UPDATE II: The D-Bomb Has Dropped

Democrats, Elections, IMMIGRATION, Private Property, Republicans, The State, The West, Welfare

The current column, now on RT, is “The D-Bomb Has Dropped.” Here’s an excerpt:

“…People with higher incomes constitute a minority, an economically dominant minority (to paraphrase Amy Chua). People with low incomes are in the majority, a politically dominant majority.

The rich are politically impoverished; the poor politically rich. The rich dominate the economy, the poor dominate the polity.

When elections roll around, the politically powerful exact their revenge against the economically powerful.

What kind of a right gives one man control over another man’s life? In a democracy, the right to vote does just that.

As for demographics; they have become destiny. They were not necessarily so. Demographics have been the excuse central planners have advanced to persevere with immigration policies that destroy civil society and shore up the welfare state.

The now-waning West became great not because it outbred the rest of the world. The West was once great because of its human capital—innovation, exploration, science, philosophy; because of superior ideas, and the willingness to defend such a civilization, not because it was more populated than the rest of the world.

America doesn’t need more people; it needs better people.

Making nice with constituencies that vote repeatedly and habitually for the candidate who promises them more stuff is tantamount to sleeping with the enemy. The only voters who could be swayed by the promise of the free market are the Democratic Party’s Asian supporters, since they enjoy higher incomes and stabler families than the party’s Hispanic and black devotees.

Ultimately, elections are about perception—the way in which the people perceive the political planks of the two parties. …”

Read the rest of “The D-Bomb Has Dropped,” on RT.

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UPDATED I: Facebook THREAD: In reality, voting Republican does not shrink the state. On the contrary; Republicans are a reliable engine of government growth. But with the importation of constituencies that want stuff, the two parties are competing to satisfy that demand. Importing third-world dependents has only helped grow the welfare state.

UPDATE II: I needed a laugh. A friend needed one. We all need one. Here is Patrick J. Buchanan in one of his finest moments.

UPDATED: Mitt Romney: Elements Of A Tragic Figure

History, Literature, Morality, Nationhood, Politics, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Mitt Romney embodies some, not all, the elements in Aristotle’s definition of a tragic figure:

* Character must be a person of stature. (Check)
* Character must neither be totally good or totally evil
* An error of judge or a weakness in character causes the misfortune. (Check)
* The character must be responsible for tragic events.
* Action involves a change in fortune from happiness to misery. (Check)
* Subject is serious. (Check)
* Tragic hero is of noble birth and displays a nobility of spirit. (Check)
* Protagonists pitted against forces beyond their control. (Check)
* Struggles courageously until his fall. (Check)
* Though defeated, gains a measure of increased wisdom.

Mr. Romney’s election concession speech speaks to these tragic elements, especially this man’s abiding faith in “this great nation.”

I so wish — I so wish that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction, but the nation chose another leader. And so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him and for this great nation.

UPDATE (11/7): We “left everything on the field,” Romney said, adding “we have given our all to this campaign.”

This comports with the prototypical Greek tragic figure who “struggles courageously until his fall.” Meantime, the snake in the grass coiled and hissed and spat venom, all the way to a victory.

Exercising A Right Over Others

Democracy, Elections

PBS’s Christina Bellantoni cites a poll (which I can’t locate on PBS News Hour’s usually well-organized site), according to which individuals earning less than $50,000 trended Barack Obama; those earning more than $50,000, and certainly individuals in the upper-income tax bracket, preferred Mitt Romney.

Single women and racial minorities are with Obama too. (Understandably, categories overlap.)

People with higher incomes are in the minority. They are an economically dominant minority (to paraphrase Amy Chua). The rich dominate the economy, the poor dominate the polity.

When elections roll around, the voting mass exacts its revenge against the economically dominant minority.

The economically dominant minority funds government. The rich pay most of the taxes. Obama is the candidate who, on paper at least, has promised his special constituencies more of what richer people rightfully own. Mitt Romney is the candidate who, on paper at least, promised to confiscate less private property.

That is, at least, how the voter perceived the candidates.

Answer me this, then: What kind of a right is the vote? What kind of a right gives one man control over another man’s life?

In this democracy (for we are no longer a republic), you vote not for a representative who will defend your inalienable, individual rights. Rather, if you are The Rich, whom The Left treats as a reified, rigid state-of-being, you vote defensively. And if you are The Poor, you vote, indirectly, to extract what your guy has promised you from The Other Guy.

In a word, pillage politics.

When Looks Can Kill

Ethics, Family, Islam, Media, Middle East, Morality, Multiculturalism

When honor killings are mentioned in the moron media there is but one narrative: “bad man, good woman – Arab men refuse to let go of patriarchal privilege and power; Arab women are the besieged political class who desperately want to – but can’t – protect their daughters from this fate. But does this represent what is really going on in Arab cultures?”

BBC News reports that a couple in Pakistan-administered Kashmir was arrested for “killing their 15-year old daughter with acid,” for fear that “she would bring dishonour on their family.”

The couple told BBC that the girl had glanced at a boy. The father proceeded to beat the girl, while the mother fetched acid and poured it over her daughter Anusha, who sustained burns on 60% of her body.

Let these events be a lesson to those who think that parental love is a universally shared value.

From “THE RETURN OF THE PRODIGAL FEMINIST” (December 5, 2003):

Here’s what a “Palestinian” woman, Amira Abu Hanhan Qaoud, did to her child, after the girl – who had been raped and impregnated by her brothers – refused to commit suicide.
Plastic bag, razor, and wooden stick in hand, the mother entered her sleeping daughter’s room. “Tonight you die, Rofayda,” the wicked witch announced, before wrapping the bag tightly around the girl’s head. The murderess Qaoud then spent the next 20 minutes slicing away at Rofayda’s wrists, ignoring pleas of “No, mother, no!” Just to be sure, this alleged mother struck her daughter on the head with the stick after the poor child passed out. Yet members of Qaoud’s community are nonplussed – they see the woman as driven by devotion to both community and family.

Anthropologist Ilsa Glaser’s eye-opening work on female aggression in the Palestinian Authority more than confirmed that women were active in instigating the honor killings … yes, of their daughters.

Read on.