Monthly Archives: March 2010

Updated: Fascism Rising: Demanding Your Data

Constitution, Fascism, Government, Individual Rights, Regulation, The State

The Constitution allows the state to count people once every ten years; it does not authorize name or information taking. The Census Bureau counts and collects information about us EVERY YEAR, all year round. There is no constitutional warrant for this intrusion, yet we accept and submit to it.
Jerry Day of the Matrix News Network advises that you ask the snots where did they derive the authority to demand your private data; show them a copy of the Constitution and request that they point to the part that authorizes their intrusion. His YouTube has had 1,237,101 views.
Did you know that virtually every government data base has either been lost, hacked or compromised? Mr. Day’s questions to the fascists who’re in violation of our 4th, and a lot more, are devastating. The bureaucrats don’t have to answer to anyone.

Update: IT HAS ARRIVED. Robert M. Groves, Director, US Census Bureau, informs this household in advance that “About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form. … Please fill it out and mail it in promptly.” And in case you doubt that the welfare and the fascist arms of the state work in tandem: “Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.”

For those who’ve compared resistance to the Census to tax objectors, there is no reference in the notice to a law enforcing this extraction of information. Taxation, by the way, is legal, if immoral—you flout the law at tremendous risk. But if there is no law behind the Census, perhaps the Constitution can prevail and resistance is worthwhile. Since I must both write a WND column for tomorrow and compete a book, I will leave the research to the clever posters of BAB.

Update III: Glenn Suggests Geert A Fascist (& European Rightists R Surprised)

Europe, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Race

I caught the late-night iteration of the Glenn Beck Show, in which he insinuated that Geert Wilders was of the “far right,” and that the European far right was fascist. See for yourself.

Defunct link:

Functioning one:

Glenn here is aping the thinking of the likes of Mark Steyn, Daniel Hannan, and other neoconservatives: all disavow any reclamation of national identity when done by Europeans. Neoconservatives are multiculturalists by default, by which is meant that, while fussing ceaselessly against official multiculturalism, neoconservatives motivate for that hollow concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.” There is nothing new about that.

See “Get With The Global Program, Gaul.”

Update I (March 9): Note please that the allusion above was to the neoconservative’s deracinated “thinking” Glenn has assimilated vis-a-vis nationhood and national identity. I do not know who said a good word about Wilders and how it was grounded philosophically, since the reader hereunder does not substantiate his assertion. However, it is one thing to defend Wilders’ right to free speech. That’s dead easy and doesn’t demand much mental effort. It is quite another to tackle Wilders’ refusal, in the name of Western tolerance, to prostrate his patriotism and his very survival—and the steps he wishes to take to that end.

Neoconservatives generally disavow, even mock, European reclamation of identity, with hackneyed, shallow assertions of American superiority: “Americans are so much better than they, as we ‘assimilate’ everyone into our [already dissolved] culture.” That would be a vintage neocon argument.

“Get With The Global Program, Gaul,” and other articles, has dealt with these nuanced neoconservative deceptions.

See what you think of Larry Auster’s dissection of Steyn. Read “Steyn calls for the destruction of Europe.” And here is the Auster Steyn archive. You really have to look beyond the Steyn pizazz and analyze what the man says.

Update II: The multiculturalims aspect: It exemplifies a seductively shallow aspect readers find appealing in the neoconservative’s argumentation arsenal.

Formulaically, they will finger multiculturalism and the newcomer’s failure to assimilate in a gamut of problems—from what they dub anti-Americanism to terrorism. Neoconservatives, however, resolutely resist dealing with the Putman findings, according to which racial and ethnic diversity mess with people’s minds—especially the host population—and makes them miserable and dysfunctional.

Update III (Mar. 10): I have updated the original, defunct YouTube embed with the functioning one provided by Robert. As Ms. West alleges here, Fox News removed the unreasoned Beck rant. Surprising to me is the surprise evinced by European rightists, and trackers of all things USA, at the denunciation of their positions by Chuckie Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. The latter—together with Hannan, Steyn, etc.—are completely congruent and consistent.

For the European Right “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”—that’s neoconservative Francis Fukuyama’s derisive description.

