From Meccania to Atlantis Part 8 – Drenched to the Bone
From the desk of Takuan Seiyo on Thu, 2009-02-19 16:06
Squaring the circle
To square a circle is a common metaphor describing a futile attempt to solve the unsolvable. But a glance at the root of this metaphor may prove instructive.
Since ancient times, geometricians have tried to construct a square with the same area as a given circle by using only a finite number of steps with a compass and straightedge. Without going into the details, outside this author’s competence anyway, the challenge was invalidated as per the Lindemann–Weierstrass theorem, which proved that pi (π) is a transcendental rather than algebraic irrational number.
It is the founding premise of this series that the central undertaking of Western Society in the last 45 years – the attempt to “diversify” itself and to equalize by fiat all people and categories of people, cultures, lifestyles, ideas and religions – has caused a catastrophic misapplication of human energy, attention and resources. And for the same reason as has foiled the squaring of the circle: the underlying π is a transcendental rather than merely rational or irrational constant.
In 1963, perhaps the year in which the West took the decisive step on the road leading to the crumbling Babel of now, Bob Dylan released a song that would become a hymn of the irrationalists of the Left (i.e. Pods): The Times They Are a-Changin’. It’s been known ever since as the archetypical protest song, and has been recorded by every major leftoid singer with a big heart and a small left brain. There are versions by Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Tracy Chapman, videos by miscellaneous Obama worshippers and so on. This is the song’s opening stanza:
Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.
Good poet though he is, perception and analysis of social reality have never been Mr. Dylan’s strong points. And so, the “Civil Rights” struggle on behalf of America’s blacks and egalitarian potheads that The Times are a-Changin’ has come to symbolize would metastize into a cult of fraudulent equality of all and everything, allowing not even the distinction between the host-civilization’s self-preservation and self-erasure. The process reached a symbolic closure with the release in 2005 of Things Change, a rap piece co-performed by a black multimillionaire named 50 cent on the soundtrack of a film entitled Get Rich or Die Tryin', about Mr. 50 cent’s life.
The platinum soundtrack album with Things Change, produced by Mr. Black Jeruz and Mr. Sha Money XL, has sold 3 million copies. To compare, one of the great popular thriller book publishing successes of 2005 by a superstar author, Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, had a print run of 1.5 million copies.
The opening stanza of the artistic effort of Messrs. 50 cents, Sha Money XL et al., was:
Nigga, things change
They dont stay the same
Now watch me come up
I hustle, I hustle even harder
I put that work in to win, no problem
The times have changed, and not for the better. The Western peoples whose lunch the Body Snatchers and their clients have been eating since the 60s should have tried harder to defend it from the hard hustlers. What remains now is to take Dylan’s advice and either empty the pond or start swimmin’. But not in the direction he had in mind.
Circus Maximus
The grand circus never stops. On the early February 2009 day on which this is being written, a U.S. government watchdog group confirmed that under the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (i.e. “bailout”) the government had paid $254 billion for assets worth $176 billion, essentially sprinkling $78 billions of the U.S. taxpayer’s money as extra feed for the piranhas in the Wall Street cesspool. Nevertheless, U.S. Pesident Barack Obama warned that unless another $938 billion (1) is poured down the rathole of favored constituencies and interests, America would plunge into an “irreversible” recession.
The porkulus bill (pork +”stimulus”) includes, among many items fit only for late night comedy acts, provisos for $4+ billions to “stimulate” the morbidly obese and truculent members of ACORN -- the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN richly deserves the prize not only for helping Mr. Obama to the White House through a massive, nation-wide campaign of voter registration fraud, but also for having done so much to intimidate U.S. lenders and politicians to dole out real estate mortgages to unemployed people with no assets but with compelling skin tones.
It was that mortgage insanity, pushed by progressive political pimps, that triggered the falling economic dominoes, falling all over the world now. And it’s the same pimps whose $0.9 trillion-sized “remedy” now includes items such as $88.6 million for new construction for schools in Milwaukee, where there are 15 vacant schools and enrollment is shrinking. Or $726 billion for an after-school snack program, and many other such stimulating items. As The Scotsman would eventually put it, “There is no terminology available to express adequately the appalling irresponsibility of this naked political banditry.”
Also today, Eric Holder, a long-time black-by-ideology member of the Body-Snatching elite, was confirmed as United States Attorney General and as a “Chance To Right Racial Wrongs.”
But Mr. Holder had already done plenty to “right racial wrongs.” As deputy to U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, he boasted that “The Civil Rights Division has ensured fairness in the lending process through the filing of discrimination suits resulting in record fines and damages.” In other words, Mr. Holder and the bureaucracy he co-managed had done their utmost to push the United States into the Subprime Loan debacle of granting mortgages to unqualified “minorities” under the bogus claim of righting racial discrimination.
The same 1998 U.S. Justice Department, represented by Mr. Holder, crowed to the U. Congress that “three skinhead members of the Nazi Low Riders were charged with both assaulting an eighteen-year-old African-American man as he was getting into his car [snip], and attacking a sixteen-year-old African American man as he was walking along a street.”
That was good work indeed. But a different crime fact should have been of far graver concern to Mr. Holder. As per his own department’s 1998 crime statistics, blacks on Mr. Holder’s watch were committing anti-white “hate crimes” at four times the rate of such crimes by whites against blacks (2). Should that not have merited at least a mention by Mr. Holder, along with his and Janet Reno's picaresque tale of three white Nazi Low Riders?
Moreover, Mr. Holder had played a key role in the gunpoint, night-time kidnapping of Elian Gonzalez by a commando-like unit of U.S. federal agents. On the other hand, he approved the commutation of the prison sentences of 16 unrepentant FALN terrorists. Naturally, Mr. Holder is a vehement proponent of disarming the peace-abiding citizens of his country (ibid.).
Also today, a leader of the American Body-Snatcher Party hinted of coming legislation that would curtail radio programs critical of Body of Snatching. Today again, it transpired that a group of 16 illegal aliens is suing an Arizona rancher for “racism” and “violation of their “civil rights” because he had held them at gunpoint and “inflicted emotional distress” after they had trespassed both on his property and on United States territory.
The pervasive lunacy infects Western society from top to bottom, on all the continents.
In Sweden we are told on this February day that Swedish schoolboy threatened by Irish gravel thieves. But we are not told – though we whose minds have not been Snatched know – what was the ethnicity of the Gangsters threatening shop owners at Stockholm mall or the rapist whose DNA evidence was insufficient for a conviction. And in Malmö, the police has been ordered not to interfere with Muslim demonstrators, no matter how aggressive they become.
In France, Ségolène Royal, who might well be the next President of France, said that there should be a unity of the “three lefts”: the left of the government, the left of social movements, and the extreme left. That’s like for a major American Presidential candidate to say that there should be a unity of the three rights: the Republican Party, the Christian Conservatives, and the Ku Klux Klan. Yet there were no public objections in France to Ms. Royal’s pronouncement.
In Canada’s Halifax, “It’s almost impossible to see signs of racism because they’re hidden in plain sight all around us.” And to prove that not all madness is confined to government employees and MSM, it transpired today that Bill Gates had just unleashed a swarm of mosquitoes on a crowd, stating that “There is no reason only poor people should be infected."
Surely, there is no reason why only ugly people should be ugly either; something ought to be done about that too. Therefore, at the next Miss Universe audition Bill Gates will spray the candidates with sulphuric acid.
But it’s not any of that that’s most worrisome but rather the docile inertia of the silent majority of the Western peoples who continue marching behind their Pied Pipers toward “progress” even as their countries, societies, culture and future are receding and diminishing, manifestly and indubitably.
Cultural Marxist chicanery and intimidation of the white majority was what the U.S. electorate dealt itself when it elected Barack Obama to the Presidency by 53% of the votes, including 43% of the white majority’s votes. And the overriding of the white majority vote by the votes of imported “minorities” has been in the cards since the 1965 Immigration Act, with nary a protest except against “illegals.” But it’s the “legals” who have overridden the votes of the actual heirs to those who have settled and built America.
