth. So the Palins' youngest child is really their illegitimate grandchild -- so the rumor has it.
Read the comments quoted in the above-linked blog entry; you will be disgusted.
This kind of scandal-mongering gossip is absurd. Surely there would be ample evidence to disprove it, but that kind of thing does not deter the left; they will try to discredit every bit of evidence to the contrary as being staged or fake. I hope Mrs. Palin does not dignify these scurrilous stories by 'answering' them.
Even if these rumors were true (and they seem far-fetched) would that discredit the Palins as 'hypocrites'?
I actually think it would be to their credit, were it true. In 'old America' it was not unheard of for parents or other family members to raise a 'chance child' as theirs, thus keeping the child within the family fold while not offering an occasion for scandal to the neighbors. I know of a few cases like this among the older generations, wherein a child was adopted and raised by the grandparents as one of their own children. In some cases, neighbors knew this to be the case, and yet it was simply not talked about.
Hypocrisy? No; it was an open secret, but rather than give some kind of official stamp of approval to illegitimacy, it was handled discreetly. In some cases, the child was relinquished to an adoption agency, or a 'foundling home' in the earlier eras. One can honor the ideals while recognizing that sometimes people fall short of the standards. That is not hypocrisy. Our age has decided to throw out standards altogether and drop any pretense of honoring morality or the Biblical commandments. That's too demanding and 'judgmental', after all.
Nowadays the answer, according to liberal anti-morality, is for the daughter to either keep the child, flaunting her 'mistake', and drawing benefits for the child in many cases, or it's straight to the abortion clinic, which the left seems to see as the 'best' option.
The other thing which the unscrupulous lefties have seized on is the issue of the baby's Down's Syndrome. They seem to think that this is somehow a disgrace. I suppose in their ideal world (heaven help us) there would be no imperfect children; actually there would be fewer children -- except those many children born to the protected 'victim groups' who are allowed to reproduce prolifically, while White Christians are denounced for being 'selfish and irresponsible' for having more than one child.
It was thought many years ago by most people that Down's Syndrome meant that a child would be ineducable and that they would need some kind of institutional care. However in recent years we've seen many people with Down's leading fuller lives, holding down jobs and sometimes living independently. I can think of a couple of cases in my extended family in which late-life babies proved to be Down's children, and they were simply treated like their 'normal' siblings and did quite well. That's the way it was handled in my family. It's obvious that Down's Syndrome people, despite their limitations, can in many cases function quite well, and most importantly they are usually very social and often very affectionate, loving children. We tend to over-value intelligence in our society; character and kindness are so much more precious. Many of those on the left have high IQs, and obviously it has not been of much benefit to them, much less to the rest of us.
For the leftists, these people are mistakes which should be prevented. And it appears that the majority of pregnancies in which Down's is discovered prenatally end in abortion. According to Wikipedia, 92-93 percent of such pregnancies are terminated.
I can believe it; it seems there are fewer Down's children visible among the very youngest ones. My town is something of an exception; there is probably a higher-than-average number of such children here because people tend to be Christian, very socially conservative and pro-life, of course.
To be fair, there are many hard-hearted 'conservatives' who decry the fact that the Palins had this child, as with at least one commenter on this blog. The 'conservative' rationale is that the parents are irresponsible to have such a child, since that the child will be unproductive. And what if the parents are able to take care of their child without any reliance on state help? Surely a conservative or even a libertarian would acknowledge that it is not their prerogative to dictate to the parents.
It really shows how far our society has fallen, when people are not ashamed to make a public issue of something like this, and to concoct stories impugning the character of the Palins individually or as a family.
I hope this low slander is rejected as it deserves to be, and I hope that those who start these rumors (Colmes et al) will be called to account for it.
Meanwhile, I'm still following the discussion on Sarah Palin, and it appears that the left has decided to spread rumors in an attempt to smear Governor Palin. It seems that their favorite way of smearing a social conservative, especially a Christian one, is to try to find some scandal, a sexual irregularity preferably, so as to throw the 'hypocrisy' charge around.
The rumor that is being spread by the DU mob and the Kossacks is that Palin faked her last pregnancy so as to cover up the fact that it was her teenage daughter who was about to give birth. So the Palins' youngest child is really their illegitimate grandchild -- so the rumor has it.
Read the comments quoted in the above-linked blog entry; you will be disgusted.
This kind of scandal-mongering gossip is absurd. Surely there would be ample evidence to disprove it, but that kind of thing does not deter the left; they will try to discredit every bit of evidence to the contrary as being staged or fake. I hope Mrs. Palin does not dignify these scurrilous stories by 'answering' them.
Even if these rumors were true (and they seem far-fetched) would that discredit the Palins as 'hypocrites'?
I actually think it would be to their credit, were it true. In 'old America' it was not unheard of for parents or other family members to raise a 'chance child' as theirs, thus keeping the child within the family fold while not offering an occasion for scandal to the neighbors. I know of a few cases like this among the older generations, wherein a child was adopted and raised by the grandparents as one of their own children. In some cases, neighbors knew this to be the case, and yet it was simply not talked about.
Hypocrisy? No; it was an open secret, but rather than give some kind of official stamp of approval to illegitimacy, it was handled discreetly. In some cases, the child was relinquished to an adoption agency, or a 'foundling home' in the earlier eras. One can honor the ideals while recognizing that sometimes people fall short of the standards. That is not hypocrisy. Our age has decided to throw out standards altogether and drop any pretense of honoring morality or the Biblical commandments. That's too demanding and 'judgmental', after all.
Nowadays the answer, according to liberal anti-morality, is for the daughter to either keep the child, flaunting her 'mistake', and drawing benefits for the child in many cases, or it's straight to the abortion clinic, which the left seems to see as the 'best' option.
The other thing which the unscrupulous lefties have seized on is the issue of the baby's Down's Syndrome. They seem to think that this is somehow a disgrace. I suppose in their ideal world (heaven help us) there would be no imperfect children; actually there would be fewer children -- except those many children born to the protected 'victim groups' who are allowed to reproduce prolifically, while White Christians are denounced for being 'selfish and irresponsible' for having more than one child.
It was thought many years ago by most people that Down's Syndrome meant that a child would be ineducable and that they would need some kind of institutional care. However in recent years we've seen many people with Down's leading fuller lives, holding down jobs and sometimes living independently. I can think of a couple of cases in my extended family in which late-life babies proved to be Down's children, and they were simply treated like their 'normal' siblings and did quite well. That's the way it was handled in my family. It's obvious that Down's Syndrome people, despite their limitations, can in many cases function quite well, and most importantly they are usually very social and often very affectionate, loving children. We tend to over-value intelligence in our society; character and kindness are so much more precious. Many of those on the left have high IQs, and obviously it has not been of much benefit to them, much less to the rest of us.
For the leftists, these people are mistakes which should be prevented. And it appears that the majority of pregnancies in which Down's is discovered prenatally end in abortion. According to Wikipedia, 92-93 percent of such pregnancies are terminated.
I can believe it; it seems there are fewer Down's children visible among the very youngest ones. My town is something of an exception; there is probably a higher-than-average number of such children here because people tend to be Christian, very socially conservative and pro-life, of course.
To be fair, there are many hard-hearted 'conservatives' who decry the fact that the Palins had this child, as with at least one commenter on this blog. The 'conservative' rationale is that the parents are irresponsible to have such a child, since that the child will be unproductive. And what if the parents are able to take care of their child without any reliance on state help? Surely a conservative or even a libertarian would acknowledge that it is not their prerogative to dictate to the parents.
It really shows how far our society has fallen, when people are not ashamed to make a public issue of something like this, and to concoct stories impugning the character of the Palins individually or as a family.
I hope this low slander is rejected as it deserves to be, and I hope that those who start these rumors (Colmes et al) will be called to account for it.
