The House of David

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Josh MacDowell and the Jews

The Christian evangelical author Josh MacDowell had a section on the Jews in Evidence That Demands A Verdict. It's worthwhile to evaluate that evidence as it reflects upon MacDowell.

MacDowell's books were a major force in recruiting educated young people into Christianity. But he lost much of his influence in the mid 1990s with the rise of the Internet and one of its first websites, Infidels.org. This site fact-checked his books to smouldering ruins. (Disclosure - Around this time I was also fact-checking his books and I started my own researches, which you can read on the "J/X" link.)

MacDowell was an admirer of the Jewish people, insofar as they protected the Torah, agreed with his causes, and fulfilled (his interpretation of) Prophecy. MacDowell's views on Jewish doctrine were more nuanced. As I recall, he dismissed Reform Judaism as barely a religion at all and thought of Orthodox Judaism as Paul's Curse Of The Law writ large. Conservative Judaism, he treated as underdeveloped Christianity.

As a Christian evangelist, MacDowell has to promote Christianity over all forms of Judaism. As mentioned above, I am not a fan. But to call him an antiSemite would inductively condemn all Gentiles observant to their own laws as antiSemites. That would be, itself, a form of bigotry.

Labels: antisemitism, conservatives, propaganda

posted by Zimri on 12:39 | link |

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Astarte's curse

I've lately noticed Conservative men searching desperately for women to lead them out of their malaise. We've been asked to pay homage to Palin and Bachmann; last year, Clinton(!); and until recently Prejean.

We're seeing now how the eastern Britons rallied around Boudicca, or the French around Joan of Arc. There is something about aggressive yet homespun femininity which appeals to the rural reactionary. As if the very Mother Earth has rejected the interloper.

It's Romantic nonsense. Queens often do well (from Hatshepsut to Catherine); but that's because they were born to the purple. History teaches that reality is a harsh school for Romantics. Eastern Britain was wholly broken after Boudicca, and the French didn't start winning until after Joan was gone.

Some Conservatives are building up these flawed and naive women as if they were goddesses, but they are not goddesses. People are going to be disappointed and people are going to get hurt.

Labels: conservatives, misanthropy

posted by Zimri on 23:50 | link |

Role models

I watched the Larry King interview with Carrie Prejean. She compared herself to Sarah Palin (and Michelle Bachmann), complained that Conservative women get their feelings hurt by liberals, and then threw a tantrum. I watched the Glenn Beck recap too - whither HotAir had directed me - and it's looking like she's not getting any sympathy from the Right.

She certainly didn't do Palin any favours. The last thing Palin wants people to see is one of her fans whining and then stamping away from a commitment.

Labels: bullshit, conservatives

posted by Zimri on 23:29 | link |

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Revenge of the Guelph

What we have now in Progressivism is a natural impulse of urban elites, which has manifested itself in history many times over in different forms.

The doctrine of the transnational elite only has to be consciously accepted, to be internally consistent, and to be common across state boundaries. The doctrine's content and even accuracy do not matter. There is little in - for instance - Progressive doctrine (as opposed to observed science) that will survive the coming century.

Some Conservatives might be tempted to send our Progressives off to reeducation camp - maybe making them all good Baptists - so that everything can go back to the Good Old Days. I doubt that this would help. Even if it "works" I think that it's more likely that these new Baptists will impose a new transnational ideology, which will be just as based on an anti-Conservative faith.

Transnational elites, like the poor, will always be with us. They are not evil; they are just inhumane. It's not a good idea to guillotine them anymore than it's a good idea for Progressives to guillotine Conservatives. We should encourage those of an abstract mindset to concentrate on non-political forms of expression, like science and research.

Labels: conservatives, progressives

posted by Zimri on 17:30 | link |

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Conservative crackup, II

In about the first substantive post of this new incarnation of The House Of David, I set original intent versus strict constructionism.

Half Sigma argues that Conservatives have another dispute: on pro-family versus pro-life. He (accurately) points out that single mothers are a threat to the family and that abortion bans in the South will mean more of them; adoption would soak up some of the excess but not enough. He (questionably) assumes that abortion is less of a threat.

He didn't prove that axiom, but I will take a shot at it. We can't tell just from looking if Jane Q. Singlewoman has had an abortion or not. And who wants to be the first to get in Jane's face and ask? If we don't see it, it doesn't exist. Abortion is a nothing procedure, and Jane can move on to have a happy family with someone else. RAINBOWS!

Yeah, I'm skeptical.

Against the "don't ask don't tell" argument, a Conservative might counter that just because you can't see the wound in Jane's soul, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

If Jane had Asperger's she could make a cold calculation and terminate the thing, and sleep well that night. But the guys out there would get a bad vibe from her like the girls get from me.

Neurotypical Janes, I expect, would react depending on who knocked her up. If it was a rape then she could live with her choice, and I'd hope most guys would agree with it (I'm not neurotypical, so your mileage may vary). If it was just some cad... not so certain. I think it hurts these women more deeply than the pro-choice crowd lets on. And I wonder how fulfilling their marriages, and families, turn out with that lurking behind them. Or if they ever get married...

I would put it to Half-Sigma and the various northeastern "fiscal conservatives": how "pro-family" is a society filled with 40-something spinsters, bachelors, and divorcees; all too damaged to settle down?

(P.S. Half-Sigma goes on to suggest that Republicans get (back) on the pro-abortion bandwagon. Not bloody likely. The GOP is too firmly associated with Conservatives now, and upper middle class women wouldn't trust the GOP even if they filmed Bill Frist performing one for C-SPAN. And then they'd just turn to economics and attack the GOP from that standpoint - these same women are also for socialism, in case anyone was wondering. Last but hardly least, from this blog's standpoint, all of this assumes that Republicans should play by the rules of democracy; since this is an aristocratic blog, I say "meh". That later post of Half-Sigma was redundant.)

Labels: abortion, conservatives

posted by Zimri on 21:01 | link |

Intelligent-design versus climate change

(Last of the 18 October series.)

Conservatives believe in "reopening the debates" on the theory of life origins and on the reason for global warming. Liberals believe the debate is closed on both: evolution for life origins; anthropogenic gases, mostly CO2, for global warming.

