Tag: politics

Boston intolerance

Steve Sailer wonders if American intolerance is to blame for the Boston bombings:

We have to ask ourselves: What did we do wrong? How did American
intolerance alienate the Tsarnaev Brothers? Perhaps the political
climate was not welcoming enough, too conservative, ignorant,
xenophobic, and right-wing. A quick search shows that Cambridge, MA was
only the second most pro-Obama town in Massachusetts.

Let’s face it, if you found yourself living amongst the sort of moronic liberal pseudo-intellectuals that live in Cambridge, MA, you’d probably be more than a little tempted to turn indiscriminately homicidal too.

The sweetness of their tears

Savor the angry tears shed by the forcible disarmament fetishists at the New York Times.  Not even their constant waving of the false and bloody flag of Newton was enough to sway the American people into volunteering another step towards giving government a monopoly on gun violence.

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

 Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers. It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines.

Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”

Newtown, in the end, changed nothing; the overwhelming national consensus to tighten a ridiculously lax set of gun laws was stopped cold. That’s because the only thing that mattered to these lawmakers was a blind and unthinking fealty to the whims of the gun lobby.

The National Rifle Association once supported the expansion of background checks, but it decided this time that President Obama and gun-control advocates could not be allowed even a scintilla of a victory, no matter how sensible. That group, and others even more militant, wanted to make sure not one bill emerged from the Newtown shooting, and they got their way.

Their impotent rage oozes from every sentence in the article. It was one thing for Americans to ignore Hispanic drug dealers and black youths killing each other in their ethnic enclaves, and to spare no sympathy for white, middle-aged men shooting themselves in despair over their unemployment and divorces, but this involved cute little children, kindergarteners no less, and white ones at that!  About the only way to tug more effectively at America’s heartstrings would have been to advertise slaughtered puppies, kittens, and bunnies.

And America shed a few tears, collectively wiped at their eyes, then stood up and said: “Fuck you, we’re still not letting you take our guns, you totalitarian bastards.”

No wonder they’re upset.  Americans aren’t falling for the emotional pornography anymore. Now they’ll have no choice but to go for the brute force option and they know they aren’t assured of winning that way.  After all, there are a lot more of us than there are of them.

Molon labe.

Mailvox: on national libertarianism

“Maybe it doesn’t interest you but, I would really appreciate if you
could spell out what exactly it is that you oppose in National
Socialism.“

The Socialism.  I oppose 20 of the 25 points of the National Socialist political program, which is considerably more than the average Democrat or Republican does.

“Do you have a theory, or belief, or some posts on national libertarianism?”

I do.  I have long described myself as a Christian Libertarian, but this is a description that only makes much sense to Europeans, where Christian Democrat is still a meaningful political term rather than something rapidly approaching a contradiction-in-terms, if not yet an actual oxymoron. 

In terms of the US political spectrum, I have concluded that it would make more sense to describe myself as a National Libertarian, which some might erroneously conclude is synonymous with paleoconservative or some form of conservatism.

Therefore, I intend to begin a series of posts entitled National Liberty, which will address the subject of why National Libertarianism is not only not a misnomer, but is the only logically coherent form of libertarianism as well as the political ideology best suited for maximizing human freedom in a sustainable manner.

Elephants never learn

Dr. Carson is the GOP’s newest Magic Negro:

Dr. Benjamin Carson was a political unknown just weeks ago. Audience members at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland last week cheered Dr. Carson, on screen, after he said, “Let’s just say if you magically put me in the White House ” Then with a single speech delivered as President Obama looked stonily on, he was lofted into the conservative firmament as its newest star: a renowned neurosurgeon who is black and has the credibility to attack the president on health care.

In his speech at the National Prayer Breakfast last month, Dr. Carson criticized the health care overhaul and higher taxes on the rich, while warning that “the P.C. police are out in force at all times.”

Overnight, he was embraced by conservatives including those at The Wall Street Journal editorial page, which proclaimed, “Ben Carson for President” — a suggestion Dr. Carson helped feed at a high-profile gathering last weekend, the Conservative Political Action Conference. He was interrupted by sustained cheers when he coyly said, “Let’s just say if you magically put me in the White House…

I mean, didn’t they just go through this with what’s his name, the Federal Reserve guy, Alan Keyes?  I mean, J.C. Watts, that is to say, Colin Powell, or rather, Herman Cain. It is clear that a lot of Republicans are far more concerned with acquiring a useless anti-raciss card than they are with the direction of the country.  They are elevating totems rather than candidates, and worse, totems that will never be recognized by those they are seeking to placate.

