Category Archives: libertarianism

Paglia’s Statist Prattle

Barack Obama, Democrats, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Politics, Pop-Culture, Pseudo-intellectualism, The State

Camille Paglia is the scrappy Democrat adored by conservatives. On politics, she conceals heavy-duty statism behind the fig leaf of libertarianism. In the realm of art and culture, she substitutes symbolism for substantive assessment. Remember her clapped out claptrap about the significance of drag-queen iconography? What she knows about music is positively dangerous; she has conceptualized of Madonna—who is unable to sing or compose a warble worth hearing—as “an authentic, creative artist”? The Paglia prattle about the mismanaged sexuality of well-worn, ugly monsters like Britney Spears, here, was as worn and uninteresting as anything Gloria Steinem has ever mustered.

This month’s canned performance, “Obama’s healthcare horror,” can be followed from the conservative, Drudge newssite. (The “edgy” stuff about nude depictions is supposed to give this bit of banality a cutting-edge feel. Please! How original do you have to be to admit that Sharon Stone takes a good picture?)

Here’s a quick précis of the essay that instantiates Paglia’s hallmark statism and proclivity for the stylistic over the substantive:

• She voted for Obama so that he could repair the country’s IMAGE overseas. She’s pleased with that choice.
• She has complaints as far as his domestic policy, but they concern strategy rather than philosophy.
• A case in point: “healthcare reform,” which she thinks is the most important thing confronting dying America. It, of course, has been merely mishandled.
• The once beloved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is no longer in Camille’s good books.
• Congress is “chaotic, rapacious, and solipsistic”; Obama is usually “sober and deliberative.”
• It is the State’s responsibility to see to it that an individual in “a major crisis,” or “earning at or below a median income,” has healthcare.
• More tired odes to the 1960s and the Democratic Party as a relic of that great era.
• Poor Camille is disillusioned. She never saw it coming: “I thought my party was populist, attentive to the needs and wishes of those outside the power structure. And as a product of the 1960s, I thought the Democratic Party was passionately committed to freedom of thought and speech.”
• Camille beats on breast because her “party is drifting toward a soulless collectivism.” Pray tell, Ms. Paglia, what would a soulful collectivism look like?
• Obamby failed to engender an “in-depth analysis, buttressed by documentary evidence, of waste, fraud and profiteering in the healthcare, pharmaceutical and insurance industries.” Another one of Ms. Paglia’s contradictory spasms; big pharma/business bad; big Obama good.
• On the Gates Case; she has nothing new to say that has not already been said by Pat Buchanan and this column.
• “The basic rule in comprehensive legislation should be: First, do no harm.” That was said by your host first.

(The same goes for Paglia’s eventual evaluation of the blogosphere; it came well after mine and only echoed what I had said in “The Importance of Boundaries.”)

THERE ARE A FEW paragraphs that are poignant. For instance: “The president is promoting the most colossal, brazen bait-and-switch operation since the Bush administration snookered the country into invading Iraq with apocalyptic visions of mushroom clouds over American cities.”

Overall, you’re better off watching the pictures linked, instead.

Updated: WikiLibel (Pitfalls Of Populism In Data)

Africa, Free Speech, Internet, libertarianism, Propaganda, Pseudo-history, South-Africa

Wikipedia is the Southern Poverty Law Center of online “resources.” It is an example of why populism in data is a piss-poor idea. Any rightist who’s had to fight that outfit for the removal of libel and lies knows of what I speak.

In short, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia of and for the Age of the Idiot. (And the malevolent.) Of course, libertarians love it—and their motives are lefty, as is often the case: Behold spontaneous order! (More like disorder.) The fact that millions of people have mastered enough technology to post online falsities masquerading as fact about those they dislike is no more significant to freedom than the fact that billions of humans have a bowel movement every day. So there!

And, as Derb demonstrates, Wikipedia makes “correcting” very difficult indeed. personally, I’ve opted for letters c/cd to a lawyer (and when I obtain proof traceable to the woman I suspect of saucing up the barely true tales posted about me … it won’t be pretty).

Truth in advertising is the issue here. Wikipedia needs to be labeled differently. It cannot be allowed at once to post lies and pose as a purveyor of truth. Right now, it uses its credibility as an encyclopedia to damage the good name of a person and present it as fact. Think of the debate over holocaust denial. Free speech always. The only question vis-a-vis denial is how and where you file it. In the library, the Dewey Decimal Classification for denial ought to be “Pseudo-history.” Right now Wikipedia bios fuse fact with fiction, yet this amalgam is filed as fact. This dubious syndicate needs to be “reclassified” itself. (Ideas?)

So far generalities. Now to more particulars. Today I was researching Dr. Mangosuthu Buthelezi for a section of my interminable book. Without going into detail, the Zulu chief is one of the good guys of South Africa; Mandela’s mafia—the ANC—is the bad element. Of course, Buthelezi being a free market man, who fought for the devolution of power rather than its concentration in a dominant-party state (the endgame of the ANC and its Anglo-American buddies)—he was tarred as the bad guy by the same axis of evil.

