Category Archives: Conservatism

NEW COLUMN: Guess Which Surrender Monkey Won the Battle Of The Monuments?

Britain, Conservatism, Founding Fathers, Republicans, Secession, States' Rights

NEW COLUMN is “Guess Which Surrender Monkey Won the Battle Of The Monuments?” It’s currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

Steve Hilton is a Briton who anchors a current-affairs show on Fox News.

Mr. Hilton made the following feeble, snowflake’s case for the removal of the nation’s historically offensive statues:

It’s offensive to our Africa-American neighbors to maintain statues in public places that cause not only offense, but real distress. And it is disrespectful to our native-American neighbors to glorify a man who they see as having committed genocide against their ancestors. None of this is to erase history. Put it all in a museum. Let’s remember it and learn from it.

“What’s wrong with Camp Ulysses Grant,” Hilton further intoned sanctimoniously. He was, presumably, plumping for the renaming of army installations like Fort Bragg, called after a Confederate major general, Braxton Bragg.

Sons of the South—men and women, young and old—see their forebear as having died “in defense of the soil,” and not for slavery. Most Southerners were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a War for Southern Independence.

Hilton, it goes without saying, is a follower of the State-run Church of Lincoln. To the average TV dingbat, this means that Southern history comes courtesy of the likes of Doris Kearns Goodwin, a Lincoln idolater and the consummate court historian.

“Doris Kearns Goodwin,” explains professor Thomas J. DiLorenzo, the country’s chief Lincoln slayer, “is a museum quality specimen of a court historian, a pseudo-intellectual who is devoted to pulling the wool over the public’s eyes by portraying even the most immoral, corrupt and sleazy politicians as great, wise, and altruistic men.”

When Doris does the TV circuit, evangelizing for power, she never mentions, say, the close connection between her great Ulysses Grant and Hilton’s “native-American neighbors.”

Yes, Doris, Steve: who exactly exterminated the Plains Indians? …

… NEW COLUMN, “Guess Which Surrender Monkey Won the Battle Of The Monuments?“, is currently on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

‘Why Are Police In Black Neighborhoods? Because That’s Where Violent Crime Is Happening’

Conservatism, Crime, IMMIGRATION, Propaganda, Race, Racism

This is a draft of a blog post never published, cobbled together on 2019/01/08. It was originally titled “Peter Kirsanow: Another Man Who Could Have Replaced The Kushners & Trump Press Secretary With Hands Tied Behind Back.”

Back then I was referring to the brilliant Mr. Kirsanow’s work at The Federalist and his fluidity, demonstrated on the Tucker Carlson Show, with the facts of America’s immigration disaster.

It is doubly valid today. If only Trump had sought out someone as clever as Mr. Kirsanow to expound on the following facts about “innocent blacks being disproportionately shot by white cops,” also “the mantra of high-school teachers and college professors“:

… the data make clear that blacks are, indeed, overrepresented among victims of police shootings, but underrepresented relative to black overrepresentation in crime, particularly violent crime.

Some media recently ran the story that blacks are twice as likely as whites to be shot by cops. On its face, that’s true. But the statement doesn’t consider the comparable encounters with police, especially in high-risk situations, that are likely to prompt exchanges of gunfire or other forms of violence. Consider the following, from the 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey, Census data, FBI Uniform Crime Reports, and other sources: (For extended discussion, see my dissenting statement to the 2018 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Report: Police Use of Force: Examination of Modern Police Practices, p. 197. Unless otherwise noted, most of the data is from 2018.)

In 2016, 466 whites were killed by police; 233 blacks were killed by police.
Whites are 76.5 percent of the U.S. population (including Hispanics); blacks are 13.4 percent of the U.S. population.
Whites commit 59 percent of violent crimes (defined as murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, aggravated assault); blacks commit 37.5 percent of violent crimes.
One out of 8,511 blacks is arrested for murder; one in 58,582 whites is arrested for murder.
Blacks are approximately 6.8 times more likely than whites to be arrested for murder.
One out of 2,800,438 blacks is arrested for killing a cop; one of 7,674,278 whites is arrested for killing a cop.
Blacks are 2.74 times more likely than whites to be arrested for killing a cop.
In 2016, 66 cops were killed in the line of duty; 32 whites and 15 blacks were identified as the killers.
More than twice as many blacks (533) murdered whites in 2016 than whites (243) murdered blacks.
Black males are 6 percent of the U.S. population. Black males are responsible for 42 percent of cop killings in the last decade.
In 2015, a cop was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was likely to be killed by a cop.
In 2016, 222 black males were killed by police. 16 were unarmed. 445 white males were killed by police. 20 were unarmed.

