The Barnum & Bailey Circus of American public life is on display today with the coronation of King Tut, down to the identity group freak shows. My, my, how far we’ve fallen as a culture.

Bring back the vomitorium says I (I am well aware that the concept is misrepresented, but the misrepresentation is worth retaining. It’s a good one).

I have been able to avoid some of the solipsistic orgy over Obama—to say nothing of the obscene platitudes and paradoxes: The Ass With Ears spoke of “Preserving our individual freedoms” through “require[d] collective action.” Moron.

This morning, I gave a prerecorded interview to RT (Russia Today TV, where my Paleolibertarian Column features). It was a pleasant, polite, intellectually stimulating, and professionally conducted exchange.

Ideas were the focus, not personalities. It always is this way with RT.

My RT experience has been vastly different from my experience with American hosts. How? Well, the RT producer’s starting point is a familiarity with and interest in some of the work written by the interviewed individual. She’ll point out which aspects piqued her curiosity, what she’d like to explore on air, etc.

Wow. Intellectual curiosity and courtesy: What old-fashioned concepts!

On the other hand, inquiries stateside invariably begin with the host’s persona and perspective. As follows:

US host: “Like, hey, We want to interview you.”
Ilana: “Sure, what about?”
US host: “Check us out on YouTube. We don’t read.”

You are expected to come on a show and rap, move your mouth. If you’re as chatty and as self-absorbed as your hosts invariably are, then all’s copacetic. But if you’re a person who tends to use words sparingly and with attempted precision, you’re out of luck.

When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise. For her devoted mother, this perceptive chatterbox of a child reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.”

To that my friend, writer Rob Stove, responded: “If everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.”

Amen.

If he’s having a good day, your host may just exhibit a limited interest in you, not in your output, by sending you some obscure link or file that has caught his attention. The idea is that his inner world and current preoccupations should become your own.

In any event, if you want to interview me, do as RT does: Check out and choose a topic from my weekly output.

UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2013): The interview was on RT’s “The Truthseeker.” The process was fun and professional. The end result not ideal, as the sound conked-out on me and only a short snippet was harvested from the lengthy interview. There’s always a next time.

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I will be a guest on The Jay Taylor Radio Show (“Turning Hard Times into Good Times”).

Date: Tuesday, June 26, at 3:30 EST.
Topic: Into the Cannibal’s Pot, as it applies to private property rights, gold in South Africa, and the backdrop to the establishment of Apartheid.

Jay Taylor is a New-York based investor and broadcaster, who invests and broadcasts in the intellectual tradition of Austrian economics. We met at the New York Junto gathering, where I was the month of May’s featured speaker.

I was delighted to hear that the topic of the talk—”Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”—resonated with Jay.

Jay is a treasure. Tune in to support his work. (And, it goes without saying, go easy on me.)

UPDATE I (June 26): You can listen to the show here.

UPDATE II (June 27): An MP3 of my segment is here.

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In attendance at the New York Junto gathering, where I was the month of May’s featured speaker, was Jay Taylor, a New-York based investor and broadcaster who invests and broadcasts in the Austrian tradition.

I was delighted to hear that the topic of the talk—”Natural Rights in ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot’: Abstractions or Facts of Life?”—resonated with Jay.

Here’s what the New York money and media man has written:

“It is most important your insights are aired as widely as possible so I was going to have my producer at Voice America track you down if I didn’t hear back from you. [I reply to every single inquiry I get. It may take time---a week or two, or more---but I answer all civilized, normal, sane interlocutors. Few are the people who get struck off my list of interlocutors. I can count 2 individuals in total in the last 5 years. And that took years of displays of incorrigible, maladaptive and manipulative irrationality, the kind that verges on malevolence.]
I really loved your talk and the following discussion. It was very enlightening. What I would most like to achieve in our discussion is to help people see how the loss of property rights is dangerous to liberty and even our safety. And I would like people to realize that applies to America as well as anywhere else.
Then I would like to have that point hammered home to my many “liberal” friends who may have their hearts in the right place but just don’t understand human nature.
You opened up a huge number of philosophical questions that I am personally struggling with, having come from a very religious Mennonite background in Ohio. Where do Natural Rights come from? “We hold these truths to be self evident. That we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (I think it was originally property?)”
I think you are actually quite good at addressing topics and questions when they are raised. I thought you did a great job at NY Junto. … I think you did a great job of explaining the connection between private property and liberty. I will do everything I can to promote your book and the ideas contained therein…

I will be on The Jay Taylor Radio Program sometime in June.

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I’ll be on “Mickelson in the Morning,” with Jan Mickelson, of WHO News Radio, 1040. Topic: “ITCP.” Date: Jan 10, 2012, @ 9:00 AM Pacific Time.

I’ve been eager to meet Mr. Mickelson, a legendary Iowa broadcaster.

UPDATE (Jan. 10): “Powerful stuff … Ilana has done us a service in writing one of the best books I have read; one of the most profound evaluations of human nature, in the misdirected pursuit of a multicultural soup. Into the Cannibal’s Pot should be required reading in political science courses at the university level; it’s that good.”- JAN MICKELSON, WHO News Radio, 1040

In addition to his gracious words about Into the Cannibal’s Pot, Jan Mickelson told me today what I did not know: Pat Buchanan has been fired from the MSNBC cesspool. Mr. Buchanan denies it. Does anyone know for sure?