And by WikiLibel. As far as I know, “necklacing,” the indigenous practice of placing a car tire around a putative offender’s neck and igniting it with gasoline, was invented by the ANC as a method of punishing collaborators. Nelson’s wife, Wini Mandela, was an avid practitioner. No, I’m not claiming there was never any cross-fertilization in the ethnic war between the Xhosa (ANC/Mandela) and the Zulu (Buthelezi). However, the ANC should take credit for inventing and perfecting this technique.

But not according to our falsifiers, who give Buthelezi the good old WikiLibel treatment.

Update (August 3): AGGRESSION AGAINST NON-AGGRESSORS. A syndicate poses as a transmitter of immutable fact. The outfit’s process allows for the repeated trashing of vulnerable individuals in its bio section—vulnerable because mass support is not behind them. Individuals enjoying the support of the masses and their crooked cognoscenti are spared. All this under the guise of truth and objectivity.

As I predicted, those whose life’s work is in undermining ordered liberty, and elevating the virtues of populism and anarchy, rush to the defense of this bully pulpit. I speak of libertarians, naturally.

Their analytical tools? Accuse the “little woman” (moi) of personalizing the matter, sulking, and not being willing to, periodically, forfeit her good name and the integrity of her record on the alter of the Collective Good—namely data disseminated by the masses.

Predictable.

It doesn’t take much mental acuity (entirely lost in the herd instincts of my interlocutors) to distill the argument of this post. All one has to do is READ IT. Again.

What moved me to write was not my ongoing libel by Wikipedia, but the blatant, malicious, cunningly embedded slander in the bio of Prince Mangasutu Buthelezi. The latter is one of the good guys of South Africa, RIP. Yet the Zulu royal has been tarred over the decades by westerners—from the state department, to the New York Times to every petty diplomat blindly doing the business of democracy in that part of the world.

In their support for Saint Nelson and the revolutionary ANC—Acorn with machetes—the majority of libertarians (not all, mind you) have been as zealous as the neoconservatives. So sure, they’d dismiss my motives for writing this post. What do these plebs, every bit as ahistoric in their sympathies as the neoconservatives, know of Buthelezi?

According the WikiLibel, the grisly tradition of necklacing (see above), originated with the prince and his political party. Wrong. Necklacing was invented and perfected by the Saint’s syndicate and put to use by his wife.

If you’re not really famous—anointed by the intellectual monopoly in the Age of the Idiot—and WikiLibel doesn’t look too shabby if it lies about you; then they’ll sanction your maligning. Good luck in trying to remove the libel. Read Derb’s experience, one among many. Otherwise you, a non-aggressor, is aggressed against and it’s up to you to keep fending off attacks you did not provoke. How excellent

Some anarchists have no problems with libel, and even advance arguments for it. Free speech baby. Fist in the air; power to the pitchfork wielders.

I predicted libertarians would ooze all over this particular spontaneous bowel movement. I was right.

Update III: Badass In America (Fighting Race Baiters)

Barack Obama, Crime, Education, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Media, Race, Racism

While out on a run one day, our alarm system was triggered. Not the full foghorn, mind you, but a sensor, which went off at the security company’s headquarters. As we were entering the home, two police officers were walking down the driveway and up the stairs. They were extremely polite, but stern. They told us they had received a report of an alarm going off at this address. Were we the owners of the abode, they wanted to know. “Yes,” we replied. They asked to see ID. We complied. Then they left. We were impressed with their professionalism and glad for the vigilance.

A similar thing happened to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. But he was not as pleased with the boys in blue as Sean and I were.

The case of Gates was catapulted to the headlines, first by the “Black In America” cable channel, CNN. Then by the mother ship docked at the White House. “Obama,” reports Fox News, “who is friends with the professor and documentary filmmaker, told reporters at a Wednesday night press conference that … ‘the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.'”

The fact that Gates was in the home is no proof he owned or resided in that home. More material: Obama was anything but impartial. His was the full-throated reaction of the president of Black America. Obama was ready with a bag of tricks that would have done the Sharpton-Jackson race baiters proud.

But back to Gates. He and his cabby had forced the front door, and it appears that Gates refused to produce an ID or any other information, calling Sgt. James Crowley a racist for requesting identification.

“According to the report, Gates then yelled, ‘This is what happens to black men in America.’ When Crowley tried to calm him down, Gates shouted, ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with.'” And, “Ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside.”

Classy.

At this stage, I think the officer ought to have walked away. Just done the gentlemanly thing and bowed out. But when Gates followed Crowley out cussing, pulling rank and threatening him, the officer cuffed the professor for disorderly conduct. At this point, the officer, who so far had done his duty, lost it and gave in to oneupmanship.

Before commenting, do read the Disorderly Conduct Report, written by both Sergeant James Crowley and Officer James Figueroa (courtesy of “The Smoking Gun”).

Update I (July 24): THE AFRICAN ARISTOTLE. Soft sobriquets such as “PC” and “elitist” don’t come close to capturing the essence of Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr.

