Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED: Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed’ (More Gloom)

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Debt, Democrats, Fascism, Homeland Security, Liberty, Paleoconservatism, Political Economy, Republicans, The State

The following excerpt is from “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” my new WND.COM column:

“Last week, this column explained the divide between Americans and their ‘Overlords Who Art in D.C.’ I asked that you quit invoking words too weak to describe that divide. ‘Disconnect,’ ‘disrespect’: These are soft designations; they don’t begin to bridge the moat that separates you from your sovereigns.

Proper metaphors for the relationship between The Great Unwashed and the government that literally has them by the genitals is that of ruled and ruler, Rome and its provinces, Imperial China and its peasants.

If you’re a tax payer — at least 50 percent of Americans are tax consumers — you are the Beltway’s bitch.

So stop beseeching sinecured statists for ‘hope’ and ‘change.’ They will never know what it’s like to slum it in your neighborhoods. They’ll never experience the effects of inflation and rising prices as you will; they’ve voted themselves salaries twice as high as yours and pensions in perpetuity. You’re paying.

Think of yourself as a servant, your nose pressed against your master’s mansion windows. That’s how I felt as I drove through the suburbs of Northern Virginia, in October of this year. I saw what Peggy Noonan lushly described in her Wall Street Journal column, excerpted by John Derbyshire in his full and fair assessment of the tottering American experiment, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism …

The complete column is “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed,” now on WND.COM.

Avail yourself of my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, on Kindle.

Merry Xmas to all,
ILANA

UPDATE (Dec. 25): “IT’S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME” (as the Beatles lyrics go). The Powers that Be thought “Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim” (and also happens to have “the equivalent of a pacemaker”), needed a reminder of her ordeal.

Hirschkind said because of the device in her body, she was led to a female TSA employee and three Austin police officers. She says she was told she was going to be patted down.
“I turned to the police officer and said, ‘I have given no due cause to give up my constitutional rights. You can wand me,'” and they said, ‘No, you have to do this,'” she said.
Hirschkind agreed to the pat down, but on one condition.
“I told them, ‘No, I’m not going to have my breasts felt,’ and she said, ‘Yes, you are,'” said Hirschkind.
When Hirschkind refused, she says that “the police actually pushed me to the floor, (and) handcuffed me. I was crying by then. They drug me 25 yards across the floor in front of the whole security.”
An ABIA spokesman says it is TSA policy that anyone activating a security alarm has two options. One is to opt out and not fly, and the other option is to subject themselves to an enhanced pat down. Hirschkind refused both and was arrested.

Hey, what do you know: A noisy, irate, flying public has changed the behavior of their sovereigns not a whit. Who would have thunk? (See “Derb Is Right: ‘We Are Doomed.”)

And what do memebers of the sheep herd say about a middle aged, ill American lady being mauled by rabid TSA dogs?

“I understand her side of it, and their side as well, but it is for our protection so I have no problems with it,” said Gwen Washington, who lives in Killeen.

It matters not a bit that “less than three percent of travelers get a pat-down.” This practice is a matter of policy, not happenstance. Theoretically, everyone could be molested, very many are. No freedom loving individual should be consoled by the repulsive, “rare-occurrence” excuse.

Arizona Attrition?

Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Labor, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

So the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, may be working: “A new study suggests there may be 100,000 fewer Hispanics in Arizona than there were before the debate over the state’s tough new immigration law earlier this year.”

“BBVA Bancomer Research, which did the study, worked with figures from the U.S. Current Population Survey. The study says the decline could be due to the law known as SB1070, which partly entered into effect in July, or to Arizona’s difficult economic situation.” [TIME]

The bigger issue is one I reminded readers of in “Mass Immigration ‘End Of Days’ Scenario” still looms. Mark Krikorian does the dues too:

“[C]ontinued mass immigration guarantees the doom of conservatism (as I spell out in detail in my Encounter Broadside on the subject). The cause of limited government cannot succeed in the long term, even if the GOP does somewhat better among Hispanic voters, so long as the federal immigration program continues to admit a million-plus newcomers a year. And the overwhelming Hispanic preference for Democrats is not something that can be addressed with tweaks to immigration policy — even if such tweaks would do any good, which evidence suggests they wouldn’t.”

