“The Vuvuzela And World Cup: A Symbol Of The End Of Civilization”: This is interesting comment by one of Larry Auster’s readers; I’ve been urged to comment about it by one of ours. Here’s my problem with sweeping, slightly hysterical deductions about the incessant horn blowing at the Soccer World Cup as a symbol of the destruction of western civilization: As a writer who reasons rather than emotes, I’m not mad about indulging in such deductions. For one, the leap from horn-blowing to civilizational demise omits some rather crucial in-between steps such as I have been covering in my South Africa essays.
(I sincerely hope that this is what draws you to this site over others: immutable fairness—reasoning from fact and first principles, and not from symbolism. You known how to show your love.)
In any event, read Patrick H’s comment, and have at it (or at me, for that matter):
“I am wondering if you are going to comment on the inadvertent (and thereby revealing) comedy of the destruction by liberalism of the World Cup soccer tournament in South Africa.
The agent of liberal destruction is a horn. Specifically, a long plastic device called the vuvuzela. The employment by South African spectators of the vuvuzela as incessant accompaniment to the soccer matches on the pitch has–and I must insist I am not exaggerating–destroyed the experience of viewing the games almost completely. The use–constant, unrelenting–of this, ah, instrument, by thousands of fans produces a tuneless monotonous drone or hum that operates at the level of a roar (a bit like a bunch of great big kazoos might do–but without any melody). And it simply never stops. The effect on television presentations is remarkable. It sounds like the games are being played in a hive full of thousands of gigantic bees. All other sound is effectively eliminated: crowd roars come through dimly–probably because the vuvuzela-ists drop their horns to join in the collective huzzah when an occasional ball wanders near the net–but chants are gone. Singing: gone.” ….
UPDATE (June 16): As a courtesy to one of my readers I commented in passing on this topic. Larry Auster and one of his readers have decided to die on a molehill over my criticisms off this tack, framing it, grandiosely, as an “objection.”
They’d like to commandeer my blog to indulge this pettiness. Sorry.
I care not a whit as to how conservatives argue—increasingly they sound to me as irrational and emotional as liberals.
Larry’s reader claims the missive was farce; fair enough. Yet Larry wishes to continue debating the thing (on my blog) as if it were not; as though horn blowing as emblematic of a liberal/atavistic society were a serious argument.
Both refuse to plug their logical lacuna—explain European soccer hooliganism. It’s not that hard. The idea, moreover, of proceeding from the particular to the general is surely predicated on galvanizing more than one fact in support of your case. In the case of South Africa, that too is easy.
As one wag put it, “South Africa has blown it,” but I’d argue—and I’d have facts, not feelings, on my side—that it’s not necessarily the noisy horns that signify the end of civilization there and the triumph of liberal egalitarianism; it’s the piling bodies, looting of land and property, radical affirmative action (BEE), etc.
A doff of the hat to Aaron Biterman (read his just-published libertarian defense of Israel) for making me aware of Rand Paul’s eminently reasonable position with respect to Israel. The more I learn about Rand Paul, the more I like him, although I don’t support economic sanctions against any country or foreign aid to any country:
The United States Special Relationship with Israel The American Spectator
By Dr. Rand Paul
Candidate, United States Senate
Israel and the United States have a special relationship. With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unites us across the many thousands of miles between our countries and calls us to work together towards peace and prosperity for our countries.
The free trade agreement that has existed, and been subsequently strengthened, between our countries since 1985 is a tremendous mutual benefit. As a United States Senator, I would work against the growing protectionist sentiment in our country and defend free trade with Israel.
I would never vote to place trade restrictions on Israel, and I would filibuster any attempts to place sanctions on Israel or tariffs on any Israeli goods.
The issue of Palestine is incredibly difficult and complex. The entire world wishes for peace in the region, but any arrangement or treaty must come from Israel, when she is ready and when her conditions have been met.
I strongly object to the arrogant approach of Obama administration, itself a continuation of the failures of past U.S. administrations, as they push Israel to make security concessions behind thinly veiled threats.
Only Israel can decide what is in her security interest, not America and certainly not the United Nations. Friends do not coerce friends to trade land for peace, or to give up the vital security interests of their people.
As a United States Senator, I would never vote to condemn Israel for defending herself.
Whether it is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, combating Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza or dealing with potential nuclear threats in the Persian Gulf, Israeli military actions are completely up to the leaders and military of Israel, and Israel alone.