Labels: Leftism, Liberalism, Party Politics, Rumors, Social Conservatism, Societal Decay
0 comment Saturday, September 27, 2014 | admin
Obama picks Biden for V.P.
Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware late Friday night to be his vice presidential running mate, according to a Democratic official, balancing his ticket with an older congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.
Biden, who has twice sought the White House, is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.
And , it appears, a plagiarist. He stole part of a campaign speech from British politician Neil Kinnock, if I remember correctly.
Why Biden? He seems a very lackluster choice. What is gained by having him on the ticket? What motivates this choice?
Not that it really makes any difference to me; to me, the two-party rigged system is not to be taken seriously anymore. I will vote third party regardless, but I am curious as to what my readers think of this, if anything.
Besides, I have little else to blog about tonight; does it seem to anyone else as if the blogosphere is especially quiescent lately? Or dispirited?
I've noticed that many of the blogs I used to read daily have either died or been abandoned, or have such infrequent posts as to be virtually extinct, while several are going on some kind of indefinite hiatus. Does anybody else notice this?
And does it seem lately as if the news is always just more of the same old same old, nothing 'new' about it? Has the news ever been more boring or ennui-producing than it is now?
Barack Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware late Friday night to be his vice presidential running mate, according to a Democratic official, balancing his ticket with an older congressional veteran well-versed in foreign policy and defense issues.
Biden, who has twice sought the White House, is a Catholic with blue-collar roots, a generally liberal voting record and a reputation as a long-winded orator.
And , it appears, a plagiarist. He stole part of a campaign speech from British politician Neil Kinnock, if I remember correctly.
Why Biden? He seems a very lackluster choice. What is gained by having him on the ticket? What motivates this choice?
Not that it really makes any difference to me; to me, the two-party rigged system is not to be taken seriously anymore. I will vote third party regardless, but I am curious as to what my readers think of this, if anything.
Besides, I have little else to blog about tonight; does it seem to anyone else as if the blogosphere is especially quiescent lately? Or dispirited?
I've noticed that many of the blogs I used to read daily have either died or been abandoned, or have such infrequent posts as to be virtually extinct, while several are going on some kind of indefinite hiatus. Does anybody else notice this?
And does it seem lately as if the news is always just more of the same old same old, nothing 'new' about it? Has the news ever been more boring or ennui-producing than it is now?
Labels: Blogosphere, Elections, News, Party Politics, Politics, Presidential Candidates
0 comment Wednesday, September 24, 2014 | admin
Fellow blogger Flanders Fields warns us:
Don't Trust Fred Thompson
...I will not consider one who pretends to be a conservative but who gets into office to carry water for the leftist corporatists who run our political world in the USA, other countries of the Western world, and much of the entire world.''And here we read about Fred Thompson's Pan-Islamist Campaign Manager, Spencer Abraham, described as an Islamist sympathizer and open borders advocate.
Although we read Thompson's comments on the appalling Hazleton decision, and we see that he is essentially saying the 'right' thing, (though he carefully refers to illegal immigration only), talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. So despite his saying what a prudent candidate would say about the court decision on Hazleton, his choice of Abraham speaks louder than his comments about illegal immigration. And by the way, if he has gotten religion on illegal immigration, he has only recently done so, since he has never shown any restrictionist leanings in his past.
This report from CNN.com tells about the woman protester in Houston who was removed from a welcoming reception for Thompson.
A woman screaming "you�re not a real conservative, sir" was removed by police from a welcoming reception for likely GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson Wednesday morning. A second protester was also taken from the room.
Houston police officers escorted the woman � as well as a man � from the hangar at Hobby Airport, where Thompson was shaking hands with a crowd of supporters. They were not arrested.
The woman questioned Thompson as he talked to reporters. She asked him why he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and noted that the organization supported the North American Union with Canada and Mexico."
Unfortunately the Fredheads will dismiss this woman, whose statements were substantially correct -- Thompson is not a conservative and is a member of the CFR -- as a 'liberal' or a 'crazy.'
These comments illustrates that mindset:
Fred Thompson is a conservative and he scares his opponents - Democrat and Republican alike. I am excited about him entering the race and look forward to sending him more money.'
There are quite a few comments from readers below the story, and it does appear as though there are plenty of people who are not taken in by Thompson's masquerading as a conservative, which is a hopeful sign despite all the enthusiasm from the GOP faithful and the Fredheads.
Richard Viguerie issues his own warning: Conservatives, Beware of Fred Thompson
The frustration of conservatives is understandable. Faced with the prospects of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, or Mitt Romney as the next Republican presidential candidate, many are pinning their hopes on former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee.
Could this actor-politician be the new Ronald Reagan?
Mainstream media types assure us that he is. His record suggests otherwise.
This is the second time conservatives have pinned their hopes on Thompson. When he was first elected in the Republican sweep of 1994, he was seen then as the "new Reagan"�a charismatic movie star turned politician. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole quickly picked Thompson to give the five-minute GOP rebuttal to President Clinton�s economic address, and no less than The New York Times swooned with its headline the next morning, "A Star Is Born."
He turned out to be a shooting star�a dazzling flash in the sky, soon gone, not there dependably, night after night, like the Big Dipper. Or, as The Tennessean later put it, "A year ago [Thompson] looked like a rising star. Today he looks more like a fading comet."
Especially to conservatives who have taken the time to examine his record.''
Among the reasons Viguerie mentions for distrusting Thompson: his handling of the Asiagate scandal, the Clinton White House's Asian fundraising irregularities, the McCain-Feingold Act, his ''failure of the Goldwater Test'' - which means his failure to show opposition to big government, his "failure of the 'Reagan Test" the question of whether he surrounds himself with conservatives.
And then there is his overall record: 8 years in the Senate, during which he voted:
FOR restricting the rights of grassroots organizations to communicate with the public.
FOR allowing the IRS to require political and policy organizations to disclose their membership�a vote against the constitutional rights of free association and privacy. (The Clinton Administration used such IRS intimidation against conservative groups that opposed them.)
AGAINST impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, specifically the reappointment and reauthorization of managers (drawn from the Republican membership of the House Judiciary Committee) to conduct the impeachment trial in the Senate.
[...]
AGAINST restraints on federal spending, specifically the Phil Gramm (R-TX) amendment to limit non-defense discretionary spending to the fiscal 1997 levels requested by President Clinton.
FOR affirmative action in federal contracts.
FOR the Legal Services Corporation, the perennial liberal boondoggle that provides political activism disguised as "legal services" to Democratic constituencies.
FOR an increase in the minimum wage, which, of course, increases unemployment among the young and poor.
FOR President Clinton�s nomination of Dr. David Satcher as U.S. Surgeon General. Among other things, Satcher opposed a full ban on partial-birth abortion.
[...]
FOR restricting the First Amendment (free speech) rights of independent groups.
FOR the trial lawyers lobby, and specifically against a bill that would put common-sense limitations on the medical malpractice suits that increase health costs for all of us. (Of course! He�s been a trial lawyer himself for some three decades.)
And, last but not least:
FOR limitations on campaign freedom of speech, by limiting contributions to national political parties to $2,000 and limiting the rights of individuals and groups to participate in the political process in the two months before elections.''
But of course all these facts will mean nothing to the Fredheads, who will respond along the lines of this commenter on the CNN blog thread linked above:
Add enough of this po� mouthin�, Republican candidates and you all will get Mama Hilary for President. If you think she�s a choice is truely crazy. Explore what she and her hand picked leftest coilition did for Arkansas Public Schools. Heck! She almost did the same thing with the nation�s health care, You think HMOs are Heck??? Well, just keep on going after the rep. candidates and you�ll really get yours after the elections.''
When much of 'conservatism' these days consists of knee-jerk anti-Democrat reactions, and personality cultism (Fred was a TV actor on a popular show! Another Ronald Reagan!) Thompson is the kind of candidate we can expect, unfortunately.
