Category Archives: America

Errant, Adulating Adults Enable Stupid Youth

America, Business, Critique, Education, Etiquette, Family, Intelligence, Outsourcing, Trade

On Facebook, Bob Murphy has presented a scenario that annoyed him:

… was at a restaurant in the Boston airport. It was very relaxed, just a few customers. My bill was for $14.85, and I paid with a $20 bill. The waiter gave me a $5 bill as change, then sauntered back to talk to the bartender. Discuss.

My take on Facebook: The young waiter probably can’t do simple math unless he closes the till, or something. The Korean young woman who mans the dry cleaners I frequent does all calculations in her head, as quick as a whip. Just as we were taught at school back in the day (I’m old, I know). Okay, be a pedant, Rob. You wanted a bill (as in an invoice). You wanted the agency to control the change you gave. But this is US youth you are dealing with. The other day, checking out at a big-box store, the same sort of simpleton insisted that the product I was purchasing (I told him the per-unit price) looked too expensive. There was no arguing with this hubristic creature. He would not check himself. He ended up shortchanging his employer to the tune of 90% of the item’s total price. I wanted to pay full price, but the young man kept shouting me down. “No, this looks too expensive to be true.” I knew this was an expensive item. He would have none of it.

Look, the adults who employ the youth adulate them, and do not wish to correct them. That’s been my experience. So let them live with the losses these pests incur.

Postscript: Meantime the Korean-owned dry cleaners I visit is making a mint, as other such establishments close down in my vicinity. The owner values every penny; he employs a sharp cookie to front his business. She’s sweet and genteel too.

UPDATE IV: Don’t Believe Michelle Obama (“Respec”)

Affirmative Action, America, Christianity, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, Political Correctness, Political Philosophy, South-Africa

In time for the release of my new book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa,” this week’s WND column explains what the book is about and why it is an important read at this juncture in our history. Here’s an excerpt from “Don’t Believe Michelle Obama”:

“Michelle Obama will travel to South Africa later this month. The First Lady’s trip coincides with the release of my new book, ‘Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.’ And not a moment too soon. (Read the Preface on VDARE.COM.) ‘Into The Cannibal’s Pot’s’ will dispel any myths Michelle Obama is likely to help perpetuate about this writer’s former homeland.

So why is this book so very crucial at this juncture in our history? Simply this: It is essential that we curb the naïve enthusiasm among American elites, and those they’ve gulled, for radical, imposed, top-down transformations of relatively stable, if imperfect, societies, including their own. As the example of South Africa demonstrates, a highly developed Western society can be dismantled with relative ease. In South Africa, this deconstruction has come about in the wake of an almost overnight shift in the majority/minority power structure. In the U.S., a slower, more incremental, but equally detrimental, transformation is underway. …

America’s intellectual ‘Idiocracy’—the president and the “Untamed Ids” of the media, liberal, libertarian, and conservative—are egging on revolution in the Middle East. Post-apartheid South Africa should serve to remind this retinue of romantics that stable societies, however imperfect, are fragile. They can, and will, crumble in culturally inhospitable climes. For better or for worse, societies are built slowly from the soil up, not from the sky down. And by people, not by political decree. …”

The complete column is “Don’t Believe Michelle Obama.”

Purchase “Into the Cannibal’s Pot” from Amazon or from the Publisher (who ships free) by clicking on the “Buy” Button of your choice.

UPDATE I (June 10): Ruth, I am against forced integration. I am for free association, as intended by the founded of this great country, and as is egregiously violated by the Civil Rights Act. If you don’t want to hire or serve a Jew (that’s me) because you have misgivings about Jews qua Jews; I support your natural right as a property owner to associate or dissociate at will.

UPDATE II: It’s interesting how the FB thread on WND was hijacked by one jackass’s complaint, instead of being a forum to discuss the substance of the book. Then two people fell into each others’ pixelated arms had a love fest, giving into sheer vanity and sanctimony. America’s reality-show mentality! For a jackass who hates writers who use words he doesn’t know (my favorite kind of writers), the guy sure spent a lot of time dismissing and dissing me. I think I used a term in the column I learned from the editor of my book (Robert Stove): “Untamed Id.” That’s what’s on display here.

I wrote the book b/c people are dying. But it’s become the topic of reality-show like kibitzing on WND’s facebook thread. There’s the Yiddish my Afrikaner reader Mr. Juann Strauss likes. Sorry: It came to me. My late grandpa’s influence. In the USA you have to apologize for your personal idiosyncrasies; for not fitting a mold.

My complete comment posted @WND (visible if you are on Facebook), in response to the complaint, is this: Imagine having to apologize for using the English to the best of one’s ability! Our founding fathers forewarned against an “Idiocracy” rising. “If a nation expects to be …ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” That genius, Thomas Jefferson, also insisted that liberty would be “a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed and enlightened to a certain degree.” That means not being angered by what you don’t know. (A function of a fragile ego.) For the benefit of the reader who heaps scorn on me for failing to mirror his vocabulary and mindset, I recommend avoiding “The Federalist”- and “Anti-Federalist Papers.” Anything our founders wrote is sure to drive him and his ilk to distraction. May I also suggest reaching for a dictionary, or for Google, instead of the ad hominem? I do the first whenever I read words I don’t know, which is often.