The fact is that mass immigration is inevitably made up of the relatively poor, who in a modern society will make disproportionate use of taxpayer-funded services (the majority of families headed by a Mexican immigrant, for instance, use at least one welfare program, even though the overwhelming majority have at least one worker in them). Therefore, the conservative message of smaller government is simply not going to resonate with a large share of immigrant voters, and may, in fact, repel them. What’s more, the huge majority of immigrants, not just Hispanics, are eligible for affirmative-action quotas as soon as they set foot in the United States, making it harder for them to embrace the party opposed to such benefits. On top of that, Hispanic immigrants, and even more their children, are more likely to have children out of wedlock than native-born Americans, another factor drawing them away from the Right and toward the Left.”

Republicans Already Teed Off With Tea Party

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Federal Reserve Bank, Inflation, libertarianism, Political Economy, Republicans, Ron Paul

Well of course the Republicans will back Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) for the post of GOP conference chair, “the fourth-highest House leadership position,” in the new Congress, over “Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), a ‘Tea Party heroine.'”

If the Daily Beast, run by airhead Tina Brown—“the author of a gossipy, somewhat obese book about the anorexic dolt, Diana Spencer”—and the life-style libertarians at Reason Magazine (which calls the former outfit an “indefatigable friend”), both favor an establishment Republican over Michelle Bachmann—take it to the bank that Bachmann is the better bet.

Jacob Sallum, a master at sweating the smaller, safer stuff, has concluded that Bachmann, one of the few people in Congress who understands and protests monetary policy, is a philosophical spender because of the “agricultural subsidies her family farm has [allegedly] received.”

Sallum’s case is not worth a straw. I am sure one can find occasions when Ron Paul has fallen short on such minor (albeit important) matters. But when it comes to the big issues—monetary policy (around which the girls at Reason cannot wrap their heads)—he more than makes up for it. Ditto Michelle Bachmann, who joined Ron Paul to do battle against Ben Bernanke.

Of course, the “High Priests Of Pomposity” at Reason panned Ron Paul too.

Reason is famous for its “35 Heroes of Freedom,” which established their criteria for “cool and cosmopolitan”: William Burroughs, a drug addled, Beat-Generation wife killer, whose “work is mostly gibberish and his literary influence baleful,” was included, as well as Larry Flynt, Madonna, Martina Navratilova and Dennis Rodman.

Madonna Reason has exalted for, as they put it, leading “MTV’s glorious parade of freaks, gender-benders, and weirdos who helped broaden the palette of acceptable cultural identities and destroy whatever vestiges of repressive mainstream sensibilities still remained.” This sounds like the unscrambled, strange dialect spoken by a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies.”

I mean “Womyn’s Studies.”

If you lost the post’s thread, here’s the gist: Bachmann understands monetary policy and grasps its importance. Republican leaders, who don’t, are choosing to back their boy over Bachmann for the position of GOP conference chair. Beltway libertarians are backing the boy and his masters.

UPDATED: Repeal The 17th Amendment

Conservatism, Constitution, Democrats, Elections, Federalism, Republicans, States' Rights

I have a secret hope that due to self-interest, the Republicans may just tackle the 17th amendment, a 1913 abomination that sundered the republican scheme of governance put in place by the Founding Fathers. Why the renewed hope? If senators were elected by the respective state legislatures, as was the original intent, I somehow doubt the Democrats would have retained control of the upper chamber.

Fox News: “Republican candidates in more than a half-dozen states have called for the repeal of the 17th Amendment, which was ratified in 1913 and which provides for the direct election of U.S. senators. Prior to the amendment, senators were designated by state legislatures.”

“‘People would be better off if senators, when they deliver their messages to Washington, remember the sovereignty of the states,’ Mike Lee, who supports repeal, told reporters recently. Mr. Lee is a Republican running for the U.S. Senate from Utah.”

“Proponents of repeal say the amendment wrecked the founding fathers’ balance between national and state governments, removing one of the last checks to unbridled power in Washington. Opponents counter that direct election of senators, long a goal of the Progressive movement of that era, expanded democracy.”

On the other hand, I think it’s plain that the newly elected Republican majority in the House will go ahead and raise the debt ceiling, even though they could take a stand and refuse to so do.

UPDATE: What else won’t the Republikeynsians do? “Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., likely the next chair of the House Education Committee, has already said that he’s not going to abolish the Department of Education.” John Stossel adds that the same people’s public “Pledge for America” “is modest. It promises no cuts in Medicare, Social Security or the military. That’s where most of the money is. Those programs account for 60 percent of the budget.”

“Divided government historically spends less than governments under one-party control,” observes Stossel, but in the absence of any “clear message on the biggest sources of government spending” from the Republicans, we’re going down.