Updated: In The New Individualist (Get It!)

Ilana Mercer, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Media, Objectivism

Under Sherrie Gossett’s capable editorial and stylistic tutelage (as well as well as the brilliant David Kelley, Roger Donway, and others), The New Individualist, The Objectivist Magazine, is both sleek and substantive, rather than tinny and rigidly ideological. The Winter 2010 issue of TNI features a new, minimalist, elegant design, and two pieces by me: “Life In The Oink Sector,” and “Man With the Reverse Midas Touch.”

Please purchase this issue—and if possible, a subscription to TNI—to show your support for this writer and the publisher. Here is your chance to support worthy writers and publishers. Featuring thinkers such as David Kelley and Roger Donway, you’ll be well-rewarded.

Update (March 14): BAB frequenter Hugo Schmidt writes an interesting review in TNI of Robert Spencer’s Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is And Islam Isn’t. As I say, there is a lot that’s worth reading in the new issue. Get it! Subscribe or order an issue.

Updated: Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot

Classical Liberalism, Europe, Glenn Beck, Human Accomplishment, IMMIGRATION, Islam, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Nationhood

The excerpt is from “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot,” now on WND.COM”:

“The ‘One-Man Global Content Provider’ [Mark Steyn] is wrong. Demographics need not be destiny. The waning West became what it is not by out-breeding the undeveloped world. We were once great not because of huge numbers, but due to human capital – people of superior ideas and abilities, capable of innovation, exploration, science, philosophy.

Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

If, as Geert Wilders and Mark Steyn contend, “Islam is a problematic religion; every school of Islam is basically at its core jihadist; and the religion is much closer to a conventional imperial project than to a faith” – its religionists must be kept away. State-engineered mass immigration must be halted.

Yes, postmodernism, PC and relativism hobble the West. Post-colonialism, however, affords it the opportunity to redraw the frontiers at the borders. This is the Wilders project. It has yet to be embraced fully by his American boosters. As Steyn has openly confessed, ‘For a notorious blowhard, I can go a bit cryptic or (according to taste) wimpy when invited to confront that particular subject head on.'” …

The complete column is “Beck, Wilders & His Boosters’ Blind Spot.”

And do read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy (or copies) now!

Update: Declining birth rates – and their antidote; the mass immigration imperative – are the excuses statists make for persevering with immigration policies that are guaranteed to destroy Western civil society and shore up the State.

To add to “Anon’s” dazzling examples of small (First World) populations that produced genius second to none, another erudite gentleman spoke of “quality, not quantity,” and offered the examples of the Scottish Enlightenment and modern Jews.

Grotesque Or Precious?

Aesthetics, Film, Hollywood, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Reason, The Zeitgeist

“There’s the most enormous, fat black chick I’ve ever seen. She is enormous. Everyone’s pretending she’s a part of show business and she’s never going to be in another movie. She should have gotten the Best Actress award because she’s never going to have another shot. What movie is she gonna be in?” That was degenerate DJ Howard Stern on Gabourey Sidibe (yes, she’s American-born), the mountain of human flesh that stars in the film “Precious,” pushed by Oprah.

Stern reminds me of the claims made repeatedly on the O’Reilly Show, that “Shangri-La of Socratic disinterest.”Have you heard them? Not speaking proper English, behaving like a rapper, not studying—these will get you nowhere. That’s so not true. And he says it to rich rappers who’ve followed exactly that path.

This is the age of the idiot first—but also the age of the halt, the lame, the plain dysfunctional, the retrograde, the exhibitionist, and above all, the black person, in all shapes and sizes. Sidibe will do just fine, embraced as she will be by the constellation of flesh-creeping cretins in Hollywood and beyond.

What’s grotesque here is not the actress, so much as the film Precious, the story. From what I’ve gleaned (I’d never go see such a film), it’s designed to schlep every sentimental fiber of a stupid person’s being.

The ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented girl gets kicked around some more after spending her formative years as the ugliest, fattest, most abused and tormented daughter in the world. Then she hits the big time. Or delves into herself, and with the aid of a lesser version of “To Sir With Love,” finds some reservoir of strength and talent to prevail. She makes everyone involved in unleashing her gifts see the light. They are lucky to bask in her riches. Am I wrong? Is it about something totally different?

If Stern was anything other than a shock jock he’d have zeroed in on the obscene sentimentality pervading this film and the culture at large. If you think I’m heartless for excoriating sentimentality in the strongest of terms, think again. Sappy sentimentality is the opposite of compassion. It causes a person to misplace compassion.

Updated: Fascism Rising: Demanding Your Data

Constitution, Fascism, Government, Individual Rights, Regulation, The State

The Constitution allows the state to count people once every ten years; it does not authorize name or information taking. The Census Bureau counts and collects information about us EVERY YEAR, all year round. There is no constitutional warrant for this intrusion, yet we accept and submit to it.
Jerry Day of the Matrix News Network advises that you ask the snots where did they derive the authority to demand your private data; show them a copy of the Constitution and request that they point to the part that authorizes their intrusion. His YouTube has had 1,237,101 views.
Did you know that virtually every government data base has either been lost, hacked or compromised? Mr. Day’s questions to the fascists who’re in violation of our 4th, and a lot more, are devastating. The bureaucrats don’t have to answer to anyone.

Update: IT HAS ARRIVED. Robert M. Groves, Director, US Census Bureau, informs this household in advance that “About one week from now, you will receive a 2010 Census form. … Please fill it out and mail it in promptly.” And in case you doubt that the welfare and the fascist arms of the state work in tandem: “Without a complete, accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share.”

For those who’ve compared resistance to the Census to tax objectors, there is no reference in the notice to a law enforcing this extraction of information. Taxation, by the way, is legal, if immoral—you flout the law at tremendous risk. But if there is no law behind the Census, perhaps the Constitution can prevail and resistance is worthwhile. Since I must both write a WND column for tomorrow and compete a book, I will leave the research to the clever posters of BAB.