On Joseph Sobran's Death

I think the best way to remember Mr. Sobran (whom I know only from reading his writings - I never had any contact with the man) is to remember some good quotes from him. To the extent that he contributed to my political development, it was through the use of one-liners that summed up principles I believed in but had never been able to express so succinctly. He could get to the heart of issues in a way that allowed me to describe and defend my worldview from some of hte more vexing attacks. So here are a few that I remember:

"I’ve always believed there’s really no such thing as a double standard. When people appear to apply a double standard, it means they are actually applying a hidden single standard — one they don’t want to admit."

"I guess the label that suits me best is reactionary utopian. I want to go back to a better world that never quite existed." (This one is especially apt, because it allows a conservative to admit that he thinks we have lost something that we need to get back without having to fight the old "the good old days weren't perfect!" retort).

(from the same article as linked above) "You know you’re politically homeless when you go to a John Birch Society dinner and you feel you’re surrounded by well-meaning liberals. "

"Notice that the Tenth Amendment is one of the few passages in the Constitution in which the Federal judiciary hasn’t discovered reservoirs of penumbras and emanations. I wonder why."

(btw, yes, I am aware of some of the more - unsavory aspects of Mr. Sobran's writings - but now is not the time to dwell on them).

That is all.

New Link

Due to a request, I am now putting "Satellite News," a blog concerned largely with issuess relating to artificial satellites, on my blogroll.

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NO AMNESTY FOR ILLEGAL ALIENS! STOP THE DREAM ACT!

Lawrence Auster has a post on how to contact your Senators to tell them to block Harry Reid's attempt to put the DREAM Act into the Defense Reauthorization bill, as well as comments on why the DREAM Act is a terrible and dangerous bill.

Click here to read about it and to find out what to do.

I would connect you to the NumbersUSA site, but their pages appear to be having difficulties loading. I am presuming that this is because of increased traffic, which I think is a very good sign.

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Christine O'Donnell

Although I haven't heard much from her recently, I do remember watching Christine O'Donnell on Bill Maher's old program on ABC.

While I was never impressed overly much by her, I do think that anyone who can make Karl Rove blow a fuse is worth something.

The "dabbling in witchcraft" thing should, I think, blow over. O'Donnell has long since repudiated witchcraft and is an evangelical Christian, so I have a hard time believing that her previous experiences are going to turn off conservative Christian voters once it is clear to them that she has been redeemed from her past sins. The whole point of her "dabbling in witchcraft" comment was to indicate that she recognized that it was a bad thing and now avoids these things.

As for Rove, his big problem is that whatever his reservations about her were during the primary, to continue to harp on her deficiencies after her nomination is counter-productive. He seems almost determined to make certain that she loses because she beat the guy he wanted in, and that is bad sportsmanship. I saw Bill Kristol on a Fox News show, and his treatment was far more savvy, admitting to her problems, and that he would have voted for Castle as more electable, but then saying that she actually had a much better chance than we have been told and stating that he would support her in the general election no question.

Not that I mind Karl Rove criticizing the nominee; but if he does, it should be for substantive issues of policy that he wants her to change her position on, or, if he does want her to lose, it should be because of severe policy differences that make him prefer the Democrat. What makes Rove's treatment of her so bad is the fact that (a) it is not as if he has huge policy disagreements, and (b) it seems more driven by resentment over her defeating Castle than over a concern about her performance were she to be elected. His attitude seems to be "I said she was unelectable, and by God, I will make certain that if nominated she WILL be unelectable!"

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Florida 2000 Blog Postings by Nick Stix

Here,
here, and here are some really great articles about the misrepresentations that some leftists have made about the 2000 election problems in Florida.

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Quote for the Day:

If a woman walking around a locker room full of naked men isn’t sexual harassment, then the term means nothing more than yet another feminist power play.

- Nicholas Stix on the Ines Sainz "scandal"

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Thought on Liberalism and Islam

It has occurred to me that regardless of one's thoughts about Islam specifically, there is something strange in the liberal conviction that all religions can be "domesticated" to be liberal-friendly. One underlying current of all the talk about "Islamophobia" is the idea that "true Islam" is perfetly compatible with liberalism because in the end, all religion is the same, except for the extremists.

People who make the claim that all religious beliefs are the same, or that they all say pretty much the same thing, actually reveal that they have no respect for religion at all. In the end, they believe in secualr humanism, believe that it is so obvious that secular humanism is correct that everyone, deep down, really believes in that (or at least all people of goodwill), and that all religions ultimately boil down to secular humanism, and that what the official doctrines say really don't matter.

In short, most people who worry about "Islamophobia" do not take religion seriously (not just that they disbelieve the doctrines, they reject the notion that those doctrines have any real importance to those who believe in them), and therefore the concept that religious beliefs can be dangerous (as opposed to only extremists on any belief being dangerous) is foreign to them.

In the end, a lot of people assume that people of faith are no different than, e.g., Star Trek convention-goers, and therefore that differences in religious doctrine, rather than representing different beliefs about objective reality, are nothing more significant than opinions over whether or not the tie-in novels should be considered canon.

