Category Archives: America

The ‘Anti-Democratic Sentiments of the Founding Fathers’

America, Constitution, Democracy, Founding Fathers, History

“A complete democracy on a wide scale was widely regarded throughout the colonies as a threat to law and order. The example of Pennsylvania, which abolished all property qualifications for voting and holding office and produced a document making a mockery of constitutional government in the eyes of some onlookers, confirmed the suspicions of many colonial leaders that an unrestrained democracy could drive good men out of public office and turn the affairs of state over to pettifoggers, bunglers, and demagogues. They wanted representation of brains, not bodies—and for a number of years the best minds in the country dominated American politics. … No doubt the Virginia Constitution and Declaration of Rights, as well as the American Constitution of 1787, would have fallen even shorter of perfection had they been written by popularly chosen assemblies of untutored and inexperienced deputies of the people at large… [The Founders] were not familiar with universal suffrage and mass democracy. … Besides, there was a abundance of historical evidence indicating that democracies tend toward mediocrity and tyranny of the majority. …”

—Constitutional scholar James McClellan, writing about the first state constitutions, 1776-1783, in Liberty, Order, And Justice: An Introduction to the Constitutional Principles of American Government (pages 151-152).

One look at the country’s preening politicians, pundits and public intellectuals proves the nation’s founders right. It’s a large sample and it’s mostly and consistently drek.

Once There Were Great Immigrants: How The Paulis Came To America

America, Family, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION

The gifted Dr. Myron Robert Pauli (who is related to Wolfgang Pauli, a pioneer in quantum mechanics) is a wonderful dad to daughter Anna. Here Myron shares with us the remarkable story of the patriarch Pauli, who came to America the old-fashioned—when no “welfare-bums” were allowed—and sired Myron.

How The Paulis Came to America
By Myron Pauli

At the request of my good friend Ilana Mercer and in honor of Father’s Day, I am writing about how/why relatives named Pauli got to America. My paternal ancestors were Pascheles – but Vienna under Karl Lueger had its own “affirmative action” policy with the goal of 100% non-Jews in the faculty of the University of Vienna. Thus my granduncle Wolf Pascheles became Wolfgang Joseph Pauli. He later had two famous children – Wolfgang Ernst and Hertha Ernestine – both baptized at Mach 1 (Ernst Mach was their godfather!). Grandfather Isadore Pascheles became John Pauli but brother Oscar kept Pascheles and had the good luck to be a Swiss citizen…..

In 1938, Hitler’s Anschluss with Austria meant beatings and sleep deprivation for WWI Captain John Pauli – to relinquish his money to the National Socialists. Grandmother Frederica (related to Jewish Austrian admiral Siegfried Popper!) and John were allowed to leave provided they had a destination. Thankfully, the Chinese consul, Feng-Shan-Ho, defying his own government, issued exit visas to Singapore to thousands of Viennese Jews. However, Prague-born, they faced a small Czech quota and apparently received some help from Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy – to get to America.

My father was in Innsbruck and snuck over the border into Switzerland with a companion who was immediately turned over to the Gestapo by the (very nice!) Swiss but since my father had the excuse of visiting his uncle Oscar in Zurich; they let him in temporarily provided he leave within a month or two. There are actually 3 letters written by his cousin Wolfgang (inventor of the neutrino) to Paul Dirac (inventor of antimatter) to try to get my dad to England because he had a job offer in America provided he made it to England. I don’t know if Dirac helped, but he eventually made it over here! A cousin in Texas, James Utitz, had to certify that my dad would not be a welfare-bum! My father showed up speaking with an English accent and became a stickler for proper English even in Noo-Yawk! Not only did he go ballistic at ads for the “Green Witch Savings Bank” (Greenwich!) – but he complained about Puerto Ricans speaking poor Spanish. Fortunately, he never lived to hear Ebonics!

Cousin Hertha, an actress and historian-author, with the honor of having her books banned by Nazi Germany – went to France and got smuggled out of France through Lisbon (helped by Varian Fry and the “Emergency Rescue Committee”) to the US with her husband and friends Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel and Franz Werfel. Both Hertha and Franz stopped at the Lady of Lourdes and each wrote a book and a movie (Franz’s – more famous) about the Song of Bernadette.

