Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED (6/1): ‘Sovereign Multilateralism: It’s DC Speak for Servitude Through International Treaties

Conservatism, Constitution, Donald Trump, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, EU, Europe, UN

“Sovereign multilateralism” is how a GOPer described the “benefits” to ordinary Americans from international agreements and treaties.

This MSNBC Republican (flogging a book) was incredulous that President Trump would dare to be so offish to NATO members. Did he miss last year’s election? We wanted out of NATO.

Candidate Trump got considerable support for his promises to violate this or the other agreement between the U.S. government and various supranational systems. Successive U.S. governments have ceded the rights of Americans to these supra-state systems. Deplorables wanted much less of it.

As I pointed out in “The Trump Revolution: The Donald’s Creative Destruction Deconstructed” (June 29, 2016), international treaties are not holy writ.

Granted, radical libertarians will contend that the Constitution itself is the thin edge of the wedge that has allowed successive U.S. governments to cede the rights of Americans to these supra-state systems. Specifically, the “Supremacy Clause” in Article VI states that all treaties made by the national government shall be “the supreme Law of the Land,” and shall usurp the laws of the states.

Either way, all libertarian-minded conservatives who yearn to breathe free should want the chains with which others have bound Americans dissolved. Johnson and Weld object to Trump renegotiating agreements or optimizing them for Americans, on the statist grounds that to so do would violate agreements that by their nature sideline the American people. Smashing or refashioning these agreements and reclaiming national, state and individual sovereignty, as Trump proposes, is certainly more libertarian than the Johnson-Weld worldview allows.

The Scarlet Letter E Establishmentarians keep overruling Trump voters.

As for Trump “Leaning Toward Withdrawing U.S. From Landmark Paris Climate Deal:” We have very strong environmental protections, including emission controls, in-house.

The Paris scheme is a wealth grab. Barack Obama and others before him were always selling out Americans for their own legacy.

UPDATE (6/1):
We’re out of the Paris Accord!


Pittsburgh before Paris:

Republicans Will Regret Celebrating Robert Mueller As Savior (And Other Stuff)

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Republicans

*Joe Lieberman, at the top of President Trump’s list of potential FBI directors, is a neoconservative.
*Republicans will regret celebrating a life-long, Deep-State operative as a savior.
* And, who will stand by the plucky Kurds?

Doing the work the madhatter media refuses to do, in a short YouTube clip offering some of the news headlines plus the RIGHT perspective, of course. Please Subscribe to the YouTube channel:

On The Deep State (Damn Straight!), Comey’s Memo To Self & Ongoing Media Cadenza

BAB's A List, Conservatism, Donald Trump, Intelligence, Law, Media, Neoconservatism, Russia, The State

By Dr. Boyd D. Cathey. (Warning to the congenitally dour: humor and Southern idiom and imagery ahead.)

Some pundits and writers on the Left and within the Deep State political and cultural pentagon deny that there is such a thing as the “Deep State.” In recent days I’ve read a couple of Mainstream Media [MSM] columnists who simply dismiss such an idea. “No,” they say with mock seriousness, “what you see—those of us self-erected ‘big shots’ in the political class and the self-perpetuating bureaucracy in Washington, the financial globalists, the Hollywood elites, the educational establishment—we aren’t really a ‘state-within-a state’. You just need to be quiet, go back to your workaday professions, and leave governing, educating your children, and producing your entertainment, to us. It’s above your pay grade.”

Let me translate, “we are your masters and you are the sheep—shut up and don’t ask questions and don’t even think about any real influence in the destiny of this nation.” And even more simply stated: “We are the managerial elite, you are the deplorables.” Seems we have heard that word before….

But only a few minutes watching the hysterical MSM yesterday, in addition to occasioning a severe case of nausea, would have convinced even the most casual and uninterested viewer that the “chattering class” of this nation had literally gone berserk, in ideological and linguistic lock-step—almost as if some hidden “Wizard of Oz,” behind the curtain, had given the punditry a strict talking points memo. The non-existent “Deep State” had once again bared its teeth, and the unmistakable reality of its suffocating presence sank in.

Over on CNN, leftist wing nut Chris Cilizza jumped, like a tick on a freshly-bathed dog, on the purported “news” that back in February, during a private meeting between President Trump and former FBI head James Comey, the president urged Comey to “let the [Michael] Flynn investigation go.” Then, according to—as always—an “unnamed” source who telephoned The News York Times right after that, Comey drafted a “memo to self,” more or less, recounting this his version of what happened. “Obstruction of justice!” Cilizza screamed. “Impeachment moment!” echoed the other programmed automatons in the MSM. “The end of the Trump presidency!” shrieked ABC, MSNBC, CBS, ad nauseum.

