Category Archives: History

UPDATED: The Founding Fathers Deconstructed (MT, Saint Or Sadist?)

Africa, America, Christianity, Colonialism, Founding Fathers, History, Intelligence, Morality, Propaganda

From today’s WND.COM column, “The Founding Fathers deconstructed”:

“The idea that the founders were flawed, sinful men like you and me is current among a hefty majority of Americans, conservative too. It is wrong. Quite the reverse. The founders were nothing like us. Not even close. I say this not as an idealist but as a realist.

” … Judging from their works and their written words, the American Founding Fathers were immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today. That goes for that gnarled, somewhat stupid sadist Mother Teresa, whom Christopher Hitchens nailed in The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. And it applies to the moral role models selected for us annually, courtesy of CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

The founders are matchless today both morally and intellectually – their actions bespeak a willingness to forsake fortunes and risk lives for liberty, a concept and cause alien to contemporary Americans, who are, mostly, bereft of both the mental and moral gravitas necessary to grasp it. … ”

The complete column is: “The Founding Fathers deconstructed.”

The Second Edition of Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society (the print edition can be purchased here) is now also available on Kindle.

UPDATE (Dec. 3): MT, SAINT OF SADIST? Just as I thought I had written an uncontroversial column, Rod writes to write me off as a writer, a human being, etc.:

He quotes my column: Judging from their works and their written words, the American Founding Fathers were immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today. That goes for that gnarled, somewhat stupid sadist Mother Teresa, whom Christopher Hitchens nailed in ‘The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice.'”

First sentence quite good – second one horribly bad. Are you an atheist like Hitchens? Why would you appeal to such a God-hater as any kind of authority on the likes of Mother Teresa. And I wouldn’t think you should need reminding, but Mother Teresa is now outside the scope of your “… immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today” – since she died 3 years ago. I can’t argue you observation of “gnarled”, or even “somewhat stupid” – but “sadist”; do you get that from Hitchens, or is this you own “somewhat stupid” idea. You had my rapt attention, and your article was making great sense – until you brought in Mother Teresa, out of the blue, I mean the “wild blue, way up yonder” out of the blue. …
I’ve been reading you for years on WND, and must say you are an excellent writer, and appear to have a brilliant mind. But you really lost it with this one. Hitchens book title is bad enough, then you pile on further insult with your “Hitchens nailed [her]” comment – are you trying to be more vulgar and disgusting that the somewhat stupid atheist, or are you just being stupid yourself.
One last thing – beauty is (truly) only skin deep. Yet you include your picture in the article – I suppose so we can all see how ‘beautiful’ you are on the outside. But in God’s economy, I daresay Mother Teresa is far more beautiful – one of the most beautiful in my lifetime. Her beauty radiates from within, just as your ugly heart is coming to the light through your vulgar words.
I guess you’ve concluded by now that you’ve lost a long-time fan.

Mother Teresa is held up as a universal paragon of goodness in it purest form. Hence the reference to her in the column. As someone who prefers facts to blind faith, indeed I do think Hitchesn—who hung out in Calcutta with Mother, and did his homework well—nailed this sister’s act (as in “detect and expose”).

More later (the parrots are demanding birdie bread with calls of “mommy, mommy”).

Later: If I am supposed to discard the facts because they were dredged up by an atheist (CH), I suggest that my reader question his adulation for a woman (MT) worshiped by former White House communications director Anita Dunn.

“My favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Theresa,” said the lizard-tongued Dunn.

I am absolutely sure that I share no heroes with Dunn. Picture a Venn diagram. There is no overlap between my mental/intellectual universe and Dunn’s.

The facts, as illustrated by Hitchen, show that MT preferred “providence to planning” in her facilities and was far from humane to the poor she took in. Hitchen quotes, among others, a doctor, the editor of the acclaimed “Lancet,” who was alarmed at the intentional neglect of proper diagnosis and pain management at a MT operation. On Mother’s orders, lavish, well-appointed homes that were donated to her cause were stripped bare of decent mattresses or creature comforts. The heat turned off. Volunteers got TB.