There has been no noticeable opposition by the Swedish population to its elected Body Snatchers’ robbery of the Swedes’ own territory, heritage, solidarity, quality of life, peace of mind and safety of the body. Even now, the only Swedish political party that opposes immigration, Sverigedemokraterna (SD), has… 3,000 members (3).
This type of analysis can be made for every Western country. One reads that, finally, 25 years too-late, 60% of the Dutch people consider the importation of 2 million non-White immigrants (4), particularly Muslims, their country’s worst mistake since World War 2. Yet, the Netherland’s main champion of national sanity, Geert Wilders, is persecuted relentlessly by that country’s ruling Body Snatcher cabal, and not even 1% of this wise-too-late majority of Dutchmen can mobilize to demonstrate in his support in front of the Dutch parliament.
It’s not hostile Blacks, or Third World immigrants or militant Islam or greedy bankers that can be blamed for the decline of the West. It’s the decline of the West that can be blamed for hostile Blacks, Third World immigrants, militant Islam and greedy bankers.
The West’s’ original population – what we call for brevity’s sake “Whites” -- has given away the keys to its own home, and delights in being plundered. The ruling Body Snatchers have initiated and executed the plunder, but it’s the demos of democracy that has chosen those Body Snatchers and keeps them at the trough.
The hundreds of millions of Pods converted to the Barack/ Ségolène cult have simply opted out of the examined life in order to live in a Kumbaya haze of “social justice,” “racial justice,” “gender parity,” “GLBT empowerment,” “Global Warming,” bad music, aping the worse aspects of the worse cultures, and self-inflicted pain via piercing, plugging, “wire-imbedding,” tattoo, unbearable music and anonymous copulation.
But the “normal,” middle class people of Euro-heritage seem to lead lives just as futile and unexamined, if in a different way. Here is the White American upper-middle class as summarized in this critique of the hit reality television series, The Real Housewives of Orange County :
“Real Housewives" is [snip] a symbol of the vapid, mindless consumption that has sunk the economy and scrambled the American consciousness. [snip] Just look at these women and how they're presented, the raccoon eyes and the god-awful fake breasts, the fried hair and yanked-up faces. Are any of them ever shown reading a book or seeing a play? Visiting a museum (for the record, the Galleria is not one), picking up a newspaper or having a conversation about anything that mattered at all? Of course not. These housewives of Orange County are too busy downing tequila shooters, redecorating their redecorated houses, admiring their cosmetic surgery and wondering why their kids are so screwed up.”
It’s because of the ordinary people’s willful disengagement from reality through vapid idealism or vacuous materialism that the West has become a runaway bus that is, I believe, unstoppable until stopped by the force of gravity.
There are, however, two ways to stop that are, at least theoretically, possible: impatient Revolution or hopeful Loyal Opposition. There are also three ways to get off the bus: Emigration, Separation, and Exodus. We shall examine all five henceforward (5).
Revolution
Wenceslas Square in Prague, an ancient horse market, is one of the largest urban plazas in the world. It is ¾ km long and its square metrage is 45,000 m². On 25 November 1989, each one of those square meters was occupied by 8 demonstrators. The total number of demonstrators in Prague that day was 800,000.
That was 5% of the population of Czechoslovakia. Given that the Slovaks held their own demonstrations in Bratislava, and considering the obstacles to travel in a Communist country, the more relevant statistic might be that the number of demonstrators in Prague that day constituted half of the population of the metropolitan area of Prague. Thus are velvet revolutions born.
Now, what is the chance that 5% of the 61 million population of the United Kingdom, let alone half of the 7.5 million population of greater London, show up in front of the Parliament to demand that their country be returned to them? And yet, is there a country whose inhabitants have been stripped of their identity and self-esteem, their cultural patrimony, their sense of community and belonging, their ancient traditions, their long-standing consensus of non-violent coexistence, their religion and freedom of exercising it, their freedom of self-defense from rampant and once-unknown crime, and their freedom of privacy from state surveillance, more thoroughly and relentlessly than the Britons have by their ruling elite? Not to speak of their impending national bankruptcy.
Where is the Western country whose population feels acutely enough what has been done to it by its Body Snatcher class to protest it vociferously and in great numbers? The people who march and protest in the West are the ones who are the cause of the dysfunction, not the ones who suffer from it. Thus, the largest public demonstration in the United States in a generation has been the “Million Men” March on 16 October 1995, organized by the Nation of Islam under the leadership of that great contributor to Western Civilization, Louis Farrakhan.
It is instructive that the march organizers estimated the crowd size at between 1.5 and 2 million people, but National Park Service that administers the National Mall where the demonstration was held, estimated the crowd at 400,000. The Park Service withdrew this estimate after Nation of Islam threatened to sue. To ensure that no further offense to the likes of Mr. Farrakhan be caused in the future, in 1997 U.S. Congress prohibited the National Park Service from conducting further crowd estimates. Thus are the interests of the too-silent majority served.
Should one discuss the viability of a non-velvet and considerably more painful revolution? In a 4 August 2008 forum, Thomas Fleming, one of America’s pre-eminent paleo-conservatives, made this comment: “I do not recommend any plan because I regard the ethnic situation–like the cultural, moral, and spiritual situations–in this country as beyond all hope of remedy. Any call to direct action… is tantamount to terrorism” Dr. Fleming added, “It is pointless to recommend policies to a nation bent on self-destruction.”
Even the Klan says on its Web page, "There is a race war against whites. But our people - my white brothers and sisters - will stay committed to a non-violent resolution.”
One familiar with French or Russian history can understand why many preferred the dreadful carnage and chaos of revolution to the cruelly oppressive and unjust status quo. But it’s not so easy to understand what drove colonial Americans to a revolution in 1776 but not 220 years later. If they rebelled then against taxation without representation, taxation in America is at least 600% higher now, and in Western Europe it’s higher yet. And under the Tweedledum/ Tweedledee two-party system, the too-silent American majority and its most vital interests have no more representation than they did in the British Parliament of the 18th century.
All of Western Society is now ruled by Body Snatchers, who see the populace as a flock to be penned and sheared at will, with the fleece redistributed to favored client groups of Pods and “minorities.” Moreover, as the favored “minorities” are the source of most violent crime in the West, they also serve as the Snatchers’ proxy instrument for culling the flock. Whether unwittingly or deliberately is beside the point, as even the facts of this matter are censored by the Snatcher’s laws and media.
George Orwell reminded us that if one has lost the freedom to say two plus two make four, one has lost one’s freedom. But “Hate-speech” laws are proliferating in the West, to force people to live by prescribed and obvious lies relative to the effects of the epochal errors, if not intentional crimes, of the Body Snatchers’ rule of the last 45 years.
This rule has been predicated on destroying the cohesion and social capital of the West via Third World immigration, destroying its financial capital via a giant expansion of social services to such immigration, and wasting much of what remainded through financial and moral profligacy toward the Third World in general.
The former manifests in ways ranging from state financing of mosques in France, to drivers license tests in 21 languages in Great Britain, to hundreds of billions in direct or securitized subprime mortgage loans in the United States. The latter manifests in the waterfall of money pouring from the West and dissipating in hundreds of Third World national, supranational, and NGO cesspools. The Western taxpayer’s money props up causes as diverse as the Cyprus bank accounts of the leaders of the Palestinian intifada, and the rare-vintage wine collection of the Dear Leader of Pyongyang.
Pinned by pinstriped psychopaths to the Snatchers’ demented balloon was a house of credit cards and other fraudulent debt instruments that allowed the besotted population, with the Snatchers’ blessing, to buy the toys and pleasures that would divert it from examining too closely what was going on.
One day, perhaps a charismatic leader will arise in some Western country who will call “Give me Liberty, or give me Death,” just before or after Body Snatcher State has sentenced him to a fine of 250,000 euros and a two-year confinement with compulsory re-education in Islam. But such a leader has not arisen yet, and no Western population exists currently that would follow him in large numbers.
