The House of David

Friday, November 06, 2009

Why is the President getting involved in New York?

According to CBS (h/t Roses): "Obama let it be known he didn't want Paterson to run because Republicans like Rudy Giuliani consistently beat him in the polls".

That would be fine if Obama were the head of the Democratic National Committee. But he's not. He's the President. The Presidency, like it or not, has a stature beyond partisanship. When The President says that so-and-so should not run, he is saying that this person is bad for the nation. That is a bombshell a President would reserve for the likes of David Duke.

Labels: fascism, obama, presidency

posted by Zimri on 18:22 | link |

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Military government in Texas

The military and civilian definitions of "order" differ; and in healthy nations there are strict roles for each, and even stricter rules for how they are to interact.

As a general principle, we don't want to live under martial law. Battlestar Galactica, in its second incarnation and earlier seasons, offered as good a reason as any: if the army is in charge, it becomes an occupation force, and an occupation force has to see the occupied civilians as the enemy. Eventually some punk will skateboard, or tag, somewhere it shouldn't and people will get shot.

Civilians revere the military when it's not ruling over them - and IMO, rightly so, as the enlisted servicemen and women have proven their loyalty to the people. Robert Heinlein understood that, and used this understanding in a bid to promote virtue in political society: that veterans should receive the franchise (and no-one else). This blog has had lukewarm-to-kind words to say about Heinlein's system here and here.

Somewhere between martial despotism and veteran aristocracy, we have the prospective of rule by military personnel who haven't yet earned their honourable discharge papers. This is the system which Texas has approved with its 7th constitutional amendment this year (hereby, "TX2009#7").

This is a VERY BAD idea, and even Heinlein wasn't proposing it. You can find a good argument in Janus's anti-endorsement.

I should have read the amendments weeks ago and raised a stink then. I did vote against it, and before that I directed readers over there; but that was clearly too little too late.

The Federal Government should implement a Constitutional clause which bans individual states from incorporating articles like TX2009#7. States which do as Texas has just done, have proven that they don't have the political wisdom to be States. A strict definition of honour would demand that our Senators and Representatives suspend their voting rights as long as TX2009#7 defines our State - and it's a sad observation of our current political situation that we can't afford to do that.

In the meantime the Oath Keepers, Sipsey Street Irregulars, Three Percenters and other pro-Constitutional groups need to get on this and see that Texas undoes its stupidity.

Labels: constitution, fascism, liberty

posted by Zimri on 17:05 | link |

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

We are not ready for this

Daily Mail says: we can create a sperm cell from a stem cell, and an egg cell from a stem cell.

The article claims this was done through embryonic stem cells; which I'm against, as a pro-lifer. But it could just as easily have been done through stem cells in the bone marrow. The researchers are talking skin cells. So I am not going to get into the embryonic / pro-life dispute here. What is going on here is bigger than that.

I see here humans being cloned by strange humans, humans who have no genetic relation to the humans being cloned. This scenario is not exactly new; there was always rape, most bluntly, but also (since 1978) we could have had forced harvesting of eggs and sperm, and in vitro fertilisation. But those methods were crude and difficult to implement. Now someone can have the needed cells when he bumps into us on the subway.

I see here the fulfillment of The Abolition Of Man (CS Lewis) toward the Brave New World (A Huxley).

If human society worldwide, the technologically-advanced nations anyway, all took part in stable, contractual unions for the purpose of procreation then I would be embracing this discovery. (I have supported government discrimination for the sake of heterosexuality; but supporters of gay marriage and even polygamy should agree with me here, within their equivalent unions.) Human society would enact laws worldwide that mandated that only a stable family had the right to this technology. This would end the curse of infertility; at the same time, no child would be born except to parents who loved them.

But if there is a theme to this blog (this month anyway) it is this: human society is not inherently nice. We are higher primates; the act of being good is a conscious effort. There are evil people in the World Jungle, who don't bother; there are even evil nations. An evil nation of high IQs - I have in mind here, North Korea - can and will use this to mix and match the genes the nation wants. They will use this to create a genetically engineered caste of bastards. Worse than bastards; they will not even know a mother's love, and their real father will be the Dear Leader.