My readers are also having a hard time with the distinctions I’ve tried to draw so far.

BECK VS. BURKE. With respect to the Enlightenment and Schmidt’s comments: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke provides a “compelling presentation of historically-based conservatism.” Russell Kirk said about “Reflections” that it “burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes.” The Founders brought a lot of Burke to the republican table, but, for obvious reasons, our countrymen (Beck is representative) know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution.

You can guess who it is that I prefer as a historical figure and social theorist. To quote my friend Paul Gottfried, it is not “the peripatetic troublemaker Paine.”

Update III: Glenn Suggests Geert A Fascist (& European Rightists R Surprised)

Europe, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Race

I caught the late-night iteration of the Glenn Beck Show, in which he insinuated that Geert Wilders was of the “far right,” and that the European far right was fascist. See for yourself.

Defunct link:

Functioning one:

Glenn here is aping the thinking of the likes of Mark Steyn, Daniel Hannan, and other neoconservatives: all disavow any reclamation of national identity when done by Europeans. Neoconservatives are multiculturalists by default, by which is meant that, while fussing ceaselessly against official multiculturalism, neoconservatives motivate for that hollow concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.” There is nothing new about that.

See “Get With The Global Program, Gaul.”

Update I (March 9): Note please that the allusion above was to the neoconservative’s deracinated “thinking” Glenn has assimilated vis-a-vis nationhood and national identity. I do not know who said a good word about Wilders and how it was grounded philosophically, since the reader hereunder does not substantiate his assertion. However, it is one thing to defend Wilders’ right to free speech. That’s dead easy and doesn’t demand much mental effort. It is quite another to tackle Wilders’ refusal, in the name of Western tolerance, to prostrate his patriotism and his very survival—and the steps he wishes to take to that end.

Neoconservatives generally disavow, even mock, European reclamation of identity, with hackneyed, shallow assertions of American superiority: “Americans are so much better than they, as we ‘assimilate’ everyone into our [already dissolved] culture.” That would be a vintage neocon argument.

“Get With The Global Program, Gaul,” and other articles, has dealt with these nuanced neoconservative deceptions.

See what you think of Larry Auster’s dissection of Steyn. Read “Steyn calls for the destruction of Europe.” And here is the Auster Steyn archive. You really have to look beyond the Steyn pizazz and analyze what the man says.

Update II: The multiculturalims aspect: It exemplifies a seductively shallow aspect readers find appealing in the neoconservative’s argumentation arsenal.

Formulaically, they will finger multiculturalism and the newcomer’s failure to assimilate in a gamut of problems—from what they dub anti-Americanism to terrorism. Neoconservatives, however, resolutely resist dealing with the Putman findings, according to which racial and ethnic diversity mess with people’s minds—especially the host population—and makes them miserable and dysfunctional.

Update III (Mar. 10): I have updated the original, defunct YouTube embed with the functioning one provided by Robert. As Ms. West alleges here, Fox News removed the unreasoned Beck rant. Surprising to me is the surprise evinced by European rightists, and trackers of all things USA, at the denunciation of their positions by Chuckie Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. The latter—together with Hannan, Steyn, etc.—are completely congruent and consistent.

For the European Right “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”—that’s neoconservative Francis Fukuyama’s derisive description.

My readers are also having a hard time with the distinctions I’ve tried to draw so far.

BECK VS. BURKE. With respect to the Enlightenment and Schmidt’s comments: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke provides a “compelling presentation of historically-based conservatism.” Russell Kirk said about “Reflections” that it “burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes.” The Founders brought a lot of Burke to the republican table, but, for obvious reasons, our countrymen (Beck is representative) know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution.

You can guess who it is that I prefer as a historical figure and social theorist. To quote my friend Paul Gottfried, it is not “the peripatetic troublemaker Paine.”

Iraq Wants What … Saddam Provided

Bush, Democracy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Iraq, Neoconservatism, War

The poor Iraqis have bought what our crooked politicians and theirs have impressed upon them with the aid of smart bombs and a lot of suffering: If you brave bombs and ink a ballot, you’ve struck a blow for freedom.