Ron Paul was the preferred Republican 2008 Presidential candidate of Americans who were disgusted with their party’s establishment. As part of his campaign, Paul published a book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, in which he advocated a return to the principles of the American Founding Fathers and the Constitution: liberty, self-government, a noninterventionist foreign policy, plus an end to inflatable paper currency.
Alas, the title was misleading, for the book contains no prescription for a revolution, but only for a change in policies. And such a change will never be adopted by the ruling cabal of mutually back-scratching “progressives” elites, corporate titans, labor unions and “minorities,” except through a revolution.
Revolution does live in the hearts of people one meets in various Western countries, particularly via the Internet. In Europe, the steaming dissidents tend to be either hormonal crypto-Leninists or wannabe Himmlers. No salutary outcome can come from either kind of revolution.
In the United States, the revolutionaries-at-heart are usually older and nostalgic for the old days when the Federal Government was far away, there was no income tax, and one’s bank did not handle phone calls or subprime mortgages in Spanish. These people often remark that the United States has been betrayed by its ruling elite and is finished. And one does not dump tea into the harbor for something that’s finished.
Still, there are signs that even the docile majority may not remain so forever. With the economic system of the West in shambles, with 50 million expected to have lost their jobs by the end of 2009, with decibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes staged by financial capitalists, and trillion-dollar Ponzi schemes staged by governments, no one can predict what tragicomedy will play out on the West’s political stage in the next decade.
What will happen in Spain, the country with perhaps the most inept and lunatic Body Snatcher government, living off sham bond sales to the European Central Bank that are bound to evaporate in the future? With its socialist-size social entitlements, insolvent banks, an unemployment rate coasting toward 20%, and tens of thousands of empty and unfinished condos that should never have been built, how long will it take before crowds of very angry Spaniards take to the streets?
Once the recession turns to hyper-inflation due entirely to the Western governments’ 24/7 money printing and wasting what they print, at what point will the people demand in great and loud numbers that the swells who have caused all this – the banksters, hedgies, credit instruments swappers and their enabling politicians -- be arrested for fraud, have their assets confiscated and their lives forfeited?
Maybe that’s why Thomas Jefferson predicted happiness for Americans on the condition that they be able to prevent their government from wasting their earnings under the pretense of taking care of them. And why this father of modern democracy counseled that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
But patriots are few nowadays and there appears to be no transgression that the West’s elected tyrants can’t get away with, as long as the advertising budget is large enough. The times, they have changed.
Loyal Opposition
The multiparty system of Western democracies no longer works in the interest of the societies that legitimize it. No matter which party is in power, it serves these primary causes to one degree or another:
(1) To rob the productive minority of citizens in order to fund the government’s own interminable growth and to redistribute the confiscated earnings to the less productive or altogether idle majority, thereby buying its votes.
(2) To enlarge the voting franchise to every less productive or idle segment of society in order to find more clients for those confiscated earnings, and therefore more locked-in voters. Such targeted new constituencies include prisoners, teenagers, mental cases, legal resident aliens and illegal resident aliens.
(3) To enlarge the pool of locked-in votes further by importing more tax-eaters from Third-World countries.
(4) To stigmatize or punish by law any public discussion of racial, ethnic, religious and gender differences with respect to mean IQs and behavioral traits. Such differences are the primary cause for the disparities in educational achievement, income, criminality, social acclimatization and even health indicators in the multi-racial Western society. Therefore, the anathema ensures that the system will continue showering ever-greater sums of money to “solve” disparities that are unsolvable. Likewise, the system will impose ever-more repressive restrictions on the whole of society, because applying them just to the preponderantly dysfunctional segments would explode the central taboo on discriminating reality from ideology (6).
(5) To dumb-down public education in order to further disguise the racial and ethnic IQ differences and education-related cultural traits. An additional benefit of this dumbing-down is the politicians’ enhanced ability to bamboozle most of the electorate most of the time.
(6) To dumb-down the electorate yet further through scrupulous noninterference in “Freedom of Speech” when it comes to the giant stream of puerile, moronic, decadent and degrading “entertainment” washing away the Western peoples’ brains and culture, while interfering with the very same freedom of speech with an iron hand when it comes to people who speak the truth about the West’s dire condition and its causes.
(7) To reward the ruling political elite’s cronies, moneybag sponsors and key supporting factions at the expense of the larger society and its future generations.
(8) To implement a multi-level globalist agenda that satisfies the utopian urges of Muticulti Gramscians and the business objectives of multinational corporations and international bankers, at the expense of the people.
(9) To perpetuate the sham of fiat paper currency and metastized credit instruments in order to create an illusory prosperity in the present, no matter what the disastrous consequences in the future. It’s a bone thrown to the electorate, to keep it busy with its Blue-Ray DVDs, Harley motorbikes and cheap fashions bought on cheap credit while the ruling elite executes its end pass relative to the preceding eight items.
As soon as a party that truly represents the will of the people has a chance at access to power, Body Snatcher International intervenes on a massive scale, to thwart it. Thus if Vlaams Belang enjoys an electoral success in Belgium, other Belgian parties form a cordon sanitaire, to deny it a share in the governing coalition, and the international press adds “far right” every time it mentions its name. If Ron Paul is the only Republican politician who will speak the truth about America’s broken economic model, and Tom Tancredo the only one to speak truthfully about broken immigration, their own party will deny them access to the speaker’s podium at its national convention.
If the Swiss People’s Party (SVP) wins 29% of the popular vote despite a smear campaign by the entire European establishment, including MSM, the UN will send its ubiquitous Doudou Dienne to sniff for “racism” in Helvetia and report to the BBC. Mr. Dienne’s title alone, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, conjures the job description of another famous hound of heretics, Tomás de Torquemada, the first Inquisitor General of Spain. As Mr. Dienne is the UN’s designated hammer of “racists,” Torquemada was "The hammer of heretics.”
In the United States it’s altogether impossible for great or even potentially great people to be elected or even nominated for the Presidency, except after a prolonged national disaster. It took the combined debacle of Johnson, Nixon and Carter for Reagan to be elected. The majority of the electorate is too dumb to discern good men or to decide correctly which candidate offers the better platform. And a third party is a non-starter in a country where elections are a long TV commercial requiring, as of 2008, half a trillion dollar brainwash budget in order to be a national “player.”
In Europe too, the ruling elites know well how dumb, confused and docile the people have become after 50 years of Podism and rising standards of living. That’s why the electorate wasn’t even consulted in matters as crucially important as the establishment of Eurabia, massive Muslim immigration, and laws curtailing Freedom of Speech and enacted to spare the responsible Body Snatchers from criticism.
Democracy, ever since its Greek days, is really a logocracy – the rule of the glib of tongue. But the glibbest of tongue are not necessarily the stoutest of character and nimblest of mind. Maybe one day the electorate will understand that a beneficial diversity is not the one obsessed with race but the one that includes the quiet and the aloof, the grave and the guileless, the highborn and the short. But until that time, we will be governed by extrovert mediocrities with toothsome smiles and an instinct for the lowest common denominator. No solution to the West’s problems can come from there.
Voting, therefore, is nearly useless. Biding one’s time in the wings, waiting for the electorate’s mood to change, is a waste of time. For the Body Snatchers, lunatics though they are, were extremely clever. They have changed the demographics of the electorate, rather than risking a change in the mood of the original electorate. For that part of the population they haven’t replaced, they replaced its brain cells via a Long March through the schools and mass communication media. And to add a failsafe layer of redundancy, they bribed the hoi polloi of both domestic and imported origin via redistributive entitlements and cheap imports of time-killing and brain-numbing gadgets.
And so, what remains is to bid adieu in some form. More on that next time.
-------------
(1) Eight days after this was written, Porkulus, reduced after much public outrage to “only” $787 billion, would be passed in the U.S. House of Representatives 246 -183 by Democratic vote to unanimous Republican opposition. Not a single lawmaker voting had read this 1071-page bill.