UPDATE III: Rob Stove, who posted below, always reserves his funniest comments to email. I’m sorry, Maestro, I’m outing you:

It’s weird. When I was an undergraduate I was perpetually being rebuked by my lecturers because they found my prose “superficial”. Now I’m being rebuked by these lecturers’ sons and daughters, who find my prose “elitist”. Yet it has been the same sort of prose which I’ve written all along!
Back when lecturers were denouncing my stuff as “superficial”, I was getting quite a few articles published in The Canberra Times, The Weekend Australian, and suchlike recognizably serious newspapers, earning fairly substantial sums as a consequence. The 1980s was a veritable paradise for a literate freelancer in this country. Now that I’m officially “elitist”, I can’t even land an article in The Pig-Breeder’s Gazette.
“Elitist” now gets routinely applied in Australia to any remark above the intellectual level of Britney Spears’s navel-lint.

UPDATE IV (June 11): Hey Roger, dodo, if you can figure it out, please post your impressions of the book to Amazon. Unlike jackass, you will read it and offer a comment on the substance of da book, good or bad, or both. I began reading it to refresh my memory in anticipation of interviews. It’s pretty easy sailing. Even my stats have been, as I like to say, de-Sailerized. I.e., made simple, unlike Steve Sailer’s statistics (which are fit for the smarter cohort), so that jackasses can grasp. Oh, stay tuned: sometime soon I will post a column about crappy writing. A few lessons I learned in journalism school in the country of da Hebes where I be getting some of my learning. The column I wrote yesterday on WND is wicked good, according to those criteria. I will compare it with a crap piece of writing, which the likes of Jackass will find heavenly.

Respec to my peeps.

UPDATED: Economic Apocalypse Now

America, Constitution, Debt, Democrats, Economy, Propaganda, Republicans, Ron Paul

The following is from “Economic Apocalypse Now,” my latest WND.COM column:

“… On reflection, the U.S. Treasury takes in enough loot to pay down the interest on the debt as well as a portion of the principal. Matching federal spending with federal revenue: what a concept! And what a tonic to our moribund economy that would be!

To the soul of the subject: The engorged organisms (Anthony D. Weiner is a sample) that currently control the economy from D.C. can discharge their responsibility to creditors without authorizing more borrowing. To do so, however, they will have to cease their many unconstitutional endeavors and break the promiscuous promises they’ve made to certain voters at the expense of the vassals, out of whose hides these ‘promises’ are carved.

As it stands, Republicans – and a few Democrats, one of whom has even cosponsored an amendment to cap federal spending – have done no more than perform a budgetary Bonnie and Clyde: If Democrats want to continue the heist and run deficits and debts to eternity, they will need to promise – “nudge-nudge, nudge-nudge; know what I mean? know what I mean?” – budget cuts, preferably in the trillions. Or introduce, not necessarily pass, a balanced-budget amendment….”

Read more: “Economic Apocalypse Now.”

My new book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, is now available from Amazon. A Kindle version should be on offer by next week.

UPDATE (June 5): Rand Paul:

“On the Democrat side, we have a proposal to cut about $5 billion to $6 billion for the rest of the year. To put that in perspective, we borrow $4 billion a day. So the other side is offering up cuts equal to one day’s borrowing.…Now, on our side of the aisle, I think we have done more, the cuts are more significant, but they also pale in comparison to the problem. If we were to adopt the president’s approach, we would have a $1.65 trillion deficit in one year. If we were to adopt our approach, we’re going to have a $1.55 trillion deficit in one year. I think both approaches do not significantly alter or delay the crisis that’s coming.…I recently proposed $500 billion in cuts, and when I went home and spoke to the people of my state, spoke to those from the Tea Party, they said $500 billion is not enough. And they’re right. $500 billion is a third of one year’s problem. Up here that’s way too bold, but it’s not even enough.” —Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) on the Senate floor, March 9, 2011

Pay attention to how the same self-anointed policemen of libertarianism—the tinny ideologues who’ve never reflected authentically American libertarianism—have taken it upon themselves to purge Rand Paul.

On the positive side, it seems like Beltway libertarians such as the author of this fair-minded piece have learned from the mistake they made when they reflexively panned Rand’s father, Ron Paul.

UPDATED: Zuming Into Action

Africa, America, EU, Europe, Middle East, South-Africa, War

Kudos to South African President Jacob Zuma for attempting to broker a ceasefire in Libya. Zuma has embarked on his second tour of duty in Libya. The mission? To get Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to say and do the requisite things that’ll pacify NATO’s (aka the USA’s) new allies, also known as The Rebels.

The African Union, which harbors many a mini-warlord, is toiling to get the Über dogs of war of “NATO” (read America) to stop leveling Libya.

Zuma is an interesting guy, as our friend Dr. Dan Roodt, founder of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG), has pointed out.

UPDATE (May 31): On Libya, Zuma sounds a lot like … me. From “Libya: A War of the Womb”:

If indeed we’re subsidizing “freedom” for the Libyans, and are fighting their battles—then we’ve also increased their impotence and diminished their initiative. Subsidize individuals because you believe they are helpless—and you’ll get more learned helplessness. Besides, what are these Libyans? Wards of the crumbling American Empire? Whatever happened to fighting your own revolutions?

Speaking in Tripoli, Zuma divulged that he and “the tyrant” (the MailOnline’s locution—and idea of impartial reporting) “discussed the necessity of giving the Libyan people the opportunity to solve their problem on their own.”

What audacious idea will Zuma come up with next?