Monthly Archives: October 2008

The NYT’s Half-Truths & Wholesale Lies About South Africa

Affirmative Action, Africa, Crime, Democracy, Israel, Media, South-Africa

My VDARE.COM column is up. Here’s an excerpt from the column, which I had titled “The NYT’s Half-Truths & Wholesale Lies About South Africa”:

“Fourteen years and approximately 300,000 murders after black rule devastated my homeland, the New York Times is shocked to discover that South Africa is fast disappearing down the same hole into which Rhodesia, rest in peace, was dropped. [Post-Apartheid South Africa has entered an Anxious Era, by Barry Bearak, October 5, 2008)

I guess some latitude is in order. It took decades and piles of dead bodies before Robert Mugabe lost luster in the eyes of the American MainStream Media [MSM]. By the time the megalomaniac Mugabe was conferred with honorary doctorates (1984 and 1986) and a knighthood (1994), he had already done his “best” work: slaughter an estimated 20,000 innocent Ndebele in Matabeleland (1983), with whose leader, Joshua Nkomo, he refused to share power.

Western conventional wisdom was, well, no wiser.”

Read the complete VDARE column.

Trash Trash ‘Joe the Plumber’

Elections 2008, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Philosophy, Taxation

The trashing of “Joe the Plumber” by the Left is uncanny. The defense Republicans offer of Joe is hopeless (like the defense offered up by the woman with the worst voice on TV and radio: Laura Ingraham.) When you have no first principles you are powerless to coherently defend a man’s right to his property.

Of course, proponents of natural rights suffer no such debilities.

Smear #1: “He’s not licensed”

State licensing is a guild system deployed to restrict entry into a trade, so as to keep the wages of a protected group artificially high. Licensing is ludicrous, especially in the case of trades.

Joe, who represents everything that’s good about America, says he doesn’t need a license to make a living. Unlike the ponces in politics, he is not forcing anyone to employ him. That’s the spirit. Don’t you hate those fat cats who want to control Joe’s destiny with meaningless stamps of officialdom?

Obama says no plumber earns so much as to worry about his tax plan. Hogwash. A plumber can look forward to earning a lot of money; they are never outsourced and are always in demand.

Smear #2: “His name isn’t even Joe!”

His name is Samuel Joe Wurzelbacher. I believe that in some parts of the US, people go by their middle names. Even if he were not “Joe,” why would that make him the object of derision and smears from parasites—politicians who’ve never done an honest day of work in their lives, and who live off others?

Smear #3: “He owes taxes”

The IRS is the criminal entity in the business of taking what is not theirs to take. In the process of preying on Americans, it has destroyed many lives. The 16th Amendment ought to be repealed. If generic Joe has taken on the IRS, he’s a hero. If he has held on to what is his for a little longer, well, then, he will soon be forced to hand it over.

The idea that a politician would make fun of his employer—Joe Citizen—is repulsive. Pitchforks anyone?

One more thing: The Republicans are grandstanding about Obama’s tax plans amounting to socialism. For the edification of GOP grandstanders, progressive taxation is socialism. In case Republicans don’t know it, we have a steep taxation system that distributes income. (Russia, I believe, has a flat tax.)

Although they could have lessened the socialism, they have not–life under the Republicans has seen a “slouching toward socialism,” perhaps not in direct taxation, but in borrowing and money printing. That’s how Republicans have funded their orgiastic spending. These stealth-like means are no different to taxation. One might argue that they are more destructive because more clandestine, allowing a greater increase in the national debt and deficit spending. The proof is in the Republicans’ record spending.

The Left’s Gallery of Cretins

Elections 2008, Intelligence, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Pseudo-intellectualism, The Zeitgeist

This is not an excerpt from my upcoming WND column; it’s a supplement to a line-up of Palin competitors: those who score way higher on the cretinism quotient than the governor.

In my journalism-school days one looked up to the brilliant and brave late Oriana Fallaci. Now, it’s mediocrities like Barbara Walters and colorectal crusader Katie Couric who’re considered cutting-edge clever. Among Walters’ prime picks for “Most Fascinating People List” were Paris Hilton, Victoria and David Beckham, and Justin Timberlake.

You’ll hear nothing but curtain calls for “Bawbawa.”

I grant lefties that if cleverness is the name of the game, then Elizabeth Hasselbeck is fair game. Other than being blond and bubbly, Hasselbeck’s conservative “credentials” amount to agitating against Don Imus and for breast cancer prevention and research, the Amber Alert Initiative, the war, and Our Leader.

On the other hand, the following is an excerpt from “The Left’s Gallery of Cretins”:

“Speaking of the Left’s intelligentsia, unlike [Mike] Taibbi and [Bill] Maher, who made a “case” against Palin’s candidacy by cussing, Joy Behar at least tried to “argue.” The result? The most originally asinine anti-Palin argument to date:

You know, the one thing that I don’t think anybody’s said yet is that she’s very mean to animals, this woman. Why does she have it in for these poor polar bear and the caribou and she aerial kills wolves? That’s a very mean thing to do. … I don’t think that’s very nice, do you? I think that that’s an important point we should all be looking at.

So now it’s Palin’s PETA papers that aren’t in order. Put it this way: If Rep. Ron Paul clubbed seals to death on ice floes; I’d still consider him a smashing potential president. (If he fired a trooper who abused his power, all the better.)”

“The Left’s Gallery of Cretins” is up on WND.

Obama On the “World’s” Resources

Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Socialism

I grow weary listening to the idiots Hussein and McCain. So, last night, I switched off the debate (the last one, thank God).

I did catch the ass Obama claim that the US uses the greatest share of the world’s apparently collectively owned oil and gas resources.

Two things:

1) The idea of private property is anathema to this man. (Let’s not kid ourselves: McCain is none the wiser.) Oil and gas are not communally owned; entrepreneurs use their privately owned property to extract these resources from the ground. The same, or other, people then use their private property to turn the useless smelly compounds they’ve extracted into stuff that powers the economy—and life itself.

2) Resources are not finite. So long as man is allowed to innovate, and is free to think and act, he will find ways to turn compounds that lie inert and useless in nature into vim for the economy.