It is not the place of outsiders to meddle or pass judgment or to use our power or relationship to force Israel to go against her own interest for the sake of “peace.”
Peace is a laudable goal. But it is just that – a goal. It is not an end at any cost.
It makes no sense to me that the United States provides Arab countries hostile to Israel with $12 billion in annual financial and military aid. Many of the weapons that Israel would face in a Middle Eastern conflict would have come directly from our government. I find this appalling. In the Senate, I would strive to eliminate all aid to countries that threaten Israel.
Finally, Iran has become increasingly bellicose towards Israel. Thankfully, Israel has one of the bravest, most elite military forces in the world. I would never vote to prevent Israel from taking any military action her leaders felt necessary to end any Iranian threat.
Just as the United States would not follow the will of another country in the face of our national security, we shall not limit the options of Israel in this area.
Finally, I believe the United States should increase the pressure on Iran. I would mandate that all publicly managed investment funds divest from Iran immediately.
We should not be subsidizing any company that does business with Iran, and we should not allow U.S. companies or those with funds from U.S. taxpayers to enrich Iran through its national energy program. I would fight to end all subsides to American corporations that do business with Iran, including so-called renewable energy companies that work through Brazil to provide support to Iran and empower its dictators dangerous nuclear saber rattling.”
[SNIP]
Go to our archives, and click on the Israel category for the case for Israel. Recommended:
THE NATURE OF THE JEWISH STATE
FOAMING AT THE MOUTH OVER ISRAEL
LIBERTARIANS WHO LOATHE ISRAEL
ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS
ISRAEL: ISLAND OF JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE FENCE
ISRAEL’S SANITY AMONG SAVAGERY
THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH STATE
A doff of the hat to Aaron Biterman (read his just-published libertarian defense of Israel) for making me aware of Rand Paul’s eminently reasonable position with respect to Israel. The more I learn about Rand Paul, the more I like him, although I don’t support economic sanctions against any country or foreign aid to any country:
The United States Special Relationship with Israel The American Spectator
By Dr. Rand Paul
Candidate, United States Senate
Israel and the United States have a special relationship. With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unites us across the many thousands of miles between our countries and calls us to work together towards peace and prosperity for our countries.
The free trade agreement that has existed, and been subsequently strengthened, between our countries since 1985 is a tremendous mutual benefit. As a United States Senator, I would work against the growing protectionist sentiment in our country and defend free trade with Israel.
I would never vote to place trade restrictions on Israel, and I would filibuster any attempts to place sanctions on Israel or tariffs on any Israeli goods.
The issue of Palestine is incredibly difficult and complex. The entire world wishes for peace in the region, but any arrangement or treaty must come from Israel, when she is ready and when her conditions have been met.
I strongly object to the arrogant approach of Obama administration, itself a continuation of the failures of past U.S. administrations, as they push Israel to make security concessions behind thinly veiled threats.
Only Israel can decide what is in her security interest, not America and certainly not the United Nations. Friends do not coerce friends to trade land for peace, or to give up the vital security interests of their people.
As a United States Senator, I would never vote to condemn Israel for defending herself.
Whether it is fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon, combating Hamas-linked terrorists in Gaza or dealing with potential nuclear threats in the Persian Gulf, Israeli military actions are completely up to the leaders and military of Israel, and Israel alone.
It is not the place of outsiders to meddle or pass judgment or to use our power or relationship to force Israel to go against her own interest for the sake of “peace.”
Peace is a laudable goal. But it is just that – a goal. It is not an end at any cost.
It makes no sense to me that the United States provides Arab countries hostile to Israel with $12 billion in annual financial and military aid. Many of the weapons that Israel would face in a Middle Eastern conflict would have come directly from our government. I find this appalling. In the Senate, I would strive to eliminate all aid to countries that threaten Israel.
Finally, Iran has become increasingly bellicose towards Israel. Thankfully, Israel has one of the bravest, most elite military forces in the world. I would never vote to prevent Israel from taking any military action her leaders felt necessary to end any Iranian threat.
Just as the United States would not follow the will of another country in the face of our national security, we shall not limit the options of Israel in this area.
Finally, I believe the United States should increase the pressure on Iran. I would mandate that all publicly managed investment funds divest from Iran immediately.
