Category Archives: Argument

UPDATED (10/14): No Notes, No Nonsense: The Genius Of Amy Coney Barrett

Argument, Constitution, Democracy, Federalism, Intelligence, Law, Reason, The Courts

After hysterical preludes, Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, questioned Amy Coney Barrett. I feared Barret’s tart tones—the American woman’s gravelly, vocal fry of a voice—would drive one to distraction, but she’s brilliant. Barrett looks disarmingly sweet and girly, but her replies are gloriously pointed and cerebral.

Advisory opinions are prohibited on the Court, Judge Coney Barrett teaches, as she explains a “concrete” as opposed to a “procedural” or “abstract” injury to the plaintiff. Her duty, as she sees it, is to address “concrete” wrongs, only, and in accordance with democratically-enacted law.

To the question of, “Why fight the Affordable Care Act, Amy Coney Barrett answered: “Ask the litigants. I don’t know.” Genius, because her replies are meta: They nail down the role of the SCOTUS in the federal scheme.

No doubt, Amy Coney Barrett will be the best mind on the SCOTUS! Her analytical reasoning—construction of an argument, the way she seals it logically, her preference for higher-order, principle- and process-oriented thinking, makes Kagan, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Roberts, Alito and Breyer pale by comparison. (Roberts is oriented toward administrative thinking; he has the mind of a functionary of the managerial State. As I pointed out in 2005, “Roberts is flummoxed by first-principle quandaries,” whereas first principles is Coney Barrett’s thing.)

For obvious reasons, Sonia Sotomayor was left off my just-cited list of SCOTUS justices whom Amy Coney Barrett easily usurps. An affirmative action baby (her term for herself), Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and basic grammar books during her summers, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton University. READ.

UPDATE (10/14):

Lots of cringe-worthy cliches and schmaltz came with the “quizzing” by Joni Ernst of Amy Coney Barrett. On being a mom, advice to young girls, exercise, role models. There is not daylight between Republican and liberal women, when it comes to this mushy drivel.

UPDATED (9/29): Interview: Ilana Mercer, Part 2: Lady Paleolibertarian

Argument, Conservatism, Critique, Ilana Mercer, Neoconservatism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy

Interview: Ilana Mercer, part 2: Lady Paleolibertarian, By Dissident Mama on Monday, September 28, 2020.

Dissident Mama, aka Rebecca Dillingham, is my kind of lady, too. She writes:

So we got to know Ilana Mercer a bit in part 1. Now, the paleolibertarian wordsmith takes full command of her keyboard and her craft, and takes no prisoners in this explosive followup. Simply put, she ain’t skeered.

Even though I’m a recovering mainstream journalist by trade, I’ve only been at dissident blogging a few months shy of four years. And here’s my big takeaway: there is no point to alternative political writing and cultural criticism unless you’re willing to ruffle tail feathers and call a spade a spade. Anything less than connecting the dots, calling out your conclusions (no matter how socially unacceptable), and vehemently smashing sacred cows is just rhetorical masturbation.

Forgive my colorful language, but really, time is of the essence, and if truth is not your game but caring about fashionable opinion is, well, I’d personally rather watch paint dry. THAT is why I admire Ilana Mercer. She writes with bang, not a whimper. She’s my kinda lady.

READ Rebecca’s interview: “Ilana Mercer, part 2: Lady Paleolibertarian.”

Part 1 is “Ilana Mercer, part 1: Roots, writing, & resistance,” By Dissident Mama on Friday, September 25, 2020.

UPDATED (9/29):  Southern gentlemen know a thing or two.

I have been following you, Ilana, since you started writing articles for WND, then here on your blog, etc. You once said in answer to some statement of mine that, “I could be a southern belle.” Well, from one old Southern guy, “You are a southern belle in my book. True southern women will never be democrat or republican as they are too strong and too independent in their personalities to be.
They know what and who they love and who they don’t and their husbands have to tread lightly with their demands. I am eighty three now and still a follower of your wit and truth. Keep at it, my friend, what you say is worthwhile. High schools and Universities have stolen a few generations of young southern women, so you light up my day. Maybe you can wake some of them up also, I pray so.

NEW COLUMN UPDATED (9/25): Critical Race Theory Robs And Rapes Reality

Argument, Criminal Injustice, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Justice, Law, Logic, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Reason

NEW COLUMN is “Critical Race Theory Robs And Rapes Reality.” It appeared on Townhall.com, WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens, and is now featured on American Greatness.

It is the fourth and last in deconstructing the pernicious construct that is racism.

Your Anti-Critical Race Theory Analytical Ammunition:
1. ‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?
2. Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!’?
3. “Ethnocidal ‘Critical Race Theory’ Is Upon Us Like White On Rice
4. “Critical Race Theory Theory Robs And Rapes Reality

An excerpt:

Inciting racial hatred against whites is all in a day’s work on CNN. It devolves into a more festive affair when a celebrity like DL Hughley joins the network’s conga-line of cretins.

