Category Archives: Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim

Update VI: The Swine (AKA The State) Are AWOL

Canada, Europe, Healthcare, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Objectivism, The State

The excerpt is from my new, WND column, “The Swine (AKA The State) Are AWOL.” If you miss the column on WND.com, you can catch it weekly on Taki’s Magazine, the following day. It’s now up. (May 2)

“Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others—intentionally or unintentionally—falls perfectly within the purview of the ‘night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,’ in the words of the philosopher Robert Nozick. …

“A well-policed barrier is the definitive, non-aggressive method of defense against these ailments and afflictions. You don’t attack, arrest, or otherwise molest undesirables; you keep them at bay, away.”

“Libertarian and leftist protest over any impediment to the free flow of people across borders is predicated not on the negative, leave-me-alone rights of the individual, but on the positive, manufactured right of human kind to venture wherever, whenever.”

Read “The Swine Are Loose,” (Taki title) to learn what “the quintessential ‘Renaissance woman,’ the late, dazzling, Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.—expert aviator, health-care policy analyst, marksman, and musician—had to say about “the effects on the health system of the bleeding Southwestern border.”

Update I (May 1): I don’t think I’ve made any dogmatic statements about Objectivist thinking per se. What I will say is this: From all warring Objectivist sources, I’ve read oodles about waging war on the world, but very little that is coherent about stopping the Third World from invading the US.

As I wrote in 2004, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.” I have seen no evidence that “real” Randians have departed from this neoconservative perversion.

Yes, some Objectivists say borders ought to be protected against dem terrorists, but has any dared to venture that defending the country’s borders may have more than just a security dimension?
By all means, enlighten me (with citations/links, please).

The title of my near-complete book manuscript, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, is meant as a metaphor, and is inspired by Ayn Rand’s wise counsel against prostrating civilization to savagery. I have no doubt she’d have been appalled by the free-for-all on the border with Mexico — and not just because of the possibility of infiltration by a couple of malevolent Muslims.

By all means, provide links to a coherent, Rand-stamped, non-neoconservative view of immigration that does not focus exclusively on security to the detriment of cultural components, which are as essential to the survival of American liberty.

Update II: I don’t buy the allegation that views on immigration among Objectivists are shaped by the validity/legality of Ayn Rand’s visa. Rand was not swayed by positive law. Likewise, Objectivists would—or should—argue from the natural law.

Update IV (May 2): The Hispanic influx into the US is unprecedented. Writes my WND colleague, Vox Day:

“To describe the discourse concerning the mass inflow of foreigners that has taken place over the last 29 years [as] ‘the immigration debate’ is to use a misnomer. What has taken place since the 1980 U.S. census is nothing less than a mass migration of the sort that irretrievably transformed historical civilizations everywhere from Hellenic Greece to Moorish Spain. In 1980, the number of Hispanics living in the United States was 14.6 million. In 2008, it was 45.5 million. Hispanics now account for 15 percent of the total population, and because they are the fastest-growing population segment, the census bureau expects their numbers to increase by a further 67 million by 2050.”

Update V (May 3): Sigh. “The Swine Are AWOL (Or Loose)” was not complicated, at least not to the sensible, straight-thinking.

* The dread diseases delineated in the column happen to hail not from the first world, but from Latin America, with which we have an open border.
* The state has a minimal duty. It is not to “control disease” or test every human being crossing the border, but to enforce a border.
* Currently about a million, poor, deprived, and often depraved, ill people cross over each and every year into the US. By enforcing the border, so that far fewer get through, the number of locals killed or sickened by criminals or carriers will be reduced. Not eliminated; reduced. Is that simple logic unclear? I don’t think so.
* This policy should not be egalitarian, naturally. Canada and Europe are first-world destinations. The diseases making a come-back in the US do not come from North America or the Continent. We have a contiguous border with the first-world Canada, and the third, or second-world Mexico. We do not share a border with Europe, naturally.

Update VII (May 4): Jack writes:

Hi

Seems that the comments are closed for this item, so will send just one of the citations/links you asked for.

Within the narrow confines of the original article, I thought it was in writing but the only reference I could find was Yaron Brook stating that people carrying infectious diseases is one of the groups that would be excluded from coming into the country. (Bottom of the page, last video, within the first minute.)

Cheers
Jack

Updated: CNN On Tea Protest: ‘Not Really Family Viewing’

Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Race, Taxation

How far has the level of “news” fallen when a reporter doesn’t know that her role is to report, not editorialize.

The following is an irate display of ignorance and arrogance by a CNN anchor (via Glenn Beck). Following a rude “exchange”–it was certainly not an interview–with a clean-cut patriot carrying a toddler, who addressed the vile woman respectfully as “Ma’am,” Madam resorted to this rant:

“I think you get the general tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the rightwing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, toss it back to you.”

Note the tone “Susan Roesgen” adopts; it drips contempt. Roesgen ought to be fired, simply because this is not journalism; it’s activism.

Update I (April 18): CNN defended Roesgen: “She was doing her job, and called it like she saw it.” From oral-sex jokes to red neck and racist insults: there has been not a vestige of honest reporting about tea party protests from mainstream malpractitioners.