(2) Per the 1998 FBI Crime Statistics, of 3573 anti-black “hate crimes,” only 58% (i.e. 2084) were committed by whites. Of the 989 anti-white “hate crimes,” blacks committed 57% (i.e. 567). What sheds the light of Reality on this is knowing that in 1998, whites were 68%, and blacks 15% of the U.S. population. At 58% of “hate crimes,” whites were significantly underrepresented in the anti-black crime category. But blacks, who committed 57% of “hate crimes” against whites, were hugely over-represented. Blacks were committing anti-white “hate crimes” at four times the rate of whites’ anti-black “hate crimes.”
(3) Per Wikipedia.
(4) Based on Wikipedia data.
(5) At about the time the first installments in the series appeared, Fjordman published his book Defeating Eurabia. I have postponed reading it until after this work has been finished, so as to enlarge the field of relevant ideas and see, after the fact, how much of our analysis genuinely cross-validates.
(6) One of the foundations of the Snatcher’s and all other ideological tyrannies is the manipulation of language. Hence the proper usage of “discriminating A from B” has been replaced by “discriminating against A or B.”
Well, Hey Mr Tambourine Man, guess What?
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 22:18.
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/10/we_are_all_bob_dylan_turkish_d.html
And, for the record, the other bloke I'd considered mentioning in despatches was Antonio Braggadino not Tony Braggadocio, but what do I know?
;-)
@Akira cc: All
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2009-02-23 20:41.
I ask you now formally. Please get off this page and stay out.
There is mud on your boots, you spread it all over my house, and I have tatami floors. You are suppposed to take off your shoes, let alone, heavy, encrusted boots, and leave them at the entrance.
BJ does not have an arrangement to block out individual posters. I will therefore have no other choice but to close the comments section of this page. It will remain permanently closed, just to keep you out. Please therefore, reconsider your fathomless vanity, and do not spoil it for other people who may want to post here.
Akira is correct (part 2)
Submitted by Sagunto on Mon, 2009-02-23 19:36.
[quote=Akira]
"How dare you talk back to your "elders and betters"!?
Yes, I know. Should I keep my juvenile trap shut? ;-)
You've voiced clear-cut and justified scepticism about the way Islam "works". I'd like to add some up-to-date info to a specific point you made earlier. It's just one of many articles on JihadWatch reporting on the issue: Christian persecution. Obviously, Islam doesn't work that well for them. Of course, for "Christian" one can substitute "unbeliever", i.e. anyone still outside the "Law of Allah".
And about the issue of being "older and better", well, I thought it might be wise to quote one still older - and better by far - and I'm glad that @Charles Martel 732 was kind enough to provide us with the extended quote.
Perhaps you and I might not share that many airmiles between us, and it is entirely possible that some of the elderly are indeed better in some respects, but when it comes to defending oneself against the totalitarian doctrine of Islam, there's only one basic adagium on which to build any credible resistance, and that is exactly the point that Islam itself is indeed, not just our biggest "problem", but an existential threat.
When the time comes, I'd happily stand my ground alongside anyone who subscribes to that maxim so aptly condensed by Geert Wilders, no matter how "well educated" that person might be, from whatever race, or from whatever political or religious denomination. That's why I can appreciate the vigour (and bitter sarcasm) you express when the discussion boils down to the core: "Know your enemy".
My guess is, we might need plenty of that vigour soon enough to defend our keep, the ones that stay and fight, that is.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
Cyprus: Grivas Bodily Harm
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 19:13.
@ kappert
Good to see you share my 'nostalgia' for the legacy of British Colonial rule in Cyprus and deplore the bloody mayhem following its ultimate demise.
You ass... (2)
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 18:44.
@ kappert
There's an old Zulu saying, and if there isn't there should be, that says:
He who sits on (border) fence, or jumps over many posts, gets one up his a***.
Tamam?
Tammam.
cyprus
Submitted by kappert on Mon, 2009-02-23 18:29.
how to destroy a community, ethnic cleansing in Cyprus
http://mondediplo.com/maps/cyprusmdv49
Akira is correct.
Submitted by Charles Martel 732 on Mon, 2009-02-23 17:09.
"Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities, but the influence of
the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund,
Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already
spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every
step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms
of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the
civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of
ancient Rome."
--Winston Churchill 1899
I thoroughly enjoy Mr. Seiyo's insights and hope he continues to produce them here. However, if he plans to mitigate or diminish the threat that is Islam he will have lost me.
Akira's comments did not deserve the derision Mr Seiyo directed at him. And Akira's snarky response may have edged over the line. Boys, we're all on the same team - or at least I hope we are.
Let us never forget the words of Winston Churchill as regards Islam. They were true then and will forever remain true. Islam cannot be reformed. The moderate Muslim only serves to mislead. Even those Muslims in name only will respond to the clarion's call when the time comes.
@Charles Martel 732 cc: Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2009-02-23 20:05.
I agree with what you say about Islam, and I thoroughly approve of your moniker. However, if people like traveller or myself, who have worked and lived in Muslim countries, and whose few bio details sprinkled even within this page attest to considerable accomplishments and maturity, therefore good judgment, attest to positive things they saw in such Muslim countries, it’s not for whippersnappers who’ve read a couple of books to correct them in contemptuous tones.
A reader has a responsibility as great as the writer. It is not to read in a text what he projects there from his own head, but to read what’s there. Therefore, do not jump to attributions or to thinking about my “plans,” based on the preceding paragraph, or on anything at all that I have ever written. If Islam works for the Kazakhs, it does not mean it will work for me or mine.
BTW, if your alias attests to a tradition of stomping Islam on the Western periphery, they were my ancestors who stomped it on the Eastern one. My mother’s family held lands on the current border between Poland and Ukraine, and fought with and suffered from Muslims for 800 years. I don’t need young punks lecturing me about Islam, particularly in that all-knowing tone of the under-self examined zealot.
I would appreciate it therefore that if you have any exchanges with or comment about Akira, you take them to a different thread connected to the work of another writer. I no longer welcome Akira’s posts here.
As to Islam, the very next chapter deals with it, so I’ll be offering you more to chew on. If you’ll wish to take exception to anything you read there, I’ll be open to criticism and debate, provided that you have been raised properly and are able to maintain a respectful tone while also showing evidence that you have examined you own assumptions and held beliefs, including about yourself.
You assume too much
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 16:40.
@ Akira
You've visited Northern Cyprus have you, Akira? You have first hand knowlege of the history, complexities and paradoxes to be discovered by anybody with an enquiring mind who is prepared to delve just a little deeper than you have into the story of the T.R.N.C. the Cypriot-Turks and their relationship with the Cypriot-Greeks and the rest of the 'outside world'?
btw: Are you aware of the subtle and not so subtle difference(s) between a Cypriot-Turk and a Turkish-Cypriot, or a Cypriot-Greek and a Greek-Cypriot? Well, I'm not going to explain them to you but I'm sure, if you take the trouble to visit the place, a Cypriot-Turk, or even a Cypriot-Greek would be only too delighted to do so.
@ Akira
Submitted by traveller on Mon, 2009-02-23 16:13.
You have the complete attitude of the fundamentalist, be it Muslim or Christian.
You don't know the difference between culture and religion.
South Africa was Christian since hundreds of years, they kicked the European whites out of office and, are returning to the non-islamic stone-age.
South American Indians the same story, human beings are human beings and are all basically the same, but the culture is different.
Further is your way of debating also related to the stone age, so try to behave a little bit, you are definitely not an example for Christian behavior.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 15:16.
If every Muslim state modelled itself on the breakaway state of Northern Cyprus and their peoples showed the same tolerance towards non-Muslims as do the Cypriot-Turks, that, imho, would be a win-win situation for everybody concerned.
see: http://www.aboutnorthcyprus.com/
http://www.cypruscatholicchurch.org/kyrenia.php
http://www.standrewschurchkyrenia.net/
http://www.chabadnorthcyprus.com/templates/events.htm
re: "100 most indispensable books"
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Mon, 2009-02-23 14:23.