“Obstruction of Justice?” First, the White House has pushed back hard on this convenient “after-thought” by Comey. If he thought it were an attempted “obstruction of justice” way back in February, why wasn’t it made public way back then? Why weren’t the appropriate congressional committees notified? Additionally, when the president and Comey met, Flynn had already been cleared by the FBI of any criminal action. Even if President Trump had suggested that Comey try to “move on,” how in any sense, legally or otherwise, can this be considered “obstruction”? That term, legally, implies action to prevent, to hinder, or to subvert an investigation or process. So, even if Comey’s “recollection” has any truth to it—and that is debatable—the only thing that has happened here is that the MSM has had another cardiac moment, another “impeachment moment” day dream.

The mind-numbing programmed MSM and their Democratic allies remind me of disjointed Bloodhounds who race frantically from deceptive scented clue to deceptive scented clue, but without ever catching their prey… because there is nothing there, there. The “Russians did it” template is fake and false, made up out of whole cloth by the Clintonistas after Hillary’s loss. And very likely, as we now know, the theft of over 44,000 Democratic National Committee emails was committed by Seth Rich, a disaffected DNC staffer who had access, who was enraged by the pro-Hillary sandbagging of Bernie Sanders. Of course, just a few days after Rich did that, he wound up murdered. And despite the fact that nothing was taken from him—not his wallet full of cash or his expensive necklace—the DC police department (with orders from up high) and FBI (and the Clinton folks) continue to say it was an attempted robbery and refuse to cooperate in any further investigation.

Just the same old Washington DC, the same old politics. And they want us to think that the “Deep State” doesn’t really exist? And too many Republicans and so-called “conservatives” either buy into that template, serving as fifth columnists, or, at a minimum, go along to prevent that kind of full-fledged assault on them that is now being inflicted on Donald Trump, his administration, and his agenda.

One of the most notorious fellow-traveler apologists for the Deep State is neoconservative head honcho and Weekly Standard founder and editor, Bill Kristol. Kristol is one of the fiercest and most intransigent NeverTrumpers, and much like columnist George Will, he continues his ferocious opposition. Most recently Kristol granted an interview to the left wing web site, “Mediaite.” Nothing unusual about that, since the candidacy of Donald Trump has brought dozens of supposedly “conservative” pundits and writers “out of the closet” and revealed what we have known all along: they are, in fact, raving leftists at heart in their basic precepts, and they will do practically anything, work with anybody, even if much further to the left, if they can “get back” at The Donald for his “sin” of challenging their leadership and control of the decadent and dying “Conservative Movement.”

To conclude, I have suggested that we are living now in a hollow, geographical entity officially titled “the United States of America,” but which is definitely NOT united, and where the very concept of “America” has no common acceptance. And the question, then, remains: how is it possible, how can there be a real future for a country where one half wants to literally suppress and obliterate the other half? And, then, those of us scheduled for such suppression—why do we permit so many of our elected representatives to take a dive and go along, and even enable this potentially fatal infection?

Why aren’t millions of us “deplorables” organizing nationally and in each state to challenge the GOP wimp-outs, like Dave Bratt did with Eric Cantor in Virginia? Why aren’t we making our presence known at meetings of leftist congressmen and on campuses? The Deep State—the establishment “swamp”—is in full attack mode. Either we respond, or we disappear as a people, with our traditions, our history, and our faith.

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

~ Dr. Boyd D. Cathey is an Unz Review columnist, as well as a Barely a Blog contributor, whose work is easily located on this site under the “BAB’s A List” search category.

How The French Lost Their Place In Their Country By Aping America

America, Conservatism, EU, Europe, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

On May 7, 2017, the French elected to get down on their knees, face to Mecca, butt to Brussels. Patriot Marine Le Pen lost to an inconsequential Obama-like figure called Macaroni, or something.

Fox News and its British neoconservative pundits celebrated the defeat of a “nationalist anti-Semite who cozied up to Vladimir Putin. Le Pen, again. (Pray tell again why you watch Fox News?) Le Pen had told the little runt, her rival Emmanuel Macron, that, “France will be led by a woman. It will be either me, or Mrs. Merkel.” The French chose Merkel and her house boy.

But did they?

What’s happening? Christopher Caldwell explains, with reference to the work of French geographer Christophe Guilluy. “The French, Coming Apart”:

A process that Guilluy calls métropolisation has cut French society in two. In 16 dynamic urban areas (Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Aix-en-Provence, Toulouse, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice, Nantes, Strasbourg, Grenoble, Rennes, Rouen, Toulon, Douai-Lens, and Montpellier), the world’s resources have proved a profitable complement to those found in France. These urban areas are home to all the country’s educational and financial institutions, as well as almost all its corporations and the many well-paying jobs that go with them. Here, too, are the individuals—the entrepreneurs and engineers and CEOs, the fashion designers and models, the film directors and chefs and other “symbolic analysts,” as Robert Reich once called them—who shape the country’s tastes, form its opinions, and renew its prestige. Cheap labor, tariff-free consumer goods, and new markets of billions of people have made globalization a windfall for such prosperous places. But globalization has had no such galvanizing effect on the rest of France. Cities that were lively for hundreds of years—Tarbes, Agen, Albi, Béziers—are now, to use Guilluy’s word, “desertified,” haunted by the empty storefronts and blighted downtowns that Rust Belt Americans know well.