Wolfgang tried to get Swiss citizenship but the Swiss decided that he “did not satisfy the requirement of assimilation” – so he and wife Franca – with the help of French colleagues – got over to Lisbon and then to Princeton to his old pal Albert Einstein and the Institute of Advanced Studies which labeled Wolfgang as his “spiritual heir.” After 1946, Wolfgang returned to work in Switzerland because he objected to excessive military influence on American physics (which, if nothing else, proves both intelligence and integrity).

Granduncle Oscar held the fort in Switzerland and tried to get family out as best he could. Poignant letters from a distant cousin from the Nazi Kielce ghetto to Oscar prior to her extermination exist (Switzerland was neutral with postal relations with Germany). Oscar’s grandson is Vice President of Global Commercial Intelligence for Merck.

My dad settled in Sunnyside, Queens and wound up with a wife and 2 kids. He loved the country and we had a small country house. We rented out our upstairs to what appeared to be 10% of Puerto Rico (whom, thanks to rent control, we could not evict!) and eventually rented the rest and bought a third house for us. Dad preferred Adlai Stevenson’s erudite English over Eisenhower’s garbled Army-speak, but after rent control, opposing LBJ’s War in Vietnam and inflation, he voted for Nixon! I don’t know what he would think of events nowadays but his work ethic and English perfectionism would not fit in with modern immigration policy!

**************

Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.

‘Liberal American City Charged With Apartheid’

America, Race, Racism, South-Africa

From the fact that African-Americans lag behind Anglo-Americans in academic achievements and socio-economic status, in New Haven, Conn., the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) has inferred, post haste and post hoc, the prevalence of deep-seated racism and segregation (“Urban Apartheid”), in the place WND’s John Bennett describes as “one of the most liberal cities in the country.”

Mr. Bennett, whose article has been well received, was kind enough to ask for my comments. These are interspersed in “Liberal American city charged with apartheid”:

Ilana Mercer, a WND columnist and author of “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” left South Africa in 1995. She is highly critical of the NAACP’s “promiscuous use of the apartheid pejorative,” telling WND, “It is as ignorant as it is glib.”
“Like antibiotics that lose their potency through over dosage – yelling ‘apartheid’ at people just because they are richer and more educated than you makes you look ridiculous,” Mercer added. …

At least it ought to make you look ridiculous.

MORE.

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A Burning Dilemma Among America’s Dhimma

America, Ancient History, Barack Obama, Bush, Ethics, History, Islam

“A Burning Dilemma Among America’s Dhimma” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

… While dhimmis contemplate what to do with the decaying corpse of a Muslim mass murderer, consider what General Sir Charles James Napier counseled about the valiant defense of Western values. The general (on an admittedly imperial mission to India) was confronted with the local Hindu practice of Sati, “the custom of burning a widow alive on the funeral pyre of her husband.”

When “Hindu priests complained to him,” as Wikipedia tells it, “about the prohibition of Sati by British authorities,” Napier replied:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

In the West, we do not dispose of the dead on open-air funeral pyres, as is still done in India, Bali, south of Indonesia, and Nepal. But we do cremate. Cremating Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s remains is commensurate with what ought to be American values: It conserves resources and leaves (almost) nothing behind.

Incinerate Tsarnaev’s corpse. It’s the moral thing to do.

It matters not that “Islam strictly forbids cremation.” True Christians and Jews forbid the murder of innocents. Those are the values that trump Islam.

Besides, Islam is a highly derivative (and distorted) belief system. Tamerlan believed that “the Bible was a cheap copy of the Koran.” However confused Muslims like him are about historical chronology, they do claim to accept the Ten Commandments, bequeathed in the Hebrew Bible’s Exodus and Deuteronomy, centuries before Muhammad. If so, the Sixth Commandment is unequivocally clear: “Thou shalt not kill.”

He who kills innocents has forfeited his right to religious burial rites—especially if these are to be administered by the killer’s victims. …”

The compete column is, “A Burning Dilemma Among America’s Dhimma.” Read it on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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