E. M. Forster wrote: The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves. [ " A Book That Influenced Me"]. Forster was also part of the so-called 'Bloomsbury Group'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomsbury_Group
Islam works, for them...
Submitted by Sagunto on Mon, 2009-02-23 14:06.
[quote=TS]
"Islam per se is not the enemy. ... I have been to Muslim countries where Islam evidently works for them"
Forget the shades of cultural relativism or reminiscenses of still "olders and betters" who came back from the Soviet Union with statements, like the in-famous:
"I have seen the future and it works".
As to the question to what extent Islam "works", there are young Winston Churchill's famous remarks (from "The River War") about how Islam works towards backwardness*.
But even today's reports issued by the UN - usually not the most Islamophobic Org. - well, they're not overly enthusiastic either. The situation in many respects is deemed worse than in most African countries.
In the well-known Arab Human Development Report (2002), three things were described as lacking: freedom, knowledge, and an adequate status for women.
According to The Economist:
"The most delicate issue of all [..] is the part that Islam plays in delaying and impeding the Arab world's advance towards the ever-receding renaissance that its intellectuals crave. [..] most secularists believe that the pervasive Islamisation of society [..] has played a significant part in stifling constructive Arab thought [..] From their schooldays onwards, Arabs are instructed that they should not defy tradition, that they should respect authority, that truth should be sought in the text and not in experience. Fear of fauda (chaos) and fitna (schism) are deeply engrained in much Arab-Islamic teaching."
Fear of "Fitna" indeed ;-)
Of course there's no need for a wholesale condemnation of Muslims, which is always feared and denounced - almost as an involuntary reflex - by appeasing Western politicians, whenever the doctrine of Islam attracts the criticism it so richly deserves.
I think that, once again, Geert Wilders was spot on in his silenced speech before the House of Lords, where he would have said: "There might be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam"
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
* "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world" is how Churchill put it.
Akira
Submitted by Paganini on Mon, 2009-02-23 10:09.
Akira, I support your point of view on islam, but it is very rude and unwise to insult an author of BJ who takes the effort to dialogue with us. Get a grip on yourself.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2009-02-23 08:54.
If you repeat the question without the snarky address line, I'll be happy to answer.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Mon, 2009-02-23 08:06.
Your youthful temperament is unsuitable for comments on the remarks of your elders and betters. Please learn respect and self reflection before taking hand to keyboard. If I see in the future that you have accquired the proper veneer to offer critique and inquiry properly in a manner that a European, let alone one with a Japanese handle, ought to have mastered, I shall offer you further answers.
@traveller, nothing beats..
Submitted by Sagunto on Sun, 2009-02-22 19:35.
Nothing beats personal experience ;-)
You have answered at least half the question, i.e. until the nineties, the problems with Moroccans and Turks in "the Lowlands" were seen as integration problems of low-skilled labourers and not as problems with Islam. So now to the other half of the Q: when would be "soon-enough" for the average person in say, Antwerp, Rotterdam or Amsterdam, to notice there is something seriously wrong with Islam itself? And when did that moment come for you?
But anyhow, the suggestion in the passage quoted could sound a bit like nothing much happened over the past 25 years and then suddenly, when it was too late, people woke up and produced the 60% TS speaks of. The real picture is somewhat different. Like you, there were many in Dutch society, who had first-hand experience with Moroccan and Turkish immigrants. Already in the late seventies/early eighties, large parts of the original inner city population in the Netherlands had strong objections concerning the immigration of those who were unable to or refused to integrate. A far-left party, no less, i.e. the SP (Socialists) took notice because their voting-base lived in the old neighborhoods, and began to protest on behalf of the native Dutch inhabitants. These leftists suggested (in 1983) that the immigrants concerned, in the face of their manifest failure to integrate, should be sent back to their countries of origin. So it was really the actual day-to-day experience with these particular groups of migrants that mattered, not political orientation. Of course the political establishment reacted, and the zealous denouncing began, which was a bit easier than nowadays, i.e. to brand people as "racists", because Islam wasn't yet part of the equation back then. Later, when people noticed the trouble with Islam itself, the Eurabists had to come up with a label that came close enough to "racism", so now it's "islamophobia" galore.
Main point: it's a bit sad perhaps that the average Dutchman isn't one for large political demonstrations, but the dramatically increased support for Geert Wilders clearly shows the growing anger about the failed integration of particular minorities combined with the islamization of our culture. It has been steadily building up over the past decades, so the figure of 60% shouldn't come as a surprise, even though people are not shouting and parading in front of the Dutch Parliament. Why would they? That would mean they still believe the establishment would listen, and of course everybody by now knows they don't, not really, even after the hasty promises they made after the assassination of Pim Fortuyn in 2002.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
After reading TS' reply: I agree. History education has left much to be desired. We differ, I suppose, about the public response we'd like to see. I'm satisfied with more votes for Wilders, as I imagine you are, and you'd like to see that accompanied by large crowds before Parliament. I'd like that as well, for sure, but I think that, for the moment, more votes for Wilders will do.
@ Sagunto
Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2009-02-22 20:00.
I lived from 1980 permanently in 3 Islamic countries as independent, non-corporate, non-diplomatic businessman. I lived amongst them and lived their lives and their culture.
From 1999 I am very closely working with original Arab/Bedu countries on high level.
My first visit to Islamic countries, inclusive Pakistan and Iran, was in 1968.
Your question is not simple, when did I first see Islam as a threat?
NEVER
When did I see uneducated street mafia as a threat? From the first hour.
The problem is not Islam.
The problem is the uneducated idiots who claim to be Islamic and the Islamic politicians who use those idiots.
My very best and dearest friends are educated Muslims. Muslims saved my life against their idiotic countrymen endangering their own lives.
I wrote before to Takuan that I would wait until the end of his essays because I felt where he was going and I didn't want
to go to quickly into the ending of his essays. He is an extremely well educated (as in informed, which is much more important in my eyes) author for whom I have the greatest respect and I really want to support him in his endeavors, Takuan deserves it. I very rarely, if ever, have read anything so intriguing as what he wants to do.
I also feel that I have more down to earth field experience than he has, so my practical approach could be complementary to his more academic approach, without trying to take away any quality or merit from his writing.
@traveller
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2009-02-22 20:35.
Based on your post, we may be a lot closer than you realize. I remind you that I was excoriated on these pages for having suggested that Islam per se is not the enemy, and that I have been to Muslim countries where Islam evidently works for them. What I object to and perceive as dangerous is a large presence of Muslims and Islam in the West, and the West’s clueless multiculti response to the dysfunctional aspects of that. But that does not have to involve a wholesale condemnation of Islam and of its adherents.
What we also share in common is the wide on-the-ground experience of real life. If I am conceited enough to ask you to read 4000+ words of mine twice a month, it’s not because I’ve read a bunch of books and I can’t wait to tell you what I read. Rather, being myself a highly hybrid product, having visited in more than 40 countries, worked in 20 and lived in six, I have arrived at a series of observations that, I believe, are unique enough to contribute something new to the large stewpot of analyses and opinions.
BTW, I did spend years in various universities, but until four years ago, for 30 years I had been a working international executive, i.e. “businessman,” and my work involved contacts with both governments and private enterprises. A little story entitled Clueless in Lagos and derived from one of my working experiences in Nigeria is in the current issue of the (British) Quarterly Review.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2009-02-22 20:44.
I like it.
@TS, better late than never
Submitted by Sagunto on Sun, 2009-02-22 16:48.
[Quote=TS]
"One reads that, finally, 25 years too-late, 60% of the Dutch people consider the importation of 2 million non-White immigrants (4), particularly Muslims, their country’s worst mistake since World War 2.
Yet, the Netherland’s main champion of national sanity, Geert Wilders, is persecuted relentlessly by that country’s ruling Body Snatcher cabal, and not even 1% of this wise-too-late majority of Dutchmen can mobilize to demonstrate in his support in front of the Dutch parliament."
