Category Archives: Neoconservatism

UPDATED (3/17) NEW COLUMN: The Open-Border Fetish Is Turning Into A Symbol Of Death

China, Globalism, Homeland Security, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Israel, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Russia

“For open-border offenders to talk-up open borders during a killer pandemic is scandalous—as scandalous as it would have been for Harvey Weinstein to be talking-up rough sex during his sentencing for sexual assault.”—–ilana mercer, American Greatness.

NEW COLUMN, “The Open-Border Fetish Is Turning Into A Symbol Of Death,” is  at the American Greatness.

An excerpt:

Taking its cues from the American Left, the Israeli left is all for national and individual self-immolation. But nobody who matters in that country has been listening to the Left babble on about “racism” and “Sinophobia.”

Against the advice of its liberal think tanks—and to protect its nationals from the Wuhan virus pandemic—the Jewish State had, early on, closed its doors to “more and more of eastern Asia, starting with China, continuing to Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore and Thailand, South Korea and Japan.”

China is Israel’s second-largest trading partner.

To follow were tough travel restrictions and a quarantine regimen on territories in Europe, in line with unfolding coronavirus contingencies. Israel has since extended the quarantine to all arrivals. Consequently, of the 9 million Israelis, 100 cases of COVID-19 have been recorded so far, but no deaths.

What is proving more difficult for the Jewish State is adding “New York and the states of Washington and California to its restricted list.” Israeli public health officials recommend it, but Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is being muscled by Vice President Mike Pence to keep his country open to those COVID-19 hot zones.

Following transmission of the coronavirus from Wuhan to Washington State, I wondered, in a mild tweet, posted with links to the Israeli policy, why Americans didn’t deserve this kind of diligence from their government.

Came the strident reply, also on Twitter: “Because, unlike Israel, the U.S. is not a postage-stamp-sized garrison state. The U.S. needs to tailor its response to the disease to its role as global economic power.”

Stalin apologist Walter Duranty summed up this Jacobin perspective perfectly. “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.” Breaking a few old eggs, in an old-age home, in King County, Washington State, is what it apparently takes to make that great global omelet.

To the extent that it safeguards the well-being of its own people, the defensive measures taken by Israel comport with the role of government. “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.”

Look to other nationalistic countries for the connection between borders closed and the containment of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As reported by CNBC, Russia had sealed its borders with China as hermetically as possible, late in January. Matters are fluid, but at this writing, Russia has only 34 cases of coronavirus and no deaths. The infected are said to be Russians returning from Italy.

Likewise, Mongolia closed its borders with China in late January. Only a single case has been reported there. Singapore has reacted patriotically with all its scientific and cerebral might to what was termed there the “Wuhan flu.” It is now over the worst. The great Lee Kuan Yew would be proud. “The response in the U.S. has essentially been the opposite,” laments an envious geneticist writing at the Technology Review.

For open-border offenders to talk-up open borders during a killer pandemic is scandalous—as scandalous as it would have been for Harvey Weinstein to be talking-up rough sex during his sentencing for sexual assault.

The open-border fetish is turning into a symbol of death, not freedom. For the correlation between borderless countries and infection rates seems unmistakable—certainly when one looks at Italy and the EU nexus of nuts to which it belongs. For Brussels, the undisturbed free flow of people across European borders is sacrosanct. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “The Open-Border Fetish Is Turning Into A Symbol Of Death,” is  at the American Greatness, epistolary home of Victor Davis Hanson and Michelle Malkin.

* Image here. Thanks for fair-use permission.

UPDATED (3/17):

NEW COLUMN: No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes (Part 2)

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iraq, Just War, Morality, Neoconservatism, The State, War

NEW COLUMN, “No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes” (Part 2), is on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

An excerpt:

“HOW does America change if our intelligence agencies were more accurate in their assessment of Saddam Hussein’s chemical and nuclear weapons programs?”

The question was posed, just the other day, in “Make America Competent Again,” by David French, at the Dispatch, a neoconservative website. The tract is an agony aunt’s meander that calls on shoring-up competency in state and civil society.

But first: Dissecting, deconstructing and exposing the neoconservative mindset and machinations matters. The reason is this:

Thanks to President Trump, neoconservatives are not exactly having a moment—they’re down in the doldrums. But they’ll be back. For neoconservatives and liberal interventionists make up the Permanent State. The ideology the likes of David French, formerly of National Review, and his ilk promote—foreign-policy bellicosity, endless immigration, mindless consumerism, racial shaming, “canceling” of deviationists and conformity to an American identity that’s been melted away in vats of multiculturalism—is in our country’s bone marrow, by now.