As a matter of theology, MT insisted that the poor be left to suffer horrible pain (while she was always airlifted to receive medical care in the best western facilities). Salvation through suffering for the poor, but not for Mother. Hypocrite?

MT, moreover, had a sizable fortune, enough money to outfit many clinics in Bengal (or wherever she operated). But she pursued “suffering and subjection” for her charges and for those working for her. If a dying man got an aspirin from her, he was lucky. Her palliative philosophy was in direct opposition to that of the Hospice movement.

Unforgivable. “Hell’s Angel.”

Myron, Mother T. had close ties to a lot of very corrupt governments, so she was hardly the epitome of private charity. Her motto seemed to have been: “money has no smell.”

UPDATE V: Killjoy Jolie (Ignoble Savage)

America, Celebrity, Colonialism, Communism, History, Hollywood, Justice, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Private Property, South-Africa

Around the time Paris Hilton made accessorizing with a Chihuahua “hot,” Angelina Jolie made it hip to wear an exotic, adopted, ankle biter on her scrawny hip. Jolie’s couture kids are fully color-coordinated. The actress “has six children, three of whom were from international adoptions.”

Tabloids report that Brangelina’s Benetton Brood is precocious and freaky, as you’d expect. (Tabloids, by the way, did the only hard news reporting during the OJ Simpson travesty of a trial. Ditto in the John Edwards’ love child scandal.)

But there’s one thing the spoilt-rotten Brangelina bunch can’t have. Pop Eater tells us that the ill-bred brood will be brooding on Thanksgiving, because mommy dearest is against the feast.

“Angelina Jolie hates this holiday and wants no part in rewriting history like so many other Americans,” a friend of the actress tells me. “To celebrate what the white settlers did to the native Indians, the domination of one culture over another, just isn’t her style. She definitely doesn’t want to teach her multi-cultural family how to celebrate a story of murder.” … “Angelina gets so grossed out by Thanksgiving that she has made sure her family will not be in America this year on Thursday,” an insider tells me.

Perhaps this deeply silly woman should read John Stossel’s always simple, straightforward columns. In “Happy Starvation Day” this week, Stossel explains “the lost lesson of Thanksgiving”:

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.
That’s why they nearly all starved.
When people can get the same return with less effort, most people make less effort. Plymouth settlers faked illness rather than working the common property. Some even stole, despite their Puritan convictions. Total production was too meager to support the population, and famine resulted. This went on for two years.
This entertaining and historical story shows that the actual hero of the Thanksgiving was neither white nor Indian: “Squint and the Miracle of Thanksgiving”
“So as it well appeared that famine must still ensue the next year also, if not some way prevented,” wrote Gov. William Bradford in his diary. The colonists, he said, “began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. At length after much debate of things, (I) (with the advice of the chiefest among them) gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves. And so assigned to every family a parcel of land.”
In other words, the people of Plymouth moved from socialism to private farming. The results were dramatic.
“This had very good success,” Bradford wrote, “for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. By this time harvest was come, and instead of famine, now God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the rejoicing of the hearts of many.”
Because of the change, the first Thanksgiving could be held in November 1623. …

UPDATE I (Nov. 25): A joyous Thanksgiving to all (besides the enemies of liberty who are everywhere around us).

UPDATE II: “BAD EAGLE HAS SPOKEN.” Somehow I doubt that joyless Jolie, of the giant wagging finger, would appreciate the words of Bad Eagle on this Thanksgiving day:

“… BadEagle.com thanks all American Indians for their faithfulness, for their strength, and for their patriotism. We are exceedingly proud of the fact that Indians are exemplary in America, and humbly happy that American Indians set this example before the greatest nation on earth. We are still here. Our presence reminds America of what it means to be a nation, to love a nation, and to preserve a nation–precisely what America needs to know now. America’s Stygian state, its mindless drift on the river of Lethe, and its apparent fascination with deception and corruption, all spell disaster soon-coming. BadEagle.com is profoundly thankful to American Indians for providing a ready lesson in the costs of nationhood.”

MORE.

UPDATE III (Nov. 26): BAD EAGLE HAS SPOKEN … WITH A VENGEANCE. Dr. David Yeagley, aka Bad Eagle, is an original and independent thinker. Perhaps this is why you don’t see more of him on Fox News.

