Category Archives: Neoconservatism

UPDATED: Geller: ‘Truth Is The New Hate Speech’

Bush, Canada, Free Speech, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Propaganda

Remember BAB posted about one Mosab Yousef, known as “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book? This bright, young Palestinian underwent, first, a religious conversion, and, in short order, a political one. Once he embraced Christianity, Yousef’s political change of heart followed, and he abandoned the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians; stopped rooting for the savagery of his Hamasnik father and joined civilization (such as it is).

Now, as the irrepressible, anti-Islamization activist Pamela Geller reports, the Treason Class running this country is deporting Yousef back to his , the West Bank, where he’ll likely be finished off. (Yeah, Flotilla Fans: that’s what they do to dissenters in Muslim territories; and with the assent of the Muslim Street)

Slight correction to such Bush-supporters as is Ms. Geller (who has called Bush a good man), whose post may give the impression that the current president’s policies are not a seamless continuation of those of the last. Bush would have done nothing different—and was even more of an illegal immigration enthusiast than is Obama. As I like to say, Bush would have wrestled a crocodile for a criminal alien. And he did.

Granted, Obama has been holding back on the matter of immigration because he’s pacing himself. There is only so much destruction and deconstruction the man can achieve at once. In order to push through parts of his political agenda, Obama has to bide his time with respect to other aspects thereof.

Bush, on the other hand, denied us much needed social-security reform, but went full steam ahead with instigating invasions and welcoming invaders, the two sides of the same neoconservative coin.

“TRUTH IS THE NEW HATE SPEECH.” While on the topic of outrages: Ms. Geller reports that PayPal has revoked her account privileges, if I understand their complaint correctly, because they contend she runs a site promoting “hate.” They have, consequently, instructed Ms/ Geller to remove her PayPal button.

This repulsive conduct on the part of PayPal follows YouTube’s reprehensible, Muslim-driven (no doubt) removal of the “We Con The World” clip (hiding being copyright claims).

It seems that in the US, we don’t need a Canadian-style Human Rights kangaroo court; we have the private sector to enforce the tyranny minimized as political correctness.

The solution has to be obvious: credible competition to both PayPal and YouTube that will offer service sans the dhimmi, Acceptable-Use Policy constraints.

UPDATE (June 15): Ms. Geller, a formidable fighter, has beaten PayPal in its cowardly attempts to bully her into submission, and has brought the internet transaction company some bad, bad press.

Ms. Geller exults, “Paypal Called, Paypal Caved Paypal backed down. Excelsior!”

Always on the look for an ethical, as opposed ego-driven, voice on the Right, I’ve picked up in Ms. Geller’s latest battle something quite different—unheard of among the garden variety, ego-bound, conservative female commentators to whom we are subjected:

“I asked what recourse do smaller websites have? As this is my real concern. My soapbox is pretty big, but what about small blogs?”

Yes, should it come under PayPal attack, Barely a Blog would never be able to generate support among mainstream conservatives as Geller has. For thinking of voices such as ours, we thank Ms. Geller.

We also thank her for bringing to our awareness an alternative to PayPal, should they continue to hound truth and freedom:

“Needless to say, I am not going back,” writes Ms. Geller. “I told [PayPal woman] that, too. She wished I would reconsider. But, no. I am sticking with Gpal — the G stands for guns.”

UPDATED: Geller: 'Truth Is The New Hate Speech'

Bush, Canada, Free Speech, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Neoconservatism, Political Correctness, Propaganda

Remember BAB posted about one Mosab Yousef, known as “Son of Hamas”—also the title of his book? This bright, young Palestinian underwent, first, a religious conversion, and, in short order, a political one. Once he embraced Christianity, Yousef’s political change of heart followed, and he abandoned the easy, destructive, fashionable path of the Palestinians; stopped rooting for the savagery of his Hamasnik father and joined civilization (such as it is).

Now, as the irrepressible, anti-Islamization activist Pamela Geller reports, the Treason Class running this country is deporting Yousef back to his , the West Bank, where he’ll likely be finished off. (Yeah, Flotilla Fans: that’s what they do to dissenters in Muslim territories; and with the assent of the Muslim Street)

Slight correction to such Bush-supporters as is Ms. Geller (who has called Bush a good man), whose post may give the impression that the current president’s policies are not a seamless continuation of those of the last. Bush would have done nothing different—and was even more of an illegal immigration enthusiast than is Obama. As I like to say, Bush would have wrestled a crocodile for a criminal alien. And he did.

Granted, Obama has been holding back on the matter of immigration because he’s pacing himself. There is only so much destruction and deconstruction the man can achieve at once. In order to push through parts of his political agenda, Obama has to bide his time with respect to other aspects thereof.

