Tag: politics

The long night of nationalism is over

How can the Greeks be blamed for turning to hard-core anti-immigrant parties? They have not been given any other choice besides national suicide:

Reeling from a vicious financial crisis that has cost them pensions and jobs, Greeks have been turning away in droves from the mainstream politicians they feel have let them down. Another political force is trying to tap the void, with blunt promises to “clean up” the country….

Black-clad Golden Dawn members have been storming across the campaign trail across Greece, stopping to chat at cafes and shops, handing out fliers promising security in crime-ridden neighborhoods – and vowing to kick out immigrants. Greece’s borders, they say, must be sealed with land mines to stop illegal crossing into a country that became the entry point for 90 percent of the European Union’s illegal migrants. Authorities estimate there are about 1 million migrants living in this country of 11 million. Appealing to populist sentiment, Golden Dawn has been gathering donations of food and clothing to deliver to the needy while pledging to make politicians accountable for the crisis. Ordinary Greeks are struggling under tough conditions demanded for rescue loan deals that have pushed the country into a fifth year of recession.

Given that the mainstream parties have sold them out to foreign banks on the one hand and African immigrants on the other, then installed an non-democratic government, Golden Dawn is now the only option left for the Greek electorate. And if the ruling mainstream parties respond by attempting to violate Greek self-determination, they’ll be responsible for the violence that will inevitably ensue. What we’re seeing here is that democracy has always been a means to the mainstream rather than an end in itself. Make no mistake, that applies to the USA every bit as much as it does to the Greeks, the only difference is that since there is no American nation, Americans have tolerated a much larger immigrant invasion, in proportional terms, than the Greeks are willing to accept.

The death of a coroner

Andrew Breitbart’s death gets curiouser and curiouser with a suspiciously convenient death:

Medical examiners in Los Angeles are investigating the possible poisoning death of one of their own officials who may have worked on the case of Andrew Breitbart, the conservative firebrand who died March 1, the same day Sheriff Joe Arpaio announced probable cause for forgery in President Obama’s birth certificate. Michael Cormier, a respected forensic technician for the Los Angeles County Coroner died under suspicious circumstances at his North Hollywood home April 20, the same day Breitbart’s cause of death was finally made public. “There are mysterious circumstances surrounding his death,” said Elizabeth Espinosa, a news reporter for KTLA-TV. “We’re told detectives are looking into the possibility that he was poisoned by arsenic.”

Now, I actively subscribe to the conspiracy theory of history, but there is one giant question about this particular purported conspiracy that I find troubling. Was Andrew Breitbart really that important? I mean, in terms of pundits, opinion leaders, and intellectuals influencing global public opinion, I don’t think I’d have had him in my top 100. It strikes me rather like trying to change the course of the NFL season by assassinating the punter for the Cleveland Browns.

This seemed apt

I thought this comment at In Mala Fide was particularly on target in light of the ongoing discussion at Wängsty’s place:

Jonathan Haidt has shown that most liberals are simply people who only care about care/harm and fairness, while discounting loyalty, respect for authority, and purity/sanctity. For liberals there are no transcendent moral values, only utility and fairness. Furthermore, other scholars have found that most people tend to rely less on those latter three moral foundations when they are comfortable and safe. Which means that liberalism is the natural and spontaneous result of living in a safe and prosperous society. Haidt has also found that liberals can’t even understand loyalty, respect for authority and purity/sanctity. So they tend to think their political opponents are just being massive dicks.

The landmark performance of the National Front in France yesterday makes it very clear that conventional left-liberalism can’t survive economic hard times. As unemployment continues to rise and economic pressure intensifies, people will quite naturally become far less indulgent of the various absurdities that the Left continues to push on the populations of the West. It’s simply not credible to argue “immigration is good for the economy” when the youth unemployment rate is north of 50 percent and 50 percent of college graduates are either unemployed or working at jobs for which their degrees are absolutely unnecessary.

