Category Archives: Race

UPDATE II: The ‘Selma’ Or ‘Sniper’ No-Brainer

Affirmative Action, Film, History, Hollywood, Just War, Military, Race

“Sniper” Or “Selma”? Which flick would you rather see? I will pass on both. However, if forced to choose between a 2-hour long, historically inaccurate guilt trip, laid on thick by the MOPE (Most Oppressed People Ever), and an action movie about an all-American “son, husband, father, and, most of all, decorated military man”; I can see why “American Sniper” is a box office sensation, while “Selma” circles the drain. “Sniper” grossed $105.3 Million on the week-end of its release; “Selma” $11.5 million.

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, the subject of the “Clint Eastwood’s biopic,” in my opinion, squandered his talents as an assassin for Uncle Sam. Kyle’s claim to fame, by the news media’s telling, is that he “held the record for number of kills by an American sniper. The Pentagon has confirmed more than 150 of his kills. The previous record was 109.”

As I wrote at the time the SEAL passed away, “live by the sword, die by the sword. Or in hippie speak: Kyle had bad karma.”

I’m quite comfortable stating that poor Kyle was not in the business of defending American liberties, as the mouths on neoconservative media insist. That the war over in Iraq saved lives stateside is a dubious proposition at best. To the contrary, there is more proof of the opposite; that picking off women and children and other invaded species, “when he [thought it] necessary,” increased the danger to Americans stateside from the victims’ community. (Unfriend and unfollow me all you like; that doesn’t change this immutable truth.)

Still, if “American Sniper” is an apolitical rendition, a human story about a controversial, conflicted assassin for the state—much like “The Hurt Locker” was—I can see the appeal.

UPDATE I: A day after I wrote “Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword” (02.03.13), Ron Paul tweeted out the same (02.4.13). He was denounced, of course.

UPDATE II: Writes pat Buchanan, in “Selma, 50 years on”: … “The era of marching for civil rights was over, and the era of Black Power, with Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown and The Black Panthers eclipsing King, had begun.”

UPDATED: A Pesky P-ssy @ Antiwar.com (Steigerwald, Oy Gevalt!)

Feminism, Gender, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Race, Racism, Reason, Science, Socialism

It used to be that Justin Raimondo was more discerning about the women he welcomed into the Antiwar.com fold. Here is how Mr. Raimondo welcomed this writer:

A major confetti-throwing welcome on the occasion of Ilana Mercer’s first regular column for Antiwar.com. Ilana is a principled longtime libertarian, and literally an international figure: she’s an ex-Israeli, ex-South African, and ex-Canadian, now a permanent resident of the U.S. And it isn’t only her prose that’s beautiful. She’s opinionated, she can write, and she’s a lot of fun. Give her a warm welcome by checking out her column.

“Respect,” as Ali G.—the creation of comedic genius Sacha Baron Cohen—would have said.

I sincerely hope Mr. Raimondo is not losing his grip on this important outfit. For no sooner had contrarian libertarians celebrated the voluntary departure of “regimist” Cathy Reisenwitz from libertarian activism —than one of Raimondo’s new columnists unleashed herself on this writer, rabbiting on about racism. Just like Reisenwitz.

This is ironic, because, Mr. Raimondo—a life-long, creedal libertarian—had smoked Reisenwitz out for libeling Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, Lew Rockwell and Hans-Hermann Hoppe as racists. I don’t expect Justin to defend me too; he and I have had a fractious relationship (although I was under the impression that some respect for each other’s commitment to liberty accounts for the détente). I do expect Justin to call off his hound-dog. No boot; just Kibbles ‘n Bits (it’s for her own good).

The paper trail of one Lucy Steigerwald is short, the prose turgid, the topics well-trodden, the angle never original. Nevertheless, this second-hander has enough to say about my column (begun in Canada, circa 1998). What It has to say is terribly predictable, tedious, and now time-consuming (opportunity costs mounting).

Long-time readers of this space will have figured out what it is that I’m being fingered for. A bit of hyperbole—literary license, really—has gotten me into hot water. For asserting that “whites don’t riot and loot” (from “Eric Garner 100% Innocent Under Libertarian Law”), I am said to be swimming is very polluted waters. The dodo Steigerwald has diagnosed me as suffering “certain propensities for racist generalizations.” Strictly speaking, I should have anticipated the response of tinny automatons like Steigerwhatshername, and written that “whites are less likely to riot and loot than blacks.” In any event, corrective feedback to that effect would have been appreciated and acted upon. Instead, I find myself fending off a bloodhound scenting for her prey: “Fee-Fi-Fo-Fem, Steigerwald Has Smelt The Blood Of A ‘Racist.'” Oy gevalt! Once started, nothing will stop the “fee-fi-fo-fem’s frenzy” of a Steigerwald (who has twice now maligned me).

Steigerwald’s worldview belongs to a tyrannical, joyless tradition. The hateful habit of policing what people say for political propriety; snidely intimating that they are somehow defective on those grounds alone and deserve to be purged from “polite” company; scrutinizing literature, music, art, television or comedy for signs of so-called sexism, racism, elitism, homophobia, anti-Semitism and meanness—this belongs squarely to the tradition of cultural Marxism. “Political correctness, especially in libertarian circles, is cultural Marxism masquerading in libertarian clothing,” warns Hans-Hermann Hoppe. It is “[a]n intellectual joke, indicating the loss of all common sense and, propagated by self-described libertarians, seriously harmful to the intellectual reputation and further development of libertarianism and libertarian scholarship.”