Don't Trust Fred Thompson
...I will not consider one who pretends to be a conservative but who gets into office to carry water for the leftist corporatists who run our political world in the USA, other countries of the Western world, and much of the entire world.''And here we read about Fred Thompson's Pan-Islamist Campaign Manager, Spencer Abraham, described as an Islamist sympathizer and open borders advocate.
Although we read Thompson's comments on the appalling Hazleton decision, and we see that he is essentially saying the 'right' thing, (though he carefully refers to illegal immigration only), talk is cheap, and actions speak louder than words. So despite his saying what a prudent candidate would say about the court decision on Hazleton, his choice of Abraham speaks louder than his comments about illegal immigration. And by the way, if he has gotten religion on illegal immigration, he has only recently done so, since he has never shown any restrictionist leanings in his past.
This report from CNN.com tells about the woman protester in Houston who was removed from a welcoming reception for Thompson.
A woman screaming "you�re not a real conservative, sir" was removed by police from a welcoming reception for likely GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson Wednesday morning. A second protester was also taken from the room.
Houston police officers escorted the woman � as well as a man � from the hangar at Hobby Airport, where Thompson was shaking hands with a crowd of supporters. They were not arrested.
The woman questioned Thompson as he talked to reporters. She asked him why he was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and noted that the organization supported the North American Union with Canada and Mexico."
Unfortunately the Fredheads will dismiss this woman, whose statements were substantially correct -- Thompson is not a conservative and is a member of the CFR -- as a 'liberal' or a 'crazy.'
These comments illustrates that mindset:
Fred Thompson is a conservative and he scares his opponents - Democrat and Republican alike. I am excited about him entering the race and look forward to sending him more money.'
There are quite a few comments from readers below the story, and it does appear as though there are plenty of people who are not taken in by Thompson's masquerading as a conservative, which is a hopeful sign despite all the enthusiasm from the GOP faithful and the Fredheads.
Richard Viguerie issues his own warning: Conservatives, Beware of Fred Thompson
The frustration of conservatives is understandable. Faced with the prospects of Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, or Mitt Romney as the next Republican presidential candidate, many are pinning their hopes on former Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee.
Could this actor-politician be the new Ronald Reagan?
Mainstream media types assure us that he is. His record suggests otherwise.
This is the second time conservatives have pinned their hopes on Thompson. When he was first elected in the Republican sweep of 1994, he was seen then as the "new Reagan"�a charismatic movie star turned politician. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole quickly picked Thompson to give the five-minute GOP rebuttal to President Clinton�s economic address, and no less than The New York Times swooned with its headline the next morning, "A Star Is Born."
He turned out to be a shooting star�a dazzling flash in the sky, soon gone, not there dependably, night after night, like the Big Dipper. Or, as The Tennessean later put it, "A year ago [Thompson] looked like a rising star. Today he looks more like a fading comet."
Especially to conservatives who have taken the time to examine his record.''
Among the reasons Viguerie mentions for distrusting Thompson: his handling of the Asiagate scandal, the Clinton White House's Asian fundraising irregularities, the McCain-Feingold Act, his ''failure of the Goldwater Test'' - which means his failure to show opposition to big government, his "failure of the 'Reagan Test" the question of whether he surrounds himself with conservatives.
And then there is his overall record: 8 years in the Senate, during which he voted:
FOR restricting the rights of grassroots organizations to communicate with the public.
FOR allowing the IRS to require political and policy organizations to disclose their membership�a vote against the constitutional rights of free association and privacy. (The Clinton Administration used such IRS intimidation against conservative groups that opposed them.)
AGAINST impeachment proceedings against President Clinton, specifically the reappointment and reauthorization of managers (drawn from the Republican membership of the House Judiciary Committee) to conduct the impeachment trial in the Senate.
[...]
AGAINST restraints on federal spending, specifically the Phil Gramm (R-TX) amendment to limit non-defense discretionary spending to the fiscal 1997 levels requested by President Clinton.
FOR affirmative action in federal contracts.
FOR the Legal Services Corporation, the perennial liberal boondoggle that provides political activism disguised as "legal services" to Democratic constituencies.
FOR an increase in the minimum wage, which, of course, increases unemployment among the young and poor.
FOR President Clinton�s nomination of Dr. David Satcher as U.S. Surgeon General. Among other things, Satcher opposed a full ban on partial-birth abortion.
[...]
FOR restricting the First Amendment (free speech) rights of independent groups.
FOR the trial lawyers lobby, and specifically against a bill that would put common-sense limitations on the medical malpractice suits that increase health costs for all of us. (Of course! He�s been a trial lawyer himself for some three decades.)
And, last but not least:
FOR limitations on campaign freedom of speech, by limiting contributions to national political parties to $2,000 and limiting the rights of individuals and groups to participate in the political process in the two months before elections.''
But of course all these facts will mean nothing to the Fredheads, who will respond along the lines of this commenter on the CNN blog thread linked above:
Add enough of this po� mouthin�, Republican candidates and you all will get Mama Hilary for President. If you think she�s a choice is truely crazy. Explore what she and her hand picked leftest coilition did for Arkansas Public Schools. Heck! She almost did the same thing with the nation�s health care, You think HMOs are Heck??? Well, just keep on going after the rep. candidates and you�ll really get yours after the elections.''
When much of 'conservatism' these days consists of knee-jerk anti-Democrat reactions, and personality cultism (Fred was a TV actor on a popular show! Another Ronald Reagan!) Thompson is the kind of candidate we can expect, unfortunately.
Labels: Conservatism, Gop, Party Politics, Political Parties, Presidential Candidates
0 comment | admin
The quality of the attacks on Ron Paul has not been impressive so far and has been deteriorating, with some rather over-the-top rants.
And the vehemence with which some people oppose Ron Paul is a little bewildering: if the critics think Paul is a 'kook' as some of the less imaginative call him, or 'your crazy old uncle who lives in the attic' as some other critic ungraciously called him (and these are 'conservatives' speaking, by the way) then why are they so upset over his candidacy and his ideas? If he is a fringe figure who has a slim chance of being elected, or even nominated, why waste any time denouncing him? Just ignore him as the irrelevancy he is.
However it seems that many 'conservatives' or Republicans, most especially the devoted party types, are worried that Paul's candidacy may siphon off a few votes from their fave candidates, and given that Giuliani and Romney and the fast-fading McCain need whatever support they can glean, since they are generating only lukewarm support, I suppose it makes sense for some people to try to discredit Ron Paul. Or maybe they are irritated by his candidacy because they realize that someone who actually supports conservative principles will draw attention to their candidates' conspicuous lack of conservative credibility.
Or maybe they are rationalizing their own unfaithfulness to any semblance of conservative principles.
I can't guess what motivates John Derbyshire's piece
That Old-Time Religion
which is somewhat fair to Ron Paul, but in the end, dismissive of him.
Nits aside, the broad outlook there is conservative in a way we don�t often see from a presidential candidate. It is, in fact, conservatism of exceptional purity. Reading through those policy positions, an American conservative can hear the mystic chords of memory sounding in the distance, and hear the call of ancestral voices wafted on the breeze: Hayek, von Mises, Rothbart, Nock, Kirk, John Chamberlain... Unlike the product in that automobile commercial, this is your father�s conservatism � the Old-Time Religion. What is there among Ron Paul�s policy prescriptions that the young William F. Buckley would have disagreed with?
So why aren�t we all piling into the wagon behind Dr. Ron? It�s not that the guy is personally unacceptable in any way. A pious family man, he has worked in an honorable profession � Ob/Gyn medical practice � all his life. (Paul has the slight political advantage of having brought several hundred of his constituents into the world.) He is personally charming and likeable. If not exactly eloquent in the florid, gassy manner American voters are used to from their politicians, he speaks clearly and well, keeps his wits about him, minds his temper, and holds his own in debate. With the positions he has, it�s easy to see why he�s not ahead with the media or the polls, but why isn�t he leading the pack among conservatives?