Labels: fascism, misanthropy, science

posted by Zimri on 23:46 | link |

Monday, October 26, 2009

United We Stand

After 9/11, "The Nation Came Together" - the way two spouses who hate each other come together, around the time the cops show up. There were still signs that the necessary conversation had not taken place. One such symptom, I think, would be the bumper-stickers.

One set had the "In God We Trust" stickers. Another set had the "United We Stand" stickers.

The people who had "In God We Trust" were presumably religious and patriotic. Conservatives, in short. The people who had "United We Stand" were more secular; and I'd expect those would have been the neo-cons and the "9/11 Republicans", each a strain of Liberal voting for national-security in 2002 and, less so, in 2004.

One might see an irony in that it was the "United We Stand" people who voted against the nation in 2006 and 2008 (and 2004 to a point). But it might just be that they were national-unity people all along. They treated the national will as the national deity and, given another chance to Come Together As One, they voted for the "unifying candidate" Barack Obama. Jonah Goldberg has a word for that.

Labels: fascism

posted by Zimri on 16:28 | link |

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Internet "Bad Craziness" as social pathology

Here's a pretty good article, from Research News: EXTREMISTS MORE WILLING TO SHARE THEIR OPINIONS, STUDY FINDS.

There's a slight irony in the hat-tip. It comes from the anonymous "Vitruvius", who shares the site "Small Dead Animals" with one "Kate". Their associations with extremists bear scrutiny.

The base group of extremists I have chosen are the essayist "Fjordman" and the blog "Gates of Vienna". These two share a consistent, principled, and courageous stand for indigenous Europe against foreigners. This happens to be about the definition of "racism" although, to their credit, they don't much mind that tag either. That much is out of the pale for American Republicanism, which has been what we now call "neo-con" at least since Frémont in 1856. As a result, when Little Green Footballs called out Fjordman & Co., they were frozen out of the mainstream American Republican-leaning blogs.

Where Kate links 76 times to "Gates of Vienna", Vitruvius links 26; and for "Fjordman" the stats are similar. Vitruvius is a third the extremist Kate is. He probably sees himself as a moderate by comparison with his friends; and, being a moderate in his own mind, sees "Small Dead Animals" as a blog which accepts moderates and, therefore, a moderate blog.

I don't have much of a "blog in this fight". I know my views are extreme, if only because most Americans like democracy and I don't.

My self-awareness as an extremist may well derive from my choice to be as antisocial as possible. People in a community, like cobloggers (here, Vitruvius) always establish a Somebody Else's Problem Field when they come across a friend who disseminates what the LGFers call "Bad Craziness". Vitruvius doesn't agree with all of the positions of the sites his blog has linked so many times. But he's chosen his side and he knows who his friends are. Which is a comfort.

I don't mean to pick on this one poor guy. On the Left side, propagandist scum like Jones, Zinn, and Lerner ought to be poison; ditto, ACORN. Some, like David Corn, get it. Most Left bloggers don't.

It's just a microcosm of what happens in the wider blogosphere. It's easy enough to diagnose. When you see a blogger attack the extremists in a given community, it might be a principled stand. But if the blogger is only attacking the former community, at the same time making excuses for extremists in another community, it is not. "Something else must be at work." That something is that he is a member of that latter community. He's a hack, maybe even a shill; and his pretensions to higher principle are to be laughed at.

The blogosphere enables this pathology, this willful hyperopia. Even among Sagacious Iconoclasts.

Labels: fascism, misanthropy, progressives

posted by Zimri on 15:43 | link |

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Robert Spencer, LGF, and me

Not long ago I draughted a slightly laboured epigram: "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." The link in that quote was to The House of David's first mention of Robert Spencer (of JihadWatch fame) in May 2006. That post had a parenthesis which cited the man with disapproval, but the article's main body cited his words with approval.