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As of this writing, Rep. Ron Paul—the ultimate outsider and quintessential anti-establishment presidential candidate—is the favorite to win the Iowa caucuses, scheduled to take place on January 3, 2012.

Polls such as Insider Advantage and Public Policy Polling place Paul in the lead, at 23 and 24 percent respectively, to Mitt Romney’s 20 percent and Newt Gingrich’s 14 percent. From ignoring Congressman Paul, the Republican Party establishment and mainstream media have moved to strategizing on how to discount his lead, and likely win, in Iowa.

Especially exercised is the Republican Party of Iowa. Its functionaries seem willing to delegitimize Iowa poll results—and the importance of the Iowa caucuses as harbingers of things to come in the national convention—if these don’t fall in line with the Party line. Apparently, caucus-goers who dare to “reward” candidates “who are unrepresentative of the broader party” deserve to be discredited.

What Grand Old Party apparatchiks cannot accept is that voters are coming around to reality dictated truths. And when “[t]hings fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

Against this backdrop, I was interviewed, on December 15, by the Russia Today (RT) television network, a broadcaster that does not abide herd behavior. Topics covered: The rise of Ron Paul, his rivals, and the Representative’s chances of parlaying his accomplishments in Iowa (to be repeated, we hope, in the Granite State and South Carolina) into a national win.

WATCH THE RT CLIP ON WND.COM.

My book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” is available from Amazon. (Don’t forget those reviews; they help this cause.)

A Kindle copy is also on sale.

Still better, shipping is free and prompt if you purchase Into the Cannibal’s Pot from The Publisher. Inquire about Xmas and New Year specials.

UPDATE ((Dec. 23): STAND UP FOR MIDDLE AMERICA. In reply to Jeff’s comment, here: You are right about Pat Buchanan’s mind. The man is brilliant. However, as for your recommendation to Ron Paul; it is mainstream and wrong. Utterly wrong. Paul should do the exact opposite of what you advocate. He should stand up for middle America. White America is not racist. That is pure propaganda. If anything, America is dangerously stupid about the reality of demographic differences on the ground.

You need to read my book, especially the section about the “Pathos of the Puritan.” (Look Inside the book.) Your argument is of the Left but has been adopted by the so-called Right. This waffle about low expectations is also the in-vogue leftist argument, conjured by the “Right” so as to both come across as politically palatable, and make excuses for 1) the militant anti-white sentiments blacks have adopted voluntarily, albeit with the encouragement of race huckster Democratic leaders. 2) Give credence to the leftist explanation for underachievement in this racial cohort: racism. All you have to do is expect more, and racial differences on the achievement variable will disappear. Hardly. Enough of this dangerous utopian day-dreaming.

Should Paul quit the obsequious apologetics and stand up for Americans—he would succeed mightily in galvanizing mainstream Republicans, heartland America. They are still a majority, if a waning one. The idiot Republicans will never win over the Left in this country with which most minorities identify. The GOP’s libertarian faction needs to veer Right and stand up for its base.

Granted, it is fashionable among the feminist Republican media bimbos and their beaus to castigate the GOP for being the party of Anglo-American males. Where’s the shame in that? That’s an acquired Mark of Cain; acquired through PC brainwashing. Who founded this country? The ancestors of this much-maligned majority. Were they so bad? Be a man. Stand up for America.

If Ron Paul proves unable to reject the racism accusations and stand up for an America that is defended as good and non-racist—he will be political toast.

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I was on Russia Today (RT), my favorite broadcaster, to discuss the Ron Paul surge. I am sorry I was unable to give you notice of the segment, but I’ve been tied up. I am sure it will pop up later. Send the embed if you find it; I’m no good at locating such things.

UPDATE I: To MyRon’s comment: If I watched myself do these things I’d never do them. I’m a writer, first and foremost. A shy one, at that. I thought RT’s Liz said “anti-war,” which is a variant on the “isolationism” libel against libertarian foreign policy,” but I could be wrong.

UPDATE II: MyRon Pauli Distills Tonight’s GOP Debate, in Sioux City, Iowa:

“I subjected myself to something almost as bad as waterboarding – watching the FOX NEWS DEBATE!

Rick and Michelle are out there trying to out do each other on protecting us from Partial Birth Abortions.

Perry was a bit better and almost funny as the Aw Shucks Redneck invoking Tim Tebow.

Huntsman, while no ideologue, actually tries to act like an adult instead of an idiotic panderer.

Mitt, the businessman, can lecture the Bloated Socialistic Newtonian on capitalism – but the voters looking for red meat cheap shots probably can’t understand a lick of economics.

Newt – that right wing socialistic egomaniac – oi vey – the true inheritor of and poster boy for Hoover Progressivism, Nixonian Price Controlling, and Dubya’s Compassionate Conservatism.

And then there is Ron Paul getting clobbered over how to deal with America’s number 1 threat – the IRANIAN NAVY (heck – what happened to the Nepalese Air Force, the Liectenstein Army, and the Maldive Islands Special Forces)? Strange because of my job that some of this hits home as well.

Well, I dozed off a few times waiting for Ahmadinejad’s Battleship to come sailing up the Potomac!”

**

This is MyRon Pauli signing off for BAB.

MyRon’s previous campaign dispatch for BAB was filed from his couch too. Read it.

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