printThe following is from “National Review Eunuchs,” my latest column:
In an interview with Brian Sack on GBTV, columnist and author John Derbyshire inadvertently anticipated his future in commenting about the dismissal from mainstream of another iconoclast, Patrick J. Buchanan:
“MSNBC is a private company. They can hire and fire who they like. But Buchanan is a serious guy who talks in a serious way about serious issues. Yet he is out of the national conversation. That’s bad.”
Not long after, Derbyshire was dismissed from National Review, where he freelanced. The “girlie boys” of NR had taken offense to “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” a column Derbyshire published at Taki’s Magazine. …
… National Review used to be conservatism’s flagship publication. These days its ideology reflects “Modern Republicanism’s” “dime store New Deal” proclivities (Barry Goldwater’s characterization). Launching oxymoronic attacks on Obamacare for “endangering Medicare”: that’s the extent of NR’s fight to free minds and markets.
… Tons of pixels have since been spilt in response to Derbyshire’s article and subsequent dismissal. The dimwitted discourse reflects a polemical landscape from which the Derbs of this world have been uprooted. None of John’s critics can write or reason as he does. None has his “range of historical and literary allusion,” as Mark Steyn observed. John Derbyshire’s is pellucid prose at its best.
A staff writer at The Atlantic epitomizes this fluffy, unfocused, Meghan McCain-like waffle (punctuated with a lot of, “I feel”) that lands you a job at a top publication. “As someone who places a high value on both robust public discourse and the fact that racism is now taboo,” he whimpered, “I won’t even try to mediate between these two except to say that Derbyshire’s piece was wrongheaded.”
That’s it? A feeble, frightened assertion is a substitute for an argument?
Such cyber-ejaculate gushed from other similar androgynous androids, possessors of the Y chromosome. The volume of bad writers safely ensconced in high places, and their voluminous, vapid output strengthened this conviction:
More so than enforcing conformity—ousting John was about safeguarding the future of mediocrity. …
… Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about.
The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.
Conservatism once had the genius of James Burnham, Russell Kirk, Frank Chodorov, and Felix Morley; now the brand boasts S. E. Cupp, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Rich Lowry, and their editorial enablers. (Perhaps NR will recruit Jedediah [sic] Bila in place of Derb?) …
Read the complete column, “National Review Eunuchs.”
If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.
Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.
UPDATE I: “Why Come You Don’t Have a Tattoo?”
About “those androgynous androids, possessors of the Y chromosome,” mentioned in the column on John Derbyshire’s firing. Here is a typical example. His name is Alexander Nazaryan. he writes for the New York Daily News:
“Please, Lord, tell me that this is a joke. Please, please tell me that a human being did not actually think these things and, worse yet, think to write them down.”
Reading Meghan McCain has just about inoculated me to the above form of writing (for it is not a style in any recognizable way).
It conjures the scene in Mike Judge’s genius of a satire “Idiocracy.” To be precise, the dialogue Joe Bauer, the protagonist, conducted with the “‘tarded” doctor character, who discovers Bauer doesn’t have the identifying, state tattoo (listen to it HERE):
Doctor: “And if you could just go ahead and, like, put your tattoo in that shit.”
Joe: “That’s weird. This thing has the same misprint as that magazine. What are the odds of–”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo? Tattoo? Why don’t you have this?”
Joe: “Oh, god!”
Doctor: “Where’s your tattoo?”
Joe: “Oh, my god.”
Doctor: “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”
Doctor: “Why come you don’t have a tattoo?”
[SNIP]
You want to slap this Nazaryan man in the face. “Settle down. Stop it man. Quit the hysterical hyperbole. Stop the overwrought outrage. Calm down and write a simple sentence countering the Derb column.”
UPDATE II: To the ladies, Jeniffer and Scherie: Saddling the state solely for the dysfunction of a segment of the population is a form of determinism. According to this formula, free will and individual agency get short shrift. For the sins of man, hard leftists blame society, and hard-core libertarians, who are also determinist, saddle the state. “The State made me do it” is how such social determinism can be summed-up.
By the way, according to Charles Murray’s Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, white, middle America is in big trouble too. It isn’t as criminal as black America, but it is shot through with illegitimacy, laziness, unemployment, family and marital disintegration, etc.
“Cyber-ejaculate”! Ouch! (But accurate.)
Ilana, you always make me think, which at my age ain’t easy. It’s a funny age we live in. I remember all the howling about freedom, free speech, the praise for people like Lenny Bruce for saying whatever he wanted, no restraints, etc. Of course, Bruce was a foul mouthed drug addict, but that’s another issue. In any case, where are we now? We can’t talk with each other in any kind of honesty or say what we think out loud. Everybody is so thin skinned and paranoid. People are fired because someone somewhere might be offended. But in all this it is still interesting to me who is allowed to be offended and who isn’t; who it’s okay to insult and who it isn’t. And who has a sense of humor and who doesn’t, mostly about themselves.