“Injustices have abounded against Indians,” I told him in an interesting interview he conducted with me, one in a series of interviews with leading conservative and independent writers. Justifying the decimation of the Indian nations is akin to the convoluted attempts, on this blog as well, to whitewash killing civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In my yet-to-be published book, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, I draw similar distinctions to David’s (hereunder in the Comments Section) with respect to the willful destruction by the British of the Zulu nation. Nothing the much-maligned Boers have ever done remotely resembles the massacres and mass murders committed by the “Anglo-American axis of Evil,” a chapter so titled in Into the Cannibal’s Pot. Ditto the Indians. Nothing the Amerindians have ever done within their self-governing territories—including to wage merciless and murderous internecine warfare on neighboring tribes—has come close to the ethnic annihilation visited upon them by the American, and other colonial, states.

American settlers defended themselves against hostile Indians as was their right (the parallels to the Boers at the Battle of Blood River are obvious). What successive American governments and military did to the Indians—these are crimes against humanity as only the state could commit.

These are the facts, nothing more.

While David is drawing distinctions between myself (a classical liberal) and other conservatives, here’s another shocker. I made friends with two exceptional men at WND’s annual conference: Albert Thompson and Erik Rush. Both were taken aback when I expressed this view on reparations: Where title to land stolen during the era of slavery can be traced, I would support reparations. The logistics, naturally, are difficult. But the principle is not. What was stolen, must be returned. Of course, the nation’s race hucksters have turned a debate about individual property rights into one sanctioning collective guilt and state-directed shakedowns.

Bad Eagle’s blog carries an interesting thread.

UPDATE IV: We discussed the crimes against Japanese civilians on the Barely A Blog post titled “White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction Of Hiroshima And Nagasaki.” Unfortunately, the comments were lost, but my replies to them in the form of updates remain, as do the hyperlinks. Forgive me for not reposting the same comments in favor of the mass murder of innocents. However disdainful, on the anniversary of that crime, I may open up this forum so as to relitigate these crimes.

UPDATE V (Nov. 27): The Rousseauist reverence for the Noble Savage I’ve condemned many times. For example:

“Robert Hughes writes: ‘Historical evidence shows that the people of the Americas had been doing very nicely for centuries and probably millennia when it came to murder, torture, materialism, genocide, enslavement and sexist hegemony.’ In our silly view of native Americans we have, says Hughes, perpetrated a stereotype in which European man has become the demon, and the native has been canonized.”

And this from “Rousseau’s Noble Savage – Not on this Continent”:

In light of archeological findings, the myth of the purity of primitive life juxtaposed to the savagery of Western Culture is even less justified. The Americas are scattered with archeological evidence of routine massacres, cannibalism, dismemberment, slavery, abuse of women and human sacrifice among native tribes. Why, the Northwest Territories Yellowknife tribe eventually disappeared as a direct result of a massacre carried out as late as 1823. By the same shift of logic, should remaining native “nations” perhaps not be made to pay reparations among themselves?

BUT the same essay ends thus:

“In no way do these facts mitigate or excuse the cruel treatment natives have endured. All they do is cut through the ‘rhetoric of moral superiority’ and challenge the cultural script.”

UPDATE III: Into The Cannibal’s Pot: An Update (+Grisly Reminders)

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, History, Ilana Mercer, Media, Race, Racism, South-Africa

Some of you are waiting for, and have been asking about, the publication of Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa. The wait is worse for South Africans who are in the thick of the events my book documents and analyzes—Into The Cannibal’s Pot is a Burkian polemic, steeped in history, reality, fact, and the classical liberal political philosophy.

When I completed the book some months back, the number of Boers murdered was just over 3000. As the courageous Adriana Stuijt now documents, the death toll stands at 3,756. Adriana has been on the case since 1987. She, WND, in the early 2000s, and myself have been (still are) the only sources of serious, ongoing analysis—as opposed to knee-jerk, fleeting cyber-ejaculate—about what is truly underway in the new South Africa. Adriana is Dutch, I believe, and lived in SA. I am South African born, as you know.