I agree that 25 years would be a little late indeed, but it's hard to see how ordinary citizens could have known in the early eighties that Islam would pose such a threat to Western civilization, when - even after the Islamic revolution in Iran - a lot of experts were only slowly waking up to that new reality. So when would be "early-enough" for the-man-in-the-street, and when did the author himself become fully aware of the global threat that Islam poses today?
That 1% of those that TS calls the "wise-too-lates", means a demonstration of about 100.000 people. That would be an enormous event for Dutch standards. When there's talk about the majority, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that most of them don't usually take to the streets to demonstrate.
I'm a bit surprised however, by the fact that TS failed to mention the rather important and widely reported development, i.e., that in the meantime, Wilders' party, the PVV, has become the second largest party in the country. In fact, the latest polls showed a substantial increase in support, as a reaction to the prosecution of Geert Wilders by our dhimmi-govt. and the latest submissive posturing of the British cowards to Islamic threats.
So no demo, but nevertheless massive support for Wilders, quite easy to discern when one is prepared to look a bit closer to what's really happening in Holland.
Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Sag.
@ Sagunto
Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2009-02-22 17:41.
Personal experience:
In the 1950's my father was the director of a textile mill, a rather large one. I was born in 1943. As a teenager I saw my father hiring 250 Moroccans and Turks. While he was doing this I looked closer and had a serious argument with my father about the wisdom of hiring uneducated, untrained people with a very bad knowledge of our language.
My father thought he was right. I KNEW as a teenager that he was wrong and told him so.
In 1964 I became director of a company myself and hired only original Flemish people.
That's a concrete answer to your question.
For your information, I didn't see them as Muslims, I saw them as possible socialist, unionized election cattle, which they became. I also saw them as future street thugs, which they became, after the closing textile industry made them jobless.
@Sagunto @traveller
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2009-02-22 19:10.
Interesting exchange.
Re: hard to see how ordinary citizens could have known in the early eighties that Islam would pose such a threat to Western civilization -- indeed, but only because of the decay of Western civilization. Had history been taught properly, ordinary citizens would have known. I have mentioned several times in my writings that I knew that as a 7-yr-old, as did every studious child in Eastern Europe -- Europe's bulwark against Islam -- and probably still does. The threat of Islam is imprinted indelibly on 1300 years of European history; there was no need to look just at the experience of the last 30 years. Only 30 advisedly, for in WW2 Islam on the Southern and Eastern peripheries of Europe, and in the Middle East, allied itself with the Nazis.
Re: the feasibility of a 100,000 –strong demonstration in Holland. What I tried to express is that unless the Western peoples start seeing and feeling what has been done to them sufficiently for demonstrating crowds MUCH LARGER than 100,000 in a population of 16 million to materialize, all you will see is a further march of the sheeple.
Re: hiring foreigners. As comfortable as it might be, we cannot get away from the issue of race and culture. There are many examples in European history, not to speak of the American one, of foreigners being invited to settle in and benefiting the host country. Salient European examples would be the welcome mat that the Low Countries extended to the Jewish refugees of Iberian Inquisition or to French Huguenots; the many German settlements, particularly of Swabians, in Easten Europe, etc. But to jump from that to the conclusion that Moroccans and Turks are suitable candidates for the same treatment is a delusion.
@TS
Submitted by Ronduck on Sun, 2009-02-22 22:23.
Re: hiring foreigners. As comfortable as it might be, we cannot get away from the issue of race and culture. There are many examples in European history, not to speak of the American one, of foreigners being invited to settle in and benefiting the host country. Salient European examples would be the welcome mat that the Low Countries extended to the Jewish refugees of Iberian Inquisition or to French Huguenots; the many German settlements, particularly of Swabians, in Easten Europe, etc. But to jump from that to the conclusion that Moroccans and Turks are suitable candidates for the same treatment is a delusion.
The Germans in Eastern Europe were brutally expelled in the aftermath of WW2 by the local population and the Red Army, so even if foreigners can make a contribution to the locals does not mean it will end well. Races should be separated, but so should nationalities.
Ronduck
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2009-02-22 23:08.
You touch on an issue that I lived, as I hail from a part of Europe that had been going back and forth between Poland and Germany for over 700 years. Although by the time I was born it was commie Poland and all the Germans had been killed or expelled, their beneficial trace still remains in the most attractive towns in that area, e.g. Wroclaw (Breslau). I assure you that had not Germany committed the unspeakable evils against Poland that it had, and had not some of those Polish-Germans collaborated with the German occupiers, they would have remained among a grateful Polish population. You can see something similar in contemporary Romania, Hungary, Slovakia etc.
@ T.S. and Sagunto
Submitted by traveller on Sun, 2009-02-22 19:36.
It worked as follows.
The Moroccans arrived from France and the Turks from Germany in the "South Station/Gare du Midi/Zuidstation" in Brussels. The socialist unions were waiting for them on the platforms and made them instant members. The unions gave them the name and address of the factories looking for workers and the address of the local union office.
My conclusions were thus not so difficult.
@ Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by Ronduck on Sun, 2009-02-22 11:58.
One of the reasons Western Man remains silent is his family has been destroyed by divorce. Divorce in the United States exploded after the legalization of no-fault divorce in the 1970's creating a nation of parentless homes divorcees.
Excellent point, Ronduck
Submitted by Rembrandt on Sun, 2009-02-22 12:05.
This is one of the forgotten points here in America. And, the church, that bastion of conservatism and tradition, supposedly, all but IGNORED that early assault on the nation. As they ignored abortion on demand and school prayer bans. All those early assaults on the country were big gains for the Marxists in laying the groundwork for subversion. And they were all but ignored.
@Rembrandt
Submitted by Ronduck on Sun, 2009-02-22 12:38.
The first no-fault divorce law in the US was signed by governor Ronald Reagan of California in 1969. See this article entitled The California Dream is Dead.
Thank you Ronduck
Submitted by Rembrandt on Sun, 2009-02-22 15:01.
I love the gipper, but he blew it on that one. Thanks for the link to the article. I immediately subscribed to that .com feed.
Aside from that, let me say that I would prefer to live under an Islamic fundamentalist regime than under the sort of Marxist utopian state that liberals visualize, full of thought police who force people to tolerate immorality. The Muslims, at least, do not promote the sort of rank dysfunctionalism that the liberals do. What a shame that I would even be having this discussion in America.
Marx vs. Mohammed
Submitted by KO on Sun, 2009-02-22 15:14.
There is no need to have the discussion whether you would rather live under Hitler or Stalin. Both are equally inimical to Western freedom. Rampant buggery, forced cousin marriage, genital mutilation, purdah, and suicide bombing might also be characterized as "rank dysfunctionalism."
Great analysis of Red and Blue states below. I wonder if there could be population exchanges? But maybe that would be unnecessary. The Red portions of Blue states are well armed. Perhaps their Red state neighbors will cross state borders to protect them.
States are the key to restructuring the US
Submitted by Rembrandt on Sun, 2009-02-22 10:32.
I have greatly enjoyed your series, Mr. Seiyo.
The state structure of the US is a strong weapon against tyranny if it is effectively wielded by intelligent conservative leaders in those states willing to secede or "go on strike" against a federal tyranny. The US has a built-in secret weapon that our founding fathers providentially foresaw and dealt with in the founding documents, to save the day for the West, if only... if only...
These positive advantages that "Red States" have that the Democrat "Blue States" don't have include:
Red States are the agricultural producer states of the world, not just America. Red States have lots of firearms in the hands of patriotic citizens. Red States are fully capable in most instances, of supporting themselves internally without any external support from the federals. Moreover, they overwhelmingly DESIRE to be self sufficient. It is still natural for most white Americans in Red States to feel this way because
their ethics are still derived from traditional sources. Despite the left's attempts to portray them as backward, Red States are at the top of the nation academically as a whole.
