Category Archives: Neoconservatism

UPDATE II: NRO Writer’s ‘UnFollow’ Leads To Musing About The Manners-Morals Connection

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Etiquette, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, libertarianism, Morality, Neoconservatism

National Review’s Kevin Williamson, aforementioned, once told me he was a libertarian anarchist. Although I never saw evidence for the claim, I took him at his word that he was a friend behind enemy lines. (It’s also true that I don’t study NRO’s output.) In the couple of exchanges we had, Williamson seemed far less uptight about intellectual differences than most Americans. Myself, so long as ad hominem is avoided and respect is shown—I can easily befriend ideological adversaries. And I do. One of the nicest gentlemen, for example, is Benn Steil, director of International Economics Council on Foreign Relations. I can’t imagine Dr. Steil churlishly unFollowing me. We differ. So what? I enjoyed his book, “The Battle of Bretton Woods,” immensely.

The UnFollow/UnFriend churlishness is not the province of neoconservatives and Republicans alone.

From experience, libertarians can be as uncivilized in their interactions. The column “Schooling Beck On Trump’s Nullification Promise” mentions “Ivan Eland’s learned rundown of U.S. presidents,” Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty. I contacted Eland as a courtesy. As did I ask him if he would kindly reciprocate with a Follow on Twitter. Unlike the polite Lawrence W. Reed of the Foundation for Economic Freedom, Eland has simply ignored me. Perhaps he’s on vacation.

Manners are a species of morals. Other than to hate mail or rude mail, I respond to all letters I receive—to each and every one. Many thousands since 1998, which is when I got my first newspaper column, in Canada. Due to time constraints, my replies are laconic. But if a reader has bothered to read my work and comment on what I have to say—then it’s only decent and proper to reciprocate.

I haven’t always been firm in this resolve, but I try my very best. If a colleague writes, I reply, whether I like them and their stuff or not. Ignoring a correspondent demonstrates contempt for that individual—a contempt that reflects on the rude “interlocutor.”

UPDATE (1/24): Facebook readers dispute the characterization of Williamson as remotely intellectual.

Christoph Dollis: Well, I’ve always known Kevin Williamson as a moron. Sorry that it hurts, and I get that (I’ve had similar experiences), but in my long-held opinion about Mr. Williamson, you haven’t lost much. I’m pretty sure Williamson is a staunch friend of arch cuckservative Ed Morrissey of Hot Air. ‘Nuff said.”

UPDATE II (3/5):

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Did The Tripoli Pirates Pirate The Authentic Islam, Mr. Kilmeade?

History, Islam, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Terrorism

Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News Channel personality—with all the non-cerebral baggage that phrase carries—has written a book, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History. In it, to judge by a recent Factor interview he gave this last week, Kilmeade pretty much co-opts Jefferson as a neocon fighting 21st century America’s War On Terror.

Yes, Kilmeade gave an in-house interview recently to a Bill O’Reilly replacement. (Good luck finding transcripts or even a video clip in the age of the no-information, no-organization, big-picture, icon-oriented website.)

Kilmeade’s silliest utterance during that Factor interview was to say that the Muslim Tripoli Pirates had been practicing Islam in the way IT WAS NOT MEANT TO BE PRACTICED.

My question is this: Did the Tripoli Pirates pirate The Authentic Islam, Mr. Kilmeade? If so, when in the course of its bloody history and borders does The Authentic Islam kick in?

Lindsey Graham: Liar & Dissembler About Islam And Foreign Policy

Foreign Policy, Islam, John McCain, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Republicans

Three minutes and fifteen seconds into Chuck Todd’s unedifying exchange of niceties with the left’s favorite Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham, Imam Graham imparts that Islam isn’t the problem; he’s not afraid of The Faith, as most Muslims practice it as it ought to be practiced. (Doesn’t he enjoy a security detail, too?) If indeed, as this liar asserts, “there is a war [of reformation] going on within Islam,” it is the most silent, uncontested intellectual war ever. The truth is that no Muslim jurist of note—and no, Pakistani cleric Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri’s fatwa is deceptive, too —to date, in any recognized center of Islamic learning, has canceled out the authentic Islam outlined in the Quran, supplemented by The Hadith and practiced by ISIS.

As to Graham’s foreign policy promises if elected by MSNBC: ISIS did not exist in the region during the Golden Age of Saddam Hussein. ISIS is a creation of American foreign policy. Yet the stuff that gave rise to ISIS—the American military’s overthrowing of secular leaders in the middle East—Graham wants revisited and intensified, not to mention more foreign aid to spread “our values” and build schools. Obama and Bush before him have done plenty of that stuff; billions worth of it, but I guess the American public has forgotten how well that went.

I wonder how the poor of South Carolina and America feel about Graham’s expansive mandate?

Recommended reading (for kids, too): “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades),” by Robert Spencer.

UPDATED: In The West The Inmates Run The Asylum

Europe, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Islam, Jihad, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Neoconservatism, Terrorism, The West

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“In The West The Inmates Run The Asylum” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine. An excerpt:

“HEY, it’s me, Salah Abdeslam. Did you see the attacks across Paris? Bismillah, may we have many more like them. Brothers Brahim, Abaaoud, myself and others pulled it off. I’m still in Paris. I need a ride back to Brussels. Come get me.”

After executing 130 people in Paris, Nov. 13, and maiming many more, Abdeslam called his compadres in Belgium to ask for a lift home. I can’t vouch for the precise wording of the telephonic exchange between Salah Abdeslam and his contacts in Belgium. But the call took place, as BBC News reported. And it must have been quite a relaxed one, circumstances considered.

Still on the lam, Abdeslam knows he has nothing to fear. The French authorities were on heightened alert. The Kufar’s telephones had all been tapped. Yet Salah’s faith in the French fools was unshaken for a reason.

Without court orders, as The Guardian tells it, François Hollande’s socialist government taps phones and emails, hacks computers, installs “secret cameras and recording devices in private homes”; infects French Internet and phone service providers with “complex algorithms” designed to “alert the authorities to suspicious behavior.”

Yet it all—the French Surveillance State—amounts to naught.

Like gun laws, spy laws oppress only law-abiding, harmless individuals.

As in all western democracies, France’s Big Brother surveillance apparatus is as useless as it is oppressive.

France’s “protectors” knew nothing of the conversations taking place under their noses. … Yes, Salah knew all too well—still knows—that offensive speech French authorities would diligently prosecute, all the more so when uttered by a “white supremacist.” But a suspicious looking swarthy supremacist like himself, hellbent on killing his hosts, would not so much as be stopped for an inquisitive chat. …

Read the rest. “In The West The Inmates Run The Asylum” is the current column, now on The Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

UPDATE: PLEASE, I never want to hear Michael Savage’s nonsense about liberalism being a mental illness repeated to me, not by my readers.

There must be no medicalizing of stupidity and misbehavior in this space. This is a gross error of logic. To do that, as Savage does, is the heights of leftism and confused thinking. By that logic, any erroneous thinking is rooted in misfiring neurons, except that there is ZERO evidence for the organic basis of bad thinking and bad behavior. None! A stupid, malevolent person is responsible for what he does and for what he believes. There is no disease process behind liberalism. Readers who repeat this nonsense are hereby assigned the entire Mercer works archived under psychiatry, pop-psychology, and especially “Psychiatry and The Therapeutic State.” Longtime readers who repeat this error must carry added guilt of knowing that they broke my heart today. I expect a thorough familiarity with the thinking of my beloved pal Professor Thomas Stephen Szasz, RIP, on so-called mental disease.