Snub ‘Snob Conservatism’

Elections 2008, John McCain, Neoconservatism, Politics, Republicans, Ron Paul, War

From “GOP, RIP?”: “Chief among the leftist factions that would hate to see a recrudescence of the Right are neoconservatives. Enter David Brooks, whose sinecure at the New York Times is a testament to the ‘mushy middle ground’ he has so successfully occupied. … Brooks has flourished in the neoconservative sorority. … he, nevertheless, now sees fit to reinvent himself as a Republican ‘Reformer.’ Brooks the Reformer has been brooding about the dangers of ‘slashing government,’ if the Republican faction he calls ‘Traditionalist’ manages to unseat neocons like himself.”

Now Jack Hunter of Taki’s further distills the essence of the Brook’s bastardized (neo) conservatism: … “But if [David] Brook’s snob conservatism, Thompson and Romney’s wannabe-Reagan-imitations, Huckabee’s holy-rolling and McCain’s mad-bomber mentality are all just stylistic variations of the same Republican policies, it is worth noting the one candidate in 2008 who attracted widespread, bipartisan support, based not only almost purely on his ideas – but ideas that stood in stark contrast to the rest of his party. Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s 2008 campaign reflected the antiwar sentiment that helped elect Obama and the anti-government outrage that now defines the grassroots Right. Paul, unlike his fellow 2008 presidential contenders, not only rejected the failed policies of the Bush administration, but despite his lack of charisma, possessed the only political platform that might have had a chance of winning – while remaining conservative to the core.

But strict, limited government conservatism is of little concern to establishment men like Brooks, which makes him completely useless. … ‘the reformists, whose new ideas are not conservative and whose old ideas are the ones that destroyed the Bush GOP, are the very last pundits Republicans should heed.’

Indeed. And if the American Right needs a new, better identity – as many rightly believe it does – a good start might be to move as far away as possible from the politics and person of David Brooks.”

Update IV: Pretty Please: A Nobel Peace Prize For My Parrot

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Human Accomplishment, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The Zeitgeist

Joy! We awoke to some comedic relief this morning: President Obama joined Yasser Arafat and Al Gore in the pantheon of Nobel Peace-Prize recipients. Arafat got the coveted award for his pioneering work on the imploding homicidal human; Gore for inventing Climagedon. (No, the Internet was invented by the US Defense Department. Really.)

I nominate another worthy homie, my little leprechaun of a parrot, T. Cup. I so named him becasue he too is a homie, born into an era when teaching homie heritage and pride are essential. (Hatch date: April 15, 2009.)

Although T. Cup is a hand-raised American Poicephalus, his ancestors hail from Senegal (there might even be some oppression involved there; I’ll leave it up to readers to apprise me of the “history from below”). T. Cup, my little homie, is a small “concentrated parrot”—that is with the huge parrot Ego.

Most important: T. Cup’s little dexterous and dainty claws have never drawn blood (Some Other Homie We Know has blood on his hands—and keep boys dying in backward places where no respectable parrot would hang out).

T. Cup’s ambition: to quell the gang wars in LA, when he is big, that is.

Update I: Well, T. Cup deserves the Nobel Prize for his noble aspirations (and for his humble homie beginnings). Was that not the reason Obama was given a prize? For what he may do in the future for world peace. Not on any objective evidence can it be claimed that he has done anything for world peace so far.

Obama is on the verge of making the Afghanistan war even more intractable. In Iraq nothing much has changed since Bush left office. I am unaware of anything but presidential good intentions with respect to nuclear disarmament.

And frankly Obama ought to have said, “Thanks, but no thanks; there are more deserving people than me.” But he greedily grabbed the undeserved honor. Is bling for the mantle place so hard to resist?

In a way, this undeserved recognition might just stop the World’s Prince of Peace from escalating wars, which he is in the process of doing. On the other hand, if the schedule of incentives and disincentives during a person’s life has taught him that whatever he chooses to do will not affect his Golden-Boy status—then the margin for a learning curve is rather small.

The unwarranted award is also, apparently, for walking humbly with Muslims and calling Islam a peaceful religion. Hey, Bush did that well before Barack, before it became fashionable. Not fair.