There's more to this saga between 2006 and now. Believe it or not.

I'll start with the positive. I do not believe that Spencer is a racist. A better such case, in the eyes of today's academy, could be leveled against me. (I'm a "believer" - I would say, accepter - of human evolution, including into the modern period.) Second, I don't have a problem with his belief in Western cultural superiority; except to quibble that by comparison with the Chinese culture, this may turn out to be a matter of preference only. Third, where he argues that democracy doesn't work for some cultures, I can't argue with that. Here too I may be more authoritarian than he is. Lastly, Spencer has an enviable grasp of Islamic history, language, and culture; and has written and edited several books, of which I cannot do other than recommend The Truth About Muhammad. Robert Spencer matters.

My fundamental disagreement with Spencer has to do with the Crusades. Spencer is still fighting them. He argues for the cultural and Christian West. There's a slogan for that in German: ein Reich ein Volk ein Gott. In my opinion this path can lead Conservatives at least to oppressive and, worse, sclerotic government if not to capital-F Fascism. The systems of government I would hold up as alternatives are probably not your cup of tea either, but at least I want a State that can be reasoned with.

Around the time I was lurking in LGF, among the commenters there was one Kejda "Medaura" Djermani. Medaura had already brought up Spencer's associations with the fascist (and not just right-wing) fringe in Europe, but did it in a less sober format than in the link here.

In 2007 I registered with LGF and, in their parlance, became a "lizard hatchling". I was not, then, on Medaura's side against Spencer. I was on her side that Kosovo is Albanian turf. That put me against Serge Trifkovic, a viciously anti-Muslim Serb who even then I knew had at least a literary association with Robert Spencer. At this point I wasn't sure which of the Djermani-said, Trifkovic-said comments I should believe. I reached an internal initial conclusion that Medaura was a troublemaker, and so I did not then wade in.

At some point in early 2008, I believe, Spencer disappointed me finally with his blurb for Hutchison's "PIG to the Bible". At this point I fell in solidly beside Medaura.

12 September 2008, Spencer had noticed (or rather, LGF had informed / shamed him) that racists in Gates of Vienna and Brussels Journal were tagging along behind him, and so Spencer turned against them. LGF noted that in post Spencer on Cologne 'Anti-Islamisation' Meeting. I had additional thoughts in #247, 4:16:34pm (but I can't link directly thereto, because I'm an ex-lizard "stalker" now, and links hence may be redirected; so you'll need to research that and scroll):

I am pleased that R.S. has acted against racialist opportunism on that site. (To his credit he has been consistent on this.) However he still troubles me -
"2. To form one group for indigenous Europeans, as has been done in several countries, reduces virtually every issue to the one non-negotiable issue of race and ethnicity, discourages cooperation, and thus encourages Balkanization, works against the idea of representative government, and obscures the common values of Judeo-Christian civilization that are shared by people of many races and ethnicities."
Note that he can't help but slip "Judeo-Christian" into his definition of civilisation in a European context ("common values"). In place of a racial definition of Europe, he wants a religious definition.

And then came the The Great Halloween Ban. Here's my wrap-up (not among those I've apologised for - #655 / 6:25:58pm):

A certain Albanian atheist poster and I were banging on this theme for some time back in the day, that the cut of the jib of this Spencer fellow was not as likeable as one might, uh, like. Colour me unsurprised. I absolutely guarantee you that the Lady M, for her part, is dancing around right now to the strains of New Order's "Told You So".
There have been signs for months that this was in the works. Spencer's pro-Crusades contribution to the "Politically Incorrect Guide" series was a freakin' HUGE sign. Providing the blurb to the obscurantist P.I.G. Guide To The Bible was, in my view, worse.
My understanding, which I believe I shared with That Other Commenter, was that Spencer holds himself as a believer in European civilisation as European, and defines Europe in magical terms. He always claimed that his beliefs were Catholic - and maybe they would be, in Pope Innocent III's Vatican.
I hope everyone has learnt something. You see someone ranting about "culture", no matter how well you think you know him, watch out.