And State governments are entrenched enough to be immediately effective in the absence of a federal hierarchy. They have effective command and control and media resources in every regard. Red States have NO animosities with one another of a serious nature. Thus, they could form alliances and groupings for common benefit.
Each has a formally equipped militia with lots and lots of real world military training and experience.
But, all these advantages risk erasure as liberalism continues it's accelerating corrosion of the national fabric. For instance, let's look at the other side of the political coin for a peek at our own future in the Red States.
"Blue" states tend to have large urbanized population centers. They are characterized by large masses of disaffected, subeducated minorities and immigrants and influential pockets of leftist elites. But, they could not easily sustain themselves with food or MONEY to support their silly Marxist schemes. When the US government finally collapses, NY will look like Mogadishu.
Imagine Washington DC's political elite suddenly finding itself trapped in a sea of a hostile angry minorities who comprise 98 percent of the city? Imagine looters hauling the furniture out of the Oval Office and running away with it.
Incidentally, it seems apparent to me that the Blue States live off the backs of the Red States, but despise and hate everything the latter thinks and does because they represent the last vestige of traditional America that is left.
@Rembrandt
Submitted by Wynne on Sun, 2009-02-22 22:38.
I think you make a very important point. And one that the left is keenly and uneasily aware of. The clear historical trend is the continuing encroachment of federal power.
Currently there are opportunities where the states yet retain sovereignty. They can pass laws that run counter to the policy views of a liberal congress. Notably, Right to Carry laws. But the promise of federal aid is too often used to induce states to surrender their sovereignty at the cost of citizens' liberty.
It is revealing that the Obama administration has written bailout legislation in such a way that, if governors elect to refuse federal disbursements, the legislatures can override them. Fools maybe, but stupid, no.
Your view that states can sustain themselves seems likely enough. Though the structure of today's economy differs greatly from earlier times, it is interesting to find that Prior to Mr. Lincoln's War the agricultural South was more prosperous than the industrialized North. Five years before that war began the export of cotton alone amounted to twice the value of total northern exports. What eventually devastated the southern economy was a combination of tariffs, the war and reconstruction.
States retain more powers than many realize, but, with few exceptions that I am aware of, they are not sanguine about implementing them.
@Wynne
Submitted by Ronduck on Mon, 2009-02-23 06:28.
The South's exports may have been twice that of the North's before the Civil War, but Southern industry was two generations behind the North at the outbreak of war. The famous scene in Gone With the Wind where Rhett Butler shows how little the South had is the best example of this.
Wynne
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2009-02-22 23:14.
This just-released Harris poll is apposite relative to your last 2 comments: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/pubs/Harris_Poll_2009_02_19...
The three top heroes named by (2400+ representative sample of) Americans are Obama, Jesus and Martin Luther King.
With this level of popular idiocy, there are no easy solutions. Which also means that I'll have to have 3-5 more installments in this series.
TS
Submitted by Wynne on Mon, 2009-02-23 01:44.
Hard to know what to say. God Help Us comes first to mind. Then Merde Alors! Public education at work (how'd they miss Jimmy Carter and Che Guevara?).
Tempering despair, though, and raising questions is the presence of some of the other names. How to make sense of it?
Wanting a dramatic change of course (read revolution) Obama could outlast Chavez in office. Well, Mr. Seiyo, looks like the task keeps growing.
BTW my guess about the length of the series: thinking of bulls.
Re: Bob D
Submitted by Atlanticist911 on Sun, 2009-02-22 01:55.
Speaking as someone who has always been suspicious of the scribblers of the qurky quatrain and hippie haiku I'm still to be convinced. (Some have even credited the Beatles, no less, with writing a few "conservative" ditties. "Taxman" and "Revolution" usually being the ones most cited). However, that being said, Akira's recent posts have certainly got me looking at Robert's works in a slightly less critical light.Thanks Akira.
The Circle (#8)
Submitted by Wynne on Sun, 2009-02-22 00:25.
I continue to enjoy the unfolding of Mr. Seiyo's epic work, and I look forward to the denouement, which appears to be near at hand.
Back to the options offered in the argument-in-chief:
I am beginning to think there may be some reason for cautious optimism in the US. We know that a fundamental tenet in the martial arts is to turn an opponent's force and momentum against him. By analogy, arrogant liberal overreach may provide just that opportunity in aid of the conservative cause.
Increasingly I am hearing the mention of the 'R'-word*, directly and by reference. Though often used in mock seriousness, its emerging currency is truly novel outside historical context. It's clear to me that a considerable anger is building among the silent majority (if still it is). Whether and in what form that translates into action remains to be seen.
Citing one notable example, the Santelli outburst on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange is not, in my view, a minor event.
An employee of the struggling CNBC -- the television equivalent of a hard-left house organ -- he must have known it was not a sound career move, and by disparaging persons in mortgage default (covering several "victim" classes) and challenging, on-air, the wisdom of the iconic Obama and his cohort, Santelli wantonly violated the rules of MSM behavior. By defying the "laws" of Political Correctness (which, after all, is nothing more than cowardice in the righteous guise of comity) he showed that brand of courage born out of frustration and anger. A brand known well to America's patriarchs.
Chicago tea party? Perhaps we should not be too dismissive...
* Body-snatchers have word-snatchers; why give them a heads-up?
@Wynne
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sun, 2009-02-22 01:03.
I see much good stuff coming also from Glenn Beck and from Lou Dobbs. And a Revolution may come one day, but it will have come too late for the U.S. as a whole. Who can revolt against whom in Atlanta, D.C., Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc? How many whites will have remained in Coastal California by 2015 to oppose La Republica del Norte (de facto if not de jure). Still, this series will end on a positive note, with much discussion of things that are actually doable, now and lawfully, and that should lead to much better things in the future.
@Takuan Seiyo
Submitted by Wynne on Sun, 2009-02-22 21:14.
Thank you for your response.
Whether we think of a political revolution or one involving the loss of blood and treasure, I believe the progress of change has to be revolutionary and not incremental. It seems to me that the left has taken on too much moving inertia to be stopped otherwise. Still, I am always willing to be persuaded by a compelling argument.
I'll be interested to know your thoughts from the coming (two, I'd guess...) installments, though I'll be sorry to see the series end. Thank you for your fine work.
Save Dylan
Submitted by KO on Sat, 2009-02-21 23:04.
Thanks for your spirited reply, Akira. I will look at "rightwingbob" and maybe extend my acquaintance with him beyond Desire.
The only thing the left understand is violence
Submitted by Charles Martel 732 on Sat, 2009-02-21 19:21.
At the end of the day, unless we are willing to fight and die for our beliefs we are doomed to fail. EVERYTHING else we can conceive of as an alternative will be insufficient. The LEFT fears Islam and therefore submits willingly to its dictates. The left can attack our society, culture, civilization and people with impunity because they understand we pose not threat to them. Unless they pay a price they will never change. Only by defeating the left through the application of force and fear will real change be effected. We can sequester ourselves in small remnants and they will not long tolerate us. Be sure of one thing: THEY will ruthlessly apply force to achieve their ends UNLESS they are made to pay a price.
There will be no peaceful resolution of the differences that exist between traditional limited government Americans and the collectivists. I wish it weren't so, truly I do. But the left's unquenchable thirst for power will not be sated until all vestiges of dissent are destroyed. It has come down to destroy or be destroyed - you may not realize it yet, but the die has been cast. The American War for Independence was fought by men willing to die for their beliefs. We have few such men today. Actually, that may not be entirely true. We do have such men, but they are not organized. The traitors on the left will never stop unless and until they begin paying a price. FORCE is the only thing these traitors understand.
As I see it, all the talk in the world won't matter a hill of beans unless and until we are willing to employ force. For they now control all the ordinary levers of power.
We have become emasculated and until we begin acting as free men willing to fight, all this talk amounts to is pissing in the wind.
Self-Defense
Submitted by KO on Sat, 2009-02-21 20:55.