I think Conservatives are wrong on life origins and right on climate change.

Our model of biology comes about because of observations of Charles Darwin, and also a few metaphysical principles such as: leave open how mutations form in the first place, and exclude intelligent designers from the equation. Darwin didn't really come up with a theory so much as lay out the questions.

By doing that, Darwin forced researchers to come up with a genetic theory. Mendel did that. That forced researchers to come up with a genetic mechanism. Crick and Watson did that.

Climate change theorists on the other hand haven't yet cleared the "observation" stage. We have data for hundreds of thousands of years, with much warming and (mostly) cooling in between; but humans were only around for the last 200,000 and, as far as we know, penned up in Africa until well after the Toba explosion. We are asked to solve a problem in geological time with a model that is active only in historical time.

Also, evolution is a general principle. Its analogy in climatology would be the theoretical existence of a greenhouse effect: atmospheric content C, and insolation I, makes for a temperature T. Anthropogenic global warming would come after many stages after that: proof that the temperature trend over the timespan is warming and then proof that the model is consistent with the atmospheric composition at any given point in the time span. And then this has to be compared over past time spans.

It is also telling that climateaudit etc are attacking the research in current journals; Ben Stein and his boys are doing an end run Wedge Strategy, and not engaging current journals.

Evolution and anthropogenic climate change (warming or not) are not on the same level. AGW is open to debate. Evolution is not; those who are "opening" that debate are more akin to Holocaust deniers and 9/11 truthers.

Labels: climate, conservatives, propaganda, science

posted by Zimri on 16:07 | link |

Teaching creationism

Now that we've identified intelligent-design as a Socratic movement, it remains to explain why it doesn't belong in a science class.

The argument of Intelligent Design is metaphysical. A metaphysic is an axiom, a means of proving rather than the means itself. ID starts with the concept of an "irreducible" complexity, that just because we don't know if a complexity may have value (as something else) if reduced, that it is evidence for Something Else At Work. The IDer says it's the Christian God; the atomist might say "in an infinity of possible universes...". Neither is testable and neither can belong in the set of "science".

Scientists find the idea of a Cthulhu from beyond the stars meddling in this universe to be a horror. This inevitably follows from the principle that every proposal has to be testable in nature, and the definition of "Cthulhu" as an entity which follows extranatural rules. Pace C.S. Lewis, scientists cannot afford miracles; if Cthulhu can come here to create life, then It can also screw with the laws of physics. In that case, any deviation from theory can be explained by Cthulhu. Faith inductively reaches the point where there are no laws in science. (Or, to put it in libertarian terms: divine intervention is the "public option" of science.) We can see the results in Pakistan, whose science textbooks say that chemistry works "if Allah wills". It was Aristotle who formalised what had long been an unease of divinity among the scientists, into an ethic; but it took until Francis Bacon to get the process right.

A moderate Conservative, like Socrates, won't care too much about which theory of origins is taught (as long as it's not too weird) - but no Conservative can accept a theory which excludes the divine. The Conservative wants moral instruction and s/he thinks you need a personal God to give it. That is why the "nothing but mammals" meme is so common on ID proponent websites. That is why Ben Stein drew a line from Darwin to Hitler. That even explains why "intelligent design" keeps away from Genesis. Conservatives see that science demands an ethic but not a morality, and so they distrust it. They might make allowances for nerds, but for normal ("neurotypical"?) people they want to replace it with piety.

There is no way to teach science that a believer in miracles can accept. That explains Conservative opposition to it. Fortunately for science education in America: most of our Conservatives don't take their morals and metaphysics to their logical conclusion, and most of our science teachers practice taqiyya in their dealings with the PTA.

Labels: conservatives, science, secularism

posted by Zimri on 15:01 | link |

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Joseph Cao needs our help

Another one of the moderates on the list: Joseph Cao (R, LA). He's the guy who beat the corrupt Jefferson last year - he didn't get the majority of the black vote, but enough blacks didn't vote against him that the rest of the district boosted him over.

I hold Cao to a different standard than I hold the despicable Kirk. Cao is genuinely vulnerable, in a district that is going away, and of an ethnicity (Vietnamese) which is not well represented in his own district (or any other). So when I hear the media courting Cao as another "moderate", I view Cao's response more as a cry for help than as a Kirk / Snowe bid for power.

When I come into contact with Louisianans, or read about the place, it usually involves something ugly like ruling against miscegenation. As a result I suspect that Louisianans put Cao alongside Jindal and slap the label "diversity quota" on that box. This frees them to ignore the weaker Cao over the prominent Jindal. This attitude is depressingly common. I expressed a "concern-troll", you might call it, over at Ace's; one "tmi3rd" helped me gain some perspective on the case. But he's one good guy in a state with a lot of bad guys.

It will be difficult to overcome some of the attitudes I've seen in that state. I think that Cao knows it, and that Cao is telling his Party not to take him for granted. He wants to be seen as someone who listens to his constituents (even if they're wrong). In short, he wants a career as a Louisiana Republican. I think he can help the Republicans, and the nation, in that capacity.

I hope that non-bigoted Louisianan conservatives are involved in their local precincts, or can at least write to someone, who can then get in contact with Cao and help him build a deeper foundation as a Louisiana conservative.

UPDATE 11/12: Okay, forget him.

Labels: conservatives, race, republicans

posted by Zimri on 17:10 | link |

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

A better Tea Party?

Well, this is heartening. (h/t, Insty.)

You'll recall that I went to the 3 July shindig, most of which offended me to the point of revulsion. I'm glad to see that the movement has improved.

Labels: conservatives, liberty

posted by Zimri on 23:55 | link |

Monday, October 26, 2009

Know your place

I think this blog's bias might be toward aristocracy.

I'm not talking about bringing the House of Lords back into the US (the Lords these days are a bunch of Labour Party hacks anyway so, no thanks). And I'm not so undemocratic as to support the Sulla solution.

Aristokratia means, literally, "rule by the Better Sort of people". But I take it as locally-applicable. In my place in the world, I can strive to be the best I can; and I will know enough not to dabble too far in stuff I'm not so good at. We would all be happier if we all learnt our place.

