Update III: Leading Paleoconservative Hails Her Hero (Warning; It’s Not Pretty)

Addiction, Conservatism, Ethics, Free Will Vs. Determinism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Paleoconservatism, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology

Bay Buchanan, who needs no introduction, has selected an heir and a hero. The choice says a lot about how low paleoconservatism has sunk; how traditionalists have adopted a liberal/therapeutic conception of bad character and conduct. If you do bad things, you’re not a rotter lacking in inhibitions and judgment; rather, you are sick, depressed, addicted. If anything, anyone who fails to recognize your heroism for suffering such afflictions–he (or she, in my case) is the real rotter.

This conceptual hangover conservatives share with liberals. Both factions are in the habit of deflecting from what mediates behavior: personality, probity, values, character or lack thereof. If someone goes off the rails, members of both these divisions will refuse to recognize a character flaw; they seldom make the individual the locus of control. More so than in politics, the reasons for the demise of conservatism and its convergence with liberalism ought to be sought in the adoption of this therapeutic conception of behavior—of wrongdoing, morality, and character.

In a tract that could have been written by Oprah Winfrey, Ms. Buchanan dissolves into a puddle of praise and apologetics for a young man who drank habitually, and, in a deluge of liquor “bumped into a black woman, called her a ‘nigger,’ and struck her in the head with an open hand.” Like all good politicians (or actors), Marcus Epstein quickly got religion on AA, “radically changed his life. … swore off drinking and started attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous. He started treating the bipolar depression that had gone undiagnosed until that run-in with the law.” (Convenient timing)

Declares Ms. Buchanan: “Marcus Epstein is one of the bravest young people I have ever known.”

Wow! How many youngsters does Ms. Buchanan know? I suggest a visit to one of the country’s VA hospitals. Or to a military cemetery, where, engraved on tombstones Ms. Buchanan may discover a more traditional narrative of heroism.

Character, grit, a bit of a stiffer upper lip in the face of adversity; forget about it! “[A]fter this incident … I came to fully appreciate his finest qualities,” writes Ms. Buchanan. My sentiments exactly.

Ms. Buchanan, there are other traditionalists around with “exceptional minds, and a remarkable talent for writing,” who endured a lifetime of adversity. Some even hail from outside the American cocoon—from lands where real existential issues are confronted daily. Update III (June 16): As un-heroic and boring as it may seem, paleoconservatives such as Brother Buchanan, Peter Brimelow, Robert Stove and Thomas Fleming have never rolled around in the streets soused, swearing and smacking innocents (let alone women) on the head. In fact, whatever the reader may think of their opinions, these men are gentlemen; they embody grace under the tyranny of political correctness. A movement that produces such personalities should not elevate lesser men (or women).

You can tell a movement by its heroes.

As my Afrikaner male friends would say in an expression of disgust, “Sis, man” (Especially with reference to striking a woman.)

Update I: To be clear: My case rests not on the ins-and-outs of the legal spat and its merits, but on the character of the individual, and on the manner in which conservatives have taken to the therapeutic idiom like ducks to water—or like liberals (no need to insult the ducks).

Many of the people I know have held more radical views than Epstein for twice or thrice as long, but have never clashed with the law—not because they revere or even respect it; au contraire, but because of a conservative view of how you conduct yourself. Call it good, old-fashioned discipline.

The idea that you blame your failings on the Other Side or on a substance is … quintessentially liberal.

The left defends its “heroes”; we defend ours. Sadly, we do so based on the same, shared, faulty premise. That’s where we go wrong. The left was always wrong.

Update II: I’m all for forgiveness; but not the instant clemency Christianity offers these days. No sooner has someone offended than he is swept up in a wave of love. I’m not a Christian, so I have no clue as to whether Christian expiation was supposed to be a Federal Express easy ride.

A Jew can’t expect to get to the Pearly Gates if he does bad things. In Judaism, your actions determine your fate on earth and in the hereafter (the first being far more important than the last).

