The Company You Keep
Michael C. Moynihan | October 24, 2008, 3:21pm
Over at The Corner, anti-immigration campaigner (both legal and illegal, according to the subtitle of his book) Mark Krikorian is horrified to learn that Sarah Palin isn't sufficiently hostile to the idea of "amnesty." Nothing surprising there. What's interesting, though, is that Krikorian apparently gleaned this information while reading the website of one Lawrence Auster, to whom he approvingly links and "hat tips." And who, exactly, is Lawrence Auster? Put it this way: this is a guy whose conservatism was too extreme for David Horowitz and Frontpagemag.com; the site cut ties with Auster after the Huffington Post published a piece detailing his history of, umm, racial insensitivity.
A few bons mots from Auster, who has published in the racist magazines The Occidental Quarterly and American Renaissance: "What really convinced me of an inherent, dangerous weakness in black ways of thought, however, was their widespread belief in Afrocentrism and the notion that whites were committing ‘genocide' against blacks." Blacks "seem to have much less interest in knowledge or beauty for its own sake" and they "are in fact less endowed with the qualities that make civilization possible, particularly Western civilization." Or how about this fascinating explication of whether or not women should be allowed to vote (Auster says they shouldn't, because while "Women are the natural care-givers and are naturally focused on the home and the family and its protection. But those same priorities, when expressed through the political sphere as distinct from the private sphere, inevitably lead a society in the direction of socialism.")
So a tip to Krikorian: If you don't want people to think that you support immigration restrictions because of some sort of animus towards Mexicans, you should probably avoid linking to the websites of white nationalists like Auster. (And for the record, as far as I can tell, Krikorian has never written about phrenology, eugenics, and bell curves before, though it is troubling that he seems to be a reader of Auster's site. In fairness, I peruse quite a few crackpot websites too—for the purposes of seeing what the mad fringes are reading, I promise—though I wouldn't think of "hat tipping" such nonsense, especially without adding a strenuous caveat.)
For those of you who suggest that immigrants simply "get in line," perhaps it's time to go over reason's helpful immigration flow chart. And don't miss Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia in combat with Krikorian on Bloggingheads.
UPDATE: I missed this post. After reading Krikorian's attempt to blame the collapse of WaMu on the company's affirmative action policies, Professor Bainbridge confessed that such nonsense makes him "embarrassed to be a conservative."
UPDATE II: Krikorian mails to say that I missed this post too.
Mad Max | October 24, 2008, 6:39pm | #
"The most prominent libertarian in American history published 'The Ron Paul Political Report.'
"What does the racial agenda of those newsletters tell us about libertarianism as a political philosophy?
"Very, very little. It tells us that there were some people from a certain time and place, with a certain set of ideas about black people, who were libertarians."
It tells us that libertarianism, because of what this prominent libertarian said, has something of a race problem. Dr. Paul insulted 95% of black people (or maybe even all of them). I do not wish to consider libertarianism Platonically, as if it wasn't a predominantly-white movement with prominent people who make statements like this.
So, in fact, it says a great deal. It says stuff I don't like, but it does say something.
Now, Dr. Paul could have gone on to the next level, and proposed to implement policies reflecting these unfavorable views. He could have advocated that the U.S. rule over brown "uncivilized" people, as advocated by J.S. Mill.
(Note - Dr. Paul can be considered as a conservative libertarian or as a libertarian conservative. I am discussing him as a libertarian because of his numerous libertarian supporters).
"I'll treat Max like someone worthy of respect when extends the same courtesy to me. Though I'm not holding my breath."
Oh, I'm sowwy, joe, did I huwt your widdle feewings?
Fluffy | October 25, 2008, 10:56am | #
no sub-Saharan black people had ever invented a written language or anything resembling human civillization
This is just false.
Sub-Saharan Africa had any number of politically complex, metallurgical, agricultural civilizations prior to contact with Europeans.
Africans were perceived by early explorers to be "uncivilized" for primarily climatological reasons - Africa's climate made European norms of clothing and housing inappropriate. To Europeans too stupid to adapt to local conditions, near-nakedness was an unforgiveable sign of savagery.
And as far as the alphabet thing goes - no northern European culture independently invented the alphabet, either. They adopted writing by diffusion from Semitic cultures. So I guess Germans, English, Norwegians, Danes, etc. are "naturally" inferior, right?
By the way, since when did wanting to preserve the historic majority population and culture of the United States make one a "white nationalist"?
The Japanese restrict immigration on ethnocultural grounds. Does that make them "yellow nationalists?"
It definitely makes them Japanese nationalists. They are nationalists who define the nation by the unifying factor of being Japanese.
Since "white" Americans span a large number of ethnicities, we can't tie your nationalism to ethnicity in that way. We have to tie it to its cross-ethnic unifying factor, whiteness. That means that if you want "to preserve the historic majority population and culture of the United States" you are in fact a white nationalist. Sorry.
Under the regime implied in Michael Moynihan’s attack on Mark Krikorian, people could be called before the bar of public opinion, or even before a government body, to give an accounting of what they have read.
Um, leaving aside the "government body" nonsense, since Moynihan is not an agent of the government, let me point out that -
I can fucking base my opinion of you on whatever I fucking want.
It's kind of amusing that people who want to defend their freedom to judge others based on their skin color want to simultaneously decry my freedom to judge me based on the fact that they employ such judgments.
Under the "regime" I favor, each individual gets to judge every other individual based on whatever criteria they want. If some of you guys want to judge black people based on historical accidents of minor timeline differences in the adoption of certain technologies, that's your affair. If I want to judge you to be douchebags as a result, that's mine. And if Moynihan wants to judge Auster based on his writing output, and to judge Krikorian on his fondness for Auster, that's his affair.
Tom P. | October 25, 2008, 3:20pm | #
If some of you guys want to judge black people based on historical accidents of minor timeline differences in the adoption of certain technologies, that's your affair.
It's a historical accident that in not a single school in America do blacks do as well as whites.
It's a historical accident that not a single black nation that wasn't run by whites has ever reached a first world standard of living.
It's a historical accident that there has NEVER been an IQ test anywhere, anytime, or any other proxy for intellectual capacity (like the ACT or SAT) where blacks comes close to doing as well as whites.
It's a historical accident that blacks have an IQ one standard deviation lower than whites. It's also a historical accident that when blacks are adopted into whites homes they are still one SD behind.
It's a historical accident that blacks are 12% of the US population but commit 50% of the crime.
It's a historical accident that in London blacks are 12% of the population and commit 50% of the crime.
It's a historical accident that South Africa once maintained it's existence as a first world country when run by whites but now that "social justice" has been achieved it's joining the rest of Africa in the third world, with the electricity going out and everything like a scene out of Atlas Shrugged. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/world/africa/31safrica.html)
It's a historical accident that in every country where there are blacks and on every continent they are the most criminal, lowest socio-economic group. (http://www.amazon.com/Global-Bell-Curve-Inequality-Worldwide/dp/1593680287/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224961519&sr=8-1)
It's a historical accident that out of the 1500 most important inventions in the history of man according to Issac Asminov, not a single one came from a person of black descent.
It's a historical accidnet that every group in the world comes to America and ends up doing better than blacks. Our native blacks think that their faliure is due to discrimination and want government help to fix it.
It's a historical accident that blacks in France are faliures relative to the rest of society and want government intervention to fix it.(http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/01/in_officially_c.php)
It's a historical accident that blacks in Iraq are faliures relative to the rest of society and want government intervention to fix it.(http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2008/08/iraq_black_iraq.php)
And I suppose the sun coming up every morning is a historical accident too?
Look at the world. Blacks are told that they are equal to whites. They look around and see that they are at the bottom in all societies, everywhere, at all times by any objective measure. Is it any wonder they hate whites and listen to the rantings of Rev. Wright?
John Bonaccorsi | October 25, 2008, 11:10pm | #
The mound-builders were Welsh? I wonder. So, in a way, did Alexis de Tocqueville:
Although we have here traced the character of a primitive people [the American Indians], yet it cannot be doubted that another people, more civilized and more advanced in all respects, had preceded it in the same regions.