Bush, on the other hand, denied us much needed social-security reform, but went full steam ahead with instigating invasions and welcoming invaders, the two sides of the same neoconservative coin.

“TRUTH IS THE NEW HATE SPEECH.” While on the topic of outrages: Ms. Geller reports that PayPal has revoked her account privileges, if I understand their complaint correctly, because they contend she runs a site promoting “hate.” They have, consequently, instructed Ms/ Geller to remove her PayPal button.

This repulsive conduct on the part of PayPal follows YouTube’s reprehensible, Muslim-driven (no doubt) removal of the “We Con The World” clip (hiding being copyright claims).

It seems that in the US, we don’t need a Canadian-style Human Rights kangaroo court; we have the private sector to enforce the tyranny minimized as political correctness.

The solution has to be obvious: credible competition to both PayPal and YouTube that will offer service sans the dhimmi, Acceptable-Use Policy constraints.

UPDATE (June 15): Ms. Geller, a formidable fighter, has beaten PayPal in its cowardly attempts to bully her into submission, and has brought the internet transaction company some bad, bad press.

Ms. Geller exults, “Paypal Called, Paypal Caved Paypal backed down. Excelsior!”

Always on the look for an ethical, as opposed ego-driven, voice on the Right, I’ve picked up in Ms. Geller’s latest battle something quite different—unheard of among the garden variety, ego-bound, conservative female commentators to whom we are subjected:

“I asked what recourse do smaller websites have? As this is my real concern. My soapbox is pretty big, but what about small blogs?”

Yes, should it come under PayPal attack, Barely a Blog would never be able to generate support among mainstream conservatives as Geller has. For thinking of voices such as ours, we thank Ms. Geller.

We also thank her for bringing to our awareness an alternative to PayPal, should they continue to hound truth and freedom:

“Needless to say, I am not going back,” writes Ms. Geller. “I told [PayPal woman] that, too. She wished I would reconsider. But, no. I am sticking with Gpal — the G stands for guns.”

Voices Of Collectivism & Exceptionalism

America, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Fascism, Foreign Policy, History, Neoconservatism, The State, War

The concept of American exceptionalism has been hotly debated in connection with what kind of history “The Children” will be force fed in state schools.

My position : “the United States, by virtue of its origins and ideals,” was unique. But most Americans know nothing of the ideas that animated their country’s founding. In fact, they are more likely to hold ideas in opposition to the classical liberal philosophy of the founders, and hence wish to see the aggrandizement of the coercive state and the fulfillment of their own needs and desires through war and welfare.

Thus, I find myself in agreement with this one statement from Princeton’s Joyce Carol Oates:

“[T]ravel to any foreign country,” Oates wrote in the Atlantic Monthly in November 2007, “and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids…deranged and myopic, dangerous.”

Andrew Roberts, on the other hand, is the Anglosphere’s “advertising agent,” whom some call a historian (most learned sources like the Times Literary Supplement question the value and veracity of his “scholarship”).

Roberts “has endorsed American exceptionalism in his own writings,” and thinks that to question it is to evince “psychiatric disorder,” or belong to liberal America (Rob Stove and I are rightists).

Yes, another learned source is our friend Australian historian Rob Stove, who detests Andrew Roberts (author of the best-selling Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945). Rob has called him a “Court Historian,” the Anglosphere’s greatest modern mythologist perfectly suited to sanitize the Bush presidency.”

In the eponymous essay Rob Stove writes that to Roberts,

“Not only must every good deed of British or American rule be lauded till the skies resound with it, but so must every deed that is morally ambiguous or downright repellent.”

“The Amritsar carnage of 1919, where British forces under Gen. Reginald Dyer slew 379 unarmed Indians? Absolutely justified, according to Roberts, who curiously deduces that but for Dyer, ‘many more than 379 people would have lost their lives.’ Hitting prostrate Germany with the Treaty of Versailles? Totally warranted: the only good Kraut is a dead Kraut. Herding Boer women and children into concentration camps, where 35,000 of them perished? Way to go: the only good Boer is a dead Boer. Interning Belfast Catholics, without anything so vulgar as a trial, for no other reason than that they were Belfast Catholics? Yep, the only good bog-trotter … well, finish the sentence yourself. FDR’s obeisance to Stalin? All the better to defeat America First ‘fascists.'”

[SNIP]

Last week’s column, “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing,” coaxed out of the woodwork some “exceptionals.”

