Category Archives: America

Updated: Exporting Soft Porn

Aesthetics, America, China, Family, Morality, Pop-Culture, The Zeitgeist

A great deal of carping goes on about the crap China exports to us (by popular demand). Very little is said about the sh-t we ship over there. Here Glenn Beck reports on the little American Lolitas, courtesy of Disney, who help sell sexy underwear to China’s children.

Beck describes (and later shows on screen) a

“White girl, 12 years old, reclining in a matching bra and panties set with Disney’s signature mouse ear design in a particular creepy detail, the pigtailed child is playing with a pair of Mickey Mouse hand puppets. In the left-hand corner is the familiar script of a Disney logo.”

The child sports cleavage which might have been enhanced digitally.

The Chinese should give Americans a hard time over this.

American children appear to be party to a very sexual vibe cultivated in sexually inappropriate family interactions and nurtured at schools. Watch any Hollywood film and you see girls being overtly sexual with their dads and vise versa.

(Why do so many American parents kiss their kids on the mouth? Absolutely inappropriate. Why do so many parents let their daughters walk around looking like “pint-sized tarts”?)

As an example, consider the Vanity Fair Miley Cyrus photo, where the girl, in various states of undress, nestles in the arms of father Billy Ray Cyrus, and looks up at him seductively. Major creep-out.

When I was growing up the instinct was to try and stay a little girl a little longer—especially around dads.

To be honest, a country exporting cheap electronics has a leg up on a country that peddles porn, don’t you think?

In case libertarians get confused, as they are wont to do, between cultural commentary and libertarian legal theory—of course peddling porn, soft and hard, ought to remain legal. The law should stay out of all voluntary exchanges between consenting adults.

Update (May 6): I must admit that, although I’ve never watched the program “Hanna Montana,” the girl Miley strikes me as anything but sweet and innocent. Perhaps my idea of nice is different. The Cyrus girl is loud, overbearing and extremely precocious. For such a twit, she’s also full of herself. The little I’ve seen of the “family” doing its wholesome-values shtick, the more they’ve struck me as shallow and showy, not wholesome. Then again, I’ve not had the chance to plumb the depths of “Hanna Montana” and her handlers.

Whenever the Fox-News folks have oozed over the wholesomeness of this girl is and then cut to actual footage of Cyrus carrying forth—my impression has been the opposite. When I think of wholesome (and as pretty as a picture), I think Martina McBride.

As to the whole blame Dad and Disney thing, I’ve expressed my views before: “The paternalistic depiction of women as passive agents, demeaned by male-driven appetites, is a humbug shared by conservatives and liberals alike.”

Cyrus may be 15, but she’s a single-minded exhibitionist, propelled and driven by the fame thing. In all likelihood, she originated the idea of posing for Vanity Fair and would not stop pestering her pappy until he relented. Anyone who has a teenager and handles her as does the typical American parent—like a demigoddess—knows I’m right.

Those who persist in the poor-teen-is-a-victim routine don’t have children. Or are oblivious to the reversal in parent-child roles that has come to typify the dynamics in the American family.

Updated: Elections Fatigue (& A Shout-Out To An Anti-Politician)

America, Education, Elections 2008, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, Taxation

What’s there to say about the interminable electioneering we’re being subjected to? I have less and less to say by the day.

For one, the candidates do not represent me or uphold my rights. If anything; they promise to violate them. The Hillary-Hussein-McCain unholy trinity caters in one way or another to the burgeoning American welfariate.

I’m also repulsed by the unchecked chauvinism of the elections coverage. Not a word about world events have I heard in weeks, perhaps months. 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 believe the last debate between Hillary and Barack was actually worth watching if only for the performance of a journalist whom I’ve praised in the past: Charles Gibson. Gibson actually flouted the common consensus about his job description and asked the messiah some tough questions. He has a pattern of such subversion.

Alas, by that time, I was so thoroughly fatigued, I failed to watch.

Let me take the time, however, to give a shout-out to an anti-politician: Actor Wesley Snipes, who “was sentenced to three years in prison for a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws.” Snipes got bad legal advice, but he’s a hero for acting on his contempt for legalized theft.

Update (April 26): MSM, which is seldom to be trusted, keeps reporting that the American people cannot tolerate the scrappy competition between Hillary and Barack. We are led to believe that, as I put it, Americans are so delicate they cannot stomach “a vigorous race for the highest office in the land because it is, well, vigorous.”