We should not be subsidizing any company that does business with Iran, and we should not allow U.S. companies or those with funds from U.S. taxpayers to enrich Iran through its national energy program. I would fight to end all subsides to American corporations that do business with Iran, including so-called renewable energy companies that work through Brazil to provide support to Iran and empower its dictators dangerous nuclear saber rattling.”
[SNIP]
Go to our archives, and click on the Israel category for the case for Israel. Recommended:
THE NATURE OF THE JEWISH STATE
FOAMING AT THE MOUTH OVER ISRAEL
LIBERTARIANS WHO LOATHE ISRAEL
ISRAEL BELONGS TO THE JEWS
ISRAEL: ISLAND OF JUSTICE IN THE MIDDLE EAST
OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE FENCE
ISRAEL’S SANITY AMONG SAVAGERY
THE FINAL SOLUTION TO THE JEWISH STATE
“Eugene Terre’Blanche, leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) that seeks the establishment of a homeland for the Afrikaners of South Africa, was alone at his homestead over the Easter period, when two farmhands bludgeoned the sixty-nine-year-old separatist to a pulp with pangas and pipes. Based on hearsay—and their abiding sympathy for savages—news media across the West are insisting that the motive for the murder was a “labor dispute.” …
… The brutality of the racially motivated murders of white farmers in South Africa, and, increasingly, of whites in general, is one aspect of these crimes. Mr. Terre’Blanche was unrecognizable. Two weeks before he was slaughtered, seventeen-year-old Anika Smit was raped, her throat slashed sixteen times and her hands hacked off and removed from the scene.
Both acts of butchery were unremarkable in Mandela’s South Africa.
The dehumanization of the victim—Crimen injuria in South African law—is another feature of these feral acts. When they were finished with him, Terre’Blanche’s killers pulled down the old man’s pants, exposing his privates. Slain white farmers are often displayed like trophies by their black killers.
Mr. Terre’Blanche was a victim of a farm murder, plain and simple.” …
Malama “threw a BBC journalist out of a press conference, accusing him of ‘white tendency’ and calling him a ‘bastard,’ ‘bloody agent’ and ‘small boy.'”
The BBC, chief obfuscator on matters South African, is made to eat dirt by a Frankenstein that is of its own creation. The West pushed for raw democracy in South Africa, and is now recoiling in horror at its former proteges and at what they’re, predictably, doing to the place.
Update I (April 10): The Funeral.
To our reader in the Comments Section: I did not see the Nazi salute in the footage I watched of Eugene Terre’Blanche’s funeral. However, I have never claimed the AWB was a savory organization. What I said is that as volatile as Terre’Blanche was, he and his cause (self-determination for whites) had come to appear civilized—civilized and prophetic—as compared to the people of whom he had warned, now running the country.
In the interviews I’ve watched, I saw gleeful black folks in Ventersdorp; and dignified resigned Afrikaners. That’s all I saw.
Now, is the AWB multicultural and non-racial; no. They believed that were South Africa—a country built by Boer and British—to fall into the hands of a black majority, it would go the way of the rest of Africa. That’s why they were separatists. Theirs was not a racial war but a war of self-preservation and survival.
Americans who’ve long since forgotten what it is to fight for their national life—and life—think that such South Africans were having fun fooling around with Nazi-looking insignia. Yes, there is unsavory stuff about the AWB. I did not understand nor sympathize with them back in the day. But I recognize now that the drive behind such an organization was a desperate attempt to forestall black majority rule, as it was believed that should that come to pass, the country they loved would be lost.
Were they right? You tell me.
Update III: I have very little patience for the South African Institute for Race Relations in all its sanctimony. I’ve been drawing on some of their factual work for my own book, but overall, they have been deniers of the racial aspect of Boer murders. That is criminal negligence. Unjust. And worse.
Nevertheless, the SAIRR teases apart some of the dynamics behind the uptick in the ANC’s racial incitement against whites (using barbarian front man, Malema):
the party is acutely aware that its support base of poor black South Africans has begun to turn against it. Violent protest action against the ruling party is now commonplace around the country.
In order to shore up support in the black community the ANC increasingly appears to be seeking to shift the blame for its delivery failures onto the small white ethnic minority, which today comprises well under 10% of the total population of South Africa. Here parallels may be read to the behaviour of Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe when that party realised that its political future was in peril. The ANC Youth League’s recent visit to Zanu-PF which saw it endorse that party’s ruinous polices are pertinent here.