[...]
If Washington, D.C. were the drowsy southern town that Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge rode into, Ron Paul would have a chance. Washington�s not like that nowadays, though. It is a vast megalopolis, every nook and cranny stuffed with lobbyists, lawyers, and a hundred thousand species of tax-eater.
[...]
On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It�s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are � duh! � not, by temperament, revolutionaries.
Imagine, for example, President Ron II trying to push his bill to abolish the IRS through Congress. Congress! � whose members eat, drink, breathe and live for the wrinkles they can add to the tax code on behalf of their favored interest groups! Or imagine him trying to kick the U.N. parasites out of our country. Think of the howls of outrage on behalf of suffering humanity from all the lefty academics, MSM bleeding hearts, love-the-world flower children, Eleanor Roosevelt worshippers, and bureaucratic globalizers!
Ain�t gonna happen. It was, after all, a conservative who said that politics is the art of the possible. Ron Paul is not possible. His candidacy belongs to the realm of dreams, not practical politics. But, oh, what sweet dreams!''
Derbyshire acknowledges that some conservatives will be attracted to the conservative policies Paul stands for, but he then dismisses those principles as unrealistic, unattainable, and hence a chimera, a distraction.
This line of argument sounds strangely familiar; we've been here before. The example that comes most readily to my mind is the recall election of 2003, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger was running against Republican -- and conservative -- Tom McClintock.
Ironically, in this op-ed piece which appeared at NRO during that campaign, the NRO editorial supported McClintock:
We know that McClintock is currently behind Schwarzenegger in the polls. But we also know that if elected, McClintock would fight the spenders and taxers in Sacramento. About Arnold Schwarzenegger we know no such thing.''
The op-ed writers were correct; Schwarzenegger has proven to be a disappointment to conservatives since taking office.
But the arguments against McClintock, solid conservative that he was, ran something along the lines of this:
For starters, Democrats know McClintock cannot win. They know that he has ran [sic] for statewide office twice before and lost both times. McClintock�s problem is not so much that he�s unknown but that Californians know about him and have rejected his candidacy time and again. Knowing this, a Democrat plot to boost McClintock�s candidacy at Schwarzenegger�s expense has already surfaced.''
And the reason McClintock was declared unelectable? He was 'too conservative', said Schwarzenegger's minions and the usual party hacks.
I don't live in California, hence I had no direct stake in that election, but I spent many an hour arguing online with Republicans on forums who kept arguing that McClintock should drop out and let Schwarzenegger have a clear field; after all, we all knew, said they, that a 'right-wing' type like McClintock was a loser. ''You don't know California; no right-winger can win. Schwarzenegger is the best we can get here. McClintock is a purist, he's too conservative, he'll lose. We need a moderate, somebody who is electable.'' So they got their wish: Schwarzenegger was elected. What's the old saying. be careful what you wish for?
This argument, that McClintock was unelectable, was the most respectable argument against the 'too-conservative, too-purist' McClintock; the less intelligent critics made constant cruel remarks about his slight strabismus, and ridiculed his appearance, much as some of Paul's more dimwitted opponents resort to cheap shots about his age or his haircut.
But it seems to me that Derbyshire is resorting to those old arguments about how being too conservative is political poison. How many times have I heard the 'pragmatists' drag out that quote from Bismarck about politics being ''the art of the possible"? In other words, we can only ever hope to elect candidates who hew to the accepted party line or who don't rock the boat too much, because to support principled men (or women) dooms us to unelectability and political oblivion. Ultimately the message underlying this mindset is that we are doomed to the status quo, however corrupt or pedestrian or hopeless or unacceptable that status quo is. The status quo, the presently accepted order of things, or some slight variant thereof, is all that is 'possible', and we are doomed to the 'possible', to more of the same, in other words.
Thanks but no thanks.
At some point, this mindset becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: we decree that anybody who is radical enough to try to remind us of the Founding Fathers' principles, or even the principles of a half-century ago, is 'unelectable' because he is quixotic or a dreamer or a wacko or a kook or a 'reactionary' or a purist or unelectable. I wonder how many people back in the 18th century said the same things about our Founding Fathers? It seems that a substantial percentage of people in that era were not in favor of our independence from Britain; no doubt they thought the Founding Fathers were extremists or 'fringe' elements. Most people prefer the 'devil they know', the status quo; no matter how unacceptable things are, we are used to them, and few people like real change; it's disruptive and it's frightening for many people. And it's especially frightening to those who have a vested interest in keeping things just as they are, for example, party functionaries and people who are insiders in the existing political structures. Or media people.
But if we continue to insist that only people who hew to the existing party line are 'electable' then we guarantee that only such people will ever be nominated and elected. How can we declare in advance that a certain candidate is unelectable? Why even have elections if we know in advance who can or cannot be elected? Let's just poll the party members and media elites and let them tell us who we want. That seems to be what our system amounts to, if these people can tell us in advance who we will or won't vote for.
The only way we can know who the people will choose or won't choose is to let them choose, and let them do so in the voting booth.
If I had my way, we'd stop running so many polls which tell us every other day who and what we want. Polls are intended to influence opinion and shape it as much as to check and report public opinion.
As others have said, the only polls that matter -- or should matter -- are the ones on election day, when we cast our ballots.
But the idea that conservatism cannot do anything but rubber-stamp and preserve the liberal status quo is to make conservatism merely a useless philosophy that does little but try feebly to slow down liberal change, and preserve yesterday's radical left innovations.
And Derbyshire's argument that we couldn't, say, throw out the U.N. because of the predictable howls of protest from the left means essentially that we can't do anything that upsets the left and provokes one of their frequent tantrums. If that is true, we are really and truly done for as a country; reversing some of the harm done by leftists is essential if this Republic is to survive, and we have been far too cowed by the left's hissy fits for too long. Let them howl like spoiled children; they've been allowed to blackmail us by means of their emotional abuse and the result is the chaotic society we live in today.
And the oft-repeated cliche that you can't turn the clock back -- who decreed that? I turn my clock back every fall, when we go back to standard time. I turn my clock back when I travel west across time zones. The idea that once liberals have done something it can never be undone is absurd.
We can nominate an 'electable' Republican who is no conservative, and 'win' as a party, but if conservatism loses, and we elect more of the same failed policies, the Republic loses. What do the fortunes of the party matter, if our country goes down? What have we 'won' if we get another open borders, globalist, big business, interventionist, disconnected elitist?
There's something to be said for daring, and stepping out of line, away from the failed status quo, and trying something different -- or, going back to the tried and true which did work for us for centuries. We know the status quo does not work. Doing the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result is madness, so the saying goes.
''If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.'' - Russell Kirk
"We all want progress, but if you�re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." - C. S. Lewis
And the vehemence with which some people oppose Ron Paul is a little bewildering: if the critics think Paul is a 'kook' as some of the less imaginative call him, or 'your crazy old uncle who lives in the attic' as some other critic ungraciously called him (and these are 'conservatives' speaking, by the way) then why are they so upset over his candidacy and his ideas? If he is a fringe figure who has a slim chance of being elected, or even nominated, why waste any time denouncing him? Just ignore him as the irrelevancy he is.
However it seems that many 'conservatives' or Republicans, most especially the devoted party types, are worried that Paul's candidacy may siphon off a few votes from their fave candidates, and given that Giuliani and Romney and the fast-fading McCain need whatever support they can glean, since they are generating only lukewarm support, I suppose it makes sense for some people to try to discredit Ron Paul. Or maybe they are irritated by his candidacy because they realize that someone who actually supports conservative principles will draw attention to their candidates' conspicuous lack of conservative credibility.