Presuming this is true and Americans are as soft as MSM portrays them—at least the ones that aren’t brewing with bitterness and bigotry and doodling with guns—why do you think this is so?

Could it be that the emphasis in schools on cooperative as opposed competitive endeavors—on the girlie over the boyish mindset—has something to do with it? The fact that everyone gets a prize at school for something, rather than for winning or being the best—could this be a factor in crippling the competitive spirit?

If the media is to be believed, Americans will soon be assuming the fetal position and whimpering in the corner if Hill and B. Hussein don’t stop exchanging barbs.

Boohoo.

Updated: Elections Fatigue (& A Shout-Out To An Anti-Politician)

America, Education, Elections 2008, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Media, Taxation

What’s there to say about the interminable electioneering we’re being subjected to? I have less and less to say by the day.

For one, the candidates do not represent me or uphold my rights. If anything; they promise to violate them. The Hillary-Hussein-McCain unholy trinity caters in one way or another to the burgeoning American welfariate.

I’m also repulsed by the unchecked chauvinism of the elections coverage. Not a word about world events have I heard in weeks, perhaps months. 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 believe the last debate between Hillary and Barack was actually worth watching if only for the performance of a journalist whom I’ve praised in the past: Charles Gibson. Gibson actually flouted the common consensus about his job description and asked the messiah some tough questions. He has a pattern of such subversion.

Alas, by that time, I was so thoroughly fatigued, I failed to watch.

Let me take the time, however, to give a shout-out to an anti-politician: Actor Wesley Snipes, who “was sentenced to three years in prison for a “history of contempt over a period of time” for U.S. tax laws.” Snipes got bad legal advice, but he’s a hero for acting on his contempt for legalized theft.

Update (April 26): MSM, which is seldom to be trusted, keeps reporting that the American people cannot tolerate the scrappy competition between Hillary and Barack. We are led to believe that, as I put it, Americans are so delicate they cannot stomach “a vigorous race for the highest office in the land because it is, well, vigorous.”

Presuming this is true and Americans are as soft as MSM portrays them—at least the ones that aren’t brewing with bitterness and bigotry and doodling with guns—why do you think this is so?

Could it be that the emphasis in schools on cooperative as opposed competitive endeavors—on the girlie over the boyish mindset—has something to do with it? The fact that everyone gets a prize at school for something, rather than for winning or being the best—could this be a factor in crippling the competitive spirit?

If the media is to be believed, Americans will soon be assuming the fetal position and whimpering in the corner if Hill and B. Hussein don’t stop exchanging barbs.

Boohoo.

Updated: Absolut Anti-Americanism Vs. Patriotism

America, Colonialism, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Israel, libertarianism, Socialism

Speaking of a hatred of America (see previous post): Let me say this: I’ve observed that the usual libertarian offenders sided with the Reconquista ad campaign of Swedish vodka maker Absolut.

They have my absolute contempt.

Such people are intent on never showing that they stick up for flesh-and-blood human beings—but can love only deracinated abstractions. Ideas and issues before individuals.

The invasion of the Southwest—or “Reconquista” in the parlance of La Raza libertarians’ —is wreaking havoc on a part of the world that was built-up beautifully by Americans, not Mexicans.

To shelter me and protect me, I’d trust a “red state fascist” any time over a libertarian Absolutist.

Speaking of patriots, I’ve just finished Pat Buchanan’s latest book. It goes without saying that I take issue with economic protectionisms. But about Pat there can be no quibble: he is an absolute patriot.

The other good news to emerge from Day of Reckoning is that Pat is rather complimentary about Israel. In fact, it’s as though he read my “Nature of the Jewish State” column about Israeli nationhood. These ideas are reiterated toward the end of Pat’s book. It was indeed a bonus for me to see a sea change in his appreciation of Israel’s existential challenges.

Update (April 16): For an evisceration of the welfare-state “argumentation” La Raza libertarians put forth see “The Work Open Borden Libertarians Won’t Do,” and other essays in the Immigration Archive.

As to our reader’s contention that “self-sufficient people don’t choose socialism”: Really? If people can get back from the taxpayer more than they earn, they do indeed choose socialism. John C. Calhoun, in “A Disquisition on Government,” warned of this eventuality quite some time back too.