Updated: CNN On Tea Protest: 'Not Really Family Viewing'

Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Liberty, Media, Propaganda, Race, Taxation

How far has the level of “news” fallen when a reporter doesn’t know that her role is to report, not editorialize.

The following is an irate display of ignorance and arrogance by a CNN anchor (via Glenn Beck). Following a rude “exchange”–it was certainly not an interview–with a clean-cut patriot carrying a toddler, who addressed the vile woman respectfully as “Ma’am,” Madam resorted to this rant:

“I think you get the general tenor of this. It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the rightwing conservative network Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, toss it back to you.”

Note the tone “Susan Roesgen” adopts; it drips contempt. Roesgen ought to be fired, simply because this is not journalism; it’s activism.

Update I (April 18): CNN defended Roesgen: “She was doing her job, and called it like she saw it.” From oral-sex jokes to red neck and racist insults: there has been not a vestige of honest reporting about tea party protests from mainstream malpractitioners.

Updated: Pro-Afrikaans Action Group Praises … Jacob Zuma

Africa, Britain, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, South-Africa

Our friend Dr. Dan Roodt, founder of the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group (PRAAG), is nothing if not original! His rightist organization is applauding Jacob Zuma, a different kind of original, for the overtures Zuma is making toward the much-maligned and disenfranchised Afrikaners.

I like this tack. It’s unexpected. So few are the truly interesting minds around, and Dan certainly is one. Sure, I’m flummox. But I’m also intrigued. Read on:

PRAAG (the Pro-Afrikaans Action Group) joined in the standing ovation that Jacob Zuma received from the assembly of Afrikaner delegates at yesterday’s meeting at the Hilton Hotel in Sandton. For perhaps the first time since the early nineties, Afrikaners had spoken frankly about the many issues bothering them in the new South Africa, such as the domination of English monoculture, violent crime, land reform, the new gun laws, corruption and the dilapidation of state resources such as the SABC, SAA, Eskom and others.

After the gathering, Dr. Dan Roodt, leader of PRAAG, told reporters: “I feel very positive about the outcome of the meeting and have the impression that foreign, especially British, influence on the ANC is diminishing. It is almost as if Zuma has some pangs of nostalgia for the old, Afrikaner-run South Africa, with its discipline, sense of patriotism, successful agriculture, frugal public salaries and respect for law and order.”

Roodt continued: “There was never any reason for conflict between Afrikaners and blacks in the past as we have understood each other and cooperated for almost two centuries. However, outside elements, ranging from Britain and Sweden to the die-hard English communists of South Africa, incited conflict in our country so as to place us on the same path as the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, with its radicalism, ethnic strife and failed states.”

Under Mbeki Afrikaners were vilified as “settlers who failed to depart”. In his speech to the assembly, the leader of PRAAG stated that “after 1994 the ANC had lacked a model to deal with a large indigenous Western minority, speaking its own language and not English, French or Portuguese”.

He went on to say that “Zuma is wise in appreciating that the radical Africanist model is a failure, as seen in Zimbabwe and many other postcolonial African countries. From his statements during the meeting, Zuma is clearly an admirer of the Afrikaner model of development with its emphasis on discipline, education, hard work, caring for the poor and successful agriculture”.

The president of the ANC has accepted an invitation to visit the Voortrekker Monument, as well as a camp of the Voortrekker youth movement. Dr. Dan Roodt said: “I think Zuma’s interest in Afrikaans culture is genuine. He should also visit the Afrikaans Literary Museum in Bloemfontein to discover perhaps the greatest cultural edifice in all of Africa, the prodigious output of Afrikaans works and translations in the twentieth century but which has been sadly neglected and even threatened during the rule of Thabo Mbeki.”

Roodt also responded to a statement by the DA that Zuma had displayed an “ethnically and racially blinkered world view” in calling Afrikaners the only “true white South Africans”.

“The DA is itself blind in its colonial liberalism that denies the multiethnic character of our state.”

No doubt, Bantu and Boer might have been better off without the British. (The same can be said of the Israelis and Palestinians.) Still, Dan knows as well as I do that the proof is in the pudding. Unless Zuma brings back the death penalty, and stops the racially motivated culling of whites in South Africa and the appropriation of commercial farms—it’s all talk.

But Zuma and Dan are shaking things up.

Check out PRAAG (where my column is occasionally featured).

Update (April 12):”Zuma Insulted Afrikaners: Zille.”

Helen Zille, quite an impressive woman, heads the Democratic Alliance: the liberal, minuscule, opposition to the South African One Party State. By her telling, Zuma was “patronisingly trying to ‘curry favour'” with Afrikaners.

If so, it’s long overdue.

The reason for Zuma’s pro-Afrikaner tack, claims Zille, is this: “By seeming to flatter, I can actually fool you all into forgetting about the corruption allegations against me. By pressing the ethnic button, I can also distract your attention from the ANC’s power abuse.”

Moreover, “It is the well-known ‘divide and rule’ tactic, which authoritarian racist governments always use to divide their opponents,” she said in her weekly newsletter on Friday.

All very plausible. However, what Zuma said about Afrikaners being the only true South Africans among whites is indubitably true. And rather perceptive, I might add.

This is what undergirds the BBC’s David Harrison’s fine book, The White Tribe of Africa.