Or maybe they are rationalizing their own unfaithfulness to any semblance of conservative principles.
I can't guess what motivates John Derbyshire's piece
That Old-Time Religion
which is somewhat fair to Ron Paul, but in the end, dismissive of him.
Nits aside, the broad outlook there is conservative in a way we don�t often see from a presidential candidate. It is, in fact, conservatism of exceptional purity. Reading through those policy positions, an American conservative can hear the mystic chords of memory sounding in the distance, and hear the call of ancestral voices wafted on the breeze: Hayek, von Mises, Rothbart, Nock, Kirk, John Chamberlain... Unlike the product in that automobile commercial, this is your father�s conservatism � the Old-Time Religion. What is there among Ron Paul�s policy prescriptions that the young William F. Buckley would have disagreed with?
So why aren�t we all piling into the wagon behind Dr. Ron? It�s not that the guy is personally unacceptable in any way. A pious family man, he has worked in an honorable profession � Ob/Gyn medical practice � all his life. (Paul has the slight political advantage of having brought several hundred of his constituents into the world.) He is personally charming and likeable. If not exactly eloquent in the florid, gassy manner American voters are used to from their politicians, he speaks clearly and well, keeps his wits about him, minds his temper, and holds his own in debate. With the positions he has, it�s easy to see why he�s not ahead with the media or the polls, but why isn�t he leading the pack among conservatives?
[...]
If Washington, D.C. were the drowsy southern town that Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge rode into, Ron Paul would have a chance. Washington�s not like that nowadays, though. It is a vast megalopolis, every nook and cranny stuffed with lobbyists, lawyers, and a hundred thousand species of tax-eater.
[...]
On the whole, though, we have settled in with this system. We are used to it. It�s not going away, absent a revolution; and conservatives are � duh! � not, by temperament, revolutionaries.
Imagine, for example, President Ron II trying to push his bill to abolish the IRS through Congress. Congress! � whose members eat, drink, breathe and live for the wrinkles they can add to the tax code on behalf of their favored interest groups! Or imagine him trying to kick the U.N. parasites out of our country. Think of the howls of outrage on behalf of suffering humanity from all the lefty academics, MSM bleeding hearts, love-the-world flower children, Eleanor Roosevelt worshippers, and bureaucratic globalizers!
Ain�t gonna happen. It was, after all, a conservative who said that politics is the art of the possible. Ron Paul is not possible. His candidacy belongs to the realm of dreams, not practical politics. But, oh, what sweet dreams!''
Derbyshire acknowledges that some conservatives will be attracted to the conservative policies Paul stands for, but he then dismisses those principles as unrealistic, unattainable, and hence a chimera, a distraction.
This line of argument sounds strangely familiar; we've been here before. The example that comes most readily to my mind is the recall election of 2003, in which Arnold Schwarzenegger was running against Republican -- and conservative -- Tom McClintock.
Ironically, in this op-ed piece which appeared at NRO during that campaign, the NRO editorial supported McClintock:
We know that McClintock is currently behind Schwarzenegger in the polls. But we also know that if elected, McClintock would fight the spenders and taxers in Sacramento. About Arnold Schwarzenegger we know no such thing.''
The op-ed writers were correct; Schwarzenegger has proven to be a disappointment to conservatives since taking office.
But the arguments against McClintock, solid conservative that he was, ran something along the lines of this:
For starters, Democrats know McClintock cannot win. They know that he has ran [sic] for statewide office twice before and lost both times. McClintock�s problem is not so much that he�s unknown but that Californians know about him and have rejected his candidacy time and again. Knowing this, a Democrat plot to boost McClintock�s candidacy at Schwarzenegger�s expense has already surfaced.''
And the reason McClintock was declared unelectable? He was 'too conservative', said Schwarzenegger's minions and the usual party hacks.
I don't live in California, hence I had no direct stake in that election, but I spent many an hour arguing online with Republicans on forums who kept arguing that McClintock should drop out and let Schwarzenegger have a clear field; after all, we all knew, said they, that a 'right-wing' type like McClintock was a loser. ''You don't know California; no right-winger can win. Schwarzenegger is the best we can get here. McClintock is a purist, he's too conservative, he'll lose. We need a moderate, somebody who is electable.'' So they got their wish: Schwarzenegger was elected. What's the old saying. be careful what you wish for?
This argument, that McClintock was unelectable, was the most respectable argument against the 'too-conservative, too-purist' McClintock; the less intelligent critics made constant cruel remarks about his slight strabismus, and ridiculed his appearance, much as some of Paul's more dimwitted opponents resort to cheap shots about his age or his haircut.
But it seems to me that Derbyshire is resorting to those old arguments about how being too conservative is political poison. How many times have I heard the 'pragmatists' drag out that quote from Bismarck about politics being ''the art of the possible"? In other words, we can only ever hope to elect candidates who hew to the accepted party line or who don't rock the boat too much, because to support principled men (or women) dooms us to unelectability and political oblivion. Ultimately the message underlying this mindset is that we are doomed to the status quo, however corrupt or pedestrian or hopeless or unacceptable that status quo is. The status quo, the presently accepted order of things, or some slight variant thereof, is all that is 'possible', and we are doomed to the 'possible', to more of the same, in other words.
Thanks but no thanks.
At some point, this mindset becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: we decree that anybody who is radical enough to try to remind us of the Founding Fathers' principles, or even the principles of a half-century ago, is 'unelectable' because he is quixotic or a dreamer or a wacko or a kook or a 'reactionary' or a purist or unelectable. I wonder how many people back in the 18th century said the same things about our Founding Fathers? It seems that a substantial percentage of people in that era were not in favor of our independence from Britain; no doubt they thought the Founding Fathers were extremists or 'fringe' elements. Most people prefer the 'devil they know', the status quo; no matter how unacceptable things are, we are used to them, and few people like real change; it's disruptive and it's frightening for many people. And it's especially frightening to those who have a vested interest in keeping things just as they are, for example, party functionaries and people who are insiders in the existing political structures. Or media people.
But if we continue to insist that only people who hew to the existing party line are 'electable' then we guarantee that only such people will ever be nominated and elected. How can we declare in advance that a certain candidate is unelectable? Why even have elections if we know in advance who can or cannot be elected? Let's just poll the party members and media elites and let them tell us who we want. That seems to be what our system amounts to, if these people can tell us in advance who we will or won't vote for.
The only way we can know who the people will choose or won't choose is to let them choose, and let them do so in the voting booth.
If I had my way, we'd stop running so many polls which tell us every other day who and what we want. Polls are intended to influence opinion and shape it as much as to check and report public opinion.
As others have said, the only polls that matter -- or should matter -- are the ones on election day, when we cast our ballots.
But the idea that conservatism cannot do anything but rubber-stamp and preserve the liberal status quo is to make conservatism merely a useless philosophy that does little but try feebly to slow down liberal change, and preserve yesterday's radical left innovations.
And Derbyshire's argument that we couldn't, say, throw out the U.N. because of the predictable howls of protest from the left means essentially that we can't do anything that upsets the left and provokes one of their frequent tantrums. If that is true, we are really and truly done for as a country; reversing some of the harm done by leftists is essential if this Republic is to survive, and we have been far too cowed by the left's hissy fits for too long. Let them howl like spoiled children; they've been allowed to blackmail us by means of their emotional abuse and the result is the chaotic society we live in today.
And the oft-repeated cliche that you can't turn the clock back -- who decreed that? I turn my clock back every fall, when we go back to standard time. I turn my clock back when I travel west across time zones. The idea that once liberals have done something it can never be undone is absurd.
We can nominate an 'electable' Republican who is no conservative, and 'win' as a party, but if conservatism loses, and we elect more of the same failed policies, the Republic loses. What do the fortunes of the party matter, if our country goes down? What have we 'won' if we get another open borders, globalist, big business, interventionist, disconnected elitist?