Guilluy doubts that anyplace exists in France’s new economy for working people as we’ve traditionally understood them. Paris offers the most striking case. As it has prospered, the City of Light has stratified, resembling, in this regard, London or American cities such as New York and San Francisco. It’s a place for millionaires, immigrants, tourists, and the young, with no room for the median Frenchman. Paris now drives out the people once thought of as synonymous with the city.

… there’s no reason to expect that Paris (and France’s other dynamic spots) will generate a new middle class or to assume that broad-based prosperity will develop elsewhere in the country (which happens to be where the majority of the population live). If he is right, we can understand why every major Western country has seen the rise of political movements taking aim at the present system.

… When France’s was a national economy, its median workers were well compensated and well protected from illness, age, and other vicissitudes. In a knowledge economy, these workers have largely been exiled from the places where the economy still functions. They have been replaced by immigrants. … Again, Paris’s future seems visible in contemporary London. Between 2001 and 2011, the population of white Londoners fell by 600,000, even as the city grew by 1 million people: from 58 percent white British at the turn of the century, London is currently 45 percent white. …

… In certain respects, migrants actually have it better than natives, Guilluy stresses. He is not referring to affirmative action. Inhabitants of government-designated “sensitive urban zones” (ZUS) do receive special benefits these days. But since the French cherish equality of citizenship as a political ideal, racial preferences in hiring and education took much longer to be imposed than in other countries. They’ve been operational for little more than a decade. A more important advantage, as geographer Guilluy sees it, is that immigrants living in the urban slums, despite appearances, remain “in the arena.” They are near public transportation, schools, and a real job market that might have hundreds of thousands of vacancies. At a time when rural France is getting more sedentary, the ZUS are the places in France that enjoy the most residential mobility: it’s better in the banlieues. …
Our Immigrants, Our Strength,” was the title of a New York Times op-ed signed by London mayor Sadiq Khan, New York mayor Bill de Blasio, and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo after September’s terrorist bomb blasts in New York. …

…The real divide is no longer between the “Right” and the “Left” but between the metropoles and the peripheries. The traditional parties thrive in the former. The National Front (FN) is the party of the outside. …

… Indeed, with its opposition to free trade, open immigration, and the European Union, the FN has established itself as the main voice of the anti-globalizers. At regional elections in 2015, it took 55 percent of workers’ votes. The Socialists, Republicans, Greens, and the hard Left took 18 percent among them. In an effort to ward off the FN, the traditional parties now collude as often as they compete. In the second round of those regional elections, the Socialists withdrew in favor of their Republican rivals, seeking to create a barrage républicain against the FN. The banding together of establishment parties to defend the system against anti-system parties is happening all over the world. Germany has a “grand coalition” of its two largest parties, and Spain may have one soon. In the U.S., the Trump and the Sanders candidacies both gained much of their support from voters worried that the two major parties were offering essentially the same package. …

… Western statesmen sang the praises of the free market. In our own time, they defend the “open society”—a wider concept that embraces not just the free market but also the welcoming and promotion of people of different races, religions, and sexualities. The result, in terms of policy, is a number of what Guilluy calls “top-down social movements.” He doesn’t specify them, but they would surely include the Hollande government’s legalization of gay marriage, which in 2013 and 2014 brought millions of protesters opposing the measure onto the streets of Paris—the largest demonstrations in the country since World War II.

French elites have convinced themselves that their social supremacy rests not on their economic might but on their common decency. Doing so allows them to “present the losers of globalization as embittered people who have problems with diversity,” says Guilluy. It’s not our privilege that the French deplorables resent, the elites claim; it’s the color of some of our employees’ skin. French elites have a thesaurus full of colorful vocabulary for those who resist the open society …

… It’s not our privilege that the French deplorables resent, the elites claim; it’s the color of some of our employees’ skin. French elites have a thesaurus full of colorful vocabulary for those who resist the open society: repli (“reaction”), crispation identitaire (“ethnic tension”), and populisme (an accusation equivalent to fascism, which somehow does not require an equivalent level of proof). One need not say anything racist or hateful to be denounced as a member of “white, xenophobic France,” or even as a “fascist.” To express mere discontent with the political system is dangerous enough. It is to faire le jeu de (“play the game of”) the National Front. …

… The “American” society that Guilluy describes—unequal and multicultural—can appear quite stable, but signs abound that it is in crisis. For one thing, it requires for its own replication a growing economy.

Important read: “The French, Coming Apart.”