Tag: politics

In defense of globalism

The Economist argues for openness, Hillary Clinton, and the corrupt anti-nationalist status quo:

Countering the wall-builders will require stronger rhetoric, bolder policies and smarter tactics. First, the rhetoric. Defenders of the open world order need to make their case more forthrightly. They must remind voters why NATO matters for America, why the EU matters for Europe, how free trade and openness to foreigners enrich societies, and why fighting terrorism effectively demands co-operation. Too many friends of globalisation are retreating, mumbling about “responsible nationalism”. Only a handful of politicians—Justin Trudeau in Canada, Emmanuel Macron in France—are brave enough to stand up for openness. Those who believe in it must fight for it.

They must also acknowledge, however, where globalisation needs work. Trade creates many losers, and rapid immigration can disrupt communities. But the best way to address these problems is not to throw up barriers. It is to devise bold policies that preserve the benefits of openness while alleviating its side-effects. Let goods and investment flow freely, but strengthen the social safety-net to offer support and new opportunities for those whose jobs are destroyed. To manage immigration flows better, invest in public infrastructure, ensure that immigrants work and allow for rules that limit surges of people (just as global trade rules allow countries to limit surges in imports). But don’t equate managing globalisation with abandoning it.

As for tactics, the question for pro-open types, who are found on both sides of the traditional left-right party divide, is how to win. The best approach will differ by country. In the Netherlands and Sweden, centrist parties have banded together to keep out nationalists. A similar alliance defeated the National Front’s Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off for France’s presidency in 2002, and may be needed again to beat his daughter in 2017. Britain may yet need a new party of the centre.

In America, where most is at stake, the answer must come from within the existing party structure. Republicans who are serious about resisting the anti-globalists should hold their noses and support Mrs Clinton. And Mrs Clinton herself, now that she has won the nomination, must champion openness clearly, rather than equivocating. Her choice of Tim Kaine, a Spanish-speaking globalist, as her running-mate is a good sign. But the polls are worryingly close. The future of the liberal world order depends on whether she succeeds.

The Economist correctly senses that the time for “the liberal world order” is rapidly running out. Notice how, like much of the conservative media and the cuckservative Republicans, the maintenance of the status quo is its only real principle and completely trumps all of their various ideologies. Everyone profiting from the current setup, from literal Socialist to small government Republican, is willing to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against anyone who would first stand for the benefit of his nation and his people.

The Economist is speaking with the voice of the transnational elite, who have no loyalty to any nation, who could not care less about Americans, or French, or British, or Chinese, or anyone else, so long as they are allowed to continue to prey upon them. It is not, as some would have it, an exclusively Jewish elite, but rather, an alliance of rapacious elites from every nation, who share an honor among thieves and defend each other at the expense of the various peoples they have been raping for at least four generations.

Globalism is an evil even greater than Communism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, or Feminism, because it is a trans-ideological meta-evil that can take advantage of any ideology except Nationalism. That is why Nationalism is the most effective response to it and that is why those who love either freedom or their own people should support the Nationalists of every nation and of every ideological stripe.

Hillary Clinton’s speech

This is an open thread to discuss Hillary Rodham Clinton’s speech at the DNC. Or her epileptic fit, neural seizure, or whatever else happens while she’s making it.

Meanwhile, Google expects everyone to believe that it was just a technical glitch that caused Donald Trump to disappear from the search results for “presidential candidates”.

We found a technical bug in Search where only the presidential candidates participating in an active primary election were appearing in a Knowledge Graph result. Because the Republican and Libertarian primaries have ended, those candidates did not appear. This bug was resolved early this morning.
 — Google Spokesperson

Yeah, that sounds entirely credible. Since we all know how neutral Google is when it comes to this election.

Meanwhile, John Scalzi appears to be considering a career as a comedian, because this is the third-funniest thing he’s ever written:

So, before Hillary Clinton puts a cap on the DNC convention with her appearance tonight, let me talk a little about what I think of her as a presidential nominee, (mostly) independent of the fact of Donald Trump as her opponent for the office. And to talk about her as a presidential nominee, I need to talk a little bit about me as a political being.

I want to talk about Hillary Clinton. But first, I need to talk about me! That’s even funnier than his claim to be a “Rockefeller Republican”. Or his declaration that “voting for Clinton” is “not only a preference, but a moral necessity”.