There's something to be said for daring, and stepping out of line, away from the failed status quo, and trying something different -- or, going back to the tried and true which did work for us for centuries. We know the status quo does not work. Doing the same thing repeatedly expecting a different result is madness, so the saying goes.
''If a conservative order is indeed to return, we ought to know the tradition which is attached to it, so we may rebuild society; if it is not to be restored, still we ought to understand conservative ideas so that we may rake from the ashes what scorched fragments of civilization escape the conflagration of unchecked will and appetite.'' - Russell Kirk
"We all want progress, but if you�re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." - C. S. Lewis
Labels: Conservatism, Conservatives, Party Politics, Presidential Candidates
0 comment Friday, September 12, 2014 | admin
This is no surprise to many people: the so-called 'McCain volunteer' who claimed she was robbed and assaulted by an Obama supporter has now apparently admitted the story was fabricated.
...According to Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard, Ashley Todd, 20, told investigators today that she "was not robbed and there was no 6'4" black male attacker."
Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield Wednesday night and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.
Todd claimed that the mugger even cut a backwards letter "B" in her cheek.
But today investigators say Todd confessed that the attack never happened.''
On her MySpace profile (her page is now apparently private) she said:
"Lying is the most fun a girl can have."
And it appears that at least one other young woman thinks along similar lines:
Police Say Girl Lied About Racism Charges
Morgan claims she has been the target of racism at West Bend East High School. The 15-year-old said she�s been pushed down the stairs, had eggs thrown at her and has been called racial slurs.
Police arrested Morgan at her grandmother�s home Monday afternoon. They later booked her at the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center.
Police want the district attorney to charge her with obstructing an officer for lying to investigators.
The police chief said the investigation proves Morgan made the whole story up.''
Can we guess which story will be the most publicized and sensationalized? The MSM are already making hay with the Ashley Todd hoax story. It will be milked for all it is worth; there will be more pontifications about 'White racism' and generalizations made against not only McCain supporters, but Republicans, 'conservatives' in general, and of course Whitey.
And the fake hate crime accusations by the Morgan girl? I will be surprised if she really is prosecuted for lying to police.
The story will be forgotten or buried on a back page, while the Todd story will go on and on, at least until the election is over with.
Compare and contrast: when a White person commits a hoax or accuses a fictitious minority attacker of something --remember the 'runaway bride' story in 2005, in which she claimed to have been abducted and taken to New Mexico by Hispanic kidnapers?
Of course the media made the most of that, and the ''Hispanic community'' demanded apologies. But when a minority person perpetrates a 'hate crime' hoax (which happens not infrequently) the story fades away, and at worst, the hoax perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist or is treated as someone in need of 'help' and 'understanding'. Meanwhile the 'mainstream media' sweep the hate crime hoaxes under the rug, refusing to even look at the apparently growing phenomenon of fake 'hate crime' accusations.
And let's not forget Crystal Gail Mangum, who is still trying to cash in on her proven lies about the 'attack' by the Duke Lacrosse team members.
We know why minorities make up stories of ''hate crimes'' that never happened, or which they themseves perpetrated ('racist' graffiti, nooses, swastikas, threatening notes or whatever). They obviously relish the victimhood role, which is so central to the identity of minorities these days. They may profit by their false claims. They certainly get 15 minutes (or much more) of 'fame' and attention. They get sympathy. And the bonus is that they are furthering the idea that Whitey is always out to get them. Usually the fake 'hate crimes' elicit some kind of community 'demonstration' about 'stopping the hate' and the usual race-baiting speeches are made. It is all part of a kind of ritual, and it is meant to reinforce the whole minority victimhood 'narrative' and the idea of Whites as aggressive and hateful bigots.
Meantime, the media still refuse to talk about the pattern of hate hoaxes.
Thus the other obvious pattern here is that the biased media are anything but objective or even-handed when it comes to reporting these things. In fact, the old media are complicit in the PC hoaxes; they are part and parcel of the whole fraud, by reporting and lending credence to false accusations and patent hoaxes -- when the lies are perpetrated by favored groups.
Most hoaxsters of any type are probably attention seekers, drama queens, histrionic personalities, or just messed-up people.
And that is probably the story with this Todd female. Judging by what she discloses of herself on her MySpace page, she seems to be a girl with a lot of what are colloquially termed 'issues.'
Is she a real McCain supporter or a Republican? To me, her writings don't sound like what I would think of a 'conservative' young woman, but then again, being a conservative doesn't necessarily coincide with being a Republican.
Is there more to the Todd story than just a messed-up, immature young woman looking for attention? We don't know. If she made the whole story up, she should be charged and she should have the book thrown at her. I have no excuses to make for her; she is certainly not helping our side at all; people like her are a liability to us. But I have a feeling she will be made an example of by the media and the justice system, while the Morgan girl will be given a pass. If we really had any kind of equality, each would be treated with similar sternness.
...According to Pittsburgh police spokeswoman Diane Richard, Ashley Todd, 20, told investigators today that she "was not robbed and there was no 6'4" black male attacker."
Todd initially told police that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield Wednesday night and that the suspect began beating her after seeing a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.
Todd claimed that the mugger even cut a backwards letter "B" in her cheek.
But today investigators say Todd confessed that the attack never happened.''
On her MySpace profile (her page is now apparently private) she said:
"Lying is the most fun a girl can have."
And it appears that at least one other young woman thinks along similar lines:
Police Say Girl Lied About Racism Charges
Morgan claims she has been the target of racism at West Bend East High School. The 15-year-old said she�s been pushed down the stairs, had eggs thrown at her and has been called racial slurs.
Police arrested Morgan at her grandmother�s home Monday afternoon. They later booked her at the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center.
Police want the district attorney to charge her with obstructing an officer for lying to investigators.
The police chief said the investigation proves Morgan made the whole story up.''
Can we guess which story will be the most publicized and sensationalized? The MSM are already making hay with the Ashley Todd hoax story. It will be milked for all it is worth; there will be more pontifications about 'White racism' and generalizations made against not only McCain supporters, but Republicans, 'conservatives' in general, and of course Whitey.
And the fake hate crime accusations by the Morgan girl? I will be surprised if she really is prosecuted for lying to police.
The story will be forgotten or buried on a back page, while the Todd story will go on and on, at least until the election is over with.
Compare and contrast: when a White person commits a hoax or accuses a fictitious minority attacker of something --remember the 'runaway bride' story in 2005, in which she claimed to have been abducted and taken to New Mexico by Hispanic kidnapers?
Of course the media made the most of that, and the ''Hispanic community'' demanded apologies. But when a minority person perpetrates a 'hate crime' hoax (which happens not infrequently) the story fades away, and at worst, the hoax perpetrator gets a slap on the wrist or is treated as someone in need of 'help' and 'understanding'. Meanwhile the 'mainstream media' sweep the hate crime hoaxes under the rug, refusing to even look at the apparently growing phenomenon of fake 'hate crime' accusations.
And let's not forget Crystal Gail Mangum, who is still trying to cash in on her proven lies about the 'attack' by the Duke Lacrosse team members.
We know why minorities make up stories of ''hate crimes'' that never happened, or which they themseves perpetrated ('racist' graffiti, nooses, swastikas, threatening notes or whatever). They obviously relish the victimhood role, which is so central to the identity of minorities these days. They may profit by their false claims. They certainly get 15 minutes (or much more) of 'fame' and attention. They get sympathy. And the bonus is that they are furthering the idea that Whitey is always out to get them. Usually the fake 'hate crimes' elicit some kind of community 'demonstration' about 'stopping the hate' and the usual race-baiting speeches are made. It is all part of a kind of ritual, and it is meant to reinforce the whole minority victimhood 'narrative' and the idea of Whites as aggressive and hateful bigots.
Meantime, the media still refuse to talk about the pattern of hate hoaxes.