Note: You can incite racial violence all you want in my neck of the woods, or among most white South Africans; murder will not be resorted to. Boer are being killed en masse because there are a lot of blacks who want to kill them.
From hereon in the much-anticipated press release descends into the same liberal clichés and solecisms.
“… a resurgent right wing will be numerous. It is most unlikely that this right wing will take the form of camouflage clad henchmen on horses in shows of force.”
OMIGOD. Would that such a resurgence took such a form; why would putting the fear of God into men with murder on their minds be so bad? How is a show of force from an attacked minority a bad thing when the alternative is to put your faith in a fat, functionally illiterate, corrupt constabulary that roots for Malema?
These people (SAIRR) make me sick.
More useful facts:
• the ANC depends greatly on the tax income paid by white South Africans to balance South Africa’s books.
• it depends entirely on the food produced by a small number of white farmers to feed the country.
• white South Africans still dominate the skills base of the country.
• and most importantly, much white opinion since the early 1990s has been moderate. White South Africa has been willing and often eager to cooperate with the Government in building an open, non-racial, and prosperous South Africa
Update IV (April 11): The British Daily Mail has decided that the raised arms at Terre’Blanche’s funeral are Nazi salutes. Is it so, or is it the interpretation of media that have not bothered to inquire what the raised arm means? I myself do not know. The flag emblem, as explained on the AWB website, isn’t intended as Nazi insignia.
Here’s what we know which belies the stupid, malevolent fixation of a hostile, ignorant media: This tiny minority is being systematically killed off; this tiny minority doesn’t wish to exterminate, a la Nazis, the 38 million blacks surrounding it; all the AWB wants is a place they can call their own, in the country they founded, away from those who want to kill them.
Have I distilled the facts without the fanciful? I think so.
Update V: To geniqu4u, thanks for writing:
• I hope you get my book when it’s out. I compare the number of deaths in detention under 40 years of apartheid with the number of murders in the New South Africa. More people die in ten weeks under Mandela’s SA than died in detention over 40 years of white rule. Ordinary blacks are missing the old SA. That’s how bad it is.
• Africa was immeasurably improved under colonialism; before that it was a morass of tribal internecine warfare of unimaginable cruelty; there were no roads, no infrastructure, education, health care, security. As I’ve written in “Blaming Colonialism Invalid, Even In Academe,” “Colonialism, dependency and racism—all highly politicized constructs—are beginning to be seen as humbugs, untrue and unhelpful, in explaining—and hence, helping—the Third World. What was once ‘conventional wisdom that brooked no dissent,’ in the words of Lawrence E. Harrison, is rarely mentioned today in intellectually respectable quarters. South Africa’s black population’s longevity, education, and numbers were markedly increased under white minority rule. Naturally, to describe reality is not to condone apartheid.”
• I don’t know where you get your data on African farming methods, but not one point you make is factual. South African blacks were never anything but subsistence farmers who had often done untold damage to the land, stripping it via indiscriminate grazing. The Afrikaner has been, in general, a good custodian of the land and the natural environment. There is no commercial, large-scale farmer in the world like the Afrikaners, who’ve turned an arid, impossible-to-farm land into oases with technology, innovation, dedication, and hard work. There isn’t a farmer who loves his live stock more than the Afrikaner. Most of the white-farmed land being seized under the land distribution policies of the ANC and given over to blacks has gone to seed. Beautiful, high tech installations taken from their owners (who feed the country, nay, the continent) and given to blacks have been reduced to rubble. The cruelty to the live stock is beyond belief; cattle dying of thirst, hunger and disease. I tell it in my book.
TimesOnLine: “South Africa’s white-dominated farming unions have greeted the threat of nationalisation with alarm. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, when multi-racial elections were held, 15m acres of farmland have been transferred to black ownership. Much of it is now lying idle, creating no economic benefit for the nation nor its new owners. Last year South Africa became a net importer of food for the first time in its history.
Update VI (April 12): Glenn Beck joined the ignoramus media by referring dramatically to the rise of extremism in South Africa, gleaned at a glance from the so-called Nazi-like salute at the funeral of Eugene Terreblanche. Thus, in order to conclude that the non-violent gathering of people at the funeral was the party deserving of condemnation—Glenn required nothing more than a symbolic gesture from them. Ignorance is bliss.
The insularity of American headline makers is alarming.