Update II: Michelle Malkin rounds up the responses. Right or Left; they are all incredulous.

Update III (Oct. 10): THIN GRUEL. What the Norwegian Nobel Committee said: Obama made “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and co-operation between peoples”; he changed “the international climate” and made a noise about “his cherished goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons.”

“Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future,” the committee added.

Where does one begin? A new Dark Ages has decended. The culture reflects and exalts emotional extremes, lack of inhibitions, exhibitionism and assorted grotesquerie: From “Gay” pride to transexualism to fetishisms to Obamaism (a kind of Onanism).

The periods during which Jews would become light in the head and take off after false messiahs were considered dark times in the nation’s history. Now darkness has descended on the world. Mass contagion is everywhere.

Update IV (Oct. 10): Via George Stephanopoulos (“Courtesy of conservative activist Keith Appell):

Barack Obama’s Teleprompter: Big Guy says Bill Clinton called and was gracious in defeat; offered to fly Kanye West over 4 the Nobel awards ceremony.

Erick Erickson: Obama is becoming Jimmy Carter faster than Jimmy Carter became Jimmy Carter.

Ana Marie Cox: Apparently Nobel prizes now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush.

Headline over AP analysis by White House correspondent Jennifer Loven: He Won, But For What?

Kathryn Jean Lopez, National Review: I want to buy the world a coke.

Ezra Klein: Obama also awarded Nobel prize in chemistry. “He’s just got great chemistry,” says Nobel Committee.

Adam Bromberg, CRC: Nobel Prize Committee must be staffed by out of work comedy writers.

Kristina Hernandez, CRC: It was the Beer Summit that put Obama over the edge.

Moratorium On Immigration

Affirmative Action, Economy, IMMIGRATION, Labor

Asks Pat Buchanan: “with nearly 25 million Americans unemployed, or no longer looking for work, or in low-wage part-time jobs, 8.5 million U.S. jobs are believed to be held by illegal aliens who broke into the country or overstayed their visas. Why is this not a matter of national outrage?

For every job opening in the country, there are six unemployed Americans… there are six Americans out of work for every job opening, it is time to call a moratorium on immigration. Why are we bringing into the United States over a million legal immigrants a year to compete for jobs against 15 million to 25 million Americans who can’t find work or full-time jobs to take care of their families?”

Update II: Writing In The Age Of The Idiot

Ancient History, Democracy, Education, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist

Excerpted from “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” this week’s WND.COM column:

“The reasons for addressing readers’ responses to last week’s column, “Paleoconservative Hypocrisy” [not my title], lie not in an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but in a sense of urgency. For some particularly jarring retorts (these have become ubiquitous over the years) are emblematic of the triumph of twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber in American culture and politics. And that’s a problem.

Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary if bridges are to keep from falling, airplanes to remain airborne, and their human cargo pacified with electronic gadgets. Otherwise, an intellectual underclass has risen to dominate America in almost every field of endeavor.

Once upon-a-time simpletons sought self-improvement. No longer; in the Age of the Idiot they are groomed to be oblivious to their shortcomings—and will proceed loudly and aggressively against those who fail to mirror their mindset. … On encountering someone he might learn from, he unfurls an “untamed Id” and an inflated Ego in all their fury.

So it was that Ivan Poulter wrote to inform me that … although he meant no insult, he nevertheless needed to inform me that I ‘also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in [my] exaggerated intelligence.'”

Believe it or not, but one Founding Founders forewarned of the “Idiocracy,” although not quite in those words. More in the column “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” which can be read on the weekends on Taki’s too.

Update I (Oct. 9): George Pal’s comment hereunder about the association between democratic mass society and mass stupidity is an important one. I wanted to include this observation, plus a reference from a “dumb-ass with an exaggerated intelligence”—can’t recall if it was Hoppe or Huntington—but I dropped the idea. Too many ideas in one column might have caused a riot.

Update II: Regarding Clay Shirky (whoever he may be, posted by anon): the man belongs to the postmodern tradition—a “tradition” that has managed to almost completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (Hint: this is why you “study” so-called “social sciences” o “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary schools and not history.)

“Intellectual disciplines were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.