I’ve said and thought many a time: This is no longer a serious society or a thoughtful society. We are a people now who, as Jesus said, strain at gnats and swallow camels. It’s very troubling.
I didn’t care for Many of Derbyshire’s comments. His caution to his children about crime rates were right on, and of course backed up with facts. But the stuff about IQ was unnecessary, as were some of his assertions further down, particularly his comparison of well-socialized and intelligent blacks to rare commodities that the rich brag of, and the following advice to his kids that they should befriend such rare creatures for political advantage.
Well, in its own ironic sense, Derbyshire proved Eric Holder’s contention that we are all “cowards” about discussing race. Almost all of us hold that we are “created equal” and generally believe that a janitor has the same right to property or freedom of religion as a neurosurgeon. In following all the feelgood liberal 1950’s – 1960’s books and movies, we would like to believe that black people are just white people with darker skin (often played eloquently by Sidney Potier and Diahann Caroll) or that white people are the same as black people with lighter skin…..
On the other hand, what is generally NOT SAID are the things that Derbyshire utters. Wealthy blacks flock to neighborhoods with the least black population to live in (better schools, less crime, …). Whites and other non-black minorities also flee the “ghettos”. These ghettos are not walled in and surrounded by Nazi troops as in World War 2 – these are ghoulish urban hellholes of drugs, rap, welfare, crime, and ignorance – led by political hacks like Marion Barry.
The only “allowable” thing to say about these urban Bantustans is either (1) nothing or (2) it is all the FAULT of “white racism”.
I picked up on the same thing as the other Robert; “Cyber-ejaculation” … intellectual XX “dirty speak”. Cool. I did not care for Derbyshire’s article. I hope that is not OK 🙂
What may or may not be said, written, expressed in any way, is now dependent on a Gnostic cabal, the keepers of the new reality. First, to express what is so is to neglect the duty to convey how it must be. Second, to take pride in despising what was once admired is the new bien pensant. To think, say, do, otherwise is to be written off as not in touch with that new reality.
I thought Derbyshire’s article was terrible. It appears he’s a philosophic determinist. He believes that a person’s views and behavior comes from genetics. Not only is this false, Derbyshire doesn’t even bother to ask why has certain segments of the black population degenerated.
As someone who is black, the amorality that permeates the inner cities did not exist even under Jim Crow laws of the south, or the de facto segregation of the north.
Unfortunately, as with neoconservatives at the National Review, they can’t seem argue based on ideas. Because it is the kinds of ideas that black people hold that explains a kind of dumbed down mentality that doesn’t expect more out of life.
I can tell you plenty of stories of family members whose neighborhoods have been turned upside down by the demolition of the Chicago Housing Projects–and the removal of these low-lifes and their feral children to working class towns.(There have been multiple lawsuits because of this as well. Now they are spread everywhere in Chicagoland).
Instead of firing him, National Review should have offered a rebuttal of why Derbyshire is wrong. They could have easily refuted his claims and instead discuss the causes of why black racism is so prevalent today. From the poor quality of education of many blacks, to the federal government turning blacks into charity cases for leftist policies of statism and collectivism that are proving to be lethal not only to black people, but to everyone in this country.
[Scherie’s point about reductionism or determinism is a good one—one I’ve often made as well.]
Oh Scherie, VERY good response!
“From the poor quality of education of many blacks, to the federal government turning blacks into charity cases for leftist policies of statism and collectivism”
This is exactly what I believe and have pointed out in Derby’s comment section: the crash of so many of the black population appears to be in direct correlation with the drastic increase of ultra-liberal pity givings. With hundreds of kids being raised with no fathers, welfare mothers, overly crowded and violent schools, bad neighborhoods, and all often with the message that white people won’t give them a chance, low test scores and heightened aggression are no surprise.
Concerning “Update II” – things are often hideous for the Black Underclass. For example, only 1 out of 8 black pregnancies results in a birth in wedlock (the other 7 being either aborted or illegitimate!). Not bloody good – but is this the FAULT of Ruth Bader Ginsburg or the New York Times or idiot bloviators from Harvard? Is it the fault of Racist Whites or taxidrivers who don’t pick up black passengers or “poverty”? When do people take responsibility for their own situation?
Compare South Korea of 1955 with South Korea of 2012 – doesn’t the emergence from poverty owe something to the people themselves? Are conservative or libertarian “solutions” to “lousy schools” like vouchers going to magically turn some psychopathic rapist into Albert Einstein???
Being immersed in a culture of such girly-men, where pointing out the obvious is inexcusable to the clique, made me feel like the lady in that old Palmolive ad when she was told, “You’re soaking in it.”
So yeah. I just quit what most would consider a very good job. What a relief. Eunuchs. I’m not propping up their universe any more.