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New Link

I have just added a link to my blogroll to the blog "Today World News," a blog that contains interesting new stories from around the world. It isn't anything particularly political, it seems, but rather a nice aggregator if you are looking for interesting random stories of the day.

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New Book on Women in War

It has occurred to me that one problem that conservatives have in the culture war is that the leftists have most of the resources devoted to supporting their ideas on cultural issues, e.g. same-sex "marriage." One of the great things about the internet is that we can use it to find obscure sources that tell the other side of the story and then get the information that can be used to argue our case factually.

Kingsley Browne has an excellent tome, Co-ed Combat: The New Evidence That Women Shouldn't Fight the Nation's Wars, that I have recently discovered that explodes the myth that gender equality in fighting war is beneficial. It not only uses thought experiments, but actually presents evidence that disproves the assertions of the other side, cites specific cases where gender integration has caused problems, and points out how evidence that goes against the idea of gender equality is systematically pushed under the rug.

Click on the link above and buy a copy from Amazon, and support Glaivester with a referral fee!

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Shirley Sherrod vs Rodney King

A reader at VDARE points out that the famous Rodney King tape was more heavily edited than the Shirley Sherrod recording. But we aren't supposed to remember that fact, are we?

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Whites are Always Evil

When a white man kills immigrants, we are supposed to blame anti-illegal immigration rhetoric:

Hate Crimes Tied to Immigration Debate?
Subtitle: Civil Rights Group Says Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Driving Increase in Hate Crimes

When a black man kills white people, we are supposed to focus on white racism.

Conn. Gunman: 'I Wish I Could Have Killed More People'
Subtitle: Girlfriend of Connecticut Gunman Who Killed 9: Racial Harassment 'Would Make Somebody Go Crazy'

More from Steve Sailer:

Did the Hartford Massacre victims have it coming?
More Pavlovian News Analysis
Breaking News!

from Lawrence Auster:

The Big Lie, in its efflorescence
Eight whites murdered for their “racism” at Connecticut beer distributorship

from Dennis Mangan:

The Media's Anti-White Agenda

from Nicholas Stix:

Family: Racism caused Conn. gunman to snap

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Shirley Sherrod

First of all, I should say that I am appalled by the use of a selectively edited recording to impugn Ms. Sherrod's character. Racial McCarthyism is racial McCarthyism, and what was done to her was wrong, and to the extent that Mr. Breitbart's involvement in this involved a reckless disregard for the truth or worse, involved delberatley misleading people, he shuld be held in contempt.

Having said that, James Fulford has an interesting article on VDARE where he points out that Ms. Sherrod still is not exactly an unobjectionable figure, even if we have no reason to believe her to be racist.

I also think that his assertion that Breitbart should, under the liberal interpretation of the Constitution, be immunized from libel suits is a very good starting point to discuss the limits of free speech as it relates to relaying deliberately false information, or of information that was deliberately underchecked.

None of which i to say that she should have been let go for the statement she made, or for that matter for any radical political views she might be accused of having; as long as the job is civil service rather than appointed, her political views do not make firing her on false pretenses any more justifiable, nor should she be fired for her views (in the latter case, it would be different if she were a political appointee, e.g. secretary of HUD).

But the idea that she is not radical or objectionable at all may not stand up to close scrutiny.

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Let's Play a Game

The next time that Lawrence Auster has a post about Alt Right or that Dennis Mangan has a post about Jewish influence on American politics, how long do you think it will be before the other posts a response? I say six hours.

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Is Jewish Hypocrisy vis a vis Israel and the U.S. Really that Prevalent?

Recently, Dennis Mangan put up a post decrying a Jewish writer who said that Israel really didn't want friends who were nationalists. That is, who supported the right of their own nations to exist rather than just supporting Israel's.

This brought up an issue which is becoming somewhat bigger on the paleo, nationalist, and white nationalist right. Are Jews mostly hypocrites who want one standard for Israel and another for Gentile countries?

While it certainly is a convenient stand to take, and while blaming the decline of white America on Jewish perfidy creates an easy target, I think that the case for this is weaker than it may initially seem.

The problem is that while there are Jews who very strongly take Israel's side on any foreign policy issue, and Jews who very much want to disempower whites and replace them in order to multiculturalize every white country on the planet, they are by and large not the same Jews. Plenty of leftist Jews dislike Jewish Israel as much as they dislike white America and/or Europe. M.J. Rosenberg of TPMCafe comes to mind.

Anyone advocating a "one-state solution" where Israel would have to stop being a Jewish state is essentially wishing to do the same to Israel as the open borders crowd wants to do to the U.S.

