Category Archives: Labor

UPDATED (4/6/018): Swollen Heads At National Review Exposed

America, Elections, Family, Labor, Neoconservatism, Political Economy, Race, Republicans, Welfare

National Review’s Kevin D. Williamson “reached peak leftism” when he declared his sympathies were “more with John Brown than John Calhoun,” in an article titled “We Have Officially Reached Peak Leftism” (June 24, 2015). In 1856, Brown’s free-soil activists snatched five pro-slavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas and split the captives’ skulls with broadswords, in an act of biblical retribution gone mad.

So it’s not that surprising that Williamson’s exquisite moral compass has led him to wish death upon white, working-class America. According to Breitbart.com, Williamson wrote this:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

This is not passionate writing; it’s plain hateful. Whatever merit there is in the indictment of working-class Americans—a case made well by political scientist Charles Murray, in “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010”—this ain’t it. Williamson writes in arrogance and contempt.

But, as further divulged by Breitbart, another National Review staff writer feels as Williamson does. He is David French (the object of my new column, “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel”). The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol’s candidate to run an independent presidential campaign is down with Williamson:

[French] described Williamson’s piece as “excellent” and said that Williamson’s words were “fundamentally true and important to say.”

French went on to dismiss the struggles white working class Americans endure.

“Citizens of the world’s most prosperous nation, they face challenges — of course — but no true calamities,” French wrote.

While French suggests that the decline of America’s middle class and manufacturing power is no true calamity, others could argue that the greater a nation or culture, the more sorrowful it is to witness its decline — much the same way that history would mourn the destruction of the Palace of Versailles more than the totaling of Justin Bieber’s car.

French insists that the devastation of the working-class’ livelihoods is unrelated to failed federal policies such as mass immigration …

I hate the, “Would he be saying this if … ” game. But I’ll indulge this once. It’s apposite. Would Williamson and French ever lay into the black underclass with the same degree of venom?


MORE AT “Bill Kristol’s Candidate: It’s ‘Important to Say’ White Working Class Communities ‘Deserve to Die.’”

RELATED: “Someone Should Tell Bill Kristol Dwarf Tossing Is Cruel.”

UPDATED (4/6/018): Kevin D. Williamson, so blood thirsty.

The Week’s Tweets (4/24/016): INTEL Trumps, NY Win, Brexits Boo BHO, More Potty Talk

Crime, Donald Trump, Labor, Outsourcing, Political Correctness, Race, South-Africa

Political Philosophy Is Not Like Sexual Orientation

Ilana Mercer, Labor, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Paleolibertarianism, Political Philosophy

Here’s my one reply to comments at The Unz Review about “The Curious Case of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian”:

Political philosophy is not like sexual orientation: You don’t just come out to the world, call yourself a thinker, and expect to be get embraced. You shouldn’t get away with that, although some try and succeed.

You do the bloody hard work, day-in, day-out. You write, you think; you get panned or praised; and you get up and do it again the next day.

You can’t just come out every day and proclaim, ‘I’m a perfect paleolibertarian, I believe everything Murray Rothbard said. Look at me, ain’t I neat, unlike Mercer,” not having written a coherent systematic sentence in your life.

And by systematic I mean, don’t just parrot the greats! The work involves, yes, applying the political philosophy as you see it to the political reality, doing it in fresh, new ways, without fear or favor.

You can’t sit on the fence, lazily, proclaiming your purity; forever suspended between what “is” and what “ought to be,” and revel in your immaculate conception (while throwing stones at me, as so many in this community have done).

In a word, you can’t be lazy, smug; an intellectual nullity that tears the hard-working down (love split infinitives).

As to The Mercer Image posted at The Unz Review: The editor organizes the page and the images on it; not the writer/myself. The Unz Review is a tightly edited website.

Why would anyone familiar with the ways of the press, print or pixels, imagine I posted a picture of myself at The Unz Review. Ridiculous!

The point of the essay is simple. My work over 2 decades (voluminous) speaks for itself. Good or bad.

It is systematic; it is paleolibertarian. Any scholar of substance would locate it squarely in the paleolibertarian tradition. Such a scholar might also distinguish a salient thing that sets this thought apart from some of those surveyed in the volume under discussion. As I wrote in defense of John Derb:

I cop to Western man’s individualist disdain—could it be his weakness?—for race as an organizing principle. For me, the road to freedom lies in beating back the state, so that individuals may regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and, generally, associate at will.

As for Israel: Why not ask the Ron Paul 2007 campaign why it commissioned a brief think piece from me and adhered to its tenets pretty well throughout the campaign—until someone likely told Paul that Mercer was un-kosher, and until someone instructed the campaign to quit calling on Mercer?

“Unshackling Israel,” mentioned in “Is Ron Paul Good For Israel?,” was commissioned by the Paul camp and repeated on the Paul campaign trail to good effect.

[SNIP]

The article under discussion: “The Curious Case of WND’s Vanishing, Veteran Paleolibertarian.”

UPDATED: MIAMI Breakthrough: Not Just ANOTHER GOP Debate

Donald Trump, Economy, Elections, Foreign Policy, Free Markets, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Labor, Middle East, Republicans

For your convenience, here are my tweets in real time of the 12th, GOP debate, in CORAL GABLES, at the University of Miami (3/10). Since so few networks respect the written word, let us thank CNN for providing a transcript. For the first time, I’m comfortable saying Mr. Trump won the debate. He had never done so before.

UPDATE (3/11):

From first to last, with the most important tweet—you’re looking at it—in the lead: