Category Archives: America

Navel-Gazing Nation?

America, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist

The coverage of Tim Russert’s untimely death is obscene. Can you imagine the BBC lamenting for days on end the passing of one of their broadcasters, or even the head of the BBC network? Never. It would not happen. You’d hear a curt, solemn announcement to the effect that, “Our colleague has passed away tragically. We mourn his death and extend our condolences to his family. Now to the news of the day.”

This pathological coverage, once again, is of a piece with the childish, self-centered, deeply silly American media, which knows not what its proper mandate is. Has such impropriety afflicted the national psyche? You tell me. I suspect most Americans are preoccupied with other matters. I hope so.

Mature, normal people know when to grieve, how publically, how loudly, and how long. When the president of the US pauses, on an official visit abroad, to declare to the world how sad he is about the death of a man his audience doesn’t know—you know what a naval-gazing nation we’ve become.

This kind of coverage applies with spades to the elections: Since 2007, cable networks have focused exclusively on the elections to the exclusion of most other new and certainly world news.

As I asked in “Elections Fatigue”: “America’s pathological, election-time self-absorption makes a mockery of the idea that the US is suited to lead the world. Shouldn’t a world leader take an interest in the world?”

I suspect that Mr. Russert would have been appalled by the choice of broadcasting his colleagues have made.

U.S. POPClock Projection

America, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, IMMIGRATION

Chew on this:

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 06/12/08 at 06:47 GMT (EST+5) is:

304,317,124

COMPONENT SETTINGS FOR JUNE 2008:

One birth every……………………………. 7 seconds
One death every……………………………. 13 seconds
One international migrant (net) every………… 29 seconds
Net gain of one person every………………… 10 seconds

At just over one million people added to the US each year, these estimates are extremely conservative.

Wright as American as Idi Amin

Africa, America, Christian Right, History

“Hagee’s Hebraic bond goes back to John Winthrop and the New England Puritans. Revivalism, evangelicalism, the faith of happy-clappers—this branch of Protestantism, and its beliefs, is also as American as apple pie. The First and Second Great Awakenings were epochal events in early America, instrumental in the Revolution. And later in Abolition. …

The particularism of Afrocentrism, Wright’s creed, is as American as Idi Amin was. Both alien and idiotic is Wright’s fealty to ‘Black values’ and the Dark Continent—where everywhere black bodies are stacked up like firewood, to paraphrase the talented Keith Richburg, a black American journalist.”

The complete column: “Wright As American As Idi Amin.” Comments are welcome.

Updated: Israel: Role Model For America

America, IMMIGRATION, Israel

This excerpt is from my new WND.com column, “Israel: Role Model For America”:

[T]he majority that dare not speak its name is on the wane.

“A couple of election cycles down the road and [Anglo-Americans] will comprise less than half the population. If mass immigration continues at current levels, predicts the U.S. Census Bureau, by 2050, approximately 130 million people will have been added to the United States, mostly from the Third World. Embittered Americans may still cling to guns and God, as their founding fathers did, but they will no longer decide elections.

Ironically, Bill Clinton has spoken glowingly about the prospects of the demise of the very historical majority upon which his wife’s candidacy now depends. Likewise, Barack Obama would hardly be inconsolable. If his immigration policies are any indication, McCain, to whom Bush has passed the baton, has also embraced this end-of-days scenario.

Israel hasn’t. The plucky Jewish state can teach the US a thing or two about cultural and creedal survival. Israel has endured to celebrate its sixtieth birthday in so small part because it has rejected American style immolation by immigration…”

Comments are welcome.

Update (May 17): To the extent the discrimination accusations come from elements on the American Right, we must take it to mean that this faction denies Israel the selective immigration policy it advocates for the U.S.—one that favors the founding people.

American Jewry is another faction that contradicts itself on Israel. Jews, who generally defend Israel, like to insist that it is a pluralistic, multicultural society. They ought to practice some honesty. If Jews are prepared to acknowledge Israel has a right to retain its Jewish character and choose who will be admitted to the polity, they must concede the same right to the Europeans and to the English-speaking peoples.