Let me do the honors. Gates is a man who has risen to the pinnacle of a society he hates. His stature he owes to the creation of bogus fields of specialty by a stupid, self-immolating WASP society. Described as “scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual,” among other effusions, Gates’ scholarship is in … drum roll … the “study of black culture,” a BS pursuit created to appease; to allow the intellectually undeserving to delude themselves and others that they’ve scaled considerable intellectual heights.

I’m appalled that no one has been remotely critical of the treatment this man is receiving as the crème de la crème of American intelligentsia; a man whose Wikipedia entry perfectly seriously lauds his skills at combining of “literary techniques of deconstruction with native African literary traditions.” Jacques Derrida at least was an educated deconstructionist. Ditto Michel Foucault.

CNN’s Soledad O’Brien, of the “Black In America” lamentations, had a frothing fit when trying to express her outrage at the treatment of this African Aristotle. O’Brien boasted about taking classes at Harvard with Gates the intellectual giant, and struggled to find the words with which to do justice to his towering achievements, not least of which is his gritty, terribly original role as an “outspoken critic of the Eurocentric literary canon.” What you can’t best, you can at least trash.

Update II (July 25): Steve Sailer on Obama’s ingrained racism. Sailer also brings up a point I’ve hammered again and again on this blog and in my columns: The importance of Ricci, the white firefighter, refusing to go gently into the good night.

Obama’s comments at his news conference on the “stupidity” of the Cambridge Police Department were, despite all his lawyerly stipulations, a textbook example of racial prejudice in action. He had prejudged these specific events based on his deeply held views on the general racial situation in America.

As in Ricci, we see the value of civil servant unions in standing up to racialized politicians. Crowley’s cop union stood shoulder to shoulder with him and helped him face down the Governor and the President. Government employee unions are expensive, but they do have an interest in standing up for civil service rules in fighting the new racial spoils system perpetrated under the guise of “civil rights.”

Another lesson is that as the Establishment has ratcheted up Racism into the worst sin imaginable in the history of the world, it has not correspondingly ratcheted up the seriousness of the consequences of falsely accusing somebody of “racism.” It was clear from even Dr. Gates’s self-serving account that his accusations of racism against Officer Crowley were the product not of evidence but of his understandably tired, overexcited brain intersecting with his business interests as a prestige media race man. Crowley refused to buckle under to extraordinary pressure, going all the way up to the President, thus setting a new standard for how to respond to false charges.

It’s time to pressure Obama to publicly call on his friend Skip Gates to withdraw his charges of racism against Officer Crowley on the grounds that the epidemic of false charges of racism must be halted.

Now, that would be a Teachable Moment!

Update III (July 27): FIGHTING THE RACE BAITERS. On MSNBC, Eugene Robinson, the mediocre, mundane mind that has landed a lucrative post at the Washington Post and a Pulitzer Prize, smirked over the allegation that Gates had cussed. “He’s a superstar, one of the best-known and most highly acclaimed faculty members at the nation’s most prestigious university.” Such people don’t cuss. “C’mon,” Robinson jocularly intimated; Sgt. James Crowley is likely the liar.

Look, I hope you get that this fracas is never about the non-aggression principle: The libertarian law is the easy part; the no-brainer. As the libertarian law goes, Crowley was in the wrong. But there’s more to society than the skeletal non-aggression axiom. The real achievement here is Crowley’s; the Sgt. got the race hucksters to back down, and that includes The President of Black America. Is the WASP fed up to the back teeth? Will he fight for his rights? That’s to be seen.

‘Audit the Fed!’

Conservatism, Federal Reserve Bank, Founding Fathers, Inflation, Journalism, libertarianism, Republicans, Ron Paul

What I appreciate about Jack Hunter, also a Taki’s Magazine writer, is the way he marries solid principles and a pragmatic approach to politics. Unless a commentator achieves this feat in a consistent, principled manner, he is worthless. Yes, worthless! Some of our readers have been seduced by the habit so many libertarian scribblers have of vaporizing libertarian theory into the ether, while sitting on the fence and playing holier-than-thou when it comes to politics. Worthless as it is easy. Aside from the pleasant Southern lilt, Hunter has a natural knack for cleaving to reality while retaining principles. In ‘Audit the Fed!’ he narrates thus:

“While Bush and McCain were ‘abandoning free-market principles to save the free-market system’ by signing off on an $800 billion Wall Street Bailout, the Republican establishment still treated the truly free-market Ron Paul as some sort of crazy, irrelevant money crank.

It’s amazing the difference a year makes.

As of this writing, every single Republican in the House and over 60 Democrats have co-sponsored Paul’s H.R. 1207 Federal Reserve Transparency Act, which calls for an audit of the Federal Reserve. Given the current economic crisis, it turns out that many legislators are eager to see just how the Fed is able to print new money out of thin air. In the 1980’s, Paul introduced similar legislation with virtually no help from his fellow Republicans. In 2009, the entire party has lined up behind Ron Paul.”

Listen here.