History has always been cyclical and it is not different this time. I pointed out that peak atheism corresponded pretty closely with the tech boom, and I think it is safe to conclude that we have likely passed the peak of social liberalism and multiculturalism as well. The problem, of course, is that while some left-liberals will return to sanity, many more will move to the hard left, or what the Communists call “the fascist right” and all of the violence that necessarily entails.

It’s worth noting that according to Haidt, the only arguments to which liberals are likely to convincing are utility-based. You’ll note that those are the sorts of arguments upon which I tend to heavily rely when engaging in discourse with them.

“Never worked a day in her life”

James Taranto correctly excoriates the feminist philosophy that served as the foundation for Hilary Rosen’s epically stupid attack on Ann Romney:

In truth, anti-momism was the very heart of “The Feminine Mystique.” Friedan’s argument was that motherhood and homemaking were soul-deadening occupations and that pursuing a professional career was the way for a woman to “become complete.” She agreed with the midcentury misogynists that a stay-at-home mother was, in Friedan’s words, “castrative to her husband and sons.” But she emphasized that women were “fellow victims.”

The book might as well have been titled “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?” Today, of course, she can, and because feminism has entailed a diminution of male responsibility, she often has no choice. As we’ve noted, an increasing number of women are choosing domestic life, finding it a liberating alternative to working for a boss. But to do so requires a husband with considerable means.

Fifty years ago, Ann Romney’s life would have made her just a regular woman. Today, she is a countercultural figure–someone who lives in a way that the dominant culture regards with a hostile disdain. And she has chosen to live that way, which is why Hilary Rosen, as an intellectual heiress to Betty Friedan, regards her as a villain rather than a victim.

Taranto also points out something that I consider vital. He effectively draws the distinction between Romney’s accomplishments and Rosen’s: “Raising children is a lot of work, and we’d venture to say it’s more valuable work than, say, lobbying for the music industry or helping BP with its crisis communications, to name two of the highlights of Rosen’s career.”

I’ll go even farther. Bearing and raising children is far more important than anything any working woman has ever done in her professional career in the entire history of Mankind. The silly, short-sighted, white trash teen mothers on MTV are contributing more to the human race than the most intelligent, highly educated, and accomplished women have ever done for it.

If a woman wants to devote sixteen or more years of her life to “education”, then follow it up by sitting in a cubicle and transferring information from point A to point B, that’s her legal right. But it’s not doing anything for the human race, and indeed, considering the economically negative effects of the government agencies and human resources departments where women are inordinately employed, economic irrelevance is probably the best case scenario.

Linda Hirschman once claimed: ““The tasks of housekeeping and child-rearing are not worthy of the full time and talents of intelligent and educated human beings.”

But she had it wrong. She had it completely backwards, because there is absolutely nothing a woman, however educated and intelligent, can do that is more important or more vital than raising children. And while home-making not the physical equivalent of working in a coal mine, it is at least as laborious as most white collar employment. I have no affection for Captain Underoos and if he wins in November I think he will probably be even worse than Obama has been. But it is as evil as it is stupid to attack his wife for doing the one thing that the human race absolutely requires for its survival.

It’s over, it’s Romney

The intrepid Republicans are going into the election led by Captain Underoos:

Finally embracing reality, Rick Santorum decided to take the easy way out rather than the hard way, leaving the GOP presidential race before a potentially humiliating loss in his home state.

It’s nice to see Republican respect for tradition. They are certainly living up to their reputation as The Stupid Party. Even if Romney wins, Republicans will lose.

WND column

Republicans nominate Romney

Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.
– Narcotics Anonymous

Four years ago, the Republican Party faced what appeared to be a reasonably winnable presidential election. The expected Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, had blundered away what should have been a sure thing by her refusal to take a stand against the unpopular military occupations, as well as the failure of her campaign manager to understand the rules by which Democratic delegates were awarded, and so Republicans were facing a national neophyte who had never won a competitive election at any level.

