Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATE II: The Punditocracy Must Resign (T & A Show)

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Media, Music, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. Better Late than never, you say. Fine, then. Let’s fawn over the celebrated Ann Coulter for finally clashing with neoconservative Bill Kristol. The first part of the Coulter column, however, would make Bill proud. This section is redeemable:

“Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war – and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we’re all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a ‘National Greatness Project,’ too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president – and look how great that turned out!

Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here’s mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.”

[snip]

I wrote “A War He Can Call His Own” two years ago, but who’s counting? Truth doesn’t count; celebrity does. For what it’s worth (read the complete column):

“By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a ‘good’ war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials. …

But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”

UPDATED I (July 10): I’ve actually, mercifully, never read this Gerson sort. The class of commentators you all reference are the least obnoxious to me, because they have some facility with the English language, and can cobble together a vaguely coherent column. Hey, a neocon must make a living too. These pests have kids to feed.

No, it’s the tits-and-ass idiots that offend me. These are the barely literate females who get lucrative book deals for their here-today-gone-tomorrow epistolary vomit, purely because of a combination of ass-ets, pushy self-promotion (which might include heroic action over and above grinding out grating gerunds), and a knack for not threatening Big Cable Egos.

One of the bad things about the rise to fame of a cretin such as SE Cupp, or the deeply silly Margaret Hoover, for example, is that this program for fem affirmative action has made these dumb dodos believe that O’Reilly and Hannity have them on as side kicks because they are so smart.

The ditzes don’t get that they are on TV weighing in on weighty matters—having never uttered an original thought in their lives—because, however hard they try, they simply cannot make their hosts look bad. Impossible.

I do respect SE Cupp’s training as a professional ballet dancer. That requires incredible skill and dedication, a determination IT has applied to the craft of political circus animal. (Ballet dancer: that’s the one aspect of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that I respect too. Ditto Kip Winger.)

How we got from trash to gold, I don’t know, but I’m glad my mind works in mysterious ways. Feast on this embodiment of American manhood. (The hard work that goes into learning to play as tightly as this and move like this is manly.)

UPDATE II: How could I forget this moron among the Fox News menagerie: Imogen Lloyd Webber is an imported liberal airhead who came up with this shopworn shibboleth on The Factor: “we must build bridges with Islam.” “I’m not particularly bright and I put myself under a lot of pressure to do well,” she said of herself. At least she possesses a modicum of self-knowledge, unlike her American bimbette competitors.

Conservative Cretinism

Conservatism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Media, Republicans

There’s a reservoirs of piss-poor conservative commentary on the Internet. (People lap it up.) Trust Lawrence Auster to point out what few others do: “So much of the conservative part of the Web is unintelligent, incoherent partisan trash. Mondo Frazier’s article at Big Journalism about the Gore sex assault charge is an example. I saw it because it is listed in the ‘must-reads’ at Lucianne.com.”

Andrew Breitbart’s “Big this; big that,” ever-mutating websites exemplify what Auster terms “low-grade conservative media.”

UPDATE III: Beck Revised (Who Eats Nails? Spencer Or Mercer?)

Conservatism, Founding Fathers, Glenn Beck, History, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans

I’ve followed Glenn Beck closely and have concluded that overall, flaws and all, he is a force for liberty. One such example was when “Beck Broke From The Pack” to denounce perpetual war as the health of the state. Let us not forget how polluted are the waters in which conservatives swim. Glenn has changed that somewhat. Not for nothing does Sean Hannity keep his distance from Beck.

“Beck, Wilders, and His Boosters’ Blind Spot” discusses some mindless Beck missteps, such as mistaking “Geert Wilders, an influential Dutch parliamentarian working against the spread of Islam in his country, as a man of the fascist, far-right.” Unforgivable.

IMMIGRATION IGNORANCE:

Glenn also vastly overestimates the virtues of the “American People,” and underestimates the forces (state-managed mass immigration) that are dissolving what remains of that people and busily electing another. (Glenn: Once the country is 50 percent Third World, you might as well be talking to the hand.)

Nevertheless, I revised the “blithering idiot” verdict I passed some years back.

Richard Spencer has not. Glenn “going-to-school-with-each-new-show” has earned the contempt of the editor of AltRight.com.

The funny thing is that I second Richard’s analysis, as I have made the same points myself about Beck’s ridiculous fetishes (stop waxing fat about “Faith, Hope, and Charity”; build on life, liberty, and property, I wrote).

Beck’s (Harry) Jaffarsonian civil rights preoccupation and racial revisionism—sad to say, there were no black Founding Fathers!—are contemptible. But, what do you know?, I have been more forgiving of Glenn than Richard Spencer. Having been characterized as someone who eats nails for breakfast, I’m pleased when along comes a young man who is more uncompromising than myself, even if this guarantees he will not be playing footsie with this conservative tootsie (“intellectual windsock”) on Sean Hannity’s Great American Panel, a forum of and for the Idiocracy.

Read Richard’s superb analysis, “The Glenn Beck Deception: Inside the PC Lunatic Fringe.”

UPDATED I (June 22): I have been extremely careful to separate Beck from James Huggins’ Republican “freedom fighters” (see comment hereunder). Without much success. If you are convinced by Huggins’ GOP loyalism—and Mr. H has stuck to his guns, insisting these hacks stand for liberty—your learning curve is, well, wobbly.

UPDATE II: Here’s the “‘Mercer Eats Nails For Breakfast’ (Not)” accusation:

I’ve been called THE WORD WARRIOR…but I would run for my life if I saw Ilana Mercer coming my way! Does she eat nails for breakfast?— Anthony St. John

UPDATE III: Who Eat Nails for Breakfast, Spencer Or Mercer? Probably both, but Spencer wins out this time, I’m pleased to say. In case you think (sorry Huggs) that every tough-talking toots on Hannity’s “Great American Panel” can eat nails or swallow flames: tough, here, implies an ability to reason, and an uncompromising fealty to first principles. These must draw on fact and on history. To reason in the arid arena of pure thought is not what Richard (or myself, for that matter) does. Most libertarians, however, do so err.

Canada Rising

Canada, Conservatism, Debt, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Political Economy

The Left will tell you it’s “regulation” that accounts for Canada’s strong banking system and solid economic growth. Nonsense on stilts; conservative financial practices account for the fact that Canada’s “economy grew at a 6.1 percent annual rate in the first three months of this year. The housing market is hot and three-quarters of the 400,000 jobs lost during the recession have been recovered.” (AP)

Canadian banks “aren’t as leveraged as their U.S. or European peers.” And I imagine that they did not aim to make home owners of those who cannot afford homes, and give credit to those who are not creditworthy.

The other day, CBC front man, Peter Mansbridge, reported approvingly on a Fed interest rate hike intended to prevent the distortions and the overextension that our artificially low interest rates are perpetuating. On American TV you’d have someone come on to give the Keynesian line to the contrary; government must stimulate; make up for sluggish demand, keep rates low. The CBC, as left as they come, did not present the “another side” to the interest rate hike story—-and rightly so.

There is only one correct economics, and it’s not the Keynesian kind.