Category Archives: Media

Lincoln Died Today; His Cult Never Says Die

Fascism, History, Media, Neoconservatism, Propaganda

Today, in 1865, is the day John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln, well after the 16th President of the United States had already done insurmountable damage. The heroic Lincoln myth-buster, Tom DiLorenzo, marks (but doesn’t mention) the anniversary with a detailed and well-sourced swipe at the cult that never quits:

… These are all the main ingredients of a modern Lincoln cultist, as [David] Brooks demonstrated in an April 7 New York Times column entitled “What Candidates Need.”

“I have two presidential election traditions,” Brooks wrote. “I begin covering each campaign by reading a book about Abraham Lincoln [probably not one by Yours Truly], and I end each election night, usually after midnight, at the statue of the Lincoln Memorial.”

Brooks should be credited with bravery for being anywhere in public in Washington, D.C., The Town That Lincoln Built, after midnight. He does not say if he holds a séance there, or just prays at the foot of the gigantic statue of the corporate lawyer/lobbyist in an armchair that is the Lincoln Memorial.

Reading most books about Lincoln by “Lincoln scholars” will generally make one stupid and misinformed, as Brooks very ably demonstrates. This is because all such books are bundles of excuses, phony rationales, and fabrications. They are all written like defense briefs in The War Crimes Trial of Abraham Lincoln, authored by third-rate lawyers or law students. Being a “Lincoln scholar” means fabricating an excuse for everything. The bigger and more elaborate the excuse, the more “prestigious” is the “Lincoln scholar.”

For example, when the high priestess of the Lincoln cult, Doris Kearns-Goodwin, wrote in her book, Team of Rivals, of how Lincoln was actually the source and promoter of the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery, she praised him for it. Rather than condemning him for supporting the explicit enshrinement of slavery in the text of the U.S. Constitution, Goodwin heaped praise on Lincoln because this slick political maneuver, she said, helped “save” the political fortunes of the Republican Party.

Another example is how, in his last book on Lincoln, Harry Jaffa tried for the ten-thousandth time in his career to explain away Lincoln’s admonition in one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates that he was “opposed to making voters or jurors of Negroes.” Lincoln opposed giving “Negroes” the right to vote in the 1850s, Jaffa wrote, so that they could have the right to vote in the 1950s. This of course is absurd nonsense but also a good example of the dishonest academic hocus pocus known as “Straussianism.” …

… The complete column is “The Very Model of a Modern Major Lincoln Cultist.” Read it.

UPDATED: By Mistake, Maureen Dowd Said Something True

Business, Economy, Hillary Clinton, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Taxation

To borrow from Camille Paglia (who was once interesting, but no longer), Maureen Dowd is a “catty, third-rate, wannabe sorority queen; empty vessel. One pleasure of reading online is that one never has to see anything written by people like Maureen Dowd [Kathleen Parker, Eugene Robinson, Thomas Friedman, Cynthia Tucker, on and on]. I ignore their hypertext like spam for penis extenders.”

Ditto.

However, I heard another sorority queen, the likeable, lovely but celebrity courting Megyn Kelly, mention that Dowd had penned an unfavorable piece on Hillary. So off I trundled to suffer through the tedium of “Grandmama Mia!” which is without one original or insightful idea.

By mistake, Dowd does say something true when commenting about “the ostensible and obscene $2.5 billion that [Hillary] is planning to spend to persuade us to make her grandmother of our country.”

She should give the kids some of the money, suggests Dowd. If Dowd liked Hillary she would, however, want Mrs. Clinton to keep the cash so that she could do all those “wonderful” things once elected.

Dowd is a dumb-dumb. She doesn’t understand that any politician makes the world a better place by giving money allotted for buying votes to privately run charities, instead of spending these billions on buying votes so as to get into office and pass programs, ostensibly for the poor, that ensconce bureaucracies that consume the lion’s share of the revenue stream coerced from taxpayers, in perpetuity.

UPDATE (4/15): Even better: Start a real business—as opposed to a foundation—with all those billions of dollars. Disinvest from politics. As Maimonides, I believe, instructed, it is better to give a poor person a job than a donation.

Leftists Are ILLIBERAL

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Reason

Hillary Clinton and the things she says should be properly dubbed illiberal. Clinton’s express “inspiration” as a future president is to “ensure that granddaughter Charlotte and her generation are provided equal opportunities to live up to their potential.”

How do you think that will be achieved, if not by the use of every illiberal power-tool in the leftist toolbox? Taking by force from some to give to others, creating new, unelected, oppressive agencies to carry out the new potentate’s plans, raising armies to march on uncompliant nations, on and on.

Clinton and the things she aspires to should be properly dubbed illiberal. Leftists, after all, stole the “liberal” label from us classical liberals.

CNN bimbos and beaus fawn over every irrational, idiotic utterance made by leftists. Why, one particular CNN tart called Poppy Harlow referred to Clinton’s putative inspiration for a presidential bid—her infant granddaughter—as a “rationale” for running.

To say you want to be president for the good of your granddaughter’s generations is of a peace with the standard statement made by the low IQ beauty queen: “I want to make the world a better place.” Except that a peaceful, pretty girl, with no ship-of-state to steer, is much more likely to make people happy than a power-hungry, illiberal, murderous statist like Hillary Clinton.

Poppy Harlow’s slobbering act and name reminded me, for some reason, of the wicked wit of Margot Asquith, “Scottish-born socialite and author, married to the British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith.” .

Mrs. Asquith corrected American actress Jean Harlow’s pronunciation of Margot, with this quick retort: “The t is silent, as in Harlow.”

Ted Cruz Too Clever For America

Elections, Intelligence, Media, Republicans

Just the other day, I mentioned the dearth of intelligence in American public life, in the context of Lee Kuan Yew’s passing. Singapore’s recently deceased leader had IT in abundance. So does Sen. Ted Cruz—who announced today, at a convocation speech “at Liberty University, the world’s largest Christian school” that he’ll stand for president, in 2016—although he tries to dumb down for his audience. He has to. As the choice of Barack Obama and George W. Bush before him shows, stupid makes thumping majorities in the US feel comfortable.

A CNN segment used the words “unapologetic” and “unabashed” over and over again about Cruz, implicit in which is that the senator has something for which to apologize.

And why doesn’t the CNN vagina brigade mention that Cruz’s mom “graduated from Rice University with a degree in math and became a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s and 1960s” ? Now that’s impressive. Cruz comes from an accomplished, high IQ clan.

Rachel Mad Cow delivered her usual snide, smarmy soliloquy about Cruz, but did alight almost enviously on the fact that Cruz’s delivery was flawless, without notes or a teleprompter.

In 2013, Cruz’ old Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz (a liberal) told CNN’s “Piers Morgan Live” that the Texas Republican was one of the sharpest students he has ever had “in terms of analytic skills. I’ve had 10,000 students over my 50 years at Harvard,” said Dershowitz. “He has to qualify among the brightest of the students.”

The more obtuse libertarians will wonder, as they invariably do, how does one both respect Ted Cruz’ intellect while disagreeing with very many of his positions, not least his militarism.

Over these pages we manage to walk and chew gum at once.