Religious people tend to reject modern science; some of them claim that their religion forces them to. When they propose to affect scientific standards, that causes trouble. Religious people are still good at preserving cultural and moral norms. They just need to stick to what they are good at, within their limits.

I was born in the UK, and raised in elite-ish circles, and I didn't have significant contact with the average American until I first ventured into an AOL chatroom in 1996. Someone like me shouldn't be elected President and, as it happens, I legally can't be elected President. I'm not sure I should be running for any public office. I know my place and it's not public office.

So, that in mind, let's talk gay marriage. Here, as elsewhere, homosexuals want to be treated the same as heterosexuals.

Conservatives, and most people in general, counter-argue that self-perpetuating cultures have an interest in promoting - that is, discriminating in favour of - stable heterosexuality. The demand for equality for group B must necessarily mean the loss of prestige for group A. That's fine and dandy if group A doesn't deserve its prestige. But in this case, Conservatives insist, group A does deserve it. If heterosexuality loses prestige in a given culture, that culture will die.

I side with Conservatives here. But I reject Andrew Sullivan's contention that this means I have "contempt" for him. (Beyond my general distrust of humanity, of course.)

The culture retains an interest in recognising reality (as with evolution). The two relevant realities are that homosexuality is an innate trait that cannot be changed, and that sex is dangerous. In that spirit, society has an interest in taming sexuality among homosexuals - as among heterosexuals. Therefore I disagree with National Review insofar as that a system of state-sponsored monogamy makes sense for homosexuals. This would be a second-tier of interpersonal contract - "civil union" - with a limited slate of rights associated with the first class (which is marriage).

What Sullivan doesn't seem to understand is that just because I put him in a lower caste on this issue, that doesn't mean I think he has no place at all; and I would put him on a higher caste on other issues. He has this opinion that it's all or nothing. This sounds narcissistic to me.

It's not that I have anything in particular against homosexuals. They, and Sullivan, just don't matter all that much to me. I've got an inventory of many other nails who stick out too far and need hammering down - including religious Conservatives, and including marginal-Americans (like myself and Obama). Besides even gays should have more important concerns.

Everybody should make their peace with the state they live in. For those who feel like overreaching - imagine what you'd get if the culture collapsed, went Muslim, and/or went through a Reaction. Rather less than what you have now, most likely.

Labels: conservatives, ghey, misanthropy

posted by Zimri on 16:34 | link |

Friday, October 23, 2009

Look into a publisher, the publisher looks into you

The long post just below agrees nicely with a discussion they're having over at Zombie's. The gay-rights movement, like the Conservative movement, has its own library and (therefore) its own publishers. Where the Conservatives have Regnery, homosexuals have Alyson.

Say a mainstream conservative wants to publish a book. He would consider Regnery as a prolific publisher with similar interests. But Regnery puts out a number of books of questionable content: in 1996, for instance, it put out �Inventing the AIDS Virus� by Peter Duesberg. (And then there are the Politically Incorrect Guides�) Someone who gets published by Regnery faces a real risk of having others dismiss him by association as a nut bar.

Or, take the book Tales Out Of School. This just dealt with growing up gay. Mainstream gays like it. Alyson has a reputation for putting out books dealing with homosexuality and youth, so why not?

...You see where I'm going with this. Alyson wasn't at core a gay-oriented publisher; it was a paedophilia-oriented publisher - which is owned by Pat Califia, and which issues forth a literature so vile that I can't repeat much of it here. (Go to Zombie's.)

Rogue publishers like Regnery and Alyson have no problem with putting out a book which is both true to their overt mission statement and of high quality. But any activist publishing outfit ultimately has to cater to activists. Since activism attracts sociopaths, a nontrivial number of books by activist publishers will be evil. The publishers' motives for publishing good books will be less than pure, and their record of publishing infamy will taint the good books under their imprint (unfairly perhaps).

I think the takeaway from all this has to be, if you are a prospective author then BE CAREFUL. In addition I think some of the more reputable publishers might consider not ruling out gay books, or conservative books, out of hand as "fringe". Some of these books aren't inherently fringe and they shouldn't be pushed out to the edge so easily.

Labels: conservatives, ghey

posted by Zimri on 19:23 | link |

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Proteaniety

I should disclose, in the context of the post below, that I'd not seen Jeff Goldstein as being on my side for some time even before this year (for instance, the Newdow affair; he sided against), and going through his archives... I see no reason to change that assessment.

For instance, the snark on Intelligent Design this April: "Or, can�t we just all get along? Because if not, so help me, people: Locusts!" The April post had a link. Surely the source would explain how creationists and biologists could "get along" ...?

Sadly, no! (As they say.) The source was not all Jeff G pretended it was. The source separated evolution from biogenesis and said of intelligent-design (accurately) "it�s not scientifically falsifiable, first of all, which means it isn�t a scientic theory, regardless of how vehemently the anthropocentic proponents of irreducible complexity insist it is". "Irreducible complexity" is precisely the argument of god-of-the-gaps intelligent design. So which is it - is intelligent design something that can "get along" with biology in a classroom? or is it something that needs to stay out of that classroom? DOES NOT COMPUTE [ERROR] [ERROR] [ERROR]

When I see a disconnect like that, I have to go look at the context of the piece which created the disconnect - that is, of the April post. This was the morning after the Protein Wisdom attack on LGF and on its then commenters (including me), for being overly solicitous of Obama in his eyes. In that context, his "locust" comment was another you're-being-obsessed concern-troll leveled at LGF, of which the latter site then had too many.

The Jeff G of the source comment (assuming he were consistent) would have praised Charles Johnson's recent posts on the topic. At least he would have approved Johnson's posts concerning Texas (and Louisiana); the intelligent-design crowd down here want to neuter classes of evolution, even before anyone gets to life's "first cause". The Jeff G of this April doesn't care.

Jeff G is also not bothered about theological creeds slipped into our patriotic standards, although that insouciance is more longstanding. I've opposed his de minimis poo-poo'ing almost since I first found his blog (the link I posted there has gone bad, so you will need to go here). "De minimis" means, it's something I've got to "lighten up" on. That's bullshit. What about the people who fight to put this crap into the so-called "public square" - how about they start lightening up? Since the lightening-up only goes one way, this has to be about something else.

That something else, and his dissonance over intelligent-design, is simply that Jeff G has chosen a side. That side happens to have a lot of Conservatives in it. He is not going to tell them anything they do not want to hear. He has sacrificed his objectivity and, on the subject of the church and state particularly, I question whether he is even speaking his true mind.

Since Jeff G appears to disapprove when people give a guy the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure he'll appreciate it when I don't bother for his sake: Mr Goldstein is a talent wasted in ideological hack-work.

P.S. / UPDATE: Barrett Brown of True/Slant has reported his own experience at PW.

Labels: conservatives, secularism

posted by Zimri on 18:11 | link |

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

I Gots A Peace Prize: A Review

I'm hearing a lot of Steve Crowder out in the right-wing circuit. I first heard of him from a shambolic "We Didn't Start The Fire" parody (at FrontPageMag.com, although I don't see it there now). Then I caught him right here at the 3 July Tea Party (his wit n' wisdom - "Obama looks like a photo negative of Alfred E Newman"). Now I find that Mr Crowder has "dropped", as they say, a new video: the rap I Gots A Peace Prize.

It's instructive to compare Crowder's parodies with those of Weird Al Yankovic. Weird Al's "Germs" derived from several Nine Inch Nails songs. One does a style parody of a charged genre for one reason - to compare an example of misbehaviour (in the new lyrics) to the pathologies underlying the original (in the shared tune). When Weird Al did "Germs", he was mocking paranoia in the style of frequently-paranoid Trent Reznor. With "Trigger Happy", he was mocking careless gun owners to the tune of a carefree surfer melody.

Crowder's video was gangsta rap. Weird Al has done gangsta rap too: in all cases, to compare his real target to the urban underclass. "All About The Pentiums" and then "White & Nerdy" both lampooned computer-nerd braggarts. Crowder, then, is saying that Obama's Nobel is ghetto. His video is a similitude like Limbaugh's.

Crowder's video is more violent than Yankovic's nerd parodies. Crowder waves a pistol around; Yankovic, as far as I remember, didn't. This brings up primal emotions of rage and terror in Crowder's audience. Crowder also chooses to rap in a Black rapper cadence; and not in the conversational tones of Vanilla Ice and the Bloodhound Gang, nor in the street-brawler snaps of Eminem and the Beastie Boys.

~~As a result I'm not sure who is Crowder's target.~~Crowder is going after the Black community as a whole. If the attempt was to attack Obama as a poser, then he would have done better to rap like a white guy (or to choose another genre entirely). ~~If the attempt was to go after the Obama supporters in the Black community, then the attempt was misguided~~ - surfing around turns up that most Black Obamists on the internet are NOT jumping up and down with pride, but mildly embarrassed by the Prize. But Blacks on blogs are not a representative sample of the average Black person; three quarters of Black population believe that Obama deserved this prize. (h/t, JammieWearingFool.)

Crowder has talent as a satirist and is technically skilled as a musician~~; but his method is distracting~~. Rating: ~~2/5~~4/5

UPDATE 10/27: Having done the research, I find that Crowder had the correct intuition about Black psychology - and I didn't. I apologise to him. I have boosted his video's rating accordingly. Crowder is, like Rush, raising an impolite truth. Satire is not supposed to be polite; it's just supposed to be accurate. That is what Crowder has accomplished here.

Labels: apology, conservatives, race

posted by Zimri on 20:27 | link |

Rage Kewpie

What was I doing at the Village Voice? Michelle Malkin sent me, where her detractor cooked up a new sexist nickname for her: "rage kewpie".

Mrs Malkin can defend herself. It's the Liberals who are hurting themselves by belittling her. So I posted this -

Being angry and looking cute are part of her online act. But you'd be underestimating her if that's all you see. She carries a lot of influence among conservatives - far more than does, if we are keeping to the distaff, Ann Coulter. With Coulter it's all about Coulter. With Malkin it's all about politicians and power.

I've met Village Voice readers and they strike me as made of those citizens of the tri-state area pretending to be Lower East Side hipsters. That's an insular bunch. They might not have seen much of the nation's "flyover" interior. Conservative activists there, I can report, take Malkin seriously. You *could* pretend she's not serious but if you do, you might be in for a shock.

Labels: conservatives, liberals

posted by Zimri on 17:06 | link |

Michael Steele's wimpiness

Steele has since "nutted up", as Harrelson might say, but this has been eating at me for months.

Steele once sat with a failed comedian and a failed rapper. The focus was on Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" comment. I'll get into how that works, some other time. For my purpose here: the conversation then drifted, and Steele lost the game.

One of his interlocutors thought that Republican events "looked like a Nazi rally". Steele responded in the affirmative.

As I've shown below, I have no problem with people making valid racial comparisons. I just don't think Liberals ought to be the only ones who do it. Steele should have retorted that his interlocutor looked like Robert Mugabe. He might then have pointed out Obama's redistributionist ethic and support for reparations. In this scenario he would have polished up by pointing out that the Republicans are the more libertarian party and that, if one were looking for a national socialist rally, one might try looking closer to home.

And the failed rapper in question was in Public Enemy, whose members have no standing to throw out the N(azi) word. Steele could have brought that up too.

Steele was more concerned with looking nice than with fighting back. If he had fought back, no moderates would have recoiled at this. They would have seen the whole clip and caught the Left making its despicable analogies. (And yes, Steele should have brought his own camera.) The activist Right would have lapped it up.

Labels: conservatives, liberals

posted by Zimri on 16:50 | link |

A defence of Limbaugh

I believe that I've amply outlined my stance as a Limbaugh detractor who believes that Limbaugh plays to racial stereotypes.

I'm going to defend him anyway.

The analogy between any given group of minorities, and the underclass control-group of their coracial brethren, is valid when the former does in fact behave like the latter. If it offends the athletes to be so compared, perhaps the athletes should not then have so behaved. My advice to the black community: use that embarrassment, and shun those making you look bad.