That was fast

Bernie Sanders is no longer a Democrat:

The nomination was barely sealed up at the Democratic National Convention before Bernie Sanders, who had campaigned against Hillary Clinton for the party’s nod, went back to being an Independent. Sanders, who considers himself, officially, an Independent in Congress because his views lean further left than the Democratic party’s platform, caucuses with Democrats. But until declaring an intention to run for the presidency in 2015, he had rarely, if ever, identified as a member of the Democratic Party.

I thought it was a little strange that someone who wasn’t a Democrat would come so close to winning the Democratic nomination, but then, Donald Trump was only a sometime Republican and that didn’t stop him from winning the Republican nomination.

It just tends to demonstrate the irrelevance of the parties and their nominal ideologies, I guess. But given the timing of this, I think we can safely count out Bernie for any serious campaigning on the Lizard Queen’s behalf.

The DNC vision for America

Yeah, letting these third-world-loving cretins continue running the country seems like a totally wonderful idea, doesn’t it. Do you still seriously doubt what the America 3: Darker and More Vibrant edition is going to be like?
  1. Stop all immigration.
  2. Replace the 1965 Immigration Act with a new Naturalization Act in line with the original one.
  3. Build the wall.
  4. Begin the mass deportations.
That’s what is required just to start Making America Great Again. You may not like the program, you may find it brutal and cruel, but it is what happens when hideously destructive policies have been adopted and allowed to run amok for 50 years.

As hard as it may be to accept, it’s a damned sight more civilized than either of the alternatives.

Alt Right vs conservative

The difference is material. As are the outcomes. On a not-entirely-unrelated note, Donald Trump answered 12 questions at The Donald sub-reddit yesterday. One of them was from Milo:

yiannopoulos_mMILO
America has a proud tradition of stealing the most brilliant and talented people from countries around the world for ourselves. Albert Einstein, Wernher von Braun, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Melania Trump… the list goes on and on. In recent years, however, H-1B visa abuse has become rampant. A program meant bring truly exceptional talent to America has been twisted by globalist politicians and corporations, allowing low-cost, short term labor to steal jobs from everyday Americans and take everything they learn back to their home countries. Will you curb H-1B abuse and make sure visas are going to people who want to become American, stay American, and make America great?

the-realDonaldTrump
I have put forward a detailed plan for H-1B reform to protect American workers which can viewed on the immigration paper on my website. My plan is the exact opposite of Crooked Hillary Clinton.

[–]MeowntainMan
For the lazy

  • Increase prevailing wage for H-1Bs. We graduate two times more Americans with STEM degrees each year than find STEM jobs, yet as much as two-thirds of entry-level hiring for IT jobs is accomplished through the H-1B program. More than half of H-1B visas are issued for the program’s lowest allowable wage level, and more than eighty percent for its bottom two. Raising the prevailing wage paid to H-1Bs will force companies to give these coveted entry-level jobs to the existing domestic pool of unemployed native and immigrant workers in the U.S., instead of flying in cheaper workers from overseas. This will improve the number of black, Hispanic and female workers in Silicon Valley who have been passed over in favor of the H-1B program. Mark Zuckerberg’s personal Senator, Marco Rubio, has a bill to triple H-1Bs that would decimate women and minorities.
  • Requirement to hire American workers first. Too many visas, like the H-1B, have no such requirement. In the year 2015, with 92 million Americans outside the workforce and incomes collapsing, we need companies to hire from the domestic pool of unemployed. Petitions for workers should be mailed to the unemployment office, not USCIS.

However, it was another answer that was more significant, as once more, Trump stressed the need to change both economic policy and foreign policy, linking both to the corrupt system of politics that is rigged against the interest of most Americans.


Americans in every party are tired of our rigged system and corrupt politicians, and want to reform our government so it no longer benefits the powerful at the expense of everyone else. They know I will fix it so it works for them and their families. Hillary Clinton’s message is that things will never change. My message is that things have to change, and they have to change right now.


We have to change a foreign policy that has led us to one economic disaster after another, and an economic policy that has failed our poorest citizens. We will never fix a rigged system by relying on the people who rigged it in the first place.


I am going to return the government to the people.


Together, we will Make America Great Again. 

Dud or warning shot?