“Contrary to the tweets and posts of some celebrities, blacks aren’t being “hunted” by whites. As Heather Mac Donald notes:

Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white). That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimizations, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.

MORE:

“Flames from False Narratives” By Peter Kirsanow

“Darkness Falls” by Heather Mac Donald.

AND, in Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

“POLICE USE OF FORCE:AN EXAMINATION OF MODERN POLICING PRACTICES,” U.S.COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS NOVEMBER 2018

Big Corp America Is No Country For Small Biz Or Individualism

Business, Conservatism, COVID-19, Critique, English, Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, War

Face it, we live in a country in which, increasingly, big corporations with political clout prevail in the economy. In politics, it’s the factions with the biggest corporate donors and the slimiest lobbyists: their politics and policies rule the day.

What is particularly sick-making is not only that a (subsidized) sham like “Tesla is allowed to reopen in defiance of the shelter in place order,” applied diligently to small companies—but that Tesla doesn’t care to protect its employees.

Hardly a good corporate citizen.

“Resentment Builds When COVID-19 Reopening Rules Apply To Some Businesses, But Not Others“:

“At the beginning we immediately closed our store, shut off our lights, put up messages to the community saying ‘we’re all in this together and we’ll be back,” said Marcy Simon, co-owner of Ashby Flowers.
But even now, the tiny shop is not allowed to bring flowers outside for curbside pickup by customers. It’s legal in the rest of Alameda County but Berkeley has its own health rules that say florists can only deliver. Meanwhile large Whole Foods Market right next to it–which also sells flowers—has a long line of people waiting to get inside.
Simon is like a lot of others who thought they were doing the right thing, but are now starting to get mad.
“I think that many people are now definitely looking for ways to get around the rules, there’s no question about it,” she said.
Clinical psychologist Judye Hess says that shouldn’t be a surprise. She says people naturally lose respect for laws when it feels like they’re being unfairly applied.

This mentality applies across the board. How many times, over 20 years, have I heard the shameless refrain from conservative outlets that, “We won’t syndicate a column that doesn’t come from the major syndicator”? To be syndicated by a major syndicator you have to parrot received opinion pretty much on everything. Neither can you be a stylistically risque, interesting writer. With few exceptions, monotony of style and mind are a must if you are to be syndicated.

Other than “too idiosyncratic,” there were the other refrains around the time my column was first syndicated unsuccessfully (2001 or 2002), chief among them were these: “You are neither Republican nor Democrat. And you don’t support Bush’s war.” (The Iraq onslaught was supported by most members of the duopoly.)

The idea that the gritty little gal or guy carries the day, or that individualism is cherished in the USA: These are fallacies in my experience.

*Image via Mises

UPDATED (5/9): Kayleigh McEnany And The TV Gig Economy

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Politics, Race, Racism, Republicans

“Kayleigh McEnany Says She Called Out Donald Trump’s Comments In 2015 As ‘Racist’ Because She ‘Naively’ Believed CNN Headlines.” So blared a news headline. At the time, McEnany had said this:

“To me a racist statement is a racist statement. I don’t like what Donald Trump said. I don’t like what Al Sharpton said,” McEnany said. She had been commenting on Trump’s remarks labelling some Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.

McEnany is a Republican, TV talking head. She said what she said about racism and Trump because, before she got this gig in the Trump administration, she believed it. In other words, it worked for her gig back then.

The deeper point is that Kayleigh McEnany was never party to the original, America First, Trump support group. There are none of those in the White House, Stephen Miller, senior advisor to Trump, excepted.

As America Firster Steve Bannon said, 2017/08/18: “The Trump Presidency That We Fought For, and Won, Is Over.”

McEnany is the Dana Perino of this administration. I’ll say no more. Unthinking partisanship being the rule in American politics, you’re not allowed to say anything about the sorry brain trust of the Republican Party.

UPDATE (5/9): To guide or not to guide American companies and communities on how to open up safely? That’s the question. And the answer was: first silence, then, Nope, not quite yet, it can wait, maybe never, mañana: