Uncle Sam soldiers on

"We can’t let go," says Pat Buchanan, referring to this country's unnecessary wars and military interventions, "because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow."

This country's "patriotic" Anglo-Euro men, who love so much to fight, live in the past, and will go to war and stay at war for anyone who comes along and pulls their "USA!" chain. Throw in some sentimental jargon about "God," and you've got them hooked. As one soldier recently indicated, all a recognized "leader" has to do is point said soldier in the direction of a so-called enemy, and he becomes a willing killer. So what if it was all a mistake? No questions asked. At least it keeps unemployed men like him occupied.

This warrior has been a willing tool to fight and die a worthless death for the safety of Israel, like a good goy boy. Now we learn that Saudis, Arabs, mind you, are calling on this eager American soldier to risk his life by attacking Iran. No doubt, Mr. Tough Marine will be just as willing to die or be maimed and deformed for the benefit of A-rabs. And next will come the Koreans -- again. Just give him a weapon and point him in the direction . . . . No questions asked.

For how much longer will the world tolerate this imperial behavior on the part of these self-indulgent American "patriots?" Here are excerpts from Buchanan's latest column, Why Are We Still in Korea?:
• • •
Fifty-seven years after that armistice [in Korea, June 1953], a U.S. carrier task force is steaming toward the Yellow Sea in a show of force after the North fired 80 shells into a South Korean village. We will stand by our Korean allies, says President Obama. And with our security treaty and 28,000 U.S. troops in South Korea, many on the DMZ, we can do no other. But why, 60 years after the first Korean War, should Americans be the first to die in a second Korean War?

Unlike 1950, South Korea is not an impoverished ex-colony of Japan. She is the largest of all the “Asian tigers,” a nation with twice the population and 40 times the economy of the North. Seoul just hosted the G-20. And there is no Maoist China or Stalinist Soviet Union equipping Pyongyang’s armies. The planes, guns, tanks and ships of the South are far superior in quality.

Why, then, are we still in South Korea? Why is this quarrel our quarrel? Why is this war, should it come, America’s war?

High among the reasons we fought in Korea was Japan, then a nation rising from the ashes after half its cities had been reduced to rubble. But, for 50 years now, Japan has had the second largest economy and is among the most advanced nations on earth. Why cannot Japan defend herself? Why does this remain our responsibility, 65 years after MacArthur took the surrender in Tokyo Bay? ...

Why, when the Cold War has been over for 20 years, do all these Cold War alliances still exist?

Obama has just returned from a Lisbon summit of NATO, an alliance formed in 1949 to defend Western Europe from Soviet tank armies on the other side of the Iron Curtain that threatened to roll to the Channel. Today, that Red Army no longer exists, the captive nations are free, and Russia’s president was in Lisbon as an honored guest of NATO.

Yet we still have tens of thousands of U.S. troops in the same bases they were in when Gen. Eisenhower became supreme allied commander more than 60 years ago. Across Europe, our NATO allies are slashing defense to maintain social safety nets. But Uncle Sam, he soldiers on.

We borrow from Europe to defend Europe. We borrow from Japan and China to defend Japan from China. We borrow from the Gulf Arabs to defend the Gulf Arabs. ...

How to explain why America behaves as she does? ... Like an aging athlete, we keep trying to relive the glory days when all the world looked with awe upon us. We can’t let go, because we don’t know what else to do. We live in yesterday — and our rivals look to tomorrow.
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What might have been

On September 10, 2001, I announced on the Issues & Views website the formation of a unique coalition whose aim would be to make war on the "War on Drugs." This was on September 10, just one day before Doomsday. September 11, of course, would force the postponement and outright termination of so many prospective events and potential good works.

The new organization that did not get to breathe life was to be part of the Free Congress Foundation's "Coalition for Constitutional Liberties," and was initiated by an array of conservative thinkers and activists. It had the blessings of such stalwarts as Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation and Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum. Eagle Forum chapters in Wisconsin, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Tennessee were to play leading roles in helping to expand the Coalition's reach. Among the more than two dozen groups allied with the Coalition were the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, and the Republican Leadership Council.

On September 10, Weyrich released this statement, which was sent directly to Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee:

We are part of a broad coalition of groups concerned that the war on drugs has degraded our privacy and civil liberties. We respectfully ask that the members of Committee consider raising the following privacy and civil liberties issues in connection with the nomination of John Walters to be the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (Office of the White House).

We intend by issuing this letter to signal neither support nor opposition to Mr. Walters' nomination. Rather, we are issuing this letter to urge members of the Committee to explore these issues in connection with Mr. Walters' nomination. As we set forth below, these issues include the use of new surveillance and investigative technologies, including the Carnivore/DCS1000 and Echelon systems, the "Know Your Customer" proposal of the Financial Action Task Force, asset forfeiture abuses, wiretaps and the drug war's sometimes corrupting influence on law enforcement itself.

Little did these concerned citizens know what was on the horizon, as they expressed alarm over the potential of everyone becoming a "drug suspect" due to heavy-handed government intrusions into privacy. Given what the American people are now experiencing, how quaint seem the members of this Coalition, as they complained about Amtrak giving DEA officials access to its ticketing database, along with passengers' last names, destinations, method of payment, and data on whether they were going one-way or round trip. Would any of these worthy patriots back then ever have conceived of airport body scanners?

In concluding my article on the activities planned by the Coalition, I asked, "Is it too much to hope that some day there might be a light at the end of this dark tunnel now ruled over by the DEA, BATF, FBI, and sundry other bureaucracies?" Well, yes, it was too much to hope for, as the tunnel has grown darker than ever.
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Seven years of hell

The warnings were there early on. Think whatever you wish about Saddam Hussein, yet those with an understanding of the Middle East warned back in 2003, that it was his strong-arm policies that prevented Iraq's diverse religious groups from harming one another. Hussein himself told his executioners that they would be sorry when they dispensed with him due to the social disorder that inevitably would prevail upon his death.

In The Murderers of Christianity, Pat Buchanan tells us who is really responsible for the November 1 massacre of Iraqi Christians. Following are excerpts:
• • •
It was the worst massacre of Christians yet. For Assyrian Catholics known as Chaldeans, whose ancestors were converted by St. Thomas the Apostle, the U.S. war of liberation has been seven years of hell. Estimates of the number of Christians in Iraq in 2003 vary from 800,000 to 1.5 million. But hundreds of thousands have fled since the invasion. Seven of the 14 churches in Baghdad have closed, and two-thirds of the city’s 500,000 Christians are gone.

While Saddam Hussein, a secularist, had protected religious minorities, Muslim vigilantes — Shia, Sunni and Kurd, as well as al-Qaida — have attacked the Christians who have endured kidnappings, pillage, rapes, beheadings and assassinations.

And what has happened to this Christian community, which had lived peacefully alongside Muslim neighbors for centuries, must be marked down as one of the predictable and predicted consequences of America’s war in Iraq. In editor Tom Fleming’s Chronicles, just days before President Bush ordered the invasion, columnist Wayne Allensworth warned pointedly:

“Iraqi Christians fear they will be the first victims of a war that might dismember their country, unleashing ethnic and religious conflicts that Baghdad had previously suppressed. ... The Shiite uprising in southern Iraq during the first Gulf War — encouraged and then abandoned by Washington — targeted Christians. Many Christians had supported Saddam’s regime, in spite of creeping Islamicization, as their best hope of survival in the Islamic Middle East.”

Why is Christianity being murdered in its cradle by Muslim fanatics?

Multiple reasons. A return of Islamic militancy. The rise of ethnic nationalism that conflates tribal and religious identity. Hatred of America for its domination of the region, for our war on terror that they see as a war on Islam and for our support of Israel in its suppression of the Palestinians.

Christians across the Middle East are now seen as both members of an alien religion and a fifth column of the Crusaders inside their camp. Paul Marshall of Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom warns that we may be in another great wave of persecution, “as Christians flee the Palestinian areas, Lebanon, Turkey, and Egypt.” Christians are gone from Jerusalem, gone from Nazareth, gone from Bethlehem. From Egypt to Iran, the Vatican counts 17 million left. ...

America remains the most Christianized of the Western nations. Yet, the protests of the White House, State Department and major media over the eradication of Christianity in the Middle East is muted. ...

Of what worth these wars for democracy if we end up freeing fanatics to annihilate communities or expel populations of our own Christian brothers and sisters across the Middle East?

Read complete article here.
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The joy of killing, and Don't ask treasonous questions

Power corrupts, but does the military corrupt absolutely? Former military man (Vietnam veteran) Fred Reed offers his observations on a General's recent comments. With this new head of Central Command for a leader, what's to become of the young soldiers? Is this to be their model as they prepare to invade all those other Middle East and African countries that are sorely in need of Liberation -- Yemen, Iran, Somalia, etc? (Did I leave out a few?)

In Psychopathy Legitimized, Reed, who is no pansy, nor antiwar, expresses the view of many current and former soldiers -- at least, those who have not yet gone over to the Dark Side. Following are excerpts:

• • •
On Antiwar.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?

A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collection. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way.

I’ll guess he fell just shy of graduating from third grade. He sure ain’t much of a general, no ways, I reckon. Just the fellow I want representing me in the world.

Does General Dworkin-Mattis speak of manhood? Odd, since his military is being badly outfought by the unmanly Afghans that are fun to kill. By the Pentagon’s figures the US military outnumbers the resistance several to one. The US has complete control of the air, enjoying F16s, helicopter gun-ships, transport choppers, and Predator drones, as well as armor, body armor, night-vision gear, heavy weaponry, medevac, hospitals, good food, and PXs. The Afghans have only AKs, RPGs, C4, and balls. Yet they are winning, or at least holding their own. How glorious.

Man for man, weapon for weapon, the Taliban are clearly superior. They take far heavier casualties, but keep on fighting. Their politics are not mine, but they are formidable on the ground. If I were General Dworkin, I’d change my name and go into hiding. Maybe he could wear a veil.

Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece. It is embarrassing. The Pentagon’s preferred enemies are lightly armed, poorly equipped peasants, which makes for a long war and thus hundreds of billions of dollars in juicy contracts for military industries. Yet the greatest military in history (ask it) gets run out of Southeast Asia, blown up and run out of Lebanon, shot down and run out of Somalia, with Afghanistan a disaster in progress and Iraq claimed as an American victory rather than Shiite. Do the aircraft carriers intimidate North Korea? No. Iran? No. China? No. For this, a trillion dollars a year? ...

Now, it is regarded as treasonous to question that Our Boys are the best trained, best armed, toughest troops in the world, and I’ll probably get punched out in bars for pointing out the awful truth. Let’s imagine an experiment. We take Killing-is-Fun General Mattis-Abzug, and a thousand GIs, and a thousand Taliban, and let them fight it out in any patch of wretched barren mountains of your choosing. On equal terms. What you think? Same weapons.

Good idea, General? You eat what they eat, wear what they wear, they have no medical care, and neither do you. If they get lung-shot and die the hard way, you do too. It will come down to guts and motivation.

Motivation: It counts, general. I believe it was Bedford Forrest who said of some of his troops, “Them cane-brake boys jest plain likes to fight.” I guess there must be just a whole lot of cane in Afghanistan. The Taliban will go to any length to cut your freaking throat because you have been killing their wives and children, fathers and brothers, and you will fight for… for…well. Uh. Big oil, AIPAC, Ann Coulter. Or a promotion for General Mathis-Abzug. Anybody want to put odds on the outcome?

And General, killing them might be a tad less fun when you couldn’t do it from the safety of a gunship. Just a thought, General. ...

Funny how things look if you think about them. Patriots talk about the tragic deaths of young Americans in Afghanistan. Well, okay. Other things being equal, young guys getting shot to death in a pointless war is not a swell idea. I’m against it. In fact, the more you see of it, and I’ve seen a lot, the worse an idea it seems. Of course, a logician might point out that if you didn’t send them to Afghanistan, they wouldn’t die there – would they?

Read complete article here.

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The dying of Europe's light

"Like all of Europe," writes Pat Buchanan, "Germany grows nervous." Are Germans finally, this late in the day, growing nervous about the five million Muslims, among other foreign groups, they have allowed to populate their country since the 1960s?

In Tribalism Returns to Europe, Buchanan describes the grim consequences of the glorious mosaic of multicultural diversity, that was supposed to bring harmony and progress to European nations. How was it ever possible to put aside common sense and buy the notion that a homogeneous people, one of shared history, language, values and disciplines, could benefit from the intrusion of heterogeneous masses of foreigners?

Because the United States was forced to make the best of its unique circumstances, as it dealt from the beginning with several existing ethnic groups, did observers come to think that this was normal? Did others not take notice that during America's best years a common culture prevailed, guided and steered by a dominant Anglo-Euro authority and sensibility? Although beset with social frictions, the country was not confronted with the challenge of an alien civilization in its midst.

In The Multicultural Cult, Thomas Sowell reminds us that, "In countries around the world, and over the centuries, peoples with jarring differences in language, cultures and values have been a major problem and, too often, sources of major disasters for the societies in which they co-exist." He mocks "the cult that has spawned mindless rhapsodies about 'diversity,' without a speck of evidence to substantiate its supposed benefits."

Of course, those who have been following this migrant scenario, know that it's much too late for Germany or any other European country to turn back the clock, as Buchanan has been warning for at least a couple of decades. Globalism may be "in retreat before tribalism," yet, he writes, "Germany’s problem is insoluble. She is running out of Germans. ... For not one European nation, save Iceland and Albania, has had a birth rate for decades that is not below zero population growth. Baby boomer Europe decided in the 1960s and 1970s it wanted La Dolce Vita, not the hassle of children. It had that sweet life. Now the bill comes due. And the bill is the end of their tribes and countries as we have known them."

In Europe, are the populist and nationalist stirrings of recent years just the last protests of those ethnically conscious whites who are, as Buchanan puts it, "raging against the dying of the light?"
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Joseph Sobran, R.I.P.

And so, Joe Sobran has left us, at age 64. Why not at 84 or 94? Why so soon? Unfortunately, ill health had slowed his pen during recent years, and many of us had already come to feel bereft of his profound ideas and insights.

I discovered Joe in the 1980s, in those pre-Internet browser days, and remember how I looked forward to each edition of his hard copy newsletter, as well as his column in The Wanderer newspaper. Because I sought out publications that carried his work, I inadvertently wound up learning a lot about the internal struggles going on in the Roman Catholic Church. I'm sure I learned more than I needed to know about particular disputes, like those between the editors of The Wanderer and The Remnant, but it was all enlightening and expanded my education in unexpected ways.

Joe was a fount of knowledge when it came to dissecting the neoconservative takeover and insidious sabotage of this country's conservative movement – the movement I thought I had joined. He was to pay dearly, via a form of secular ex-communication, for his candid observations on these perverters of conservative principles. "Never before," he wrote, "has enthusiasm for concentrated power and violent change been regarded as a conservative trait."

Here are excerpts from a column by Joe, in 2001:

Many of my favorite books are books that shook me up, even angered me, when I first read them. One of these is The Present Age, by the late Robert Nisbet. I knew Bob Nisbet slightly, and he was kind to me, especially considering what a young fool I was. He had the wisdom to know that a young fool can often be transformed by time alone. Or, as the poet William Blake put it, “If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.”

Nisbet, a distinguished sociologist and conservative philosopher, published The Present Age in 1988. Though he hated Communism, he harbored a profound skepticism about the Cold War. In 1988 I still didn’t see how a man could hold both attitudes at the same time. Yet I respected Bob Nisbet enough to listen when he said things I didn’t want to hear.

Chief among those things was this: If the Founders of the American Republic could come back today, they would be most astounded, among all the vast changes that time has wrought, by the militarization of the United States. Since World War I, this country has been totally transformed by war and constant preparation for war.

American militarism has been the chief force in changing a decentralized federal republic into a centralized, bureaucratic monolith. During World War I the United States underwent an amazingly swift metamorphosis. World War II accelerated the alteration. The Cold War completed the transformation from isolated republic to global empire. We became inured to limitless government in the name of “defense” and “national security.”

The shock of September 11 has disposed countless Americans to accept, without demurral or reservation, the claim of new powers by the Federal Government — particularly by the executive branch.

But this disposition was made possible by a new tradition of equating patriotism with militarism, and militarism with “defense.” Most of us no longer recognize the new tradition as a break with our original tradition. So we beg the Federal Government to protect us from terrorism, even if that means letting it usurp powers never assigned or allowed to it.

Instead of asking ourselves the pragmatic question, “How can we defeat terrorism?” we should be asking ourselves the more basic question, “Is this the kind of situation we should let ourselves be maneuvered into?” How did a country that was once determined to remain aloof from the endless conflicts of the Old World manage to get itself embroiled in, of all things, the medieval Crusades?

It’s no concern of mine whether Osama bin Laden speaks with the voice of authentic Islam (whatever that may be) or as a crank who happens to have a lot of followers who have the means and determination to kill people I love. Either way, I want him stopped. The sooner the better.

But — and here’s the rub — stopping him may also create more like him. No doubt the U.S. military campaign will deter countless people from trying to emulate him, but it will also have the opposite effect on a few. And a few terrorists or guerrillas are enough to make a lot of trouble, as we have already seen.

The state of Israel has been cracking down on terrorism, hard, for thirty years. Has it worked? The problem is worse than ever. And that’s what we can expect over the next few decades if our own government follows Israel’s example. If we persist in our folly, will we become wise?
•
And more Sobran reflections from a column in 2002:

The Bush administration's threat to use nuclear weapons against Iraq, though thinly veiled in circumlocutions, should tell us all we need to know about the American image in the world today.

The United States, once so admired over most of the earth, is now seen as a nuclear bully. No wonder it's called "the great Satan" by Muslims and "arrogant" even by its European friends. And President Bush thinks they hate us for "our freedom, our democracy"?

The warning is supposed to deter Iraq from using weapons of mass destruction against American forces and allies, even though (1) we don't know that Iraq has such weapons, and (2) the administration has told us repeatedly that deterrence doesn't work against Iraq.

Iraq hasn't threatened the United States, in spite of Bush's raving on the subject. The United States definitely threatens Iraq. And it has forfeited the right to describe Iraq's or any other regime as "evil."

For decades Americans have worried about nukes falling into "the wrong hands," as if there were "right hands" for weapons of mass murder. Well, those weapons are in the wrong hands now: Bush's hands.

Maybe we should distinguish microterrorism, the terrorism of scattered groups of stateless, relatively helpless people with few other options, from the macroterrorism used by powerful states to back up their huge conventional military forces. When there were two superpowers, each had the plausible excuse of deterrence for amassing nuclear arsenals. Now that excuse is gone: the United States is the only superpower left. And it's still using its nukes.

Maybe it will be said that Bush doesn't really intend to use them. But he is already using them. When a bank robber points a pistol at the teller, he's using it, even if he doesn't fire it. He's also terrifying the bystanders, as Bush is doing.

Though history allegedly ended over a decade ago, we should notice that the U.S. Government is out of control, and it continues to make enemies frequently and unpredictably. Who imagined, when its army was bogged down in Vietnam, that it would go on to wage war (or "keep peace"), not long afterward, from Lebanon to Panama to Iraq to Serbia to Afghanistan and back to Iraq? Does anyone care to place a bet on where it will make future enemies?

The Inspiration of Joe Sobran, by Paul E. Gottfried

Joe Sobran: Martyr for truth, by Stephen J. Sniegoski

Joseph Sobran, Writer Whom Buckley Mentored, Dies at 64, by William Grimes, New York Times

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Glenn Beck's carnival of repentance

See my article, Carnival of Repentance: The Outcome of American Conservatism, at Alternative Right

Excerpt:
One has to wonder who these people are who will march on Washington to "restore" the country's "honor," as the rally's theme boasted, yet are in the forefront of supporting some of the most dishonorable acts engaged in by their country's interchangeable governments. Just what is special about the moral convictions of these advocates, who fervently sermonize on such issues as patriotism, war, family life, religion, the nature of government, ad nauseam?

Related

See The Infantilization of American Conservatism, by Paul Gottfried:

Excerpts

[Conservative] critics of the Left cannot bring themselves to find fault with any excess in the Civil Rights movement -- and especially not with its far leftist icon Martin Luther King. “Conservatives” are so terrified of being called “racists” or for that matter, sexists or homophobes, that they devote themselves tirelessly to showing they are just as sensitive as the next PC robot. ...

Such faux conservatives accuse long-dead Democratic presidents, who were well to the right of the current conservative movement, of being more radical than they actually were. It would be no exaggeration to say that Wilson and FDR were far more reactionary than any celebrity in the Tea Party movement. One could only imagine what such antediluvian Democrats would have said if they had heard last year’s “Conservative of the Year,” chosen by Human Events, Dick Cheney, weeping all over the floor about not allowing gays to marry each other. ...

The Tea Party sounds so often like the Left because it is for the most part a product of the Left. Its people were educated in public schools, watch mass entertainment, and have absorbed most of the leftist values of the elite class, to whose rule they object only quite selectively.

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Usurping control of the Tea Parties

Among the more interesting diversions these days is watching the Tea Party evolve, or devolve, depending on your point of view. It's no more than a couple of years old and yet "histories" of the origin of this movement are multiplying.

During the Mark Williams fiasco, we saw his version of the Party, i.e., the Tea Party Express, take a thrashing from leaders of something called the Tea Party Federation, which identified itself as a sort of "umbrella" group for all the Tea Parties.

Williams vigorously claimed that, as the co-founder of the Tea Party Express, he had never heard of the Tea Party Federation, and, further, the first time he heard of his group's membership in the "Federation" was when he was thrown out of said "Federation." He described the Tea Party movement as "millions of tea partiers involved in thousands of groups," and claimed that, "Every tea partier is a tea party leader." Translated this means that no group has power over another and certainly has no power to expel anyone from the movement.

But we all knew that nothing works that way for very long, didn't we? And it wasn't long before the proclaimed "leaders" began to emerge.

The Daily Bell offers an enlightening look at another maneuver to influence the direction of the Tea Parties. In Dick Armey's Tea-Party Coup, we learn of the recent activities of the former Congressman. Following are excerpts:
• • •
A number of months ago, we wrote a good many articles about the Tea Party movement. Along with everyone else we were trying to figure out what it was about and why there seemed to be several different movements and no real way of determining who was in charge or what the message was. ...

Fortunately, Dick Armey is willing to set us straight. Here is the history, as he recites it: "Today the ranks of this citizen rebellion can be counted in the millions. The rebellion's name derives from the glorious rant of CNBC commentator Rick Santelli, who in February 2009 called for a new 'tea party' from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. By doing so he reminded all of us that America was founded on the revolutionary principle of citizen participation, citizen activism and the primacy of the individual over the government. That's the tea party ethos."

Actually, as we understand it, the Tea Party phenomenon was inspired by the libertarian-republicanism of the Ron Paul presidential campaign that created small activist cells. Rick Santelli – and we have seen his "glorious rant" – had nothing to do with this spontaneous manifestation of anti-state protesting. Santelli's TV statement came much later. The reason we have concentrated on [Armey's] article is because it is a superb example of how the mainstream media reworks memes to make them palatable and useful to the powers-that-be.

The Tea Party, initially, was an amorphous and generalized uprising against the modern welfare/warfare state. It was libertarian in nature and fairly specific about its point of view. Today, that specificity has been mislaid (perhaps the movement is too big for one point of view) and the mythmaking has begun. Thus the Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal provides a vast platform for the appropriate tale. And Dick Armey provides it. (In fact Murdoch's media organization is also publisher of a book that Armey has written – Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto.)

Here is the insider's insider, a man who served as Majority Leader of the House of Representatives for a number of years and then as a $750,000 per annum lobbyist (a berth he has now vacated). Yet Armey, by dint of his connections, ability to raise funds and incessant ambition to shape the political horizon to his liking, has attempted to remake himself as political "outsider" and in the process has seemingly launched a takeover of the inchoate Tea Party. (He denies this of course and regularly emphasizes the Tea Party has no leadership – but certainly he is available to help.)

Not only has he somehow become a high profile, de facto leader of a movement and a definer of the history of a movement that deliberately has no organizational core, he has somehow managed to link himself to a Contract From America that many so-called Tea Party political candidates have "signed." The idea is that the Contract From America emerged out of the inchoate opinions of thousands of Tea Party activists and then were codified by Armey and his staff a the Tea-Party oriented Freedomworks, which he founded in the mid 2000s. ...

The military-industrial complex [whose expenditures are not mentioned in the Contract From America] is one of the largest appendages of the modern American warfare-welfare state. The lack of inclusion of central banking and military expenditures makes this Contract From America fairly useless in our humble opinion.

In fact, from our perspective, this article grants the opportunity to see clearly how a power elite dominant social theme is shaped in modern times. Murdoch provides the platform. Dick Armey poses as a radical Libertarian and rewrites history to his liking.

Read the Contract From America and the rest of this article here.
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Statistical differences as grievances

Did you know that baseball coaches of minority races are found more often coaching at first base than at third base? (Now what might this mean?!) And further, the third-base coaches become team Managers more often than first-base coaches. (Aha!) From the 1964 Civil Rights Act straight to the lunacy of today's quotas and discrimination lawsuits, one never knows what to expect next.

In Bean-Counters and Baloney, Thomas Sowell shows how the multiculturalists' relentless recitation of statistics is driven only by the desire to demonstrate "social injustices." No matter what! Nothing, of course, must suggest that there are genuine differences between and among ethnic and racial groups. Following are excerpts:
• • •
The bean-counters have struck again – this time in the sports pages. Two New York Times sport writers have discovered that baseball coaches from minority groups are found more often coaching at first base than at third base. Moreover, third-base coaches become managers more often than first-base coaches.

This may seem to be just another passing piece of silliness. But it is part of a more general bean-counting mentality that turns statistical differences into grievances. The time is long overdue to throw this race card out of the deck and start seeing it for the gross fallacy that it is.

At the heart of such statistics is the implicit assumption that different races, sexes and other subdivisions of the human species would be proportionately represented in institutions, occupations and income brackets if there was not something strange or sinister going on.

Although this notion has been repeated by all sorts of people, from local loudmouths on the street to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States, there is not one speck of evidence behind it and a mountain of evidence against it.

Ask the bean-counters where in this wide world have different groups been proportionally represented. They can't tell you. In other words, something that nobody can demonstrate is taken as a norm, and any deviation from that norm is somebody's fault! ...

At our leading engineering schools – M.I.T., CalTech, etc. – whites are under-represented and Asians over-represented. Is this anti-white racism or pro-Asian racism? Or are different groups just different?

As for baseball, I have long noticed that there are more blacks playing centerfield than third-base. Since the same people hire centerfielders and third-basemen, it is hard to argue that racism explains the difference. No one says it is racism that explains why blacks are over-represented and whites under-represented in basketball. Bean-counters only make a fuss when there is a disparity that fits their vision or their agenda. ...

In countries around the world, all sorts of groups differ from each other in all sorts of ways, from rates of alcoholism to infant mortality, education and virtually everything that can be measured, as well as in some things that cannot be quantified. If black and white Americans were the same, they would be the only two groups on this planet who are the same. ...

The bean-counters are everywhere, pushing the idea that differences show injustices committed by society. As long as we keep buying it, they will keep selling it – and the polarization they create will sell this country down the river.

Read complete article here.
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Dr. Laura joins the ranks of the fainthearted

So, even the supposedly tough-minded talk show host Laura Schlessinger dissolves like putty when confronted with the noise of disapproval coming from the multicultural mob, for her use of the proscribed "Nigger" word. But what else could we expect on the heels of the black woman who telephoned the show, to get advice about her own "racist" white husband, his relatives and friends?

We've learned that even the take-no-prisoners Dr. Laura now accepts the notion that there is ONE word in the English language that is allowed to be spoken by members of only ONE group. Can we expect her to join with those insufferable whites who delight in telling of their disdain for the taboo word, and how they refuse to use it under any circumstances? "I won't even say it in private," they proudly prattle on, waiting for the pat of approval.

Dr. Laura might as well join in the campaign already underway to abolish the word "Nigger" from the lips of all non-blacks. Perhaps she will endorse a federal law to punish any non-black caught spewing it. This could sort of be an expansion of the New York City Council's Resolution of 2007, in which the public use of the word was symbolically "banned." Of course, this ban has meant nothing to those blacks who practice no restraint in their use of the prohibited term and are primarily responsible for extending its life, by keeping the epithet fresh in the popular lexicon.

Here are whites running from the accursed expression, while blacks fill New York City's air with it, and even sanctify the word. The gay website Queerty.com had fun by mocking the Council's ridiculous Resolution. Claiming that New York City was soon to be a "Nigger-free zone," the editor asked, "If the council's all about cleaning up people's politically incorrect potty mouths, where are the bans on spic, faggot, kike, chink and all those other nasties?"

Of course, those "other nasties" are generally terms well known to be spewed forth by blacks, more often than by members of any other group.

Most countries in Europe already have "word crime" laws, as part of their pernicious "hate crime" packages. Why not bring such innovation to these shores and join the Europeans? But, what am I thinking? All assaults on blacks (by non-blacks, of course) are first investigated to learn whether or not the "Nigger" word was hurled before the blows came. Then, thanks to "hate crime" statutes, the assaulter can be subject to extra penalties for the use of the term. Ooh, what he said! Since most assaults on blacks are perpetrated by fellow blacks, I wonder if there are any pre-assault verbiage investigations when the perp has an abundance of melanin. Want to guess?

By retreating on this issue of free speech, do whites really think that the cowardice they have displayed since the 1960s needs to be revealed any further? It is white cowardice that gave us those facets of that 1964 Civil Rights Act, that went over the top by stifling the movement for self-sufficiency and taking the wind out of the economic sails of blacks, while forcing whites to pick up the slack. It is white cowardice that made possible that outrageously unconstitutional Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. And how can we even keep count of the endless Affirmative Action and Quota laws around the land, that have undone any pretense at instilling fairness in society? All gifts of white cowardice.

Does Dr. Laura and her ilk really think the world needs any further evidence that whites are willing to submit to anything, but anything, to avoid offending black "sensitivities?" We get it. You will do anything, from overturning Articles in the Constitution, to denying free speech rights even to yourselves. We get it.

It is whites who fell to their knees in the 1960s, and have never gotten up. What fear of rioting and mayhem can do! And, even when a group declares, WE can do this, but YOU cannot, the whites' response isn't "That's what you think!" but, "Yes, Master, whatever you say." Dr. Laura confirms the three- to four-decade slide into docile obedience.

One of the games of the multiculturalists is to keep up front certain words and terminologies that are deemed off-limits to whites. In this way, whites can be raked over the coals whenever one strays. In 2005, black columnist Lovell Estell scorned the hypocrisy that he said envelops the word "Nigger," and offered his views on the forced resignation of a white baseball coach.

Estell suggested that in our PC-driven land, no white can be allowed exoneration, if he can be persecuted. Scoffing at the notion of the word "Nigger" as the "ultimate insult," he observed that "Most of the people who have called me one haven't been white folks." In defending the coach, Estell claimed that the man had never mistreated any of his black ballplayers, and was guilty only of "bad judgment" and an "idiotic faux pas," and, therefore, should be allowed to resume his career.

Did meaningful numbers of whites join in Estell's protest to reinstate the white coach? No, they ran, as usual, to hide under the bed or in a closet, abandoning the coach to his private hell. And, of course, like Dr. Laura, Senator Trent Lott, Doug Tracht (The Greaseman), and Don Imus, the coach apologized, and apologized, and apologized. But, hey, that's what white folks do.

In the early part of her dialogue with the black caller, who complained about whites making use of the Forbidden Word, Dr. Laura made an observation that would occur to anyone with common sense. She ruefully remarked, "Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race." But it was not too long afterward that she issued her initial apology, in which she whined that, after she realized she had "articulated the N-word all the way out," she was too upset to finish the show.

A final thought about the idiot black woman caller who spurred Dr. Laura's intemperate remarks. What kind of a dimwit, who marries out of her race, discovers that her white husband, his white relatives, and his white friends consider his black wife (namely, her) a daily punching bag for their humor, and then calls a stranger on the radio for advice? Is the husband trying to let the dense wife know that he's had enough of her, and desires to move on? Maybe it's time to take a hint, lady.
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The "anchor baby" loophole

In our 2008 post, Birthright citizenship is not constitutional, California State University Professor Edward Erler asks, "If the American Indians, who were certainly born in this country, were not considered automatic citizens by the Constitution's framers, how can it be that the offspring of foreigners who arrive here become automatic citizens?"

Erler debunks the fallacy of believing that anyone born within the geographical limits of the United States is automatically subject to its jurisdiction, and goes on to explain what the Constitution's 14th Amendment means by a person being "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."

Jurisdiction is understood as owing exclusive political allegiance, Erler explains, not simply subject to American laws or courts. A foreign child born in the US is subject to the same jurisdiction to which is parent[s] are subject – that of their native country to which they owe political allegiance.

From this, the question is raised, Why would the newborn baby of an American couple, whose company happened to assign them to the Beijing office, be considered a Chinese citizen? Why wouldn't such a baby, instead, be subject, as are his parents, to the jurisdiction of the United States?

Children's allegiance "should follow that of their parents during their minority," observes Erler. Further, he argues, it is difficult to fathom how any sovereign nation could allow any other policy.

In a Vdare article How Mexican Law Undercuts 'Anchor Baby' Interpretation of U.S. 14th Amendment, Allan Wall looks at the subject from another perspective – that is, Mexican law. He describes birthright citizenship as a "loophole" in American law, and tells of new bills introduced in Congress to rectify this misinterpretation, as well as actions now being taken on the state level.

As to Mexican illegals, Wall indicates that the key to resolution is proving that the children of aliens are not completely "subject to the jurisdiction of the United States." This can be done by using the laws of Mexico. He writes:

According to the Mexican Constitution, Capitulo II, Articulo 30, the child born to, or begotten by, a Mexican is a Mexican, regardless of where he is born.

The Mexicans by birth shall be…The individuals born abroad from Mexican parents who were born within national territory, from a Mexican father who was born within national territory or from a Mexican mother who was born within national territory…The Individuals born abroad from naturalized Mexican parents, from a naturalized Mexican father or from a naturalized Mexican mother…

Thus, any child born to a Mexican parent—either mother or father, regardless of whether that parent is a natural-born Mexican or naturalized Mexican—regardless of where he is born, is considered a Mexican.

And Mexican consulates have the authority to issue documentation to children born to Mexicans outside of Mexico, to confirm it.

Read the rest of Wall's discussion here.
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The Threat to liberty is not from Islamic gangbangers

Doug Newman at The Fountain of Truth is one of those rare practicing Christians one can truly admire. He has no truck with foolish believers in "My country, right or wrong" idolatry, or the immature ranters of USA! USA! Newman knows a warped Christian mind when he encounters one. That audacious warmongers invoke the name of Christ in their deathly causes angers him.

On his blog he reflects on this country's misguided actions centered around the 9/11 attacks, as well as the fall-out from the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan, and offers some provocative points:

• It has been centuries since a Muslim country conquered a non-Muslim country. The Islam world is militarily irrelevant. 911 was not a military invasion, but a suicide attack. The hijackers are all DEAD. You cannot take over a country, force everyone to speak Arabic, impose Islamic law, etc., when you are DEAD!
• A few thousand gangbangers who do not even control the government of Afghanistan are not going to come and take over the mightiest economic and military power on earth.
• When you station troops in 130 countries and throw your weight around militarily the way America does, don't complain when a lot of people hate you. And when you start wars with countries that haven't done anything to you and kill countless thousands of innocent people, don't complain when people hate you. You reap what you sow!
• Our liberty is not at all threatened by "radical Islam," but rather by the establishment that has ruled this country for close to a century. The greatest threat of all comes from the millions of Americans who have allowed this establishment so much power with no regard to the consequences.
• In the Great Commission - Matthew 28: 18-20 - Jesus tells us to "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." He doesn't tell us to bomb the crap out of countries that have never done anything to us and kill countless thousands of innocent people!
• The proper, moral, constitutional response to 9/11 was a Letter of Marque and Reprisal, that is, a warrant to go after the specific perps. It was NOT to start wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, threaten war with Iran, attack Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia and - are you cluing in? - kill countless thousands of innocent people!
• Millions of Christians are so biblically illiterate that they are easy prey for the Falwells, Hagees, Robertsons, Dobsons, etc., and their promotion of aggressive war as Christian. You reap what you sow and when you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

---

An afterthought
It sure doesn't take much to get those "easily led" evangelical types stirred up, does it? Just a few well-placed, inflammatory words from their trustworthy talk show host leaders and the stuff hits the fan – even to the point of suggesting the burning of another religion's holy book. Holy cow! Never mind the ethical issues here, how do you get this simpleminded?
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A depressing futuristic fantasy

In The Year America Dissolved, economist Paul Craig Roberts indulges in a dystopian fantasy of life in America in the not-so-distant year of 2017:

• • •
It was 2017. Clans were governing America.

The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.

As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.

The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money.

With the dollar’s demise, import prices skyrocketed. As Americans were unable to afford foreign-made goods, the transnational corporations that were producing offshore for US markets were bankrupted, further eroding the government’s revenue base.

The government was forced to print money in order to pay its bills, causing domestic prices to rise rapidly. Faced with hyperinflation, Washington took recourse in terminating Social Security and Medicare and followed up by confiscating the remnants of private pensions. This provided a one-year respite, but with no more resources to confiscate, money creation and hyperinflation resumed.

Organized food deliveries broke down when the government fought hyperinflation with fixed prices and the mandate that all purchases and sales had to be in US paper currency. Unwilling to trade appreciating goods for depreciating paper, goods disappeared from stores.

Read the rest of this sad tale of prediction here.
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Make way for your replacement population

In The Rape of Europa: How the West is Overrun, Mark Hackard describes the role played by the U.S. government in its ongoing drive to eliminate Russia as a rival and gain access to Central Asia's energy resources. Washington, of course, cares nothing about the consequences of policies that must inevitably result in altered population demographics throughout Europe. Following are excerpts:

• • •
The postmodern assault on traditional culture and Christianity that Poland and other Washington-allied East European nations are beginning to experience is already far advanced on the rest of the Continent, where secular hedonism and pop-democracy are more deeply entrenched. The European Union itself is but a grotesque parody of Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire. While EU governing elites and the complacent masses they rule carry ultimate responsibility for apostasy and decline, it is necessary that we recognize another driving force at work: U.S. power.

By its role in the NATO alliance and its network of bases, the United States has for 65 years shaped European strategic and political discourse and retained its dominant position. There is a shared, institutionalized worldview at work fostered by successive generations of transatlantic elites, from politicians and corporate leaders to policy experts and military officers. This may seem a rather obvious point, but it is crucial to acknowledge the ideological aspect of U.S. hegemony -- perpetuation of the liberalism and materialism that so define the “free world”. ...

With Marxism discredited at the end of the bipolar era, only one messianic ideology was left standing. In the two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, America has gloried in the triumph of the liberal revolution and ceaselessly proselytized its globalization. Perhaps the most important target of this effort has been the former Soviet space. To eliminate Moscow as a rival and gain Central Asia’s energy resources would bring Washington to a level of dominion over the world never yet achieved. ...

The comprehensive military presence the United States enjoys in Europe provides it not only unquestioned leadership in the “Euro-Atlantic Community”, but also a platform for expansion into Eurasia’s heartland and the prosecution of wars in the Middle East. The foreign-policy analyst Doug Bandow wonders aloud why the Army’s V Corps remains stationed in Heidelberg rather than stateside:

About 52,000 American troops are in Germany. Obviously the most populous and prosperous country at the center of Europe doesn't need defending. The likelihood of Russian troops marching on Berlin and clambering up the Bundestag building is somewhat akin to that of the Martians landing and conducting a modern War of the Worlds.

The only other reason to have forces in Germany is because that country is closer to other places where Washington wants to send U. S. personnel -- but shouldn't. German bases once devoted to preventing a Red Army conquest are now handling casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. However, if the U. S. wasn't promiscuously warring on other nations, it wouldn't need a German way-station in Europe. ...

No study of Europe’s subjection to transatlantic elites would be complete without mentioning the use of Muslims to further divide and demoralize its peoples. For the past 30 years, beginning with covert U.S. support to the Afghan mujahideen, Washington has courted Islamic power as a vehicle of influence in Eurasia, and Europe is no exception in this regard. Through the course the 1990s NATO bombarded Serbs and introduced peacekeeping troops into the Balkans to create Muslim states Bosnia and Kosovo on the carcass of Tito’s Yugoslavia. ...

U.S. diplomacy also celebrates Turkey, with a foothold in Thrace and its two million countrymen in Germany, as an up-and-coming European nation. Washington has long advocated Turkey’s entry into the EU, with all its attendant consequences for native European populations. ...

Faced with waxing Turkish power and assertive and growing populations of Muslim migrants, Europeans may yet react and begin to reclaim their lands and heritage. But they must know that in their resistance, it is entirely likely they will receive not U.S. support, but hostility to their cause and possibly armed intervention on behalf of Muslim belligerents. ... The tribes of Europa are told to forget their past, reject their faith and ethnic identity, and their very place in the Cosmos. “Place no hope in the future,” they are commanded, “for your replacements have arrived.”

Read complete article here.
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Instigating a new war to kill, cripple, disfigure, and dismember more of our soldiers—for nothing

Philip Giraldi, in the American Conservative magazine blog, asks, "Who Voted for War With Iran, Mr. Obama?" Here is his post:

• • •
House of Representatives resolution 1553, introduced by Congressional Republicans, and currently working its way through the system will endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates.

The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary…including the use of military force”. The resolution is non-binding, but it is dazzling in its disregard for the possible negative consequences that would ensue for the hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic personnel currently serving in the Near East region.

Even the Pentagon opposes any Israeli action against Iran, knowing that it would mean instant retaliation against US forces in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action. AIPAC thinks it is wonderful.

Ironically, the push against Iran comes at a time when the National Intelligence Estimate on the country is being finished. It might come out as soon as August, but it will be secret and its conclusions will either be leaked or released in summary. My sources inside the intelligence community insist that it will support the 2007 NIE that concluded that Iran no longer has a weapons program.

The White House has delayed the process seeking harder language to justify a range of options against Iran, including a military strike, but the analysts are reported to be resisting. So we spend $100 billion on intelligence annually and then ignore the best judgments on what is taking place. Might as well use a Ouija board.
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Ensuring that ethnic majority

Philip Weiss brings our attention to a CNN report on the eviction of Bedouins from a village in southern Israel. CNN staff writes:

Police evicted 200 Bedouins from their homes in a southern Israeli village on Tuesday and demolished their dwellings, an act decried by residents who said they are on ancestral land. The move occurred five miles north of Beer Sheva in a village called Al-Araqeeb, an enclave not recognized by the state of Israel.

Witnesses told CNN that the Israeli forces arrived at the village accompanied by busloads of civilians who cheered as the dwellings were demolished. They said armed police deployed with tear gas, water cannon, two helicopters and bulldozers. But Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said there were no disturbances and the operation went according to plan.

Weiss also cites a quote by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu at a recent Cabinet meeting. He sounded a warning that this was "a situation in which a demand for national rights will be made from some quarters inside Israel, for example in the Negev, should the area be left without a Jewish majority. Such things happened in the Balkans, and it is a real threat."

We're aware of the great delight that Zionists take in comparing the U.S. dispossession of the Indians to the Israelis' treatment of the Arabs in their region. Supposedly, this removes any right for an American to criticize, even though it's our billions of tax dollars that make the cruelties now being exacted on the Palestinians and others in the territory possible. Let's say Israel stops taking U.S. money, even to the point of paying for those Caterpillar machines, and let's see how effective their human removal will be.

What do you think the chances are that a U.S. official today would be heard to say that gentile whites must secure every region and that no area should be left without a "white gentile majority?" We can bet that 99% of the Jews in this country would go ballistic, yet they praise such an approach in dear, little, persecuted Israel. Gentile whites in the U.S. can, by their actions, secure all-white areas to live in, but they'd better not talk about it openly.

Bedouins, of course, have lived in the Negev region for centuries, and claim, as they do in the story above, to have "original deeds to the land." Did they get their deeds from a Sky God, too? I wonder.
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How to subvert a law

In The Arizona Lesson: What the state’s experiment with the rule of law has already taught us, Heather Mac Donald offers her observations on why the Los Angeles Times smeared Arizona Law SB 1070. Although her article was written just a couple of days before Judge Susan Bolton blocked from enforcement certain parts of the law, Mac Donald's article is still pertinent for its insights on why the media, most of whose members support open borders, ignore or embellish basic facts about immigration. Following is an excerpt:

As the start date of Arizona’s new immigration law, SB 1070, approaches, the Los Angeles Times has published an article on a nearly three-month-old homicide in Phoenix that no one but the victim’s family claims had anything to do with Arizona’s immigration initiative—not the Hispanic neighbors of the alleged killer and his victim, not the police, not even illegal-alien advocacy groups.

“It’s just weird to hear them say he’s racist,” one of the suspect’s Hispanic acquaintances marvels. The suspect had expressed his opposition to Arizona’s law just days before the May 6 shooting; he had invited his Hispanic neighbors to Thanksgiving last year. As for the victim, he “did not get shot because he was Mexican,” a local civil rights activist maintains.

And yet the Times has put the story on its front page as part of its coverage of SB 1070. Why? The official reason: as “an illustration of how incidents in the state now get interpreted through the prism of the new law.” The real reason: to suggest that the Arizona law—which officially authorizes a police officer, during a lawful police stop, to check the immigration status of people whom he suspects of being in the country illegally—is fueling a wave of possibly homicidal hatred against Hispanics. Evidence for this proposition, which has been embraced by editorialists and activists across the country? Zero.

Read entire article here.
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Don't confuse Mark Williams with the facts

See my article, House Slaves: The Tea Party Remains Captive to PC, at Alternative Right

Excerpt:

What is so disheartening about people like Mark Williams is that they have imbibed every cliché taught them by the Left, and yet they call themselves "conservative." For instance, his notions about the early NAACP and its origins, and of W.E.B. Du Bois, is boilerplate propaganda. He has obviously consecrated this history, as it was taught to him.
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Liberal talking elites and immigration

As liberals wax hysterical over Arizona's proposed immigration law, Michael Lind offers some sobering counsel to his fellow progressives, especially those known as the "commentariat." It appears to him that too many liberals have gone beyond denouncing what they view as "racial profiling" in certain laws, to condemning all immigration enforcement law. In Open borders or high-wage welfare state, Lind reflects on how far removed such thinking is "not only from the American public as a whole, but also from most Democratic and independent voters."

He writes: Since the economy crashed in the fall of 2008, public attitudes toward immigration, both legal and illegal, have been hardening. Between 2008 and the summer of 2009, the number of respondents telling Gallup that immigration should be decreased shot up from 39 percent to 50 percent.

And then there are those Democrats who actually support an increase in immigration. These are the people who worry Lind and he describes them: The mere 15 percent of Democrats who favor increased immigration make up the overwhelming majority of Democratic pundits, think tank operatives and other opinion leaders. Indeed, it appears that many prominent progressives are opposed to any enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at all.

He cites the liberal Nation magazine, whose provocative article, Arizona Burning, shows how clearly the left tends to view immigration policy as a race issue. Lind asks, Do the editors of the Nation want the U.S. to have any laws regulating entry by citizens of other countries into the U.S. or not? If so, then they have an obligation to explain the methods of law enforcement that they support.

He then offers sensible suggestions on how to make enforcement work, that would include reliable identification of foreign nationals and punishment of employers who break immigration laws. Lind cites the conflict so often expressed on the part of liberals, who don't want any forms of identification or government inspections of work places.

So, do they want American workers to be protected? he asks. Do liberals, by opposing workplace raids, really want to be on the side of meat-packing companies and union-busting janitorial firms that violate hard-won labor laws?

And Lind offers a zinger for the left: If progressives really believe that the U.S. should become the only sovereign country in the world that does not assert the right to regulate entry to its territory and participation in its labor markets, they should team up with the only other tiny sect in America that believes in open borders: right-wing libertarians.

Lind chastises those liberals who claim a concern for improving the lot of the foreign poor by keeping our borders open to them: It is surprising that any progressives are naive enough to fall for the insincere claim of conservatives and libertarians that their cheap-labor policies are motivated by altruistic concern for the foreign poor. ... The faux-humanitarian arguments of the open-borders, cheap-labor right come as part of a larger policy package that genuine progressives should reject as a whole.

Lind makes it clear that he is well aware of other pressing agendas among the left:

Much of the left's opposition to immigration law enforcement, of course, is based on a strategic appeal to the Latino vote, not on a rational analysis of what sort of immigration policy best suits U.S. labor market conditions in the 21st century. If most Latinos began voting for Republicans, undoubtedly many Democrats who object to border and workplace enforcement would fall silent pretty quickly.

Read complete article here.
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George's new edifice

About ten minutes after hearing the announcement of George Steinbrenner's death, I penned some rough notes that I knew would have to wait before being zapped into upload. It was too early to hit the negative button, what with all the effusive media hype that had only just begun.

For the past half dozen years, at least, I could not bear to hear this man's name mentioned because of its connection to the destruction and final demolition of Yankee Stadium. I didn't think I could put the right words in place and I hoped that some mighty soul would come along, right quick, and waste no time crashing the media's hypocritical love fest. Just who the hell are these people kidding, anyway?

So, I sent out a half-whispered query, as if to the wind: "Matt Taibbi, are you paying attention?" And, sure enough, good, old Matt was, indeed, paying attention to all that phony, sentimental claptrap being focused on "The Boss," that was filling up the airwaves.

In The Steinbrenner Slobituary," Taibbi describes the adulation that has taken over New York City's main sports radio station, WFAN, as it engages in a "round-the-clock Steinbrenner grovel-a-thon." Of course, these sports talk show hosts are always in desperate need to keep some featured story going, so it's understandable that the Steinbrenner death is splendid grist for their mill.

Taibbi calls the "mania for elegiac slobbering" a disgusting aspect of public life in this country. What surprised me were the saccharine calls from what sounded like ordinary guys eagerly repeating the cloying platitudes about Steinbrenner being put into the ether by ingratiating media types. Why on earth would these simple sounding callers identify with this vainglorious man, who never hid his contempt for the likes of them and whose ruthless methods transformed the nature of the game, which consequently led to tripling the costs of the average shlub's ticket and food prices. Taibbi writes:

Steinbrenner was in every conceivable way the prototypical office tyrant and the fact that he's being uninterruptedly worshipped after his death by a nation of cubicle slaves tells you almost everything you need to know about the modern American psyche. In no other country do people genuinely love their bosses the way Americans do. They'll go home after 12 hard hours of capricious superiors peeing in their faces, and the very first thing they'll do is call up some talk radio show and denounce the graduated income tax that gives them a break at their bosses' expense.



Taibbi claims that people's heads are so turned around that the terror of being thought of as poor and subordinate "has people reflexively worshipping their bosses, to the point where George Steinbrenner -- a workplace Caligula so stupid and self-centered that he could not be convinced George Constanza wasn't named after him -- is somehow thought of as cute and lovable."

Perhaps it had been taken for granted that Yankee Stadium was safely and officially land marked, and could no more be razed than the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building or the Woolworth Building or City Hall. But it was not land marked and, perhaps, even if it had been, the fear of Steinbrenner's powerful reach might have made even a Jackie Kennedy hesitate to protest.

The reality of the Stadium's disappearance was especially hard on us Bronxites who ride the No. 4 elevated subway on a regular basis. For me, it was an instinctive habit to look up momentarily from whatever I was reading for a glimpse of the Stadium, as the train pulled into the 161st Street station. For the past several years, however, I could not bring myself to look up at the site, since I did not want to see the daily or weekly stages of alteration. The House that Ruth built disappeared level by level, and is now replaced by the House that George built.

One talk show host will not refer to the new structure as "Yankee Stadium," but as "That Place Across the Street." Others refer to George's building as the Yankee Shopping Mall or the Yankee Food Court. I simply call it the New Edifice.

Late last season, I attended my first (and probably only) game in the New Edifice, since I felt I should see the interior of the place. Big deal! I was struck by the fact that you never have to sit in your assigned seat to view the game. Since the whole point of the place seems to be to keep the attendees roaming around, buying and eating, and roaming some more, there are dozens of picknicky type spots, with benches and eating counters, and big-screen TVs blasting the game on the field. The place seems to be designed to keep the wallet carriers engaged in everything except the ball game.

I wonder how those corporate executive suites are faring in the New Edifice, since they are the reason for which Yankee Stadium was destroyed in the first place. Last year, it was gratifying to hear about all those high-priced seats that embarrassingly stayed empty all season long. Hopefully, Taibbi's wish of last year will come true, that the Yankee management will "choke on their own greed."

And as for Steinbrenner? Taibbi suggests that we should have thrown a parade "the minute the guy drew his last breath." He asks, "Whatever happened to Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead?"

Related

The long-dead Brooklyn Dodgers still haunt New York
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Calling the race-hustling Reverend

The black blogger Aaron Laramore in If You Have to Call Al Sharpton for Help With Your Own Mayor, You Have No Power, tells of Sharpton's recent visit to Indianapolis, and writes, "He's here at the urgent behest of local ministers, some of whom pastor the largest black churches in Indianapolis, to help them pressure Mayor Ballard to meet with them regarding the police beat down of a teen during an arrest. Sharpton is scheduled to make several appearances around town and give a speech this evening at 7:00 at Eastern Star Church."

What does this signify about black leadership? "I'm not sure I can conceive of a more visible display of political impotence and irrelevance on the part of these ministers," says Laramore. "If you have to call in an out of town race hustler like Al Sharpton, in order to get the attention of the mayor of your own city, you are irrelevant."

Laramore claims that this scene has been played out in the past, when these ministers tried to make demands on the city's previous Mayor and administration. "This is all reaction that will not result in significant change and stands as an example of how faith leadership in Indianapolis fails to expand and develop the strategic value of their connection to thousands of people."

But do these elites really have a connection to "thousands of people?" Or are members of their congregations weary of the familiar pulpit bombast that ensues each time a "race incident" presents an opportunity for exploitation? Such black "leaders" are eager to show their constituents that they, at least, have the power to engage the Almighty Al Sharpton in their cause, as they hope for some of his luster to rub off on them.

Sharpton is a man for all seasons, and willingly answers the calls even of distressed white folks. Thanks to the white Don Imus who, during his radio troubles in 2007, resuscitated Sharpton's career, almost singlehandedly, the black race hustler still earns a comfortable living doing what he does best. And he is now the host of three (three!) radio programs here in the New York area. So, if white folks, like Imus, aren't calling for the good pastor Sharpton to forgive them their "racial sins," black preachers are keeping him busy hounding their political enemies.

Laramore concludes, "When you call Al Sharpton in from out of town just to have a conversation with your own Mayor, you are missing the boat."

See also here for Laramore's take on this recent NAACP Convention: "I wanted to find something to be encouraged about in this speech, I really did, but color me totally unimpressed. Black folk catching hell and she's touting school snack programs? the opening of a few college chapters; so-called curriculum reforms to teach civil rights history? That's it? That's the best you've got to tout as achievements? The speech has a constant focus on the wrongs done to us, not nearly enough of anything about problem solving in our communities. It was heavy on platitudes, way light on substance."
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Our masters and liars

What is this? Is the staunchly Zionist New York Times suggesting that much of life is a misery for the Palestinians trapped in the prison of Gaza? But, haven't we been led to believe, from Israeli propaganda, that life is coming up roses for Gaza residents, and that those who make claims to the contrary are just whining crybabies?

In Trapped by Gaza Blockade, Locked in Despair, we learn of the negative impact on people's lives through their inability to travel and to trade with other nations, in order to spark Gaza's economy and generate employment:

Israel is never far from people’s minds here. Its ships control the waters, its planes control the skies. Its whims, Gazans feel, control their fate. And while most here view Israel as the enemy, they want trade ties and to work there. In their lives the main source of income has been from and through Israel. Economists here say what is most needed now is not more goods coming in, as the easing of the blockade has permitted, but people and exports getting out. That is not going to happen soon.

And we learn, as well, the views of many Palestinians about their governing authorities:

As if the Palestinian people did not have enough trouble, they have not one government but two, the Fatah-dominated one in the West Bank city of Ramallah and the Hamas one here. The antagonism between them offers a depth of rivalry and rage that shows no sign of abating. ...

In fact, there is a paradox at work in Gaza: while Hamas has no competition for power, it also has a surprisingly small following. Dozens of interviews with all sorts of people found few willing to praise their government or that of its competitor. “They’re both liars,” Waleed Hassouna, a baker in Gaza City, said in a very common comment.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian people pay the price for the ongoing war between their masters, the Israelis, and their political leaders, the "liars."

Read complete article here.

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The photo below is interesting, isn't it? In Israel, young Jewish woman harassing Palestinian woman by yanking on her scarf, while Jewish boy applies a kick to her leg. Israeli policemen nearby watch the fun. Everyday life in the Land of the Chosen. But, hey, those Palestinian leaders claim that they would like to see an end to Israel, so anything goes as far as treatment of Palestinians, in general, right? Sort of like that new "Black Panther" party in this country declaring death upon all whites, so this makes it fair game to go out on the streets and torment or mow down average American blacks, right? Is this picture reminiscent of photographs you've viewed of scenes in Europe during the middle of the 20th century?



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Eminent domain and the Kelo backlash

When, five years ago, the Kelo v. City of New London decision was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court, I thought, Well, that's the end of things for sure. When any government can systematically employ a ruse to legally confiscate citizens' homes, that's a sign that the Republic's days are numbered. I figured the Supreme Court had given a green light to every developer who salivated over some landowner's piece of property. I had followed the case closely since I couldn't think of many rulings that could be more significant than this one.

When a Supreme Court Justice himself claims that a ruling by his very Court is "unconstitutional," where do you go from there? What is one to think when the mighty "interpreters" of the Constitution admit to error by the Court? In Kelo Justice Clarence Thomas vehemently disagreed with the majority decision, as written by Justice John Paul Stevens. In his Dissent, Thomas wrote:

The Constitution’s text, in short, suggests that the Takings Clause authorizes the taking of property only if the public has a right to employ it, not if the public realizes any conceivable benefit from the taking. ... The Takings Clause is a prohibition, not a grant of power: The Constitution does not expressly grant the Federal Government the power to take property for any public purpose whatsoever. Instead, the Government may take property only when necessary and proper to the exercise of an expressly enumerated power. ... Something has gone seriously awry with this Court’s interpretation of the Constitution. Though citizens are safe from the government in their homes, the homes themselves are not. ... When faced with a clash of constitutional principle and a line of unreasoned cases wholly divorced from the text, history, and structure of our founding document, we should not hesitate to resolve the tension in favor of the Constitution’s original meaning.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, another emphatic dissenter, expressed it this way:

To reason, as the Court does, that the incidental public benefits resulting from the subsequent ordinary use of private property render economic development takings “for public use” is to wash out any distinction between private and public use of property – and thereby effectively to delete the words “for public use” from the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. ... The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory. ... Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random. The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.

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Here are excerpts from a view on the case offered by The Economist magazine, The worst decision of Justice Stevens:

[Justice Stevens'] opinion in Kelo v. New London (2005) was simply terrible. The case was about a private developer in New London, Connecticut, who wanted to raze some waterfront homes to build an office block and some posh apartments. The owners didn't want to sell. The city decided to force them to, calculating that the new development would create jobs and yield more taxes.

The city decided to use the power of "eminent domain." Under the Fifth amendment, the government may seize private property only in exceptional circumstances. The land seized must be put to “public use,” and “just compensation” must be paid. “Public use” has traditionally been taken to mean something like a public highway. Roads would obviously be much harder to build if a single homeowner could hold out forever or for excessive compensation. The government's powers of “eminent domain” have also been used to clean up blighted slums.

In this case, however, the area was not blighted, and the land was not going to be put to a public use, so the seizure was plainly unlawful. Amazingly, Justice Stevens – and a slim majority of the court – said it was fine. Rejecting “any literal requirement that condemned property be put into use for the ...public,” he said it was enough that the seizure should serve some vaguely defined “public purpose” — such as those new taxes. This massively expanded the government's power of eminent domain. ...

The ruling had two effects. First, it told local governments and their developer chums that working-class neighbourhoods were up for grabs. In the year after Kelo, the Institute for Justice, a group that defends property rights, counted 5,783 homes, businesses, churches and other properties condemned or threatened with eminent domain to the benefit of a private party. ...

But second, Kelo provoked a backlash. Most Americans are repelled by the idea that the state might take your house and give it to Donald Trump. (This is not rhetoric: New Jersey once tried, unsuccessfully, to seize someone's home because The Donald needed somewhere to park limousines outside one of his casinos.) Since the Kelo ruling, no fewer than 34 states have passed laws or constitutional amendments aimed at curbing the abuse of eminent domain. At the mid-term elections, voters in ten states approved measures curbing politicians' power to seize private property, all by wide margins.

Public revulsion against such seizures is visceral and nearly uniform: polls find between 85% and 95% of Americans are opposed to them. Political affiliation makes no difference. Republicans hate to see property rights violated and individuals bullied by the state. Democrats hate to see the state's coercive power hired out to big corporations, and worry, correctly, that the chief victims of eminent domain abuse will be the working class and ethnic minorities.

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And the discerning writer William Norman Grigg offers his inimitable reflections on the notorious Kelo case:

Prior to the closing of the frontier in 1890, "Manifest Destiny" was the incantation used by the government when it gave itself permission to steal property it coveted. Today, the preferred conjuration is "eminent domain." The phrase "eminent domain" reflects an assumption Karl Marx would find congenial: government is the default owner of everything, and that private ownership, however extensive, is merely a contingent arrangement. ...

In his recent book, Government Pirates, former real estate developer Don Corace offers a concise description of how eminent domain operated prior to the onset of the current depression: "Arrogant and corrupt city and county officials – with near limitless legal budgets ... align themselves with well-heeled developers, political cronies, and major corporations to prey on the politically less powerful and disenfranchised, particularly minority communities." ...

In recent weeks, the Illinois state government has begun the legal process of seizing a huge amount of private property in and around Peotone, a small town in Will County, about forty miles south of Chicago. The land is being taken for the supposed purpose of building a third Chicago-area airport to complement O'Hare and Midway – a project that has been discussed, studied, and debated since 1968.

The proposed "South Suburban Airport" – which would be three times the size of O'Hare International – is impractical, unwanted, and unnecessary. It doesn't enjoy the support of any major airline or the approval of the FAA. ...

Expanding the small international airport in depressed Rockford would provide additional runway space at a fraction of what would be spent on a third Chicago-area airport. But this would deprive the state's patronage pimps of an opportunity to lavish plundered wealth on their favored constituents. ...

Four Peotone-area condemnation cases are already working their way through the court system. Unless the land owners are successful in getting the cases dismissed outright, they will face a lengthy, protracted legal struggle in which their opponent – the criminal junta dominating Springfield and Chicago – will use money extorted from them as taxes to underwrite the effort to drive them from their land. ...

There's every reason to believe that the Peotone Landgrab – if it's successful – would be a template for similar acts of official larceny wherever fertile tracts can be seized by the political class at depressed "fair market value."

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Following are conclusions about the Kelo case offered by the Institute for Justice, the public interest law firm that represented the New London residents:

The U.S. Supreme Court should have ruled in favor of the Kelo homeowners and established a federal baseline that would protect home and business owners throughout the nation. Instead, it threw the issue to the states, completely abdicating its role as guardian of Americans’ rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Less than one week after the decision was handed down, the Institute for Justice launched a national campaign called “Hands Off My Home.” IJ was determined to focus the outrage over Kelo and turn it into meaningful reform. In the five years since the decision, there has been an unprecedented backlash against the Kelo ruling in terms of public opinion, citizen activism, legislative changes, state court decisions, and lessons learned from the New London case:

• Citizen activists defeated at least 44 projects that sought to abuse eminent domain for private gain in the five-year period since Kelo.
• Forty-three states improved their laws in response to Kelo, more than half of those providing strong protection against eminent domain abuse.
• Nine state high courts restricted the use of eminent domain for private development since Kelo while only one (New York) has so far refused to do so. ...

Across the country, property owners and activists have testified before crowded public hearings and state legislatures. They have formed groups and started websites. They stood tall on the steps of City Hall and held press conferences demanding officials keep their hands off their property. They have held neighborhood meetings, which have turned into citywide meetings. ...

Following the public outcry about Kelo, constitutional amendments and legislation at the federal, state and local levels were introduced in legislative bodies nationwide. In the five years since the decision, 43 states have passed either constitutional amendments or statutes that have reformed eminent domain law to better protect private property rights. ...

When the U.S. Supreme Court decided not to correctly interpret the U.S. Constitution, the state high courts began to fill that void. Three state supreme courts — Ohio, Oklahoma and South Dakota — explicitly rejected the Kelo decision. Ohio cities had frequently abused eminent domain and Oklahoma cities had occasionally abused the power, but we have heard of no new abuses in either state since their respective court decisions. Moreover, the New Jersey Supreme Court implicitly rejected Kelo while also curtailing the use of redevelopment and blight as an excuse for private development.

The Institute for Justice describes the dismal facts of what ultimately happened to the land in New London that was sought by the developer Pfizer, Inc.:

Part of the package of incentives offered to Pfizer to come to New London was the redevelopment of the neighboring Fort Trumbull area. Fort Trumbull was a working-class neighborhood. It housed approximately 75 homes, as well as a few smaller businesses and an abandoned Navy base.

The plan called for this area to be replaced by an upscale hotel, office buildings and new housing. Now, five years after the Kelo ruling, there has been no new construction on any of the land that was acquired in Fort Trumbull. After the decision, the remaining residents who had fought to save their homes, including Susette Kelo, were forced out. The Fort Trumbull site was completely razed. And it has remained empty ever since — brown, barren fields no longer home to people but rather to feral cats and migratory birds. After much controversy and many extensions of time given to the chosen developer, the city terminated the development agreement.

Now, ten years after its initial plan was approved, the city has commissioned another study to see what might work in the area. Ironically, given that a majority of the area used to be filled with owner-occupied and residential rental property, the city is considering a proposal to build some rental property on a portion of the project area. Ten years lost and more than $80 million in taxpayer money spent to perhaps one day build a lesser version of what used to exist on the peninsula.

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Related

Judicial vandalism

Eminent domain: Taking from Peter to give to Paul
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