I can’t disagree

But that’s hardly the salient point:

“I think if President Obama came out as gay, he wouldn’t lose the black vote,” a cheerful Van Jones told MSNBC this afternoon. “President Obama is not going to lose the black vote no matter what he does,” he added.

He’s certainly not going to lose it to Mitt Romney. But what a very strange thing to say, considering the rumors that have surrounded Obama in Chicago.

The transformation of the secular left

At the end of the day, the Left’s addiction to authoritarianism exceeds their commitment to secularism:

George Galloway is the founder and sole personality of a political party that he calls Respect. A veteran of the hard Left, he is the most prominent person in Britain to have made the transition from Communism to Islamism…. Everything is different now because Galloway has won a by-election in the constituency of Bradford West, and re-enters parliament as an independent. The Labour Party has held this seat since 1974 and expected to do so again. But Muslims, mostly from Pakistan, have replaced the old Labour voters in huge numbers and they like Galloway’s Islamism. Presenting himself as a pseudo-Muslim, he talked about Allah and dropped Arabic words into his speeches, had posters put up in Urdu, had supporters speaking in praise of sharia, and criticized his Labour opponent, a Muslim by birth, for drinking alcohol. A landslide followed. Galloway had a majority of over 10,000 and a swing from Labour to Respect of 36 percent.

According to the media, this swing is due to the discontent of the working class who would like the Labour Party to be old-style Socialists. Class resentment is in order but Muslim separatism and racism is taboo. Reporting the news of the by-election, the BBC couldn’t bring itself even to utter the word Muslim. A senior Labour Party ex-minister could only say there was a local “problem” and refused to elaborate what that might be even though a crowd of young men with beards could be seen on television swarming round Galloway.

I wish I could find it more amusing that the secular Left is, precisely as expected, being replaced by the Islamic Left. The abhorrent vaccuum is being filled. Galloway is a freak and we can hope that he is simply a one-off, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Power struggles in China

The fact that the battle is taking place behind the scenes and away from the news cameras doesn’t mean that it won’t have a serious impact on the geopolitical situation:

After three hours of eloquent and emotional answers in his final news conference at the National People’s Congress annual meeting this month, Wen uttered his public political masterstroke, reopening debate on one of the most tumultuous events in the Chinese Communist Party’s history and hammering the final nail in the coffin of his great rival, the now-deposed Chongqing Communist Party boss Bo Xilai. And in striking down Bo, Wen got his revenge on a family that had opposed him and his mentor countless times in the past.

Responding to a gently phrased question about Chongqing, Wen foreshadowed Bo’s political execution, a seismic leadership rupture announced the following day that continues to convulse China’s political landscape to an extent not seen since 1989. But the addendum that followed might be even more significant. Indirectly, but unmistakably, Wen defined Bo as man who wanted to repudiate China’s decades-long effort to reform its economy, open to the world, and allow its citizens to experience modernity. He framed the struggle over Bo’s legacy as a choice between urgent political reforms and “such historical tragedies as the Cultural Revolution,” culminating a 30-year battle for two radically different versions of China, of which Bo Xilai and Wen Jiabao are the ideological heirs. In Wen’s world, bringing down Bo is the first step in a battle between China’s Maoist past and a more democratic future as personified by his beloved mentor, 1980s Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang. His words blew open the facade of party unity that had held since the massacres of Tiananmen Square.

This October, the Communist Party will likely execute a once-in-a-decade leadership transition in which President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen hand over to a new team led by current Vice President Xi Jinping. The majority of leaders will retire from the elite Politburo Standing Committee, and the turnover will extend down through lower tiers of the Communist Party, the government, and the military. Wen hopes his words influence who gets key posts, what ideological course they will set, and how history records his own career.

The vicissitudes of civil war amongst the Chinese nomenklatura aside, I thought this was a particularly illuminating, if ironic, comment. “Hu taught his children to resist the idea, wired into the Communist Party psyche, that they had any particular hereditary right to high office.”

And thus we see the Ciceronian political cycle at work, as democracy, aristocracy, and tyranny all represent temporary phases rather than stases.