Wikileaks releases 29 DNC voicemails:

Another shoe has been dropped by Wikileaks. On the night President Obama and Vice Presidential nominee Tim Kaine were scheduled to speak to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the anti-secrecy whistle-blower group released hacked voicemails of top Democratic officials. Wikileaks put up a page containing 29 mp3 files of calls, identified by phone number, running approximately 14 minutes combined.

None of the messages listened to by The Washington Times contained anything immediately obvious as embarrassing or incriminating. However, the very fact the DNC voicemail system has been hacked is embarrassing and could augur the release of far more damaging material later.

 Given the way Wikileaks likes to draw things out for maximum media impact, one would assume that the release of these innocuous messages is a warning shot, especially in light of how the Democrats and the bitter #NeverTrump die-hards have been attacking Wikileaks as a pawn of Vladimir Putin.

On the other hand, it could simply be a bluff because they don’t have anything more. Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Warning shot.

Wikileaks’ Julian Assange said that the organisation plans to release a “lot more” leaked material on Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in the run up to November’s presidential election.

Viva Catalunya

The Catalan Republic votes to secede from Spain

In the aftermath of last month’s Brexit vote, there was an outpouring of concern in Europe that the British decision would embolden similar separatist movements across the continent. Earlier Wednesday, this is precisely what happened when Catalan nationalists voted to approve a plan to secede from Spain, defying the nation’s Constitutional Court and challenging acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who is currently in political limbo as he struggles to form a government.

The decision was approved by 72 regional MPs out of 135. Ten MPs from the CSP group linked to Podemos, Partido Popular and Ciudadanos walked out of the assembly and the Socialists did not vote. A recent poll shows that 48% of the Catalan population currently supports independence compared with 43% against it.

The vote, symbolic as it may be, was one of defiance toward Madrid as Spain’s Constitutional Court had in recent days prohibited the regional parliament in Barcelona from voting on it. As Ansa reports, the resolution was presented by the pro-secessionist groups Junts Pel Si and CUP. The anti-secessionist parties – PP, Ciudadanos and PSC – have spoken out against the ”illegality” of the decision. PP parliamentary chief Xavier Garcia Albiol has said that the act is tantamount to a ”coup” against the government in Madrid and warned that there will be a price to pay for it. The head of the Socialist party, Pedro Sanchez, said there can be no democracy without common rules, while Albert Rivera, the Catalan-born leader of liberals Ciudadanos, described it as a attack on Spanish democracy. They both have rejected supporting Rajoy’s candidacy to become premier again.

Catalan regional president and pro-secessionist Carles Puidgemont instead says that the position taken by the regional MPs is ”legitimate” and has in recent months confirmed that the goal is to achieve an independent ”Catalan Republic” by the end of 2017.

Isn’t the double-talk from the anti-secessionists all too predictable? Democracy is about the will of the people, not “common rules”. And to call a representative vote that clearly has the support of the majority is not “an attack on Spanish democracy”, it is, rather, a democratic attack on Spanish imperialism.

One hopes that the conquered States of America who are only part of the USA due to military invasion and occupation will one day be permitted their own self-determination too. After all, they’ve been occupied by the USA for considerably less time than Catalonia has been occupied by Spain.

About those state polls

As I demonstrated yesterday, it’s too soon to talk about the state polls. But it’s NOT too early to talk about the trends in state polls. Here are the two battleground states in which polls have been released this week:

NV: Trump vs. Clinton KTNV Trump +5
OH: Trump vs. Clinton PPP (D) TIE (Trump +3 all four candidates)

Now, there aren’t enough previous Nevada polls for there to be a trend. But given that the earliest Ohio polls were as high as +7 for Hillary, it is apparent that there is a trend towards Trump, as that is 10 points of Trumpward movement. I will review the other battleground states as they come in, but for reference, their early high water marks are as follows:

PA: Clinton +15
VA: Clinton +17
FL: Trump +8, Clinton +13 (Florida was Trump, then heavy Clinton, nothing new since 7/11)
NC: Trump +6, Clinton +10 (same as Florida)
CO: Clinton +13

So, if my prediction of a Trumpslide is correct, we should see significant movement Trumpward in all five states. Virginia is particularly important; if Clinton can’t maintain a strong lead there despite selecting Virginia senator Tim Kaine, she is even more vulnerable than anyone imagines.