Indeed, what kind of libertarian polices speech for propriety, and alights on those who violate standards set by the PC set? An excuse for a libertarian! Like left-liberals, “lite libertarians”—they’re the kind that is afflicted with the same spineless conformity; a deformation of the personality euphemized as political correctness—are incapable of appreciating a script or book; a painting or symphony; a stand-up routine, if only because the material and its creator violates the received laws of political correctness. As far as promoting the demonstrably false racism meme—what speech is racist, what slip of the pen (like mine) or tongue deserves outing; which feelings are bigoted; the kind of humor that is off-color; the fears of The Other that are verboten—this kind of left-libertarianism is indistinguishable from left-liberalism on this front.

On the matter of my alleged “propensities for racist generalizations,” here’s my reply, taken almost verbatim from “Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” (pp. 41-42):

My answer to those who’d fault me for daring to make broad statements about aggregate group characteristics, vis-à-vis crime [or rioting], … would be as follows: Generalizations, provided they are substantiated by hard evidence, not hunches, are not incorrect. Science relies on the ability to generalize to the larger population observations drawn from a representative sample. People make prudent decisions in their daily lives based on probabilities and generalities. That one chooses not to live in a particular crime-riddled county or country in no way implies that one considers all residents to be criminals, only that a sensible determination has been made, based on statistically significant data, as to where scarce and precious resources—one’s life and property—are best invested.

For me, the road to freedom lies in beating back the state, so that individuals may regain freedom of association, dominion over property, the absolute right of self-defense; the right to hire, fire, and generally, associate at will. As a paleolibertarian, however, my idea of liberty is never propositional–it is not a deracinated principle, unmoored from the realities of history, hierarchy, biology, tradition, culture, values. The paleolibertarian grasps that liberty has a civilizational dimension, stripped of which the libertarian non-aggression axiom, by which we all must live, cannot endure.

Race is never an organizing principle in my work. You have to be an idiot to say so. I am, however, a bit of a misogynist. And for good reason.

UPDATE (1/14)::

* Cathy Reisenwitz Redux: Steigerwald, Oy Gevalt!

* Target Liberty

* Quarterly Review: “Ilana Mercer reads the riot act.”

Who’s Racist? Charlie Rangel Is

Race, Racism

In an attempt to wrangle black police officers into defying their training to be more like him, Democratic New York Rep. Charles Rangel blurted out a home truth about the proclivities among men of his racial sensibilities: “In the Korean War, only black deaths bothered me. … I never was moved until I saw dead people that looked like me in my uniform. And it does make a difference.”

Yes, who is more likely, in aggregate, to embody this tribal racialism? Whites, who’re forever marching alongside blacks victimized, or blacks whom one seldom sees standing up for whites victimized?

UPDATE II: 2014: The Year Of Living Racially (FREE People Don’t Fear ‘Racial Polarization’)

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Correctness, Private Property, Propaganda, Race, Racism

The current column, “2014: The Year Of Living Racially,” surveys some of the major racial milestones of the year, only to conclude … Well, read it yourself, on WND.

My man Richard Sherman said something that kicked off the 2014, year-round, banal, racial back-and-forth that parades as debate in the U.S.

Other than that the Seattle Seahawks are my team, on account that they’re from my neck of the woods; what I know about American football is dangerous. So naturally, I was rooting for, if not watching, the Hawks, when, following their victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Sherman said That Thing. And from their citadels of stupidity, U.S. mainstream media—conservatives, liberals and libertarians—went into full St. Vitus mode

“I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like [Michael] Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me!”

Sherman sounded good to me. Still does. The man was pumped, as men ought to be in a testosterone-infused game. The Seahawks’ cornerback was correct to point out that his “outburst,” following the “defensive play that sealed his team’s trip to the Super Bowl,” was an extension of “his game-time competitiveness.”

“Let’s not make thug the new N-word,” pleaded John McWhorter, a scholar of color, whose intellectual and moral authority in the culture stems primarily from the concentration of melanin in his skin cells, not from the force of his argument.

Come again?

As in January of last year, I still don’t get the reason for the fuss over what Sherman said. His boisterous bit of theatre set in motion some racial, national free-association, which no man or woman with a brain cell to rub between them can follow.

Speaking of mindlessness, in February, the president of black America launched his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative. Barack Obama claimed “this initiative” as his “lifelong goal,” “even after he leaves office.”

If to go by Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” “rising inequality and declining mobility,” as well as “widespread decay in moral fiber”—these are as serious and widespread among “white, lower-status, less well-educated Americans,” as they are among the black and Hispanic communities. It was against this backdrop that Obama signaled his intention to deploy his signature initiative to keep at least $200 million belonging to “leading foundations and businesses,” for “programs aimed at minority youth of color.” …

Read the rest. “2014: The Year Of Living Racially” is now on WND.

Happy New Year.
ILANA

UPDATE I: The title of the column is from a movie, but I doubt anyone under 40 (Kerry Crowel excepted), brought up on current Hollywood fare, will remember “The Year of Living Dangerously.”

UPDATE II (1/2): FREE People Don’t Fear “Racial Polarization.” I am not sure why people, in this so-called free society of ours, “worry” so much about what they term “racial polarization.” Leave people to fire, hire, rent, employ or live with whomever they wish. So long as there is no aggression against The Other, who cares about “racial polarization”? Isn’t the right to include and exclude a feature of freedom of association and the right of private property.