An obscure tradition which prevailed among the Indians on the borders of the Atlantic informs us that these very tribes formerly dwelt on the west side of the Mississippi. Along the banks of the Ohio, and throughout the central valley, there are frequently found, at this day, tumuli raised by the hands of men. On exploring these heaps of earth to their center, it is usual to meet with human bones, strange instruments, arms and utensils of all kinds, made of metal, and destined for purposes unknown to the present race.
The Indians of our time are unable to give any information relative to the history of this unknown people. Neither did those who lived three hundred years ago, when America was first discovered, leave any accounts from which even a hypothesis could be formed. Traditions, those perishable yet ever recurrent monuments of the primitive world, do not provide any light. There, however, thousands of our fellow men have lived; one cannot doubt that. When did they go there, what was their origin, their destiny, their history? When and how did they disappear? No one can possibly tell.
How strange it appears that nations have existed and afterwards so completely disappeared from the earth that the memory even of their names is effaced! Their languages are lost; their glory is vanished like a sound without an echo; though perhaps there is not one which has not left behind it some tomb in memory of its passage.
-- Democracy in America: Volume 1, Chapter 1 (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/1_ch01.htm)
Bruce Graeme | October 29, 2008, 6:22am | #
Eurowatcher,
My estimate is that the chance of splitting up at the moment is only small. cf. www.misesyouth.org/Decentralisation.pdf
I can only confirm that the party is a viable model for nationalist parties in other parts of Europe and America.
The party defends the free market, wants to reestablish traditional values and mores, rejects multiculturalism and openly opposes massimmigration and warns against the Islamification of Europe.
By the way, I was one of the early pioneers to warn about that possibility. But I had a nasty experience with that!
Angered by the many errors in religious truth claims and motivated by injustices experienced at the hand of religious intolerance, since I was 15 years old (1960), I became an atheist and I considered the elimination of religious error a noble task.
As an abolitionist, I wrote various articles attacking Christianity, the bible and defending atheism. Within the freethought movement this was appreciated; but this was 'before' there was massive immigration of Muslims in my country. Since then things have changed....I have been excluded from the local Free thought Organization. Why? Because I criticized the Islam in the same and harsh way as had been the case with Christianity. But this time the leftist freethought movement considered my critique as "political incorrect". Six years ago - thus before the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers - I predicted terrorist attacks in Europe and incidents (as have happened all ready in France, Spain, Great Britain and in Denmark); they called me a racist and agitator!
That's why I am very sensible for every apologetically tone I detect sometimes in articles regarding Muslims and their religion by many freethinkers and atheists as well - in particular those on the 'left' - who manifest themselves as Islamic apologists, taking a soft tack on Islam. [e.g. when Muslims around the world reacted with violence and anger to the remarks made by Pope Benedict XVI on Islam, 'atheist' Austin Cline commented shamelessly in one of his posts: "Benedict XVI doesn't have what it takes to be a pope in the modern world where marketing, image, and communication both move quickly and are vitally important." - cf. http://atheism.about.com/
If I had known beforehand (when I was 15) what I went through the last five years, because of the turmoil in the wake of my political incorrect letters about Islam (*), I would never have grieved my mother with my break of faith, and certainly never would have felt the need to be debaptised. I have never been personally repressed by the Catholic Church's clergy; on the other hand, the repression by 'secular freethinkers'- the only repression I have been victim of in my whole life - has been going on for about five years!
(*) I was actually stalked about 5 years ago by the secret police on command of the Belgium Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt and, last year in March I have been put in a mental hospital for six months.
Guy Verhofstadt is a highly emotional, narcissistic person, who - for the sake of power - veers from one pole to its opposite. Back in 1991, in his second 'Burgermanifest', he had still the audacity to criticize Islam. But after he fell upwards - with the blessing of “the dioxinecrisis” - and became Prime Minister, he took a 180 degree turn from earlier made comments and is now a hater of Muslim critics (such as me), because they criticize him as well.
Here is what he wrote in 1991: “Is the Rushdie-case not ultimate proof of the impossibility to fit Islam in our society? Does this case not demonstrate how Islam at its core is a totalitarian ideology, colliding with the cultural, moral and legal regulations which apply in an open and democratic society?”
In that mental hospital, I have been forced to swallow anti-psychotic meds simply to try to space myself out and not to focus on the the danger of Islamization.
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