The failed case against the Trump-Putin conspiracy

The #NeverTrump crowd is increasingly panicked by Trump’s rise in the polls, and now they’re attempting increasingly unlikely disqualification attempts. Jeffrey Carr fact-checks Josh Marshall’s claims about Putin funding the Trump campaign:

A fact is defined as a “true piece of information”. How many of Josh’s facts were true?

  1. Trump’s debt load was a Bloomberg estimate, not a fact.
  2. Trump is highly reliant upon money from Russia. Open to interpretation, not a fact.
  3. Trump Soho took investment money from Russian criminals. Fact.
  4. Trump’s campaign manager used to work for Viktor Yanukovych when he was running for Prime Minister of Ukraine. Fact.
  5. Putin could put Carter Page, Trump’s foreign policy advisor, out of business at any time. Not only not a fact, but untrue and ridiculous on its face.
  6. Putin has aligned all state-controlled media behind Trump. False.
  7. The Trump Camp only cared about softening the platform on arming Ukraine. False.

For the record, I despise Donald Trump. I can’t imagine a worse candidate for President and I’m shocked and appalled that he is the Republican nominee. However, there’s no need to invent Russian conspiracies to make the Trump boogeyman appear worse than he is.

Two for seven. Not exactly a closed book. The irony, of course, is that we KNOW Putin is funding the Clinton Foundation. As usual, the very worst case against Trump that can be conceived is to claim he might do something Hillary Clinton is already doing.

I assume the claims are false simply due to the unreliability and irresponsible nature of the people making the charge. They’re desperate, and their claims are going to get increasingly weirder. But even if they were true, so what?

We already have 60 million foreigners interfering with the US elections. That’s why we have so many Democrats still in office. What is one more?

Conservatism in ruins

Andrew Klavan’s first thoughts on rebuilding conservatism:

The conservative movement has collapsed and is in ruins. Its vehicle for political expression, the Republican Party, is now in the hands of an authoritarian nationalist who has never read the Constitution and does not believe in free expression, free trade or the separation of powers. Its central vehicle for expression in the news media is in disarray as Fox News becomes embroiled in scandal. Even its defenders on talk radio and in the blogosphere are severely at odds as they are forced to choose whether to defend Trump as the lesser of two evils or to stand fast with the founding fathers against both terrible sides.

The conservative movement has collapsed and lies in ruins. And it has done so due to the deceit and dishonesty of conservative commentators like Andrew Klavan, who apparently feel the need to make provably false statements about everyone from Donald Trump to the Founding Fathers.

Let’s look at the three false statements in this one diagnostic paragraph alone:

  1. Donald Trump is not an authoritarian.
  2. Fox News has never been a central vehicle for expressing conservative views. It has, rather, pushed neoconnery as nominal conservatism while serving as a politically moderate alternative to the hard progressivism of the ABCNNBCBS cabal.
  3. The Founding Fathers believed in trade protectionism and a white America. Whether he gives a damn about the US Constitution or not, Donald Trump has as much or more in common with the Founding Fathers as the conservative movement does. The Constitution exists only to safeguard the unalienable rights of white Americans who are the posterity of the Founding Fathers, that is its sole purpose.
Now let’s look at Klavan’s proposal for rebuilding conservatism, which strangely enough, he provides without ever considering just why the movement is in ruins.

1. There is no substitute for victory. A political philosophy should be an outgrowth of moral values but it is not a moral value in itself. Its purpose is not to be good; its purpose is to be as good as it can be and still win power. A Christian may count it a victory when he is devoured by lions for his faith, but a conservative who is repeatedly devoured by the opposition in elections is just a self-satisfied schmuck. I am completely opposed to those — like Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam — who essentially argue  that conservatives must win by becoming watered-down liberals. But clearly, the methods by which we have been selling our philosophy to the voters have not just failed but failed utterly, and we should rethink them.

True enough, and yet Klavan observably knows so little about the history of conservatism in America that he doesn’t understand that conservatives have never had a philosophy proper. He obviously hasn’t read Russell Kirk, anyhow. That’s why they can’t sell conservatism to anyone anymore; it doesn’t even exist as a coherent self-contained philosophy. Conservatives have never been much more than philosophical parasites on the Left. Klavan should read Cuckservative; if nothing else it would bring him up to speed on the intellectual inadequacies of conservatism.