And many of the more pro-Israel Jews are also very pro-U.S. Take Don Feder, for instance, who has described himself as "to the right of [Ariel] Sharon on Zionism, [and] to the right of Pat Buchanan on immigration and Americanism,"

The pro-Israel anti-white America (and Europe) position is taken largely by a small number of neocon or noeoliberal Jews. The reason why this has been picked up on as representative of Jewish hypocrisy in general is probably because paleoconservatism is, to a great extent, a reaction to neoconservatism. This has caused a much greeater focus on neoconservative positions than on the positions of any other sector of the political landscape. It has also caused a focus on non-neocons who take a position that is similar to that of the neocons on either Israel or the U.S., and assuyming essentially the neocon position on the other subject - or, alternately, combining each of the two positions (pro-Israel and anti-white America) one each espoused by two different Jewish people, and assuming a level of hypocrisy from that, as if both being Jewish meant that their opinions were, in essence, the opinion of one person.

In short, I think that the idea that Jewish positions are driven by different attitudes towards Israeli ethnic policy and U.S./European ethnic policy is not that applicable to most Jews.

That is all.

Obama Administration Tries to Stop Arizona from Punishing Illegal Immigrant Employers

So the Feds won't do the job, and now they are trying to stop anyone else from doing it?

I thought that punishing employers was what the liberals said we should be doing.

I especially liked this part:

A separate Arizona law penalizing employers of undocumented workers would "disrupt a careful balance that Congress struck" in the 1986 federal immigration act, the Justice Department told the court in a filing Friday.

What balance? There was an amnesty, and then no enforcement.

I also liked this part:

The Arizona law, passed in 2007, subjects employers to stiffer penalties than federal law and lacks safeguards that Congress provided against employment discrimination, government lawyers said.

Screw the antidiscrimination laws.

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The Problem with Gays in the Military - or, is Homosexuality More Enlightened than Heterosexuality?

*

A reader at VFR lays it out:

Congress is now moving to admit open homosexuals to the military. We're told that homosexuals are no more likely to engage in sexual misconduct or harassment than heterosexuals. That's debatable, but so what? Heterosexual men in the military don't bunk down and shower with the women. But homosexual men will indeed bunk down and shower with the other males if Obama gets his way. Ditto for lesbians and the other females. There would be universal outrage if heterosexual male soldiers demanded to shower with naked female soldiers, but naked male soldiers are expected to shower with homosexuals who might desire them. Female soldiers are expected to shower with lesbians.

And he sums it up in a way that no one ever has before (at least to my knowledge):

What we're being told, indirectly, is that homosexuality is a more enlightened form of sexuality... Heterosexuals can be barred from situations where sexually improper behavior might result, but homosexuals cannot. Indeed, they have a right not to be barred.

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Tax Striker vs. Illegal Immigration

Nicholas Stix at the VDARE blog has a good point.

Every single argument that is used against immigration enforcement can also be used against paying income taxes. Likewise, people who seem to insist that deportation should be treated under criminal justice presumptions rather than civil ones (that is, that people should be considered legally here until they are proven illegal) never seem to put the same thinking into filing out individual income tax forms.

While I do not advocate "tax striking" it does seem to me that as a thought experiment it provides a good counterpoint to those who demand amnesty for illegal aliens, and reveals their hypocrisy when they couch their terms in the impossibility of enforcement or in the unconstitutionality of effective enforcement.

That is all.

Thoughts on Rand Paul

Update: Lawrence Auster says that my assumptions on Rand Paul not knowing this question was going to be asked beforehand are incorrect. I will have to check this out more, as I have been rather busy and haven't had time to check everything out as fully as I should have. More on this as I check it out.

But yes, if he knew this was going to come up he should have %%#&&*^!! well prepared for it.

Original entry:

I pretty much agree with Rand Paul's assessment that extending anbtidiscrimination laws to private business is bad. I do think that Lawrence Auster's distinction (scroll down to the fourth, and as of now, last, comment by Auster ("LA") to see him make his point) between employmenbt and service (i.e. that people could be allowed to discriminate against people in hiring them for a job, but still be legally forced to accept them as customers) has some merit, although I never thought of the issue that way before.

I think that people who criticize Paul for stepping in it are somewhat correct. Having said that, Paul's problem is not, as Unqualified Offerings' Thoreau suggests, that Paul focused on the wrong aspect of racial issues with liberty to deal with. He didn't choose this topic, it was thrust on him. On the other hand, Paul could talk more about issues where his philosophy would disproportionately help black people and emphasize that, as a way of reducing the impact of issues such as this - in fact, it would be a good idea to have done so early on as a "vaccination" against issues like this later.

I think that Lawrence Auster has a much better point, that Paul (a) should have prepared for such questions in advance, and (b) should have avoided hostile forums until he had prepared.

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Thoughts on the Upcoming Movie MacGruber

Aside from the fact that the film is a parody of a TV show that ended 18 years ago, the fact that the TV trailer for the movie contains not one, but two jokes about "number two" gives me grave doubts about this movie.

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Sorry for Lack of Posts

Sorry. I've been worn out the past few weeks. I will try to get up a few posts this next week. I have big post about Austrian economics that I have saved as a draft, but I haven't added to it for a while.

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