People not in the offending group, who nod along to this comparison, have no need to be offended on anyone's behalf. We white people have our own embarrassments amongst us, including Rush Limbaugh on occasion - just not over this issue. When "one of us" screws up, believe me, I'll be here to point it out. (Among those screw-up upon whom we'll need to apply the cluebat-smite will be those who harass innocent black bystanders with invalid racial associations.)

People not in the offending group, who are ostentatiously shying away in horror, are phonies. They're not outraged, and I would even assert that they know Rush is right. They see a conservative making a racial remark and in that, they see a weapon.

UPDATE 10/24/2009: linked back to a similar thought.

Labels: conservatives, liberals, race, trolls

posted by Zimri on 16:35 | link |

Pandering to racial stereotypes

I learn from Media Matters (h/t, Village Voice) that Limbaugh hadn't quit the pandering to racial stereotypes as recently as 2007. There, Limbaugh was making a larger point about unsportsmanship conduct in the National Football League. In the course of it he likened the athletics to the underclass gangs, Crips and Bloods.

It's not "out of context". This is the context - he's making it mainstream conservatism to relate this behaviour to underclass thuggery. His closing "there, I said it" comment reveals the process. He had that analogy in the back of his mind all along, and then worked himself up to the point when he could throw it out there. At that point he heard himself say it on the air and, I presume, watched Snerdly's reaction. He rethought his comment, wondered if it needed to be retracted, and when no reason comes immediately to mind he put his stamp on it.

He could just as easily have compared the athletes to any other group of criminals, but he chose the group who just happened to be caste minorities. THAT, dear readers, is what pandering to racial stereotypes looks like. It is time to quit arguing that Limbaugh didn't mean to evoke race.

Labels: conservatives, race

posted by Zimri on 16:17 | link |

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Rush Limbaugh

Rush Limbaugh is now being accused of racism. I've been on the Limbaugh beat before. As mentioned there, I used to be a fan, and then got tired of him. I was accusing him then of pandering to racial attitudes ("the Bronx" in the context of violence) ~~and anti-Semitism~~ back in the mid-to-late 1990s. It's been over a decade and an addiction since; so I am now willing to allow that he's mellowed. In any case the specific "quotes" latched to him now, are bogus.

On a purely theoretical level I have to support Limbaugh against smears to his character that he doesn't deserve. On a more personal level, I know that running Limbaugh out of the public discourse would be a bad precedent, because if Limbaugh's enemies were to win which private citizen would be safe? However I must repeat that I still don't trust Limbaugh and, I will explain here why not.

Limbaugh is to blame as much as is any other Conservative pundit for making modern Conservatives into the obscurantist sect they are today. I was pointed to these comments back at LGF, which had that fabled "obsession"; but Limbaugh's words speak for themselves, March 18 2008:

Ben Stein has a new movie out. He brought it by my house Friday afternoon to screen it for me. It's called Expelled. It is powerful. It is fabulous. And here's the premise of his movie. The premise is that Darwinism has taken root, taken hold at every major intellectual institution around the world in Western Society, from Great Britain to the United States, you name it. Darwinism, of course, does not permit for the existence of a supreme being, a higher power, or a God. His interviews with some of the professors who espouse Darwinism are literally shocking. The condescension and the arrogance these people have, they will readily admit that Darwinism and evolution do not explain how life began. One of these professors said it might have been that a hyper-intelligence from another planet came here and started our race. This from some professor either in the UK, I forget where it was, but can't be God. These people are so threatened by the existence of God, they will not permit intelligent design to be discussed. Professors have been fired, blackballed, and prevented from working who have deigned to try to combine the whole concept of evolution with intelligent design.
Ben Stein's new movie is going to open to a thousand screens pretty soon, it's not out there yet. It's called Expelled. But the point of it is that these people on the left are just scared to death of God. It threatens everything. We, on the other hand, recognize that our greatness, who we are, our potential, our ambition, our desire, comes from God, and as part of our Creation, this natural yearning to be free and to practice liberty. That is how we think this country came to be great. It is how we think this country will continue to be great and to grow.

This wasn't an aberration. April 8 (after a wholly irrelevant comment about the Higgs boson):

Ben Stein has a movie coming out that I have screened at my house, it's called Expelled, and it is about people, scientists who are being fired and shunned for their belief in intelligent design. These are Darwinists. Just for questioning Darwinism and just for being open to the possibility of intelligent design. These people fear God. These scientists, they fear God because God has the answers, God's smarter than they are. God's judgmental. That's one of the things that liberals and atheists hate about religion anyway is that it's judgmental. But regardless, I think you'll find some scientists, physicists particularly. I can't remember his name, there was one old coot who is close to death, and this goes back a year or two ago, but he'd been a lifelong opponent of the whole notion that anything here was created, that it was just random and miraculous but there was nothing intelligent behind any of this, and he's finally concluded, near his deathbed that an accident can't explain this. He wouldn't go so far as to say that there's a God. In fact, one of these guys in Ben Stein's movie, guy named Hawkins who's over at Oxford I think, Oxford or Cambridge, Ben Stein goes over and interviews him in this movie, Expelled. The movie hits April 12th or the 16th. And he said, "Can you explain the origins of life with Darwinism?" "No, we can't. Well, actually we can, but we don't."
Stein then asks him, "Where did all this come from? The guy actually says, "Perhaps an intelligent race from outer space landed on our planet gazillions of years ago and got all this rolling. But there's no way," says Hawkins, "it could be God, there's just no way. But it might be some people from outer space." And this guy is an elitist theorist and professor at Oxford and Cambridge. It's a fascinating movie. Eighty-two percent of the people in this country believe in God. Forty-one percent are Darwinists. Darwinists are more than just believing in evolution. Darwinists are now a very closed society, they do not allow anybody to disagree with what they think. They shun and fire anybody in their midst that is open to anything other than Darwinism. Darwinism is natural selection, survival of the fittest, actually eugenics. Darwinism seeks to get rid of people who are not up to par. Darwinists are not big tent people. They are not big tent people.

By saying that "Darwinists" are not big tent people, Limbaugh is saying that those who insist on scientific standards for biology are bigots, unworthy of the Conservative brand. Limbaugh wants to run people like me out of the Conservative movement.