In any event, the manuscript is currently under consideration. If all fails, fear not (with your help), someone will see to it that the true story of the New South Africa (“Rambo Nation”), as detailed in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, is told. (And that an important work is published.)

So far, four magnificent men (as writers, thinkers, and human beings) have returned Praise For The Cannibal. Thank you. You know who you are. These gentlemen seemed to sense the urgency of my mission (and, I am told, the thing is an excellent read). As I’ve already said, these towering talents do not inhabit the solipsistic universe in which most American “writers” (and publishers) are mired.

I hope this gives you an idea of where in the publication process I am with Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.

UPDATE I: A GRISLY REMINDER. And people close to my family expect me to rush to the place to visit, possibly forsaking my life. Local predators are on the look for idiot outsiders, such as these. Having documented, contrasted and compared SA crime rates in statistical detail in Into The Cannibal’s Pot, I am more aware than are family and friends of the real risks.

This flashy couple will get western attention, the Boers dying daily in defense of their Zimbabwified farm land, not at all. I tell family and friends that as an outsider, you stand out; become a target in SA. They don’t get it. I, at least, still have the SA accent. But tourists… Why do you think this irresponsible, newly wed man was tossed from the taxi while his lovely wife kept back only to be killed later on? On that, Western media will refrain from postulating or reporting.

Via the Mail Online:

The driver of a British businessman whose new wife was shot dead in South Africa appeared in court today accused of helping to kill her.
Anni Dewani was shot dead after the taxi she and husband Shrien, 30, were travelling in was carjacked.
Their driver Zola Tongo, a local man, was charged with murder, kidnapping and aggravated robbery at a court hearing in Cape Town this morning.
Tragic: Anni Dewani was shot dead after the taxi she was travelling in was carjacked. The driver has been accused of her murder
Tragic: Anni Dewani was shot dead after the taxi she was travelling in was carjacked. The driver has been accused of helping to kill her
A prosecutor told the court that Tongo is likely to enter into a ‘plea bargain arrangement’ in return for a possible lenient sentence.
Millionaire Mr Dewani and his 28-year-old wife were hijacked on November 13 as they returned to their five-star hotel from an evening meal.
They had asked Tongo, whom they had met at the airport, to drive them through the poverty-stricken township of Gugulethu so that they could experience a flavour of ‘the real Africa’.
But within three minutes of leaving the motorway, two gunmen hijacked the taxi.
After robbing them both, Mr Dewani was thrown out of the people carrier’s back window.
Nine hours later his wife’s body was found in the back of the abandoned taxi.
While Tongo’s actions were not revealed in court, it has been reported locally that during the drive he phoned a friend.
He allegedly told the friend what the couple were planning and where in the township they were planning to go.
This morning, Tongo appeared in court alongside another man, 25-year-old Mziwamadoda Qwabe. Xolile Mngeni, 23, appeared in court last week.

UPDATE II: I mentioned above the knee-jerk, fleeting cyber-ejaculate type commentary that cyber-celebrities allow themselves when it comes to South Africa.

Contrary to Pamela Geller’s fast and furious factoids, a Boer is NOT a “disparaging term for any white South African,” as she “wrote” in an April 16, “American Thinker” post this year, titled “Genocide In South Africa.” Geller, who is in the habit of spouting off as though she knows everything, should learn to cite sources who do know something about the South African subject.

UPDATED III: Given the South African market, my goal is to ensure my readers in South Africa can purchase the book. We will have to see. But this has to be part of the deal.

UPDATED: The Founders Reduced

Africa, Colonialism, Ethics, Founding Fathers, History, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood, Political Correctness, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, Race, Racism

After a conference (some photos are posted below) in Baltimore, I decamped to Old Town Alexandria (still occupied federal territory) to do some sightseeing. That meant staying away from the venue from which Glenn Beck and his 9/twelvers choose to rouse the nation: DC. Incidentally, a gentle bouquet of sewerage blanketed DC when I landed at Reagan National Airport. It lingered for days.

I, of course, needed no olfactory reminders to steer clear of DC. We headed into Virginia. Fredericksburg, Charlottesville, and Orange: The landscape took my breath away. So beautiful, so steeped in history and patriotism. One could so clearly see why magnificent men once defended these places to the death.