I don’t wish this debate to take on a theological bent; so don’t pursue this except in the narrow sense.

Doing the obligatory stuff to extricate yourself from a legal bind, including going into rehab—this does not count as atonement. Thus, it is wrong for Ms. Buchanan to get huffy over Epstein being dropped from law school, subsequent to the episode, as I understand it. A paleo mother Hen, as she is to Epstein, should accept that adversity will be character-building for her errant protege.

Update III: Lettermen/Palin: Dull Meets Dumb

Energy, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Ethics, Family, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, John McCain, Pop-Culture, Republicans, Sarah Palin

I defended the woman effectively in “Sensational Sarah,” “Who’s Stupid? Not Sarah,” and “The Left’s Gallery of Cretins.” I did so mainly because her detractors were so much more odious and pretentious, and because I saw in Sarah Palin something, a spark. That glimmer has fizzled. Her philosophical ignorance was unaided by the trashy family dramas, played out in public; the interviews (and no, Bristol is NOT “a bright young woman,” despite what Mother says), the shrill inflection she has developed, the propensity to talk without stop in senseless, rambling, run-off sentences.

And now, in her “uprising” against Dave Lettermen—a veritable storm in a C-cup—Palin comes off as a cross between a less intelligent Gloria Steinem and that ding dong Carrie Prejean (who too refers to herself adoringly as a “bright, intelligent young woman”; I don’t think so). That “young woman” sobriquet is enough to trigger a conniption.

Update I (June 13): Palin has good instincts and a sinewy intelligence. She is, however, too ambitious for her own good, and has shown herself to be, unlike Ron Paul, “an easily co-opted politician, [who’ll abandon] her conservative core beliefs and restrain her political persona for a ticket and candidate that [had] neither: This [was] likely the reason for the mangled, mixed massages, absent from the governor’s Alaskan record.

Palin [also] slammed a cause she had, at one time, saluted: that of the Alaskan Independence Party. That she was once affiliated with said party speaks to her visceral feeling for freedom. That she has since denounced the IP, and seems to have imbibed no political philosophy to speak of since the McCain escapade, also speaks volumes.

However, don’t write her off yet. Where her expertise lie is in energy. She knows what she’s talking about. In a better world, Palin would know her weaknesses and cultivate her strengths. This would mean assuming control of the energy portfolio in a Ron Paul administration, just before he dismantles it.

Given her own boundless energy, Plain could also take charge of the Department of Fish and Wildlife, prior to Paul’s scattering of the critters and cretins who infest the place. As the real Diana, the goddess of the hunt, a Palin subservient to a Paul would allow men to kill and hunt wild life that encroaches on—and endanger—communities (like bears, etc).

Alas, Palin will not attach herself to Paul, because she possesses few enduring, important passions and principles, other than for retards: young women and disabled children.

When Palin runs again, she will cling to the most powerful ticket, or she will be That Ticket. She will then overreach, well beyond her ken. And she will absorb and emit the requisite statism.

Update II (June 14): A couple of Palin faithful have made little of the substance of my disappointment in the woman. Let me reiterate the point people are so willing to forget (frightening that). Put it this way: Do any of her fans remember the policies promoted by the man Palin supported blindly? Anyone recall the kind of mammoth government expansion “McMussolini” advocated? You need a refresher! This woman did not confine herself to yammering about a tiny Department for Retards. Perpetual war, anyone?
I gave Palin a great deal of support. I loved the way the sissy media televised images of her speaking against the backdrop of a man feeding turkeys into the grinder—the food liberals gladly eat, but never hunt or gut. But Palin showed zero conviction; she failed to defend her natural, unperturbed pose with an honest worker in the background. She apologized for who she is—a girl who has hunted, skinned, and then cooked what she kills, and who sees nothing wrong in that great, gory, picture-perfect prop (the slaughter of turkeys).
Palin allowed herself to be “handled.” And now, she’s jumping on some bandwagon that is bringing to her side feminists of the left-liberal and “conservative” ilk—the usual cows. Puke.