I am not saying "good riddance", despite Limbaugh's provocation.

I would be more prone to support Conservatives, and non-Conservatives would be less able to attack them, if Conservatives were more consistently on the side of basic science. The global-warming skeptics are on the side of science; but most scientists won't take them seriously because of the skeptics' association with Conservatives and therefore, evolution deniers. The human-biodiversity crew are also on the side of science; but they can't get the support even of most Conservatives, because most Conservatives (I would say: all Conservatives in the best standing) can't support the basic premise of evolution and, thanks to Ben Stein, think it's Hitler-ish.

I cannot shake the feeling that the obscurantism of the Conservative brain-trust is a big part of what continues to drive Internet pro-Conservatives, like Charles Johnson and his remaining commenters, into becoming vehement anti-Conservatives. It certainly tempts me into becoming yet another "moderate", "independent", comment-board troll.

UPDATE 10/20/2009: Since I misremembered which names Limbaugh cited, I can't say I remember how he said them. That means the charge of antiSemitism is entirely unwarranted. I apologise to Limbaugh and to all his fans for that error. Thank you "lopki" for calling me out on this.

Labels: conservatives

posted by Zimri on 18:50 | link |

Saturday, October 17, 2009

True Love Waits

I posted this a week ago or so at GayPatriot, and was trying to lead into it below, but I got sidetracked. I've come up with a more focused, Poe-based theme on that post and will carry on here.

I don't think that social conservatives need be the enemies of homosexuals. Conservatives (as I've defined them) can't support a so-called "gay agenda". But that's mostly because they can't support any agenda of change. They are inherently reactionary.

Reactionary ideas can help gays though. One such idea is that people have a deep down human nature. If that's true then gays can't be reconfigured any more than an albino can be magically turned into Barack Obama, or an autist into Casanova. This should keep Conservatives from persecuting gays. For the most part you don't see anti-gay slurs on Conservative blogs. (You do see them on neo-Nazi fora, but they're infected by eugenics and other progressive memes.)

The reactionary theme "true love waits" also derives from social conservatives. And it turns out that such a theme would save gays from much the same grief that plagues other sexually-active subgroups like, um, heterosexuals mingling at the local pub.

I would urge social-conservatives not to overplay their hand, such as the variously grim and silly efforts to "convert" gays (perhaps reaching its nadir at Alan Turing); but conservatives do have a few themes which are gay-friendly, and advice that works for gays as well as it does for everyone else.

Labels: conservatives, ghey

posted by Zimri on 15:26 | link |

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The cultural Right

Anyone else bored with Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism? It's a decent book, especially when touching on Woodrow Wilson, but it's led to an epidemic of pick-n-choose Conservatives trying to cast the Nazis as belonging to the Left. This is an embarrassment, or should be. I think even Goldberg himself has to be tired of his fans citing that book.

People should put the Nazis, and other political phenomena, in a background of culture. For instance, John Derbyshire in NRO has said this: "Barack Obama was raised in an atmosphere of cultural Marxism". This is not a controversial statement among Conservatives (or Marxists). It shouldn't be controversial to anybody.

But if there is such a thing as cultural Marxism; then one can hardly object when we posit that there is also a cultural far Right...

Say we take a snapshot in time, to Weimar Germany. The most authentic reactionary party there and then was the German Nationalists. They didn't get a lot of votes but they owned the military's ex-officer corp, the landowners, ... the aristocracy basically.

It pleased the Nationalists, in March 1933, to throw their support alongside the Nazis to get Chancellor Hitler his Parliamentary majority. With that, "first they came for the Communists" and, you know the rest. To put it another way, the right-wingers in Germany looked around and they found the most congenial major party to their Weltanschauung to be - the Nazis.

The Nazis were trolling for support among right-wingers as long ago as that Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 - alongside Ludendorff the war hero.

The cultural far Right is not a Liberal myth; it is an inevitability on any bell-curve of political thought. It is, further, susceptible to Nazi arguments. If right-wingers at the time are telling you they're cool with Nazi rule, you should pay attention... not cover your eyes and wish Jonah Goldberg would come hold your hand.

On the far Right's own terms, a Mencius Moldbug might argue the Nationalists should have ignored the Nazis, and taken over the state themselves "to restore order". The Night of the Long Knives would then have taken out Hitler alongside all his SA buddies. Instead the Nationalists decided to follow another path, maybe because they figured it was easier. This path to the Dark Side has a name: Tory democracy. In Moldbug's words, "The basic method of Tory democracy is to appeal to the masses to support a non-democratic, ie reactionary, form of government." Tory democracy is not equivalent to Conservatism, nor to fascism; but Tory democracy can corrupt Conservatives, and lead them to the fascists. (Where did I find that out? From the last chapter of Jonah Goldberg's book.)

Labels: conservatives, fascism

posted by Zimri on 19:11 | link |

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Conservatives and history

Among the "Conservative library" - and not just the Politically Incorrect Guides - there are books on slavery and on American history. (Some of this is being hashed out at the blogmocracy.) Since we've established that the PIGs are works of propaganda, we should look for what the PIGs are squealing about with respect to the Southern Question.

The PIGs (i.e., Conservatives) don't have much of a theme here; but in general, are arguing "we're not as bad as you think".

One point they raise is that slavery didn't start out because of racism. It's often pointed out that slavery was about profit. It isn't as often pointed out (on any side of the debate); but I think it's relevant - in the 1620s while slavery was growing in the American South, it was also growing in Barbados. Labourers had a price tag in the Caribbean - might it not be profitable to carry them further north? So at the root of slavery in Virginia, we might blame greed and bad decisions by courts (like Johnson vs Parker, 1654). The racism came later, to justify what was being done; there was already a racist literature, Goldenberg has shown, from the Arabs, and this could be and, so, was imported.

However Conservatives are still stuck with the racism from 1700 to, well, now. Virginians (and white Bajans) had the opportunity not to indulge in outright Zanji slave-taking. They failed. Going on a nitpicking tear is fun and educational. It doesn't absolve the Colonies, or their State successors, of a damned thing.