Thus the other obvious pattern here is that the biased media are anything but objective or even-handed when it comes to reporting these things. In fact, the old media are complicit in the PC hoaxes; they are part and parcel of the whole fraud, by reporting and lending credence to false accusations and patent hoaxes -- when the lies are perpetrated by favored groups.
Most hoaxsters of any type are probably attention seekers, drama queens, histrionic personalities, or just messed-up people.
And that is probably the story with this Todd female. Judging by what she discloses of herself on her MySpace page, she seems to be a girl with a lot of what are colloquially termed 'issues.'
Is she a real McCain supporter or a Republican? To me, her writings don't sound like what I would think of a 'conservative' young woman, but then again, being a conservative doesn't necessarily coincide with being a Republican.
Is there more to the Todd story than just a messed-up, immature young woman looking for attention? We don't know. If she made the whole story up, she should be charged and she should have the book thrown at her. I have no excuses to make for her; she is certainly not helping our side at all; people like her are a liability to us. But I have a feeling she will be made an example of by the media and the justice system, while the Morgan girl will be given a pass. If we really had any kind of equality, each would be treated with similar sternness.
Labels: Hate Crime, Hoaxes, Media Bias, Party Politics, Political Correctness
0 comment Saturday, August 30, 2014 | admin
From an article called Not So Huddled Masses: Multiculturalism and Foreign Policy
by Scott McConnell
The modest contemporary literature on the connection between America�s immigration and foreign policies contains this assertion by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, from the introduction to their 1974 volume Ethnicity: Theory and Experience: "The immigration process is the single most important determinant of American foreign policy . . . This process regulates the ethnic composition of the American electorate. Foreign policy responds to that ethnic composition. It responds to other things as well, but probably first of all to the primary fact of ethnicity."
Yet, the authors noted a nearly complete absence of discussion of the issue, and they pursued it little themselves. Rather, they tossed it in as a supplement to their general argument: ethnicity was not going to wither away, leaving only colorful residues for annoyance or celebration. It would remain a primary form of social life in the United States.
Nonetheless, ethnicity played little role in the foreign policy battles of the 1960s and 1970s.''
This is an interesting piece, though I take issue with certain of his presuppositions.
He does correctly note that the 1965 Immigration Act was a turning point, and he makes the connection between the passage of that Act and the Civil Rights Revolution of the years preceding. On this blog I've mentioned that Ted Kennedy himself said that the Immigration Act was a natural extension of the Civil Rights Act, as if to imply that 'civil rights' for American-born blacks also extended to the 'civil right' to immigrate here for all nonwhite peoples. To continue immigration restriction, especially when the restrictions favored European immigrants, would be seen in the light of our newfound ideology as 'discrimination', and that, above all, was not to be allowed.
In any case, the backers of the 1965 act did not imagine huge demographic changes: there would be, they claimed, some modest increase in the number of Greek and Italian immigrants but not much else. The sheer inaccuracy of this prediction was already apparent by the early 1970s. The 1965 Act allowed entry of immigrants from any country, so long as they possessed certain job skills or family members living here or had been granted refugee status themselves.
The family reunification provision soon became the vital engine of immigrant selection. By the 1980s, it had greatly increased numbers of Asians and of Hispanics�the latter mostly from Mexico. The European population of the country was now in relative decline�from 87 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 2008. If immigration continues at present rates (and barring a long-term economic collapse, it is likely to), by 2040, Hispanics will make up a quarter of the American population.''
I think he, (along with most who discuss this subject of demographics) greatly underestimates the numbers of Mexicans and other Hispanics who are here now (who knows how many?) and the number who are still coming. The government has consistently, and I think deliberately, lowballed their figures so as to allay the concerns of many people. And obviously, the low estimates produce an inaccurate prediction of how many will be here by 2040. I am convinced that White Americans will be a minority before that date. All the signs are there.
McConnell discusses the role played by ethnicity in our past foreign policy. He describes how the various ethnic groups in America influenced our country towards neutrality in both world wars, as conflicting ethnic interests caused heated disagreements about the right course of action.
In any event, America�s intra-European divisions began to melt away quickly after Pearl Harbor, as military service became the defining generational event for American men born between 1914 and 1924. The mixed army squad of WASP, Italian, German, Jew, and Irish became a standard plot device for the popular World War II novel and film.''
But did those wartime movies simply reflect the reality of the 'melting pot' America which had unified around the patriotic cause? Or were the movies meant to try to create such a reality and influence the real world? There was probably some of the latter involved. I've noticed how many World War II era movies were heavy on the 'one big American family' storyline, with each European ethnicity being celebrated and given positive treatment. Did the old distrusts and animosities evaporate during the War, or did they just get swept under the carpet for the duration?
McConnell connects the new post-war ethnic activism to the Cold War, with many Eastern Europeans being very anti-Communist.
Eastern Europeans lobbied for the rollback of Soviet rule, enshrining it as a GOP platform plank if not a practical commitment. Americans of East European background remained staunchly anti-Communist long after anti-Communism surrendered its luster in the aftermath of Vietnam, allying with neoconservative Jews and hamstringing Nixon and Kissinger�s détente policy. As anti-Communism became an engine of Americanization, the Cold War showcased the hyphenated American.''
I've noted too that the Cold War also became further incentive for America to embrace egalitarianism and to aggressively push 'civil rights', as a response to Communist propaganda. The old Soviet Union found that for many Americans, our Achilles' heel was the racial inequality that they saw in America. And the Soviets, being fully committed to egalitarian ideology, believed that any inequalities were the result of oppression and discrimination, not of any innate differences among the races. So they focused on the racial divisions in our country, seeing this as a way of discrediting our claims of being a free country with 'liberty and justice for all.' The Soviets, in addition to emphasizing in their propaganda how we were a country of haves and have-nots, a country with extremes of wealth and poverty, liked to accuse us of being racially backward. And our elected officials seemed especially stung by these allegations from the Soviets. They felt that we had to show the world we were making progress on 'racial unity' and thus win the propaganda war, the public relations war.
Now, we seem committed to continuing this 'multicultural', proposition nation image that was so deliberately crafted in the 60s and onward.
McConnell downplays the potential foreign policy influence of Hispanics, seeing them as not particularly loyal to the Mexican state, which they see as corrupt. I wonder if he noticed all those demonstrations a few years ago, in which Mexicans (and other Latinos) aggressively carried their national flags? Has he ever been through a Mexican neighborhood and seen how many Mexican flags fly? Granted these are anecdotes, not hard evidence, but I would say the Latinos, whether Mexican or other Latin Americans, are highly ethnocentric, aggressively so, as they have always been. He confuses loyalty to a state or regime with loyalty to their ethnic nation and their culture.
How can it be that we have always been a neighbor to Mexico, yet few Americans seem to know much about Mexicans, other than the stereotypes and the pro-Hispanic propaganda put out by the RNC et al?
McConnell, like most conservatives, seems almost exclusively concerned with the fortunes of political parties rather than the well-being and the future of the American people, the core, American population. I get the sense that he thinks we are already history, or soon will be, and this does not bother him.
He cavalierly describes the end of 'Anglo-Protestantism':
For if solidifying the American nation required a re-invigorated Anglo-Protestant culture, the initiative would have to come to a considerable degree from Anglo-Protestants themselves. Reading Huntington (and Kennan as well), one cannot but sense that what they really seek is a revival of something resembling the American national elite of the 1940s and 1950s, exemplified by the foreign policy "wise men" of the Truman era (of whom Kennan was one). But that particular Protestant elite, whose cousins held the commanding positions of America�s industries and universities, was more or less banished from the national stage in the 1960s. Not only is its return impossible; it barely exists. What has replaced it as the dynamic core of American Protestantism is the evangelical culture Bacevich describes, rooted in the South and West, whose attitudes were epitomized by the Bush-Cheney administration.