Sadly, after touring George Washington’s Mount Vernon, James Madison’s woefully neglected Montpelier, and Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, Sean and I turned into betting men. The bet? In what room, or stage of the guided tour, would our guide begin to deconstruct the founders for slavery, making sure that all present understood how compromised were these brilliant and brave individuals because of that peculiar institution.

Whites had been taught well. Many of the questions fielded touched on slavery; most of those present were eager to display their exquisite sensitivity. Achingly sensitive: Although the slave quarters were closed for renovations, one young man had draped himself over a windowsill. There he stood motionless, deep in thought, his frame racked by (very showy) pain.

An African-American family sauntered toward the estate plan, where I lingered. The father pointed his son toward one thing and one thing only: “Here, son, were the slave quarters. Here is their unmarked tomb,” said dad. They left. Thus was the boy instructed to keep those suppurating sores oozing with resentment. Not a word did dad disgorge about George Washington. Thus was Washington whittled down.

At Monticello we were joined by my good friend the economist and historian Tom DiLorenzo. Tom has blogged about another libel leveled against “The Great Man,” on Lewrockwell.com: the notion that “Jefferson fathered six children with slave Sally Hemmings,” disseminated by the “school-marmish tour guide.”

On average, by the time you arrive at the second room in any given house, you are hit with the requirement that Honky expiate over slavery. The Founders, it is intimated, are beyond repair given the contradiction they embodied. This was the gist of the message.

One pimply female gatekeeper—she was ominously standing sentinel at Washington’s tomb—wearing trendy shades and a shortish skirt, explained to a concerned middle-aged white man: “Washington freed his slaves towards the end, but kept some on because “he was addicted to the life style.” Imagine using contemporary pop-psyche vernacular in this context!

HISTORY FROM BELOW. The history of the US is what the Legislative Black Caucus, the NAACP, and so-called civil-rights activists say it is; it’s history from below; a litany of complaints and contrivances from self-styled victims’ groups on behalf of minor historical figures.

Outside “the plantation office building where Stonewall Jackson died in Guinea Station, Virginia.”

These little piggies, Ossabaw Island Hogs, belong to the very breed once bred by George Washington at Mount Vernon. This most innovative farmer, who used state-of-the-art technologies and thinking with respect to agriculture and conservation, was, naturally, nothing without the slaves (whom he and his ilk schooled).

With Barely A Blog Star, Myron Pauli, who was good enough to attend the Mencken Club Conference.

Peter Brimelow and myself.

UPDATE: I understand that David, in the Comment hereunder, is being cynical when he writes, “I got it, the founders were flawed, sinful men like me and you,” but the following bears saying:

No, the Founders were nothing like us. Not even close. I’m not talking as an idealist, but as a realist. Judging from their deeds and their words, the American Founding Fathers were immeasurably better than just about anyone on earth today (and that goes for that gnarled, somewhat stupid sadist, Mother Teresa. And yes, Christopher Hitchens nailed the woman).

Their actions tell us that they forsook their fortunes for a cause we no longer have the intellectual or moral capabilities to grasp: liberty.

Their writings evince an intelligence and a level of abstraction far beyond that evinced by most contemporary intellectuals. In fact, Charles Murray’s monumental work, Human Accomplishment, in which he comes up with 4,002 subjects who “dragged their fellow men out of wattle-and-daub hovels and pushed them into space rockets,” tends to support my harking to the past, not the present, for intellectual inspiration.

Slavery was debated vigorously and finally abolished by the English—not the Arab or African traders (who persist in the practice).

I cover this topic in my yet-to-be-published book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons For The West From Post-Apartheid South Africa. It is a complicated subject. The missionaries in Africa, for example, regarded slaves as children to be de-tribalized and missionized. They were taught skills and trades; mission stations acted as havens for refugees fleeing tribal depredations in South Africa.

As you tour the homes of the founders mentioned above, you’re wont to hear about this or the other wonderful cabinet maker or marvelously gifted horseman, or farmhand, etc. Who do you think taught the slaves these skills and trades? The monarchs of Buganda or Ethiopia?

As I say, the Founders were advanced for their time in EVERY respect. Not perfect, but a great deal more perfect than most of us.