2. Win what minority types we can with the truth. The opposition likes to point out that too many conservatives are white men. They’re right — but only because blacks and women have been successfully sold a destructive bill of goods in leftist racialism and feminism. The facts are: black people are not oppressed by the police, women are not underpaid for the same work, white privilege is a destructive and racist myth, and true freedom means people you don’t like are going to say things you disagree with in ways you find offensive. These are hard sayings but they need to be said, and they don’t need to be said by conservatives to other conservatives, they need to be said by conservatives to blacks, women and sexual off-beats of all stripes. The Democrats have co-opted these people with destructive lies that make their lives worse. We can’t win them back by jumping on that bandwagon. We need to proudly, unapologetically (and politely) tell it like it is — to them, in their neighborhoods and organizations. We won’t win a lot of them. Not at first. But facts have a way of getting through over time — if you speak them courageously without being a jackass about it.

This is remarkable. And it’s a tactic doomed to failure; conservatives like Klavan can’t win anyone with the truth for the obvious reason that they don’t know the truth. They religiously subscribe to the idiotic lie of the Proposition Nation and they attempt to win over minorities that will never, ever, be won over in significant percentages by the alien ideals of 18th century whites. Klavan can’t explain historical anomalies that puncture his precious Ellis Island myth like the 1790 Naturalization Act, which means he can’t tell it like it is because he doesn’t actually know what it is.

The alternative is that he does know what it is and he is knowingly deceiving his fellow conservatives. But I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he is merely ignorant.

3. Fight the culture wars in the culture. The culture wars are problematical because too often conservatives come across as anti-freedom or bigoted. That makes victory tough. I feel passionately about some cultural issues and indifferent to others, but I believe all of them should be fought on a cultural and informational level rather than a political one. For instance, I believe that abortion is the taking of a human life and that government therefore has a right to forbid it. But just speaking bluntly and honestly, I don’t think I can win that fight in the political arena right now. Happily, the truth may do what politics cannot. The truth is on my side and the more the truth gets out about what abortion looks like, how it’s done, and who the people who support it are, the more the public will know that it is unacceptable. Then we can win politically. As for sex issues, I confess I care not at all about other people’s sexuality (I’m so deeply immersed in my own), but I do care very deeply about religious liberty and the freedom not to participate in what you abhor. That’s a fight we can win and we should argue it everywhere as a freedom issue.

Correct concept, inept execution. Winning the culture war is NOT getting the truth out. It is rhetorically convincing others what the truth is. This is why the arts are the most vitally important battleground in the cultural war.

4. Some class occasionally would be nice. Conservatives have been all but banned from universities, the news media and show business. In response, we formed our own media in blogs, talk radio and Fox. Those are great venues for informing our own, but we could use some outreach to open-minded Democrats. I’ve wasted too much breath trying to convince conservatives that art is good and can change the world over time. They just won’t believe me. But could we maybe agree that screaming at people and calling them evil and talking like a belligerent loudmouth know-it-all is not always the best way to bring them over to your side? No, huh. Well, it was just a thought.

For fuck’s sake. He’s another hapless tone policeman. This is why the Alt Right is going to win; because we don’t give a quantum of a damn about “class”. Someone once told me the important thing was “to win with grace and style”. No, the important thing is to win, even if you have to get bloody and dirty in the process. Klavan, like a good conservative, is far more interested in going down to noble defeat and surrendering while wearing a nice clean uniform than he is with winning.

It very much looks to me right now as if Trump is going to lose this election on pure incompetence and mean spirit. That might actually make it easier for conservatives to regroup in the ruins of the Republican Party. If he wins, we may need a new party of our own. But whichever way things go, I think we need to open a discussion about how conservatives can not only remain conservative but also win elections in modern America.

Is he even watching the political conventions? This sort of wishful thinking is why no one should bother paying any attention to a cuckservative like Klavan now or in the future. Conservatism is dying. Its diseased remnants are flocking to the progressives, as we always knew they would. And we watch them go with dry eyes and a grim smile, because we don’t need a bunch of useless cucks and moderates who were always happier shooting at their own side than the enemy.

I have never been a conservative. I will never be a conservative. I am delighted to see the conservative movement crumbling into dust. Conservatives conserve nothing, accomplish nothing, and stand for nothing. They will not defend the Church, they will not defend America, and they will not defend the West.

The Alt Right will. Join us, if you have the steel.