Murdered Mexicans

Barack Obama, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Foreign Policy, Government, GUNS

In my forthcoming, weekly WND column—it talks about how A-Jad (Ahmadinejad) has become the fall guy for the AT (Attorney General)—I mention a neglected aspect of “Operation Fast and Furious,” neglected by its American investigators and the criminal enterprise they are probing (the US government). Writes Ruben Navarrette Jr. on CNN.COM:

But by far, the group that paid the heaviest price for this doomed initiative is the Mexican people. There is no way to know how many Mexicans died at the hands of criminals armed with weapons supplied courtesy of the ATF, but Carlos Canino, an ATF agent at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City, reportedly testified to congressional investigators that Fast and Furious guns showed up at nearly 200 crime scenes. This scandal is about dead Mexicans.

MORE.

Not a System; But Life Itself

Free Markets, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Natural Law

I missed the Republican debate last night. The weekly, WND column was to be devoted to that bit of sparring. But lo, 8:00 PM EST rolled round, and there was no debate on CNN, FoxNews and Business, MSNBC, etc. There were references to The Debate, but the newsmen who’re supposed to say, Where, What, When, Why, Who—they refuse to give it up when the ratings don’t accrue to their network.

Here is the “Complete Transcript of the Hanover Economic Debate.”

Hermann Cain promised to “re-establish confidence in our system.” “Our system.” How I hate that phrase. Everyone uses it with reference to the voluntary free market.

Such crude utilitarianism.

“The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really is a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm, and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace—this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter and people suffer.” [By The Free Woman]

They all call it The System. It is not. The free market is a sacred extension of life itself.

Remember the cult, 1967 British television series, “The Prisoner”? Google “I am not a number—I am a free man!”. (Whenever “Number 6” (the individual) attempted to escape from “The Village” (the collective), a giant balloon called “Rover” gave chase and subdued him.)

The free market is us; at least everyone of us who is not a moocher or a looter. If this “collective” had a voice it would scream, “I am not a system I am life itself.”

UPDATED: Thank You, Pat Buchanan (The Old Right)

Celebrity, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Etiquette, Founding Fathers, Ilana Mercer, Old Right, Trade

I’ll be retiring tonight with “Suicide of a Superpower: Will American Survive to 2025?” by the iconic Patrick J.Buchanan, whom every paleo-libertarian admires. I’ve just received a copy courtesy of the author. The new book is inscribed as follows:

“To Ilana Mercer: Fellow Columnist and Fellow Conservative, with The Respect and good wishes of The Author.”

Mr. Buchanan’s graciousness made my day, make that my month.

In a gracious note to this writer, the one and only Mr. Buchanan wrote: “I believe your book is being sold [or bundled on Amazon] along with my new book, ‘Suicide of a Superpower: Will America survive to 2025.’ … my 18,000-word chapter on ethnonationalism and tribalism and the surge of both throughout the Third World—as well as our own declining world—tracks pretty much with what you wrote …”

UPDATE (Oct. 12): You wish, Myron! Being called a “fellow conservative” by Pat Buchanan is most definitely a high honor. Like myself, Mr. Buchanan regards giants such as Democrat Grover Cleveland, Russell Kirk, Barry Goldwater and “Senator Robert Taft of Ohio, also known as Mr. Republican,” as authentic conservatives. Snarky comments to the contrary, Buchanan is a member of the Old Right. (As am I.):

In the wonderfully conciliatory 1992 essay “A Strategy for The Right,” Murray N. Rothbard traced the original American Right to a reaction against the New Deal and the manner in which it obliterated the old republic’s classical-liberal foundations. Members of the original Right wanted to abolish the Welfare State ushered in by the New Deal and return to the foreign policy of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson, enunciated in his First Inaugural Address, in March 1801: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” Avoiding the metropole status our imposter conservatives or neoconservatives are currently cultivating was crucial to an America First foreign affairs position.
By no means a monolith, the Old Right sported nuanced opinions in matters of philosophy and policy. Sadly, it petered out politically, only to be usurped by the W. F. Buckley, big-government “conservatives.”

Sure, Mr. Buchanan goes wrong on trade, but one would expect posters here to be familiar with my record on free trade.

Democracy In Egypt = Dar al-Islam

Christianity, Conflict, Democracy, Foreign Policy, Freedom of Religion, Middle East, Military

Remember how members of the American chattering class, libertarians too, practically tripped over one another to show-off their solidarity with the popular uprising in Egypt?

Many of the same slobbering sorts failed to mention that, when he was not ordering rendition and torture in the service of the US, Mubarak’s dictatorial powers were directed, unjustly indubitably, against the Islamic fundamentalists of the Muslim brotherhood. He kept them in check. All in all, Mubarak protected the endangered Coptic Christians of Egypt, who form “one-tenth of the 80 million people.”

So many neocons and liberals came down on Obama, his VP, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when they responded with “old-school diplomacy” to the developments on Israel’s southern border. The opposition wanted BHO to be less low key about the lovely rebels. BHO eventually complied.

PBS refuses to identify the 26 “protesters” who were killed in yesterday’s “sectarian” clashes in Egypt between Muslim and Christians. I wager that the Christian Coptic community stands less of a chance now that Mubarak is gone.

RAY SUAREZ: Some 1,000 Christians gathered last night to protest the slow response of the military government to Muslim attacks on Coptic churches, but the peaceful protest quickly grew into a melee, as Christians, Muslims and security forces battled in the streets.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK of the New York Times attests to the fact that what started as “a demonstration, a peaceful march that began in the neighborhood of Shoubra—Copts demonstrating over the attack on a church in the southern part of Egypt—“ended with “the security forces… driving a trucks into the Coptic Christian protesters and firing ammunition also at the protesters. So, today, we had bodies that were badly mangled by those vehicles and others that had those bullet wounds.”

“The Christian minority [lost] a protector in Hosni Mubarak,” admitted KIRKPATRICK.

But no. “Yesterday wasn’t a clash between Muslim and Christians, but it was led by thugs who want to stab the revolution and the political process,” said one of Egypt’s new “son of 60 dogs” (an Egyptian expression for political master).

Nice try.

Egypt, like Iraq (where Saddam kept Muslim fanaticism in check), is destined to become Dar al-Islam (House of Islam)

The heyday for Iraq’s Christian community was under Saddam Hussein, when “Catholics made up 2.89 percent of Iraq’s population in 1980. By 2008,” thanks to the Bush pig, “they were merely 0.89 percent.” Iraq’s “dwindling Christian community,” “whose numbers have plummeted since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion as the community has fled to other countries,” has suffered a terrible loss today.