Category Archives: History

Updated: Amanpour Omits Genocide Of Boers By British

Britain, Criminal Injustice, History, Justice, Media, South-Africa

I watched Amanpour’s CNN’s program on genocide. No mention was made of the genocide of Boers by the British during the Second Boer War. Fifteen percent of the Afrikaner population was rounded up, interned, and starved to death–27,000 women and children.

Apparently after some controversy, Amanoour even mentioned the poor Armenians whose wholesale slaughter is usually denied because the slaughterers, our “allies” the Turks, demand the denial of that Holocaust. National interest and all that stuff.

Here is a rather common image from the annals of the Second Boer War (1899-1902). The caption follows, below.

“The young Lizzie van Zyl who died in the Bloemfontein concentration camp: She was a frail, weak little child in desperate need of good care. Yet, because her mother was one of the “undesirables” due to the fact that her father neither surrendered nor betrayed his people, Lizzie was placed on the lowest rations and so perished with hunger that, after a month in the camp, she was transferred to the new small hospital. Here she was treated harshly. The English disposed doctor and his nurses did not understand her language and, as she could not speak English, labeled her an idiot although she was mentally fit and normal. One day she dejectedly started calling for her mother, when a Mrs Botha walked over to her to console her. She was just telling the child that she would soon see her mother again, when she was brusquely interrupted by one of the nurses who told her not to interfere with the child as she was a nuisance.”

Update: JP’s heartfelt comment hereunder with respect to how Afrikaners were treated warrants mention of another aspect of genocide, salient in the plight of the Afrikaners, then as now: demonization. The British liked the Bantu; and hated the Boer. They demonized the Boers as retarded and stupid and would hang notices around the necks of Afrikaner kids caught speaking Afrikaans at school: “I am a donkey.” (Source: The White Tribe of Africa: South Africa In Perspective by David Harrison, p. 48) Need I mention the Bantu’s “Kill the Boer” slogans?

Updated: Your Godless Government At Work

Barack Obama, Bush, Christianity, Economy, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, History, Inflation, Judaism & Jews, The West

The excerpt is from my latest WND column, “Your Godless Government At Work“:

“…Your gut tells you that your government is not only economically bankrupt, but morally bankrupt too—detached from any ethical moorings.

Alas, ‘figures don’t lie, but liars can figure’:

The experts say the complete opposite: The values and virtues ordinary mortals hold themselves to don’t apply to government. The macroeconomic and microeconomic solitudes are governed by separate codes of morality. Never the twain shall meet. Or so the money mavens claim.

Whereas you’ll pay dearly for your profligacy; the government’s recklessness will be rewarded. Whereas your debt will wipe you out; government debt will lift us all up. The latter is ‘stimulating’; the former sapping. …”

The complete column is: “Your Godless Government At Work”

Update (Nov. 29, 2008): At the “Secular Right,” John Derbyshire, also the only interesting writer at National Review Online (there you go, Ilana, making friends again), has written a post about “Your Godless Government At Work.”

I like the way Derb neutralizes me with the “ravishing and brilliant” appellations. Duly subdued. As one of the few intellectually honest, brilliant, paleo-conservatives around, Derb, naturally, always has my attention. (There are quite a few brilliant paleos, but not all are intellectually honest.)

A couple of comments from one secular rightist (me) to another (Derb): Although not religious, I’m a defender of the so-called Judeo-Christian tradition. I’m not hostile to religion (except to Islam, which is a political system).

The main points of Derb’s post are:

Derb: “Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe.”
Ilana: You don’t need to be an able Talmudist to knock that logic down. Islamic theology, for example, is of considerable interest if only in showing naive westerners that it (and its adherents) is incompatible with their creature comforts and their very continuance. Therefore, Islamic theology is of some, limited interest to those outside the Umah.

Derb: Talmud “is all just tribal chanting.”
Ilana: The little Talmud I learned at school I liked and was good at. It’s fun, and doesn’t involve “elucidate[ing] what Rabbi So-and-so meant back in the 13th century.” At least not when studied in a secular school such as the Israeli secondary school I attended. It involved logic and law. A great deal of the logical method—pilpul—through which Talmudic scholars arrived at the law seemed to me to follow logic, and is thus more universal than tribal. Brilliant too.