Conservatives get themselves in more serious trouble over Abraham Lincoln, who they claim was (among other faults) racist. That's not true; for a start Lincoln is documented as becoming personally more well-disposed to blacks' rights over the 1860s. As a rule if it cites DiLorenzo with a straight face, it's propaganda.

Conservatives have cognitive dissonance over Lincoln. On the one hand he's the one who won the first election for the Republicans, today a generally Conservative party; and he united the nation (although that's arguably more a fascist notion than a Conservative one). On the other hand Lincoln interfered in local governance; which then led to Reconstruction.

Conservatives tarring Lincoln as racist is a mere tactic (tu quoque specifically). Conservatives don't believe it themselves. Liberals and "neo-con" Republicans have always claimed Lincoln's values as their own. Conservatives by contrast want Lincoln to be a "complex" character, which their opponents can't use against them.

What we're dealing with, in both the case of slavery's origins and that of Lincoln's motives, is myth. Conservatives love their country; they want to keep loving her, and they want to defend her against those who don't. They also define "their country" in terms of family and local community; to which country, Lincoln delivered its greatest defeat.

Labels: conservatives, propaganda, race

posted by Zimri on 17:49 | link |

The Conservativally Correct Guides

There exists a market for quick-lookup guides for neophytes on a variety of subjects. These guides are prone to following conventional wisdom, and some have been hijacked by propagandists. Those people who dispute, and cannot get their views heard in the mainstream, have struck out on their own.

Hence the Politically Incorrect Guide series, abbreviated "PIG" and decorated with the expected cutesy porcine icon. The PIG series lays out cases for several ideas, which it associates in a bundle. It assumes that the reader who likes one would like the rest. The PIGs survive because their editors were right; there is a market for such a series. The market in question agrees entirely with the market for the Human Events.com Book Service. To sum up: the PIG series represents White American Conservatism, and is propaganda for that sect.

That's not necessarily bad. It's a truism that one can do propaganda for righteous causes, and that it can even be true. Capra's "Why We Fight" series is propaganda. It may as well be history.

Seen that way, some of the PIGs' cases are better than others. Spencer's guide to "Islam and the Crusades", one of the first, remains one of the better ones. Kantor's guide to Western literature was the best.

But as we'd expect in a pig-trough, there's rubbish mixed in with the good stuff. Wells' book on "Darwinism and Intelligent Design", Bethell's on "Science", and Hutchinson's on the Bible are all rotten. I'd argue that Hutchinson goes as far as an assault upon history and is, therefore, the worst of the lot.

If there's a PIG in your library, your library is a pigpen. If you write a book for this series, you're covered in mud.

I also venture that the Conservative library shows us the Conservative mind. It is great on literature, good on Islam... bad on science.

Labels: conservatives, propaganda

posted by Zimri on 17:00 | link |

Sunday, October 11, 2009

Can Blacks be conservative?

It may happen that someone from an otherwise-Liberal ethnos will cross over to join a party filled with Conservatives. I have in mind here Blacks but this can equally apply to central Mexicans, Guatemalans, Somalis etc.

Some Conservatives on the Internet treat minority Republican-voters as movement leaders. Other Internet Conservatives, like Steve Sailer, don't talk about "black conservatives" much beyond a few references to Booker T. Washington. Conservatives off the Internet barely know that they exist.

Some Black conversions to the Right side are attributable to Christianity. Others are attributable to idealism. Since these converts will not get much support from their friends and family, they hook into the Conservative movement on the Internet where there is a community.

The idealist is a conservative of the mind, not of the heart. It's questionable as to how far they can speak for the Black community. This contributor to Black & Right grew up in a White neighbourhood in Massachusetts. He might have more in common with me. As such, he is not Conservative in the Romantic, "RS McCain" sense; I would argue, not a Conservative at all, but a Burkean ally to Conservatives at most.

Afrocity strikes me as a true Conservative. She grew up in a community of people like her and, so, has roots. In her case, she is, or was, a voter for Democrats like Hillary Clinton. Voting Republican would be more difficult for her than for intellectuals like Sowell or B&R.

Blacks can certainly be Conservative, but Black Conservatives will probably not vote Republican. The more Afrocity (say) tilts to the Republicans, the less rooted she will become to her own kind; she will become more ideological, and so less Conservative.

Labels: conservatives, race, sailersphere

posted by Zimri on 19:14 | link |

Conservatives in the mist

Robert Stacy McCain is a controversial blogger. He is Southern-born and proud of that. If he filled out a Census, he would write his ancestry "American"; most citizens instead prefer to call themselves German, Black, Irish or (in my case) English. I take him at his word that he speaks for the base Conservative.

In nineteenth-century terms, his Conservatism is a Romantic movement.

For the Conservative, Americanism has a mystical meaning. It is rooted in love of the land and of fellow tribesmen. This is what Europeans will immediately recognise as �blood and soil�, or �nationalism�; but the best word I know of is Ibn Khaldun�s asabiya.

From his standpoint, the Conservative is free to rank his fellow citizens on personal kinship and degree of fealty to America. His "Americanism" is tied to the local community, public ritual, and military service or at least belonging to a family with active duty members. It is not about the founding documents or any other set of abstract beliefs. Thinkers who argue for Conservatism exist - like Edmund Burke - but they are not, themselves, Conservative. (Burke was a Whig.) Even the Constitution is secondary to a Conservative if it conflicts with what he is used to. This sets the Conservative apart from ideological allies, like libertarians and reactionaries - even Mormons.

Conservatives retain the right to discipline members who call into question the common ideals of the community. These days the heretic is usually a Liberal.

Conservatives see no need to discipline members who are following a fundamentalist strain of the local faith. In a dispute in which side A is arguing for something clearly stupid but with a cultural basis in the community (Creationism, or Josh MacDowell), and side B is arguing against: Conservatives will pick side A as it is, at least, their side.

Conservatives join the Democrats if they are Black or central-Mexican; they join the Republicans or the Constitution Party if they are White, north-Mexican, Cuban, or Vietnamese.