If the emergence of an American elite able to cement a strong national identity and coherent national interest is unlikely, what options remain for a country now irreversibly multicultural? Huntington saw the choice as either imperialism or liberal cosmopolitanism, both of which would erode what is unique about America.''
He describes paleoconservatives (among which he includes immigration restrictionists and 'America Firsters') as being future losers in the 'immigration wars.'
And yet he does not seem to see that it is America as we have known it which is being lost.
I suppose this is the fruit of seeing America as a political entity or an ongoing 'proposition' rather than a nation made up of a specific core group of people and a continuous tradition.
by Scott McConnell
The modest contemporary literature on the connection between America�s immigration and foreign policies contains this assertion by Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, from the introduction to their 1974 volume Ethnicity: Theory and Experience: "The immigration process is the single most important determinant of American foreign policy . . . This process regulates the ethnic composition of the American electorate. Foreign policy responds to that ethnic composition. It responds to other things as well, but probably first of all to the primary fact of ethnicity."
Yet, the authors noted a nearly complete absence of discussion of the issue, and they pursued it little themselves. Rather, they tossed it in as a supplement to their general argument: ethnicity was not going to wither away, leaving only colorful residues for annoyance or celebration. It would remain a primary form of social life in the United States.
Nonetheless, ethnicity played little role in the foreign policy battles of the 1960s and 1970s.''
This is an interesting piece, though I take issue with certain of his presuppositions.
He does correctly note that the 1965 Immigration Act was a turning point, and he makes the connection between the passage of that Act and the Civil Rights Revolution of the years preceding. On this blog I've mentioned that Ted Kennedy himself said that the Immigration Act was a natural extension of the Civil Rights Act, as if to imply that 'civil rights' for American-born blacks also extended to the 'civil right' to immigrate here for all nonwhite peoples. To continue immigration restriction, especially when the restrictions favored European immigrants, would be seen in the light of our newfound ideology as 'discrimination', and that, above all, was not to be allowed.
In any case, the backers of the 1965 act did not imagine huge demographic changes: there would be, they claimed, some modest increase in the number of Greek and Italian immigrants but not much else. The sheer inaccuracy of this prediction was already apparent by the early 1970s. The 1965 Act allowed entry of immigrants from any country, so long as they possessed certain job skills or family members living here or had been granted refugee status themselves.
The family reunification provision soon became the vital engine of immigrant selection. By the 1980s, it had greatly increased numbers of Asians and of Hispanics�the latter mostly from Mexico. The European population of the country was now in relative decline�from 87 percent in 1970 to 66 percent in 2008. If immigration continues at present rates (and barring a long-term economic collapse, it is likely to), by 2040, Hispanics will make up a quarter of the American population.''
I think he, (along with most who discuss this subject of demographics) greatly underestimates the numbers of Mexicans and other Hispanics who are here now (who knows how many?) and the number who are still coming. The government has consistently, and I think deliberately, lowballed their figures so as to allay the concerns of many people. And obviously, the low estimates produce an inaccurate prediction of how many will be here by 2040. I am convinced that White Americans will be a minority before that date. All the signs are there.
McConnell discusses the role played by ethnicity in our past foreign policy. He describes how the various ethnic groups in America influenced our country towards neutrality in both world wars, as conflicting ethnic interests caused heated disagreements about the right course of action.
In any event, America�s intra-European divisions began to melt away quickly after Pearl Harbor, as military service became the defining generational event for American men born between 1914 and 1924. The mixed army squad of WASP, Italian, German, Jew, and Irish became a standard plot device for the popular World War II novel and film.''
But did those wartime movies simply reflect the reality of the 'melting pot' America which had unified around the patriotic cause? Or were the movies meant to try to create such a reality and influence the real world? There was probably some of the latter involved. I've noticed how many World War II era movies were heavy on the 'one big American family' storyline, with each European ethnicity being celebrated and given positive treatment. Did the old distrusts and animosities evaporate during the War, or did they just get swept under the carpet for the duration?
McConnell connects the new post-war ethnic activism to the Cold War, with many Eastern Europeans being very anti-Communist.
Eastern Europeans lobbied for the rollback of Soviet rule, enshrining it as a GOP platform plank if not a practical commitment. Americans of East European background remained staunchly anti-Communist long after anti-Communism surrendered its luster in the aftermath of Vietnam, allying with neoconservative Jews and hamstringing Nixon and Kissinger�s détente policy. As anti-Communism became an engine of Americanization, the Cold War showcased the hyphenated American.''
I've noted too that the Cold War also became further incentive for America to embrace egalitarianism and to aggressively push 'civil rights', as a response to Communist propaganda. The old Soviet Union found that for many Americans, our Achilles' heel was the racial inequality that they saw in America. And the Soviets, being fully committed to egalitarian ideology, believed that any inequalities were the result of oppression and discrimination, not of any innate differences among the races. So they focused on the racial divisions in our country, seeing this as a way of discrediting our claims of being a free country with 'liberty and justice for all.' The Soviets, in addition to emphasizing in their propaganda how we were a country of haves and have-nots, a country with extremes of wealth and poverty, liked to accuse us of being racially backward. And our elected officials seemed especially stung by these allegations from the Soviets. They felt that we had to show the world we were making progress on 'racial unity' and thus win the propaganda war, the public relations war.
Now, we seem committed to continuing this 'multicultural', proposition nation image that was so deliberately crafted in the 60s and onward.
McConnell downplays the potential foreign policy influence of Hispanics, seeing them as not particularly loyal to the Mexican state, which they see as corrupt. I wonder if he noticed all those demonstrations a few years ago, in which Mexicans (and other Latinos) aggressively carried their national flags? Has he ever been through a Mexican neighborhood and seen how many Mexican flags fly? Granted these are anecdotes, not hard evidence, but I would say the Latinos, whether Mexican or other Latin Americans, are highly ethnocentric, aggressively so, as they have always been. He confuses loyalty to a state or regime with loyalty to their ethnic nation and their culture.
How can it be that we have always been a neighbor to Mexico, yet few Americans seem to know much about Mexicans, other than the stereotypes and the pro-Hispanic propaganda put out by the RNC et al?
McConnell, like most conservatives, seems almost exclusively concerned with the fortunes of political parties rather than the well-being and the future of the American people, the core, American population. I get the sense that he thinks we are already history, or soon will be, and this does not bother him.
He cavalierly describes the end of 'Anglo-Protestantism':
For if solidifying the American nation required a re-invigorated Anglo-Protestant culture, the initiative would have to come to a considerable degree from Anglo-Protestants themselves. Reading Huntington (and Kennan as well), one cannot but sense that what they really seek is a revival of something resembling the American national elite of the 1940s and 1950s, exemplified by the foreign policy "wise men" of the Truman era (of whom Kennan was one). But that particular Protestant elite, whose cousins held the commanding positions of America�s industries and universities, was more or less banished from the national stage in the 1960s. Not only is its return impossible; it barely exists. What has replaced it as the dynamic core of American Protestantism is the evangelical culture Bacevich describes, rooted in the South and West, whose attitudes were epitomized by the Bush-Cheney administration.
If the emergence of an American elite able to cement a strong national identity and coherent national interest is unlikely, what options remain for a country now irreversibly multicultural? Huntington saw the choice as either imperialism or liberal cosmopolitanism, both of which would erode what is unique about America.''
He describes paleoconservatives (among which he includes immigration restrictionists and 'America Firsters') as being future losers in the 'immigration wars.'
And yet he does not seem to see that it is America as we have known it which is being lost.
I suppose this is the fruit of seeing America as a political entity or an ongoing 'proposition' rather than a nation made up of a specific core group of people and a continuous tradition.
Labels: American Identity, Demographics, Hart-Celler Act, Immigration Restrictionists, Mass Immigration, Party Politics, Political Correctness, Racial Dispossession