Condemned For The Company He Keeps

Free Speech, Private Property, Race, Racism, South-Africa

You can read my interview with Dan Roodt now on Quarterly Review, to which I contribute.

At least 2 publications that carry this column chose not to publish the Roodt interview. That’s perfectly fine; it’s the prerogative of private property. The reason given by one fine outlet (and these are all fine people) was that Roodt, it seems, has written for American Renaissance and it has been alleged that he has given a talk to a Nazi organization in Sweden.

I have no idea about these associations. My reply echoes my position: I generally follow the veracity of what a person says, not who he hangs with. Policed political correctness often pushes desperate people into dubious company. And Roodt is a man desperate to save his people. (Or perhaps whites are not permitted to belong?)

This is not to say that Jared Taylor is “dubious”; only that he has been marginalized as such. If you read Mr. Taylor’s last book, it is straight-forward, good, shoe-leather journalism. Other than the title, there is not much that is radical about it. For this reason, Taylor’s teaser of a title was, in my opinion, a mistake.

Who Needs A Head Exam? Hillary Or The American People?

America, Elections, Hillary Clinton, Politics

We know what’s in Hillary’s head: corruption, statism, militarism, welfarism, multiculturalism, internationalism; naked ambition, and blood lust—on steroids. Even Hillary’s own husband would have fired her for incompetence, as was the fate of Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense Les Aspin, for failing in Somalia.

About the caliber of American ruling class, Fred Reed writes this:

“I can’t understand it. Out of three hundred million Americans, and lots of them went to school and can pretty much read, we get a slick minor pol out of Chicago for President and Pickle-Boy Kerry for Secretary of State, God knows why. Before that, we had Hillary, former First Housewife. Even god couldn’t explain that. And they throw their weight around just like they had some.”

The question is, what’s wrong with America? If it is indeed true and Mrs. Clinton’s favorability is as high as her acolytes in media say (47 percent)—then it is Americans who need their heads examined, not the “former First Housewife.”

‘Keeping Track Of Which Countries The US Has Wrecked’

Healthcare, Iraq, Military, Republicans, War

On the radio, Friday, in the car, I heard Sean Hannity say that each Iraqi should have been made to pay America (which Hannity equates with the American government), in compensation for the blood our warriors shed in liberating those Iraqi ingrates.

Where does one start? How does a person’s worldview evolve to reflect the exact opposite of reality? Propaganda. You propagandize yourself as much as you propagandize others.

Mr. Hannity was suggesting a source of funds to compensate veterans for the indignities afflicted on them by Veterans Affairs Department.

Have Republicans not heard about privatization? Presumably, Mr. Hannity’s “patriotic” listeners find a suggestion of stealing from a poor people whose lives the US has destroyed way sexier than, say, privatizing that pit of perverse incentives that is the VA. It’s a socialized system much like Obama Care.

I suppose that, as Fred Reed says, “The world is full of countries, and it’s hard to keep track of which ones you’ve wrecked.”

And wreck Iraq we did. The truth is that, “More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain’s leading polling groups.” (See Reuters as well as “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey.”)

If personal stories are what you hanker after, here is the most excellent Arwa Damon’s report straight from the mouths of some sad, sad Iraqis:

