Category Archives: Neoconservatism

Update II: Bangalore On The River Brent (Demographics? Diddlysquat!)

Britain, Europe, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Multiculturalism, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The West

What on earth is a representative of the British National Party (BNP) doing in what he says is Wembley (an area of north-west London), but looks like Calcutta, warbling in Welsh? Be gone with you, you rambling racial supremacist. Give it up. As the Virginia Postrel thesis goes, change is always good. Embrace it. Count your blessings: there is still one pukka British symbol on the streets of Wembley: the double-decker bus.

Update I: Surprisingly, most comments hereunder ignore the larger reality, preferring to concentrate on minutia: are the streets clean and orderly (how the fuck do they know?). Western liberals are like that.
By contrast, confronted with a take-over of swathes of their towns, Chinese, Indian or Pakistani men would be furious. This is to their credit.
Yet an out-migration of the indigenous English population from a section of the city they no longer recognize or feel comfortable in is dismissed by your average, non-nonchalant, liberal-minded westerner. How sophisticated! This is why I, with few exceptions, have little respect for western men and, like Tom Fleming, hold white liberal-minded men responsible for everything from affirmative action to racial set-asides to speech codes—and, in general, for most forms of cultural and legal foot-and-mouth. As Dr. Fleming put it:

“[W]e should not make the mistake of blaming black people for the suicide we continue to inflict on ourselves. We white males are the problem, not blacks, women, homosexuals, or Mexicans. We–at least the liberal part of “we”– turned away from our religion and our civilization; we made war on property and marriage; we rejected Haydn and Sophocles in favor of John Cage and Kate Chopin. We have emasculated ourselves, pithed our brains, destroyed our vision and hearing …”

I believe this is the very impulse evinced in the blog posts that dismiss the Wembley footage. It’s left-liberalism at its seeming suavest.

Update II (Nov. 5): DEMOGRAPHICS? DIDDLYSQUAT! It is a great shame that the Jacobinism of the Steyns of the world is mistaken for a coherent defense of the West, or for the good kind of nationhood, for that matter. A little reminder: When the barbarians of the banlieusard rioted through France in November of 2005, one neoconservative troika—Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg, Frederick Kempe—fingered French racism and snobbery in marginalizing its poor Maghrebis. France, in this unholy trinity’s assessment, fell short in offering its Third Worlders freebies and fraternité.

From “Get With The Global Program, Gaul”:

When America’s news cartel woke up to one of 2005’s biggest stories—Muslims running riot across France—the response from many a neoconservative was to gloat.
The Schadenfreude was tinged with a sense of American superiority [can you say Steyn?]. It’s not happening here because we’re better. And why are we superior? To listen to their accounts, it’s because we’ve submerged or erased aspects of the American identity.
Taking the Frank out of the French hasn’t been as easy. As the famed (neoconservative) Francis Fukuyama has observed, in Europe “identity remains rooted in blood, soil and ancient shared memory.” How gauche.

Steyn, your “One-Man Global Content Provider,” is, predictably, wrong. Demographics are NOT destiny. Demographics are the excuse of statists (such as our neoconservative contingent) to persevere with immigration policies that destroy western civil society and shore up the western state. (I will incorporate these idea in a column.)

Did the now-waning West become great because it outbred the rest of the world? Ridiculous! The West was once great becasue of human capital—innovation, exploration, science, philosophy; because of superior ideas, and the willingness to defend such a civilization.

Of course, if I spouted the silly Steyn line I’d be rich.

Kvetch Cable

Feminism, Gender, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Neoconservatism

CNN anchor Campbell Brown tries here to parlay into a CNN advantage a valid point about the Fox News-White House tiff. She does not convince. While MSNBC most certainly does not do neutral news—and Brown and her CNN buddies are not blatantly biased—the CNN message seeps through via a steady stream of soporific, soft-news stories, to say nothing of the reign of the King of Kvetch, Anderson Cooper.

Mercifully, Brown et al. don’t engage in straightforward opinion, but their unadulterated leftism—not to mention hard-core statism—creeps into reports by way of story selection, slant, and facial grimaces. Examples are punishing programs such “Black, Blue, Brown, and plain Bored in America.”

Call it the CNN meta-message.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting interlude:

Over to Brown:

Videotape: Brown: officials have been very public about their feelings about fox news and what they believe fox news is and represents and they made a point of coming out and saying it.

Jarrett: that’s a different issue. What we’re saying is that we want the public to understand what’s going on. When we saw the kind of distortions this summer, particularly directed at seniors, over health care reform, it was really outrageous.

And I think what the president said in his message before congress is we’re going to speak directly to the American people and make sure that they understand the truth.

And so, certainly, if we see somebody distorting the truth, we’re going to call them on the carpet for that. But we don’t want to take our focus away from the core issues that are so important to the American people. Now, when there’s all that chatter and distortion and false information, we have to disseminate — we have to distinguish between truth and fiction.

Brown: so do you think fox news is biased?

Jarrett: well, of course they’re biased. Of course they are.

Brown: do you also think that MSNBC is biased?

Jarrett: well, you know what, this is the thing. I don’t want to — actually, I don’t want to just generalize all fox is biased or another station is biased. I think what we want to do is look at it on a case-by-case basis. And when we see a pattern of distortion, we’re going to be honest about that pattern of distortion.

Brown: but you only see that at fox news. That’s all — that you’ve spoken out about, fox.

Jarrett: what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power.

When we saw all the distortions during the course of the summer. When people were coming down to town hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death. When we’ve seen commercials go up on television that were distorting the truth, we’re actually calling everybody out.

This isn’t something that’s directed at fox. We want the American people to have a clear understanding, there’s so much at stake right now. We really don’t have a lot of time for nonsense and distortions.

The American people are also smarter than that. Let them reach their own judgments based on the facts. Let’s just take health care, for example. Reasonable people could differ about the right approach. So let’s have a conversation about that. Let’s not scare people by telling them that things are going to happen that are actually not even on the table. Let’s just talk about the facts. (end clip)

Brown: so, I am stating what I think is the obvious here. Jarrett seems loathe to admit that MSNBC has a bias. And that is where I think the white house loses all credibility on this issue.

Just as fox news leans to the right with their opinionated hosts in primetime, MSNBC leans left. I don’t think anyone at fox or MSNBC would disagree with that. In fact, both fox news and MSNBC are….

Updated: Loser Lindsey G. Pummeled By Paul

Constitution, Federal Reserve Bank, Foreign Policy, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Republicans, Ron Paul

I’ve said it before, the stupid party needs not a bigger tent, but a giant tin-foil hat. Duly, Lindsey Graham attacks Mr. Constitution, Rep. Ron Paul, by vowing to a booing town-hall gathering to rescue the GOP from white gentlemen like Paul (words you’d expect from the Party of Lincoln), and to continue shedding blood in futile, unconstitutional wars.

To which Ron Paul replied: “What does Graham have against the Constitutions?” Of course, Graham embodies everything that is wicked about the Republican Party.

Update: Glenn Beck gives it to Graham too: pro amnesty, for Sotomayor, for stimulus package; signed climate-change bill…

Snub 'Snob Conservatism'

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”