US politics are now an identity game.  Democrats have already established that they are the brown, black, and yellow party, so unless Republicans realize that they are, whether they like it or not, the white party, and begin to plan their strategy accordingly, they not only cannot win intentionally, they aren’t really even in the game.  It’s like watching a rugby team trying to play football without bothering to learn what the rules are.

It is long past time for conservatives to realize that one cannot continue to play by centuries old Anglo-Saxon rules after one permits a large quantity of non-Anglos who neither know nor care about those rules to invade the playing field.  The great irony is that the Republicans of the sort one finds on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, who cling to the outdated notion of a creedal United States, genuinely consider themselves to be pragmatists.

I expect that like his predecessors, Dr. Carson will, sooner or later, inadvertently reveal himself to be considerably less conservative than all of his newfound fans ever imagined.

GOP pursues strategic suicide

Any party that is dumb enough to bank on that elusive conservative Hispanic vote deserves what it will get:

Republican opposition to legalizing the status of millions of illegal immigrants is crumbling in the nation’s capital as leading lawmakers in the party scramble to halt eroding support among Hispanic voters — a shift that is providing strong momentum for an overhaul of immigration laws.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a Tea Party Republican, on Tuesday became the latest to embrace a more welcoming approach, declaring to the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants that if they want to work in America, “then we will find a place for you.”

While he never uttered the word “citizenship” and said a secure border must come first, Mr. Paul strongly implied that citizenship would eventually be available to them.

It’s disappointing, but hardly surprising, that Mr. Paul’s conventional, (and in this case, erroneous), libertarian instincts would get the better of his economic and nationalist sensibilities.  America doesn’t need 11 million illegal immigrants working.  It doesn’t need 30 million legal immigrants working, for that matter.  Those who think they do clearly don’t understand supply, demand, and the consequences of increasing supply with regards to price.

One would think that Republicans would learn to rethink their actions any time the New York Times lines up behind them, but apparently one of the key aspects of being a Republican is never remembering what happened last time.

“His new message follows the publication
on Monday of a blistering report from the Republican National Committee
that urged the party’s members to champion an immigration overhaul that
Hispanics can embrace or risk seeing the party shrinking “to its core
constituencies only.””

Ronald Reagan once noted that he didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left him.  The Republican Party is now in the process of abandoning its core constituencies in favor of an imaginary and alien one.

Rabbit Rules of Order

Larry Correia engages in a long dance with liberals and in the process illustrates why it is a mistake to pay attention to their inevitable and invariably one-sided appeals to etiquette:

Here, let me break this down for you.  Not just this thread, but any thread where you argue with liberals.

Liberal 1: Attack, ATTACK! Attack, attack, attack! ATTACK!
Liberal 2: ATTACK! ATTACK!
Conservative: Defend.
Liberal 1: So rude!
Liberal 2: Yes, very rude. 

Larry Correia I
do believe she started it, thought Brad was full of it, and then asked
for examples. Provided. She didn’t think there was any bias, and now
several of us are demonstrating that is incorrect.
Or are you just going to do another hit and run, like whatserface? If
you don’t know much about the target, ridicule and attack. Claim your
moral superiority and call it a day?

As for my rudeness, oh well. I guess that is what happens after years
of being called a racist, sexist, wymyn hating, child killer, corporate
shill of the military industrial complex. So put your big girl panties
on and deal with it. :)

Cenate Pruitt (p.s. anyone who nonironically uses the phrase “political correctness” needs to be sent to a reeducation camp.)

I’m going out on a limb and guessing he doesn’t realize the
last US president to put people in camps was liberal icon, FDR, but hey,
whatever.

Remember, their entire game is not to prove that they are right. This is why they will blithely ignore the fact that you’ve conclusively proven their statements to be wrong and claim the irrelevance of the very point upon which they’d previously based their entire argument. It is to force you to back down and apologize, which, according to the Rabbit Rules of Order, means that you lost.

This is why, if you want to shut them up, all you have to do is a) force them to admit that they are wrong, or b) insist that they apologize for something.  They will usually vanish rather than do either, because, by the Rabbit Rules, either of those things is tantamount to losing.  Actually being wrong doesn’t matter because their is no objective reality; their concept of reality is entirely social and subjective.

And Larry, if you happen to see this, shoot me an email, please….

Who needs tokens?