Update III: There is on BAB a Sarah Palin archive. To check it out, click Sarah Palin under Categories.

Updated: We Get It: Museum Shooter Is a Hateful Honky

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Elections 2008, Free Speech, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Regulation, Terrorism, The Zeitgeist

The excerpt is from my new column, now on Taki’s Magazine, “We Get It: Museum Shooter Is a Hateful Honky”:

THE MORE OBVIOUS MORAL of the von Brunn attack relates to media coverage. If you’re a white supremacist caught in the act, intrepid, mainstream journalism will not rest until it has dug-up, divulged and dissected everything about you.

Scarcely had the cowardly attack taken place than the mug of the hater was plastered on every TV station across the country. (I can’t tell you what the Jihadi du jour looks like.) Ditto details of von Brunn’s dysfunctional biography and ideology.

In no time the usually lackadaisical liberal media expertly knitted together von Brunn’s years in irons, unsavory associations, and the ins-and-outs of his holocaust-denying, anti-Semitic belief system. …

On the other hand, does anyone … know who Wael W. Kalash is?

I didn’t think so. If you’re a swarthy supremacist, driven by devotion to a vampiric prophet and his deity, you can count on the ‘discretion’ of those whose job description is vigilant indiscretion.”…

The complete column is “We Get It: Museum Shooter Is a Hateful Honky.”

Miss the weekly column on WND? Catch it on Taki’s Magazine every Saturday.

Update (June 14): In addition to the assorted protected-species murder charges (hate crimes), “Von Brunn, 88, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 39-year-old Stephen T. Johns, who was black.” (via FoxNew)

I’m beginning to get the gist of equality under the law in America. If you aggress against a gay, black, or Jewish individual, then you’ve earned the severest of sanctions: first degree murder, in the case of von Brunn. If, in the course of being Muslim, you behead your wife—well then, Muslim acts in mitigation. You’re charged with second degree murder, only.

Updated: SotoSetAsides: 'I Am A Product Of Affirmative Action'

Affirmative Action, Intellectualism, Law, Multiculturalism, Race, Racism, The Courts

I’m shocked. Sonia SotoSetAsides once admitted that her test scores “were not comparable to her colleagues at Princeton and Yale” (with the exception of the scores of Mighty Michelle O). Nor were her scores on par with the scores of the forgotten students the system had helped her usurp.
I’m so disillusioned (irony alert to the prosaic among you). Weren’t we promised by the POTUS, another recipient of racial preferential treatment, that Sotomayor had a first-rate legal mind? Don’t tell me that this society has been hollowed out like a husk at every level—private and public; local, state and federal—by statist social engineering? And so, once again, we were right to call Soto so-and-so a mediocrity, a product of racial set-asides. It’s all so very shocking. You want to add Larry Auster’s analysis to the specter of Soto admitting that her test scores left much to be desired. (On the bright side, perhaps a dim liberal bulb will do less damage as one of America’s new black-robed deities):

Update: “Her academic career appears to have been a fraud from beginning to end, a testament to Ivy League corruption.”

“Two weeks ago, the New York Times reported that, to get up to speed on her English skills at Princeton, Sotomayor was advised to read children’s classics and study basic grammar
books during her summers. How do you graduate first in your class at Princeton if your summer reading consists of ‘Chicken Little’ and ‘The Troll Under the Bridge’?” …

“Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review – all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.”

“… were it not for Ivy League dishonesty, Sotomayor would not have gotten into Princeton, would never have been ranked first in her class, would not have gotten into Yale Law, nor been named editor of Yale Law Review, and thus would not be a U.S. appellate court judge today or a nominee to the Supreme Court.”

Who else but Pat Buchanan could deliver such masterstrokes? (Okay… I do quite well). The only facet Pat forgets to speak to: the loss of the importance of object, intellectual standards.