In a July segment, the comedian, author of Surrender, White People!, regaled those CNN viewers of a masochistic mindset, by comparing “racism” to COVID-19.

Whitey, belched Hughley—who used to be witty and is now a drag—can be an asymptomatic carrier of racism. Just because you haven’t done anything racist, doesn’t mean you aren’t racist.

Pay no attention to the COVID-race comparison. It’s the Left’s lowbrow idea of an intellectual quip. Be mindful, however, of the “guilty if you do, guilty if you don’t” pop-jurisprudence. Collectively convicting an entire racial group for metaphysical crimes is the cornerstone of the Critical Race Theory.

Flouting Western judicial philosophy, Critical Race Theory says you are a racist without having committed racism, which is like being a murderer, robber or rapist without having murdered, robbed or raped.

How does that jurisprudence strike you?

It strikes the reasonable, fair-minded member of society as “less than human, less than coherent, less than sane.”

SYMBOLISM INSTEAD OF REALISM

Deconstructed, racism, as deployed by Critical Race racists, is purely a metaphysical affair. It doesn’t survive contact with reality, relying for its validation on a loose relationship with the real world.

You might say Critical Race Theory is anchored in symbolism and not realism.

Ditto Critical Race Feminism, a subspecies of Critical Race Theory, the symbolic nature of which I had traced in a 2001, Ottawa Citizen column:

Women’s studies courses and English departments have long been littered with [postmodernism’s] lumpen jargon. There, text is routinely deconstructed and shred. Subjected to this academic acid, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, and T. S. Eliot are whittled down to no more than ruling-class oppressors, their artistry reduced to the bare bones of alleged power relationships in society. All this glumness is due to a theory, no more, and one based on a partial and insular view of history [and reality].

To properly place the oppressiveness of all critical theory in perspective, a young man followed-up that column by writing me a personalized tale of desperation. He had the misfortune of drawing a skyscraper in art class. His creation was alighted on by his professor-cum-oppressor and right away called out for being a phallic symbol, offensive to womenfolk, meant as a symbolic assertion of his dominance qua male.

Where is reality in all this white noise? Nowhere. This nonsense exists solely in the heads of demented distaff and their house-broken, white, liberal, male accomplices. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN is “Racist Theory Robs And Rapes Reality.” It appeared on Townhall.com, WorldNetDaily.com, The Unz Review, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens. It is currently featured on American Greatness.

UPDATED (9/25):

Dr.C. Fhandrich appeals to ‘dunderheads’ who dog this column, but fail to read it:

The absolute DUNDERHEADEDNESS, of millions of whites is evident in the fact that this brilliant little essay, which concerns the welfare and safety of whites in the very nation they founded, has to now had a mere 8 comments. What is it with so many “whites”? Too busy playing “paintball warrior”?Too busy debating what form of crack you should try? Too much in pain from taking the “knee” too often???

Russian Interference? How About American ‘Color Revolutions’ The World Over?

Argument, Conservatism, Democracy, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Globalism, Law, Neoconservatism, Race, Racism, Republicans

Regime change abroad is not the purview of the Deep State alone; it’s the practice of the American State, Republican and Democratic administrations:

… both the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute “are chartered to promote democracy abroad with [ostensibly] nonpartisan training and election monitoring.” “Loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties,” these institutes “were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations.”

As an example, take “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt,” detailed in my 2012 column. Americans were outraged when Egypt expelled US nationals for fomenting regime change. Egypt was right:

The Egyptian Justice Ministry, under the authority of the military council, has detained and indicted 19 American democracy activists. To listen to the malfunctioning media stateside, however, the Egyptians are being petty, picking a fight with their American benefactors for “operating in Egypt without a license.” Or, if you want “expert” opinion, courtesy of Politico.com, the Egyptian plan to prosecute these “Americans and two dozen others” “is more over the future of U.S. aid to Egypt and who controls it.”

More…

Now, Darren J. Beattie, former Trump speech writer (who should have been kept on, if the Right had any moral courage), unsparingly reminds us of the American “Color Revolution” policy. His thinking is refreshingly original, the likes of which one doesn’t often see coming out of conservative quarters, where the same talking points are constantly recycled.

(To wit, on the same Tucker Carlson show, Candace Owens provided recycled boilerplate to the effect that the US is not in a race war, and that black violence is the doing of the Democrats. Untrue. There is most certainly a racial offensive against whites, to which conservatives can’t give expression. Irrespective of the Democrats’ undeniable agitation and incitement, this enthnocidal aggression against whites would persist.)

Essentially, Beattie empirically and analytically connected the US-launched “Color Revolutions” with the “lawfare” coups against Trump. I like the “lawfare” term Beattie has coinded. Nicely done.

Note: Beattie imputes “Color Revolutions” to the “US Government,” not merely to Democrat-run administrations. 

HERE:

There is no purer embodiment of Revolver’s thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged “authoritarian” governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump’s 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas—same people same playbook.