Instapundit notes that Barack Obama’s cabinet is unexpectedly short on African descent:

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY WE’D HAVE A LILY-WHITE CABINET. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! CBC leader concerned Obama has named no blacks to new Cabinet. “Attorney General Eric Holder, appointed in Obama’s first term, remains the Obama administration’s only black Cabinet-level appointee. According to a Politics365 analysis released last week, that’s the fewest by any president over the last 38 years.”

Hey, if you’re the token, what need have you for other tokens?

Mailvox: Republican hatred of Ron Paul

Stickwick wonders why conservatives react in such a stereotypically liberal manner to Ron Paul:

I have a question about the conservative perception of Ron Paul. Rachel Lucas seems like a reasonable right-of-center person whose political views are moving towards libertarianism. In fact, she now refers to herself as a libertarian. However, she still hangs on to the idea of American interventionism. In a recent post she criticizes McCain for his criticism of Rand Paul and for his overly-interventionist policy, but agrees with Ace that *some* interventionism is necessary:

I don’t agree with it, but at least their position is stated reasonably. What I find odd is how her commenters are using this as an opportunity to dump all over Ron Paul. Here’s a typical example:

“For the record, I cannot STAND Ron Paul. Fiscally he makes sense, but in every other conceivable way he’s a senile, batshit crazy old fuck.”

Why do some right-of-center people get so vitriolic about Ron Paul? They go right past “I strongly disagree with his ideas on foreign policy,” and straight to “crazy old fuck.” This is exactly the sort of thing they denounce when the left gets personal in its attacks or calls right-of-center ideology a “mental disorder.”

Why do conservatives call Ron Paul crazy instead of just disagreeing with him? Would you shed some light on this?

It’s not at all hard to understand why so many conservatives hate Ron Paul with all the fury of a thousand suns.  The reason is that he shames them for their hypocrisy.  He reveals the inconsistency in their non-conservatism.  He forces them to confront the fact that they are not the proponents of small government and liberty they believe themselves to be.

Big government, international interventionist, and monetarist “conservatives” hate Ron Paul for exactly the same reason the Pharisees and Sadducees hated Jesus Christ.  Because he exposes their intrinsically false nature to themselves.  And the reason they dismiss him as crazy instead of responding rationally to the arguments he presents is because they know they cannot do so without losing.

Can’t say we weren’t warned

Some find significance in symbols:

Oh, dear. This is probably not the symbolism the White House wanted.

Hours after CIA Director John Brennan took the oath of office—behind closed doors, far away from the press, perhaps befitting his status as America’s top spy—the White House took pains to emphasize the symbolism of the ceremony.

“There’s one piece of this that I wanted to note for you,” spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters at their daily briefing. “Director Brennan was sworn in with his hand on an original draft of the Constitution that had George Washington’s personal handwriting and annotations on it, dating from 1787.”

Earnest said Brennan had asked for a document from the National Archives that would demonstrate the U.S. is a nation of laws.

“Director Brennan told the president that he made the request to the archives because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law as he took the oath of office as director of the CIA,” Earnest said.

The Constitution itself went into effect in 1789. But troublemaking blogger Marcy Wheeler points out that what was missing from the Constitution in 1787 is also quite symbolic: The Bill of Rights, which did not officially go into effect until December 1791 after ratification by states. (Caution: Marcy’s post has some strong language.)

That means: No freedom of speech and of the press, no right to bear arms, no Fourth Amendment ban on “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and no right to a jury trial.

How … symbolic?

It could be.  I find it more intriguing that Obama took both his oaths of office in private ceremonies after the first, public one was fluffed.

Kicking it old school

I have to admit, I rather like the cut of Paul the Younger’s jib:

In a rare, traditional filibuster, Sen. Rand Paul vowed to speak on the Senate floor “as long as it takes” to draw attention to his concerns about the Obama administration’s policy regarding the targeted killing of American terrorism suspects.

The Kentucky Republican took to the floor before noon Wednesday to block an expected vote on the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA, with aides saying he could continue for hours. Paul, beginning his remarks, said he would continue “until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our Constitution is important.”

“Are we so complacent with our rights that we would allow a president to say he might kill Americans?” Paul asked. “No one person, no one politician should be allowed … to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything we fundamentally believe in our country.”

Paul is absolutely right.  And it does not speak well of the Republican Party that so few of his fellow Senators are joining him in taking what should be the obvious position that the President of the United States cannot simply murder any American he wants whenever he wishes, without trial, sentencing, or even a warrant.