Self-reliant Westerners have been demonized by the government-media complex for 50 years as rednecks, vigilantes, and madmen. We have to get over our own indoctrination. Then we have to defend our right to self-defense in the public square. Meanwhile, patriots should arm themselves on general principles, first, just not to be helpless sheep dependent on the state. Second, to defend ourselves and our own, hopefully in harmony with the forces of public order, so called. We should identify the forces that are local to us and assess the citizens' ability to ensure that those forces are not turned against the citizens in a pinch. (As British police were turned against the foxhunting demonstrators--foxhunting being a profoundly wholesome pursuit, see Roger Scruton.) Third, to protect oneself and one's own from the forces of public order themselves, though the balance of power is so uneven, in the absence of strong allegiances between local people and the command structure of those forces, that escape and concealment are necessarily the first responses to armed attack on faithful Westerners by hostile government forces.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sat, 2009-02-21 05:47.
I like your fondness for historical inquiry. Right about that invasion. Ultimately, every people get the governance they deserve. It wasn't that invasion that did it, though, but the Poles' own traitors, including their king. As to the idiocy of the smartest layer of the world's population, Milliband being a prime example, I'll deal with it more extensively in an upcoming segment.
Dylan the liberal
Submitted by KO on Sat, 2009-02-21 14:15.
Akira: Dylan built his career by joining in the Beat-hip-bohemian-Com Symp attack on square America. He reinforces liberal stereotypes about America, for which liberals reward him with undying adulation. The fact that his criticism is turned against them means nothing to them. Liberals are masters of irony, when forced to they will acknowledge the gulag and the failures of their policies, but they retain their credo quia absurdum and will still choose the USSR over the USA every time. They don't really believe in anything but hatred of conservatives. Thus the satire of liberals by Dylan does not prove he is not deeply liberal. Therefore I don't think I could be persuaded that Dylan is a conservative.
I will concede, though, that his artistic gifts and integrity are deeper than his liberalism and that truth, which is non-liberal, shines through his work at every stage, at least when he is not propagating liberal lies. In that sense he could be described as conservative despite himself. (As Hollywood becomes conservative despite itself in movies such as Traitor, Dead Man Walking, and A Few Good Men.)
I also have to concede that the last album I knew well was Blood on the Tracks. Thanks for posting here and keep up the great work!
PS. Lawrence Auster is a huge Dylan fan. If you searched VFR for Dylan references, I would not be surprised if you found hundreds of them.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sat, 2009-02-21 05:04.
I'll let your opinion on Dylan stand. I am a boomer, happy to be one too. So what soaked into me is indeed the influence Dylan had on my generation when it was in its impressionable stage. As to your comments about Russia, as a Pole whose country was oppressed for 2.5 centuries and whose relatives were murdered by Russians, and raised in a Catholic culture unfriendly to Orthodoxy, I could be expected to take strong exception to your comments, but I agree with you relative to the foreign policy matters you raise.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Sat, 2009-02-21 02:17.
I don't read the "anti-Obama" song as anti-Obama. Good poet that he is, people tend to read meaning into words that's not there. It ain't me Babe is about It ain't me Babe.
I don't know enough here, but I recall three songs from when I was still of the age to follow Dylan seriously, and they were "With God on Our Side," "Only a Pawn in their Game," and "The Murder of Emmit Till." These were all the songs of the radical American left.
But maybe you are right. By now there may be evidence that Dylan has been mugged by reality.
@Akira
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Fri, 2009-02-20 23:33.
Thank you for this elucidation. You are far more the Dylan expert than I am. I just seized on one of his songs, but know there are people who know and have made a serious study of them all. I certainly think he is a good poet. As to Dylan's personal convictions as reflected in his lyrics, I'll take your word for it. But, just remembering news snippets from the past, he seems to have traversed a confused road as a person, with bouts of Judaism, Christianity, back and forth and probably other isms too. Another singer/writer/poet of similar social background and towering talent is Leonard Cohen.
@KO
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Fri, 2009-02-20 20:19.
Thanks fyr kind feedback. I loved the Kutuzov character in the Sergei Bondarchuk film. I wouldn’t be writing this series just to discuss what will not and cannot work, and am close to the chapter that will discuss a strategy that seem viable to me. I would call it Kutuzov-meet-John Galt. But remember that invoking a general implies a formation, say a phalanx, even if it’s for the purpose of a proper retreat. We have not even begun building such a formation.
I am not familiar either with the Icelandic sagas or the Turner book you mention. It should be an important part of our project to construct a list of the 100 most indispensable books that should form the nucleus of the mental baggage of every Western person (for want of another term) or one who wants to be adopted as Western. It should be done by survey involving the most original conservative thinkers in a span extending from Russia to Ireland and beyond, to the Americas and the Antipodes. The input should be from a group wide enough to include supporters of church supremacy and secular libertarians, paleocons and nationalists, scientists, businessmen and artists. I would love it if a trio composed of Roger Scruton, Jose Luis Borges and William Buckley could take charge of such a project. Maybe if we buy Scruton an Ouija board he’d consent.
BTW, National Review did compile a list like that years ago, but it should be probably revised with more international input.
Njal's Saga
Submitted by KO on Sat, 2009-02-21 00:48.
Mr. Seiyo: Njal's Saga is the greatest of all the Icelandic sagas. From what you have disclosed of your taste and personality, you should find it highly satisfactory. Dry wit, taciturnity, courage, prudence, opportunism, and tragic realism are the virtues of saga characters. Just yesterday I had a conversation with someone to the effect that the Japanese would probably like the sagas, though we had to agree there is no cult of obedience on Iceland. The Icelanders are not idealists, but they have their code. Of course, they are not as warm as Sienkiewicz's Poles and they are not Catholic. They are hard-handed farmers, traders, warriors, and lawyers.
Turner's Genesis is as relevant to the undertaking as his New World. It concerns the terraforming of Mars and the resulting war between entrepreneurial, pioneer colonists and the Eco-Theists of the UN who object to altering Mars from its natural state. They also object to violating the natural state of earth and basically attempt to quash all human development. Sound familiar? Predicting the pod future in the 1987 epic poem.
Although I don't disagree with one word of your diagnosis in this installment, I think that self-government can be seized by those from whom it has been stolen. But a revolution in thinking has to reach a critical mass before that happens.
@dchamil
Submitted by Takuan Seiyo on Fri, 2009-02-20 19:37.
You did not read the relevant paragraph attentively enough.
Wenceslas Square
Submitted by dchamil on Fri, 2009-02-20 16:09.
45,000 sq meters times 8 persons per sq. meter equals
360,000 persons, not 800,000 persons.
The Kutuzov Strategy
Submitted by KO on Fri, 2009-02-20 13:03.
Thank you, Takuan Seiyo, for persisting in this important work. Your readers should collect links to all the installments and spread them around as widely as possible. Even in hostile minds they will plant a seed that may grow into a renewed loyalty to the West, or at least doubt of the legitimacy of pod-hegemony.
In War and Peace, Kutuzov retreats and retreats before Napoleon, confident in the ability of his people to endure the devastation, in the arrogance that will bring about his enemy's self-destruction, and in the land's hostility to an overweening invader. The pods too are arrogant and will overextend themselves. The remnant of the people will endure. Reality is unforgiving.
For the remnant: along with the novels of Sienkiewicz, the curriculum for survival should include all the Icelandic sagas. They are a treasure of Western culture and virtue. They also depict self-government by capable, prudent men in the absence of any state, a lesson that is and will be of importance in those areas, present and to come, where the pods have destroyed effective government.
I also refer again to the Free Counties in Turner's New World. In the America of the 24th century, they preserve creativity (in learning, technology, and religion) and ordered liberty in their self-governing, well-armed, semi-aristocratic republics. Outside the Free Counties is the madness of the Riots (cities), the humiliation of the exploited Burbs, and the oppression of the theocratic Black Counties. The makings of the Free Counties (and the Black Counties too?) are with us in the millions of American families, at least, that home-school--and arm--their children.