Therefore, the fighting words in response to French’s framing of the invasion of Iraq as a mere glitch in intelligence are these:

Oh no you don’t, you so-and-so!!

No creedal neoconservative should be able to get away with the claim that a problem of criminality is really just a problem of competency.

You’d think that a military man like Mr. French would know that fixing problems rests on defining them with precision. Recasting state corruption and war crimes as incompetence cures neither state crimes nor incompetence.

America’s war on Iraq was a war crime, plain and simple. It was a reflexive collaboration between elements in a vast, by now familiar, intelligence bureaucracy, comprised of neoconservative and liberal interventionists, whose aim was to help The Powers that Be pulverize a country, Iraq, for the purpose of making it over in the image of America.

Contra Mr. French, the war on Iraq cannot be reduced to systemic incompetence. Anyone who doggedly tracked and documented the ramp up to war, as this column did, can attest that the United States bullied its way to war, monomaniacally. …

… READ THE REST. NEW COLUMN, “No Pardons For Neocon War Crimes” (Part 2), is on WND.COM and The Unz Review.

Finally, A Fox News Guest Stands Up To Laura Loud Mouth, Asserts His Expertise, Rejects Her Agenda

China, Conservatism, Healthcare, Neoconservatism, Science

“No, it’s not correct. It’s not correct to say that.”—Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., to Laura Ingraham

Finally, a Fox News guest stands up to Laura Loud Mouth Ingraham—who always ends up drowning out her guests.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whose credentials are impeccable and apolitical-–I’ve followed him since he and his team tracked down “patient zero” in the HIV/AIDS epidemic—asserts his expertise, and rejects Ingraham’s agenda.

Chinese scientists are not to be equated with Chinese officials, Fauci explains to the ego in the anchor’s chair.

AND:

“No, you are NOT correct,” Fauci tells Laura Loud Mouth. “A World Health Organization group of respected scientists whom I know, and personally interact with, is in in China. The Chinese scientists and health officials I interact with and know personally are to be trusted. Their information is good.”

As to Laura and her rah-rah America shtick:  A pundit who uses the words “regime” constantly is a hop, skip, and a jump away from her neocon roots of regime change …

It’s fine to present your guest with your theory, succinctly. Tucker Carlson does that.

But learn from Tucker. Let the expert speak. People like me are not interested in Laura’s hackneyed views. But when she has an extremely knowledgeable guest on, we’d like him to get a word in edgeways.

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UPDATED (2/17): NEW COLUMN: Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1)

Conservatism, Culture, Donald Trump, Government, Neoconservatism, Politics

New column is “Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1).” It’s now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

An excerpt:

Mr. French, on the other hand, appears to take a bow for a philosophical bent that belongs to classical conservatism: “The culture is upstream from politics.” Or, as Russell Kirk, the father of American conservatism, put it, “At heart, all political problems are moral and religious problems.”

Relinquish the ego. Quit letting your reptilian brain lead you, and allow, in a sentence or two, that the stuff “I THINK” in “MY WRITING,” to parrot Mr. French, belongs to a proud conservative tradition.

That tradition might need revision. For the world, political and cultural, has changed, metaphysically.

Although a man of the left, Canadian columnist Rick Salutin had, without doubt, advanced astute observations about the relationship between culture and politics. Because they comport with the metaphysical changes alluded to, Salutin’s observations are the better ones.

Back in 1998, Salutin offered up a prescient, if distressing, view of politics as culture, following “the capitulation of most sources of opposition to the neoconservative … agenda.”

Wrote Salutin: “In a culture of imagery and spectacle, politics has become mostly a show, entertainment.”

“[F]or the moment, politics in the democratic, electoral sense, is no longer about making choices [left or right] regarding social and economic direction.”

“What’s increasingly clear to voters is that they are not choosing the direction of their society—that has already been settled; they are voting for a cast of characters who will play the role of The Government on television and on [Capitol Hill] for the next [couple of] years.

The scrip is set, but you get to decide who plays the parts on TV.”

If Deep State durability has proven anything, it is that not even a fire-breathing political dragon like our president can fumigate the snake pit that is the Permanent State. …

… READ THE REST. The complete column is “Incompetent, Imperial Neocons And The Permanent State (Part 1).” It’s now on WND.COM and the Unz Review.

UPDATE (2/17): Glad you liked it!

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