Wrote Mom [don’t you hate it when women call themselves “mom”? I see these self-identifiers everywhere, when out on my running excursions. They occasionally swing a kid while talking incessantly on the cell, and are always sedentary and overweight. Sorry for that detour]:

“I do not agree with you at all.…I give this administration a D in foreign policy and public relations…Listen, yes we have made some mistakes in our 300 years, but on the whole, this is the best country on the planet and we are an exceptional nation….This administration’s aim is to diminish our greatness and our status on the world stage…for a One World socialist government…When Obama said we have no borders, I nearly fell out of my chair…if we diminish our borders, we will not have a country….How did he allow Calderone to bash our country? You know why, because he doesn’t think of our country is special…So, I don’t give any points to him, I want my country back…I do not recognize my country anymore….so for you to give this admin. points … that is a no no. Sorry…”

[SNIP]

In other words, even though she and I agree on immigration, I must never be fair to BHO when he is not wrong. Indeed, fairness and non-partisanship have gotten me nowhere.

Tangentially related is another letter received last week in irate response to “In Defense Of Obama’s Apologizing.” This time the “exceptional reader” informed me imperially that he was writing me off and would no longer be reading The Mercer Column because I FAILED TO ENDORSE HIS FAVORITE MASSACRE.

This particular reader was a relic from my years of writing against the Bush war of aggression in Iraq—you know, when all those “red-state fascists” kept trying to get me fired from WND.

Memories…

Update III: Glenn Suggests Geert A Fascist (& European Rightists R Surprised)

Europe, Glenn Beck, IMMIGRATION, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, Race

I caught the late-night iteration of the Glenn Beck Show, in which he insinuated that Geert Wilders was of the “far right,” and that the European far right was fascist. See for yourself.

Defunct link:

Functioning one:

Glenn here is aping the thinking of the likes of Mark Steyn, Daniel Hannan, and other neoconservatives: all disavow any reclamation of national identity when done by Europeans. Neoconservatives are multiculturalists by default, by which is meant that, while fussing ceaselessly against official multiculturalism, neoconservatives motivate for that hollow concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.” There is nothing new about that.

See “Get With The Global Program, Gaul.”

Update I (March 9): Note please that the allusion above was to the neoconservative’s deracinated “thinking” Glenn has assimilated vis-a-vis nationhood and national identity. I do not know who said a good word about Wilders and how it was grounded philosophically, since the reader hereunder does not substantiate his assertion. However, it is one thing to defend Wilders’ right to free speech. That’s dead easy and doesn’t demand much mental effort. It is quite another to tackle Wilders’ refusal, in the name of Western tolerance, to prostrate his patriotism and his very survival—and the steps he wishes to take to that end.

Neoconservatives generally disavow, even mock, European reclamation of identity, with hackneyed, shallow assertions of American superiority: “Americans are so much better than they, as we ‘assimilate’ everyone into our [already dissolved] culture.” That would be a vintage neocon argument.

“Get With The Global Program, Gaul,” and other articles, has dealt with these nuanced neoconservative deceptions.

See what you think of Larry Auster’s dissection of Steyn. Read “Steyn calls for the destruction of Europe.” And here is the Auster Steyn archive. You really have to look beyond the Steyn pizazz and analyze what the man says.

Update II: The multiculturalims aspect: It exemplifies a seductively shallow aspect readers find appealing in the neoconservative’s argumentation arsenal.

Formulaically, they will finger multiculturalism and the newcomer’s failure to assimilate in a gamut of problems—from what they dub anti-Americanism to terrorism. Neoconservatives, however, resolutely resist dealing with the Putman findings, according to which racial and ethnic diversity mess with people’s minds—especially the host population—and makes them miserable and dysfunctional.

Update III (Mar. 10): I have updated the original, defunct YouTube embed with the functioning one provided by Robert. As Ms. West alleges here, Fox News removed the unreasoned Beck rant. Surprising to me is the surprise evinced by European rightists, and trackers of all things USA, at the denunciation of their positions by Chuckie Krauthammer and Bill Kristol. The latter—together with Hannan, Steyn, etc.—are completely congruent and consistent.

For the European Right “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory”—that’s neoconservative Francis Fukuyama’s derisive description.

My readers are also having a hard time with the distinctions I’ve tried to draw so far.

BECK VS. BURKE. With respect to the Enlightenment and Schmidt’s comments: In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke provides a “compelling presentation of historically-based conservatism.” Russell Kirk said about “Reflections” that it “burns with all the wrath and anguish of a prophet who saw the traditions of Christendom and the fabric of civil society dissolving before his eyes.” The Founders brought a lot of Burke to the republican table, but, for obvious reasons, our countrymen (Beck is representative) know and love Thomas Paine, who sympathized with the Jacobins and spat venom at Burke for his devastating critique of the blood-drenched, illiberal, irreligious French Revolution.

You can guess who it is that I prefer as a historical figure and social theorist. To quote my friend Paul Gottfried, it is not “the peripatetic troublemaker Paine.”