Category Archives: Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN: Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2)

Africa, America, Donald Trump, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Political Philosophy

NEW COLUMN, now on Townhall.com, is “Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2).

Part 1 was “Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed.

An excerpt from Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2):

… be it Africa or Arabia, the Left labors under the romantic delusion that the effects of millennia of development-resistant, self-defeating, fatalistic, atavistic, superstition-infused, unfathomably cruel cultures can be cured by an infusion of foreign aid, by the removal of tyrants such as Robert Mugabe or Jacob Zuma, or by bringing the underdeveloped world to The West. (Left-libertarian Katherine Mangu-Ward actually told Tucker Carlson that, “If we had a billion people in America, America would be unstoppable. That would be amazing.”)

Alas, bad leaders are not what shackle backward peoples. Not exclusively, at least. And Africa’s plight is most certainly not the West’s fault. Rather, Africa is a culmination of the failure of the people to develop the attitudes and institutions favorable to peace and progress.

However, while human behavior is mediated by values, we’d be intellectually remiss to deny that the cultural argument is flawed. It affords a circular, rather than a causal elegance: people are said to do the things they do because they are who they are and have a history of being that way. See what I mean by flawed?

What precisely, then, accounts for the unequal “civilizing potential,” as James Burnham called it, that groups display? Why have some people produced Confucian and Anglo-Protestant ethics—with their mutual emphasis on graft and delayed gratification—while others have midwifed Islamic and animistic values, emphasizing conformity, consensus, and control?
Why have certain patterns of thought and action come to typify certain people in the first place? …

… READ THE COMPLETE COLUMN. “Why Trump Pooh-Poohed “S-ithole” Countries (Part 2)” is on Townhall.com, where you can read Part 1: “Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Controversy Deconstructed.” 

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1: How Do You Know You’re A Neocon? Hint: It Has To Do With How You See US History

Cultural Marxism, History, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Military, Neoconservatism, Old Right, Political Philosophy, States' Rights, The State, War

A neoconservative will have hastened to condemn a wise and magnanimous man, John F. Kelly, for seeing redeeming qualities in Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee. was an honorable man,” said White House Chief of Staff Mr. Kelly. How dare he! And how right he was. Lee was a great American.

When Lee resigned his commission as the colonel of the 1st U.S. Cavalry in April 1861 and subsequently took command of the state forces of Virginia, and eventually of the armies of the Southern Confederacy, he was only acting to “fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country.”

John F. Kelly is an honorable and wise American.

Allen C. Guelzo, the author of the piece condemning Kelly, writes in the neoconservative, Cultural Marxist tradition, whereby history is painted over with a cheap patina of current political dogma, to conceal traditional, republican virtues of yesteryear.

Pat Buchanan on The Great Man.

NEW COLUMN: A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party

Africa, Communism, Democracy, Morality, Political Philosophy, Race, South-Africa

THE NEW COLUMN comes abridged and unabridged. “A New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is the short and not-so-sweet version, now on Townhall.com.

In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny” is longer with lots of “inside baseball” for the nerds. It’s on the Unz Review, America’s smartest webzine.

An excerpt:

READERS were angry. I had rained on their parade by venturing that the appointment of a new party boss to head South-Africa’s dominant party was an insignificant game of musical chairs.

But perhaps it is I who should have been annoyed. Nobody with a modicum of cerebral agility should see in the new South-African Strong Man, union boss-cum-tycoon Cyril Ramaphosa, a significant change of the guard.

Surely by now it should be common knowledge that in Africa, you replace a despot, but not despotism; you oust a tyrant, but not tyranny?

There’s a reason Ramaphosa riles crowds at a South African Communist Party rally just as easily as he excites the head of Goldman Sachs’s South Africa office. (For a clue, ask yourselves how a union boss becomes a tycoon.)

In the tradition of dimming debate, the chattering class has reduced systemic corruption in South Africa and near collapse in Zimbabwe, respectively, to the shenanigans of two men: Jacob Zuma and Robert Mugabe.

Emblematic of this is a thematically confused  article in The Economist, offering a description of the dynamics set in motion by the Zuma dynasty’s capture of the state.

At first, the magazine explains the concept of “state capture” as “private actors [having] subverted the state to steal public money.”

Later, the concept is more candidly refined: “The nub of the state capture argument is that Mr. Zuma and his friends are putting state-owned enterprises and other governmental institutions in the hands of people who are allowing them to loot public funds.”

Indeed. Corruption invariably flows from state to society.

And, “state capture” is quite common across Africa, even if “unfamiliar elsewhere in the world,” which is all the “context” The Economist is willing to provide.

“To avoid a dire, two-decade dynasty of dysfunction, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress should ditch the Zumas,” the magazine concludes.

That’s it? If only.

The Corruption of South Africa,” courtesy of The Economist, hurtles between being an excellent exposé, yet providing nothing more than reportorial reductionism.

Continental context, if you will, is essential if one is to shed light on the “Dark Continent.”

To wit, the seductive narrative about the ANC’s new boss, Cyril Ramaphosa, gets this much right: There is nothing new about the meaningless game of musical chairs enacted throughout Africa like clockwork. The Big Man is overthrown or demoted; another Alpha Male jockeys his way into his predecessor’s position and asserts his primacy over the people and their property.

Elections across Africa have traditionally followed a familiar pattern: Radical black nationalist movements like the ANC take power everywhere, then elections cease. “One man, one vote, one time,” to quote the book, “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America From Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Or, if they take place, as they do in South Africa, they’re rigged, in a manner.

For a prerequisite for a half-decent liberal democracy is that majority and minority status be interchangeable and fluid, and that a ruling majority party (the ANC) be as likely to become a minority party as the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA). In South Africa, however, the majority and the minorities are politically permanent, not temporary, and voting along racial lines is the rule.

So, as the dictator Mugabe hung on to power for dear life, reasonable people were being persuaded by the pulp and pixel press that if not for this one megalomaniac, freedom would have flourished in Zimbabwe, as it has, presumably, in Angola, Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, and the rest of strife-torn Africa south of the Sahara. …

… READ THE RESTA New Party Boss In South Africa Is No Reason To Party” is now on Townhall.com.

In Africa, You Oust A Tyrant, But Not Tyranny” is on the Unz Review.

The Sage Of Fox News

Celebrity, Media, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Republicans

Bret Baier is keeping the flame alive for Chucky Krauthammer, who’s been ill (and should make every liberty lover ill). Everything about Chucky is “brilliant,” don’t you know? Even his baseball commentary is on the “graduate-school” level. The immoral, unconstitutional wars the neoconservative Chucky has supported and continues to indiscriminately cheer: simply sublime, too. Genius.

Bret Baier is baring his Chiclets nonstop.

As is clear from the thread on Twitter, Fox News dittoheads seem as devoted and devoid of critical faculties as Bret.

More: “The Curse of Chucky Krauthammer