Labels: conservatives, religion

posted by Zimri on 17:51 | link |

Jurisprudence v. secularism

Conservatives in the USA claim that they support "strict constructionism" and "original intent" in a reading of the American Constitution. I've found a place where they contradict.

I've posted here and elsewhere a belief that "under God" / "In God We Trust" ceremonial deism amounts to a Congressional establishment of religion at the Federal level. This is a "strict constructionist" standpoint.

However, that standpoint need not have been the "original intent" of even the near-Voltairean Jefferson. No-one in the late 1700s had Clue One about the nature of this 13.7 billion year old universe, of this 4,567 million year old planet, and mankind's 100s-thousand year sojourn upon that. Atheism wasn't intellectually feasible in the 1700s; a strict secularist at the time would have been either a genius with a LOT of faith in the science of his day, or else insane.

Ceremonial Deism, as a 1700s lowest-common-denominator, has safeguards in the form of historical precedent against growing into full-blown Calvinism etc. So, we can agree to disagree on whether Ceremonial Deism must count as a religion.

(Originally posted as an appendix to New Zeal. I still won't tolerate the de minimis argument: "get a grip" etc. But that's out of scope and I've dealt with it elsewhere.)

UPDATE 11/19: "Strict constructionism" is how Western civil law works. I've since written on that here.

However one could counter-argue that the hermeneutic (interpretation-ethic) of Constitutional law is more akin to that of Islam: appropriate to the holy writ delivered to a Prophet. In that analogy original intent is the analogue of Prophetic tafsir. The notion is at least internally consistent and falsifiable by natural means, and for that I won't dismiss it out of hand. I insist only that we are clear about our axioms.

Labels: conservatives, constitution, secularism

posted by Zimri on 17:03 | link |

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Night of the long knives

I emerge from hiatus to read on Drudge:

BLITZ ON RUSH LIMBAUGH TO INTENSIFY ON THURSDAY WITH CHARGES OF DRUG ABUSE...

AFTER DAY OF INTENSE MEDIA BASHING ON LIMBAUGH SPORTS QUOTES /// NATIONAL ENQUIRER TO ALLEGE IN BOMBSHELL REPORT: 'RUSH LIMBAUGH IN DRUG RING'... HOUSEKEEPER WORE WIRE IN SET-UP, SUPPLIED PAIN PILLS TO DEAF TALKSHOW HOST... ENQUIRER ALLEGES ABUSE OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF PILLS...

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS SET TO SPLASH PAGE ONE THURSDAY, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE.

As of now (9:30 pm) this is the only story on Drudge.

I am truly, deeply saddened to read this.

I am an ex-Rush fan. I used to listen to his radio show every day and watch his TV show every night, exactly a decade ago. His show had an immense effect on me at the time, which co-incided with and perhaps co-induced my nervous breakdown that winter. Perhaps one day I will get up the courage to post that story on the blog. For now, I will only say that even after that breakdown I still tuned my radio to his show, off and on, until about 1995 or so.

In '93, I had been moving from vague libertarianism to Horowitzian conservatism. PJ O'Rourke had a hand in pushing me on my way, but it was Limbaugh's radio and TV spots that guided me from there. Limbaugh taught me that I could be a conservative and still not a racist.

This was important to me. I had come from a British boarding school where racism was overt. Being libertarian ("Liberal", as it was then and there called) was the way you could remain anti-communist without buying into the anti-immigrant right wing. Over in the States, there is no party-label option for the old-school Liberal. That forces non-partisans into alternate means of politics. I was alone; the Internet was still a couple of years away; that forced me to the radio. And on the radio was Limbaugh.

Limbaugh - then - was keen to showcase political conservatives of any race, including Blacks. He had the Black conservative group "Project 21" on his TV spot, counteracting the standard line on Rodney King, and also counteracting Ben Chavis's hideous "gang summit". And Limbaugh was right: the Republicans cannot keep their majority or their very souls without appealing to Black support, and Blacks are not going to do well if they do not have a political alternative (even Al Sharpton agrees with this!).

Even after '94 I used to turn to Limbaugh on the radio, just to keep tabs on him. Limbaugh didn't let me down. In '96 Limbaugh commented on Colin Powell's maybe-run for the Republican nomination for President. Limbaugh said he was GLAD that Powell was running, even though they disagreed, because it would add "competition" to the Republican field: "competition is always good!", I distinctly remember.

I stopped listening to Limbaugh in '97. One day I was driving through Kirby and Westheimer, I flipped to his channel - he was commenting on a study on the Southern "honour culture", wherein a couple of academics ~~(whose last names happened to sound Jewish - there was a "-stein" suffix on one of them)~~ had pointed out that crime rates were higher down here, and that much of this was due to an "honour culture" which requires that insults be avenged. Instead of defending the honour culture, or else suggesting how it might be channelled away from fellow Americans, he played it up as an anti-South bias among academics. He lingered on the academics' names a few times, presumably because they sounded liberal or something. And at the end, he asked what might happen if the same study were performed on the "Bronx".

I read this as bordering too close to the ~~anti-Semitic and~~ racist fringe. And I never listened to him again. And, yes, there is a pattern: a look at Google will point out Rush spinning for Trent Lott last year, and that infamous "take that bone out of your nose and call me back" quip from years before.

I kept enough distance not to trash Limbaugh's name when he underwent that ear surgery. Now of course he's gone further than that, sliming a quarterback as some kind of affirmative-action legacy.

To paraphrase Hershel Shanks on John Strugnell, disgraced anti-semitic Dead Sea scholar - one can feel pity for Limbaugh's fall from grace, and for any mental anguish that has brought him to this pass. But for Limbaugh's racism - only he can shoulder the shame.

UPDATE 10/18/2009: I believe the book in question would be Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South by Nisbett and Cohen. The year is pretty much right: the book came out in 1996. But it wasn't "Epstein" he would have cited; it was "Cohen". Six years later and I missed a bit so, sorry.

UPDATE 10/20/2009: This article could be taken as to impute antiSemitism to Limbaugh. Since I didn't get Cohen's name right I probably got Limbaugh's tone of voice wrong too. I can't claim Limbaugh set special emphasis on his Jewishness. He did however put down the Bronx and I still think that's racial code, so I'm not backing off that one.