Freedom is the exact opposite. “Casting a vote to give someone power does not make a man free; freedom is the knowledge that even if one abstains from that ritual, nobody can exercise power over one’s life, liberty, and property.”

In Iraq, ink and blood stains mingle, just like the Jacobins like it. Elections yesterday left Iraq 40 people short—they died for democracy by improvised bombs. “Authorities in Baghdad announced a curfew,” which Americans, the public and the pols, do not consider a limitation on liberty given the monumental importance of the act of voting.

AND LISTEN TO THIS:

About 6,200 candidates from more than 80 political entities are vying for seats. [Read: a steady income from the USA] At least a quarter of the positions — 82 — are guaranteed to go to women, and eight more have been allocated for minorities. [We’ve Americanized them: they abide by quotas; yippee.] They include five set aside for Christians and one each for the Shabak, Sabaeans (Mandaeans), and Yazidis.

With so many candidates fighting to get in on the political game, no wonder “the leading political parties are expected to take until late spring or even summer to strike the bargains needed to form a coalition government.“

STRONG CONTENDERS ARE “Maliki’s State of Law alliance, former prime minister Iyad Allawi’s Iraqiya party, or the Iraq National Alliance, which includes Ahmed Chalabi and radical Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr. … The two main Kurdish parties and a breakaway Kurdish group are expected to be a key part of any coalition.” [McClatchy]

Chalabi, right-hand man to the neoconservatives in their push for war in 2003, is striking another blow for freedom. He heads the “Justice and Accountability Commission, tasked with purging Baathists from political life.” It has “barred hundreds of candidates from running in these elections.” Way to go.

So what do The People want from the hordes of politicians they are electing?

CNN’s most excellent Arwa Damon took the popular pulse:

“We want basic services (like water and electricity) and jobs for our husbands and children,” Umm Rasha told CNN at a campaign rally in central Baghdad.
“And someone to deal with the displaced people, the retirees, and the widows,” her sister Umm Hassan chimes in. … “We want stability … security,” said a young man who didn’t want to be named. “Even now, there are still kidnappings and bombings.”

Essentially impoverished traumatized Iraqi’s, whom one can forgive for wanting so much from the state, crave what Americans extract from their social democracy—and what Saddam provided to a greater degree than the Obama/Bush approved goons.

If the state is going to provide, it must also control.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Under the socialist Ba?th Party, the economy was dominated by the state, with strict bureaucratic controls and centralized planning. Between 1987 and 1990 the economy liberalized somewhat in an attempt to encourage private investment

Although Saddam’s judiciary was relatively independent, “The political system, however, operated with little reference to constitutional provisions, and from 1979 to 2003 President Saddam Hussein wielded virtually unlimited power.”

But before the radical G. I. Jacobins arrived in 2003, Iraq was undergoing slow, evolutionary progress, much like in Iran—:

In 1989 a committee was set up to draft a new, more democratic constitution, which would extend the power of the National Assembly and permit the formation of new political parties. A draft constitution was prepared and approved by the National Assembly in 1990 …

During Saddam HEALTH AND WELFARE were heaven on earth; it’s something Iraqis want but are now without:

Between 1958 and 1991 health care was free, welfare services were expanded, and considerable sums were invested in housing for the poor and for improvements to domestic water and electrical services. Almost all medical facilities were controlled by the government, and most physicians were (and still are) employed by the Ministry of Health. Shortages of medical personnel were felt only in rural areas. Cities and towns had good hospitals, and clinics and dispensaries served most rural areas. Still, Iraq had a high incidence of infectious diseases such as malaria and typhoid, caused by rural water supplies contaminated largely by periodic flooding. Substantial progress, however, was made in controlling malaria. … After 2003 the health care system relied heavily on donations from abroad and the efforts of international aid organizations.

What do you know? Saddam’s socialist Ba’ath regime had a little more than K to 12. Darn dem Arabs:

Britannica again: “The Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research have been responsible for the rapid expansion of education since the 1958 revolution. The number of qualified scientists, administrators, technicians, and skilled workers in Iraq traditionally has been among the highest in the Middle East. Education at all levels is funded by the state.”

* Iraq. (2008). Encyclopædia Britannica. Deluxe Edition. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica.