Category Archives: History

Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara

Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Founding Fathers, History, Ilana Mercer, libertarianism, Liberty, Political Philosophy

My Friday column for October 22 will probably be titled “Thomas Paine: 18th Century Che Guevara.” The column following it, to be published on Friday October the 29th, is “The ‘Moronizing’ Of Modern Culture.”

You’ll have to read the first to appreciate the second, as they are part of a conversation with Dennis O’Keeffe, Professor of Sociology at the University of Buckingham, and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, “the UK’s original free-market think-tank, founded in 1955.”

Under discussion is the subject of Professor O’Keeffe’s latest book, “Edmund Burke.”

One of the questions I asked Dennis was “Why is it that one rarely hears Edmund Burke mentioned in American public discourse, yet my countrymen know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke (‘the greatest Irishman who ever lived’) for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious ‘Revolution in France’?”

Indeed, although neglected, Edmund Burke’s thinking is central to American—and any other—ordered liberty.

Be sure to read the two columns, which you can follow from Barely a Blog to WND.COM.

I am away at the 3rd annual meeting of the HL Mencken Club. Please join me if you are in the vicinity. The details are HERE.

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, Economy, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.

The John (Eliot Spitzer) & The Mindless Schoolmarm (Kathleen Parker)

Celebrity, History, Media, The State, The Zeitgeist

We can all agree that Eliot Spitzer did his most ethical work as a John, between the sheets with the hooker with whom he was caught. Before that he was a politician who persecuted the productive class.

“Parker Spitzer,” CNN’s new current-events program, is easily the most repulsive thing on TV. More so than “Keeping Up With The Kardashians.”

I’d never have guessed, though, that I’d prefer Spitzer’s open statism to Kathleen Parker’s coy conformity. The New York Times stated that “Ms. Parker does not bring to CNN Mr. Spitzer’s propensity for controversy.” That’s an understatement.

Parker, we are told, is a Pulitzer prize winner. That tells me as much about that journalistic honor than Obama’s peace prize tells me about the Nobel Prize. Not only does this woman, Parker, not express a thought in opposition to her partner’s; she doesn’t express a thought.

Today the creepy couple entertained the king of Keynesians, economist Paul Krugman. Both offered plaudits to his predictive brilliance. Neither one challenged his warped history and economics. Yesterday it was the gorgeous model and ditz Paulina, and the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy. Both called the tea partiers a savages. Nobody was smart enough to point out the differences between the Revolution in France, as Edmund Burke referred to this barbaric turning point in history, and the American Revolution.

Parker is a wound-up, tight-lipped, prissy schoolmarm—which is not a bad thing at all. I like prim and proper. It’s the dumb statist that I don’t much dig.

“Parker Spitzer” is self-congratulatory, pompous Beltway banter.

It needs to fail.

Rauff Revs Up The Muslim Message

Christianity, History, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Religion

The official Right in this country did not tell it like it is: Feisal Abdul Rauf, Chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, and the man behind the mosque in lower Manhattan, was picked by the Bush administration to serve as the American emissary to Muslim countries. Did you know this? I was under the impression that the Imam was B. Hussein’s pick.

I find nothing outrageous about the Imam’s opinion, also mine, that America’s adventurous foreign policy is a necessary condition for Muslim aggression. But that’s not the entire story. Rauff would never admit that our meddling abroad is far from a sufficient condition for Muslim aggression.

However, when Abdul Rauf, in this clip, soothingly says that Islam and America are organically bound, and then proceeds to describe the American Founding Fathers, without mentioning their Christian background and beliefs, as non-parochial men of faith—then I get the creeps.

Rauf sees the three faiths as enmeshed and America’s history as intertwined with Islam and Muslims. At least so he says. Taqiyya, anyone?

This man would make a good snake charmer.