For the reductionists who whittle down aggregate, Ashkenazi IQ to exogenous factors—breeding and natural selection—I venture that the study of Talmud must have contributed to innervating those dendritic connections in Jewish brains.

As a secular individual, Thomism and the Talmud interest me both as part of Western tradition. Talmud a little more, maybe, for tribal reasons (grin): in the context of my column, my readers (evangelicals) value the Jewish tradition. If I can show that the latter values freedom, why, then I can turn them against their leaders. I can also try and draw religious Jews away from leftism. That’s why I think JIMS’s impetus is important, because it might help save a few Jewish souls from the sins of leftism and convert them to the righteous philosophy of freedom.

So are Judaism’s texts—theological and other—merely a tribal affair? No. Are all the scholars who busy themselves with the respective texts members of the tribe?

(The same goes for the Hebrew Bible. I’m of a generation of secular Jews which knows and loves the Hebrew Bible as a tremendous literary, philosophical, and historical achievement. It’s unique. Those who have studied it in Hebrew, as I have, know the 39 books for the vital, lively (very Jewish), earthy, pioneering, and fascinating works they are. There is nothing stuffy or pompous about the Hebrew Bible, either. Paul Johnson (is he a member of the tribe?) agrees. In A History of the Jews, he writes: “The Bible is essentially a historical work from start to finish. The Jews developed the power to write terse and dramatic historical narrative half a millennium before the Greeks.”)

The central error of anti-religion crusaders is that they consider the Jewish and Christian traditions systems of ideas, denuded of historical context, to be accepted or rejected on the strength or weakness of their intrinsic logic (or lack thereof). Judaism and Christianity, however, are who we are historically (the same is true, unfortunately, of followers of Islam). One can no sooner denounce them than one can disavow history itself.

And that would be irrational.

Update II: The Obama Presidency: Hamiltonian Curse, Marxist Mess, Or Both? (Part I)

Barack Obama, Classical Liberalism, Federal Reserve Bank, History, John McCain, Political Philosophy, Ron Paul

On WND.com, “Obama Presidency: Hamiltonian Curse or Marxist Mess?”:

I interview my good friend Thomas J. DiLorenzo about his new book, Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution—and What It Means for America Today, with relevance to the events of the day.

Tom DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland, and the author of The Real Lincoln, Lincoln Unmasked, and How Capitalism Saved America.

Update: Says professor DiLorenzo:

“We are a nation of tax slaves for the benefit of our masters on the Washington, D.C. plantation. …”

AND:

“Whenever you hear the phrase ‘living Constitution’ [which you’ll hear a great deal from president elect Obama], just substitute the word ‘no’ for ‘living,’ and you’ll understand what it means.”

Be sure to follow up with part II of our conversation on IlanaMercer.com.

Update II: Part I of the interview is playing it again on WND:

PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
Obama presidency: Hamiltonian curse or Marxist mess?
Exclusive: Ilana Mercer talks to Tom DiLorenzo about new book exposing Founding Father
–WND

You know where to find Part II.

Happy Birthday, Pat Buchanan

America, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, IMMIGRATION

Tom Piatak writes a great column about a great American (with whom I’ve disagreed, a fact that has nothing to do with the man’s prescience and patriotism): “Pat Buchanan At 70: ‘He Told You So, You F****ing Fools!’” Read it on VDARE.COM, naturally:

“Both Bush and McCain swallowed the neoconservative line whole. Both see the mission of the United States as using its blood and treasure to spread’ ‘global democratic capitalism.’ Both welcome the mass immigration that is radically transforming the United States. … neither views America as a real country at all, but as the embodiment of an abstract political creed—the ‘first universal nation.’

Buchanan long ago warned that allowing neoconservatives to set the agenda would be calamitous for conservatives. His warning was unmistakably vindicated when the Republicans lost Congress in 2006. And if the American electorate rejects Bush and McCain next Tuesday, it will be rejecting neoconservatism, pure and simple.

Of course, Buchanan opposed the Iraq War that has cast its shadow over Bush’s presidency. He foresaw that removing Saddam Hussein would greatly strengthen Tehran and that an occupation of Iraq would be both costly and deadly.

More generally, Buchanan recognized that the end of the Cold War meant that America must begin reexamining its global commitments and pursuing a foreign policy in line with the one recommended by the Founders—and that failure to do so would be costly.”

The complete column on VDARE.COM.