Ten years on, one can easily look around Baghdad and see a veneer of normalcy. But nothing about Iraq or what it has been through is normal. The cloak of sorrow that hangs over the capital is more suffocating than ever, even if violence is slightly down.
“We’re not living,” one Iraqi colleague told me. “We’re just surviving.”
I think the ones who are good left, and only the bad people stayed here.
It’s as if the violence created a façade. People were so focused on staying alive they didn’t fully notice the corruption, suspicion and tribalism that had seeped into society and government. Now that attacks are down — and fewer Iraqis are killed every day — all that and more has risen to the surface.
Basma al-Khateeb and her two daughters, 22-year-old Sama and 14-year-old Zeina, are among the remnants of Baghdad’s elite — a family that could have left but chose to stay. Basma is an IT professional and well-known activist.
We’ve known Basma and her family for years — she is a regular guest on CNN — and have always marveled at their courage and determination, a love for country that trumped their desire to escape.
But even Basma is uttering what for her was unimaginable. “I lost hope six to seven months ago,” she said. “You don’t feel it’s home any more.”
She paused, crushed by the weight of her own words. “Did I really say that?”
“Now the fear is different,” she explained. “You don’t know who is in the next car. They look at you as if you are different, your clothes, or even your gestures, your body language is different. We’re not comfortable being around the streets.”
“I think the people changed,” her daughter Sama added. “I think the ones who are good left, and only the bad people stayed here.”
It’s such an emotional, mentally complex notion that the family struggles to clearly define it — to be an alien in your own country.
“It’s a different culture, it’s a tribal culture. Before, there was no kind of culture that was dominant.”
Now there is. The streets feel hostile, and people continue to be wary of each other.
For the young, there is no room to mentally expand. For a professional like Sama, it’s either adopt the “principles” of corruption or find yourself unemployed.
“I had hope in the beginning and then I lost it,” she says. “It was like climbing the stairs and then there’s no end to it. You have to go down the stairs again. And that is depressing and very disappointing.
“This is no place for us. Because if I stay here, I have to be corrupt also, to live, to survive.”
In another time and place, Sama might have pursued her passion for the arts. She plays the piano beautifully. It’s a dream she plans to pursue far from her homeland.
As for Zeina, who has known nothing but war, she too wants to leave. Her first memory is of violence. Her defining moment of the last 10 years was a church bombing in 2010 in which her best friend was killed.
For their mother, this is the only home she has known. “I don’t want to have another home.”
But Basma wants something better for her daughters.
“In a certain time, at a certain point, it’s best for them to leave,” she says. “For study or work … for them to find out about themselves (and) be strong. They will not be strong here.”
Tragically, so many Iraqis I know echo those same sentiments. For the vast majority of them, the defining moments of the last 10 years are not of Saddam Hussein’s trial and execution, the drafting of the constitution or dipping their fingers in purple ink in the first elections.
It is the moment they last saw their loved one, gave them that last hug or kiss goodbye — not knowing it would turn out to be such a precious moment — before they were inexplicably, harshly torn away.

Go Alweady, Bawbawa Walters!

Celebrity, Intellectualism, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

Barbara Walters has promised to retire. But then so did that lip-licking lizard, Larry King. You can’t take them at their word.

In my journalism-school days one looked up to the brilliant and brave late Oriana Fallaci. Now, it’s mediocrities like colorectal crusader Katie Couric and Barbara Walters who’re considered cutting-edge clever. And they’ve sired a new crop of cretins. Can you believe that talking coifs such as Brook Baldwin and Erin Burnett of CNN are regularly asked to address university graduates? There is NOTHING these people can say that can edify or enlighten. Nothing. They are walking cliches. The same goes for the Fox News crop, with some exceptions (Gerri Willis, Elizabeth MacDonald, Melissa Francis).

As the author of America’s “Most Fascinating People List,” Barbara Walters had redefined the concept of “fascinating.” The detritus of humanity paraded by the reality TV racket is where the boorish broadcaster turned for “fascinating” figures. She was thus an integral cog in a coarsening culture. Some of her past picks for the List included Paris Hilton, Victoria and David Beckham, Kim Kardashian and Justin Timberlake.

All Walters’ interviews make the flesh crawl. Paris Hilton’s porn debut, in which the woman made narcissistic love to the camera, (i.e. herself) was transformed by Walters’ syrupy “journalism” into a PG-rated tale of innocence betrayed.

And the Walters empathic posturing concealed a good deal of cattiness, even cruelty. Her idea of getting to the guts of a story: Bringing a supremely vulnerable celebrity to tears. The wicked Walters once prefaced an interview with singer Celine Dion by pronouncing, “You are not beautiful.” She then watched gleefully as tears welled in Dion’s beautiful eyes.

The only person to rival such bitchiness is sly Katie Couric. She once interviewed Hillary Clinton while drunk with love for Obama. Couric’s below-the-belt barbs and blithe probes about Obama—but not the issues—made Hillary appear elevated by comparison. Clinton was courteous where Katie was cruel. “Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?” Couric asked. “Only with some boys,” Clinton said, laughing. The answer was quick and classy.

Good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters. For her contempt of Islam, Fallaci was forced to flee her native Italy. She came to America, where, needless to say, she did not make it onto Barbara’s List or as a “CNN Heroes” nominee.