Some months after that LGF sent sporadic swipes at Spencer, with varying degrees of fairness. I don't even remember if I said anything.

Then, on Thursday, April 23, 2009 2:33:16pm: commenter "Bubblehead II" announced that Spencer's friend, the shrill blogger Pamela Gellar, was about to take a trip to Cologne on behalf of Manfred Rouhs's group ~~Für Volk und Heimat~~ uh, "Pro Köln". (These guys assured us they were NOT racists, because they'd invited a guy from the Society of Pius X. Apparently.) 3:37:33 pm PDT, Johnson followed up on this with a post devoted all to her - Pamela Geller: Poster Girl for Eurofascists. In this post we learnt that Pro Köln had announced Spencer as one of the other speakers.

I mused, 5:07:24pm, in #268:

Recneps Trebor has to be thinking hard about this one. He wants to be taken seriously as a scholar and overt participation in a fascist conclave would undercut that. On the other hand if he doesn't go, Geller and Belien might squeal that they've been "thrown under the little green bus".

Soon enough Pro Köln breathlessly reported Spencer's agreement, as Johnson reported the next morning 8:38:01 am PDT. Longtime commenter "Ayatolla Ghilmeini" 4:35:37pm relayed an email from Spencer that he was NOT going; but there was still no word from the man himself. Instead Johnson reported 5:43:00pm, that Spencer had posted, he was "looking into the group and the people involved".

I'd given this fracas a semi-pass at this point, but then Spencer said that Rouhs "has no neo-Nazi connections and is not an extremist". Big mistake. Charles posted the Rouhs library Saturday, April 25 at 3:56:17 pm PDT, Pro Koln Organizer's Nazi Merchandise. We all found a LOT of bad shit in that library. The merchandise Charles himself showcased included a Hess book, which I found was more properly Nazi themed than Nazi, but that was just nitpicking. In its place I found two books by Herbert Taege: a truly evil man, who was in the Waffen SS when they burned down the Warsaw Ghetto, and who graduated to guarding Dachau; I have no idea how he avoided the hangman. And it had holocaust apologetic from Dirk Bavendamm. And it had Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, Jewish Bolshevism: Myth and Reality. Other "lizards" found other material. A man's library shows the man's mind: Rouhs was absolutely an extremist, and he would have supported the Nazi regime if he had been alive. Why Spencer covered for this refuse is beyond me.

The whole mess sprayed egg upon the faces of all involved, as summed up by gegenkritic. Spencer has shown that there are few far-right and, yes, Nazi alliances he will not accept; and he has to be shamed into not accepting those. Both he and Gellar would be blogospheric footnotes by now, were it not for the subsequent self-footnoting of Lord Charles himself.

At any rate: since then, Robert Spencer has compared me to Ezra Pound, so I gather these opinions are mutual.

Labels: fascism, lgf, propaganda

posted by Zimri on 19:08 | link |

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Obama's NEA

I was reading over my past articles. It looks like Obama may have read over it too, back when the articles were up, and printed out "For whom does the artist create?". That piece had argued that the National Endowment for the Arts must belong to the Executive. That is currently the elective office which Barack Obama holds.

Under a partisan President like this one, who is Serrano's pipe dream brought to life: the result is predictable.

UPDATE 10/29 - Ave Caesar!

Labels: fascism, obama, propaganda

posted by Zimri on 16:10 | link |

Thursday, October 15, 2009

The Holocaust Museum is not a political football

If the last post seemed familiar to some, it should. Much of it was aired in the comments of... another green-themed blog. (I didn't keep a copy; and I expect the cowardly Stalinist who runs the place "[deleted]" it.)

The original controversy was about one Von Brunn, an 88 year old who shot up a Holocaust Museum. It turned out he was a S@#$%front member and all-around racist nutter. Certainly a cultural Rightist. Case closed... to the history-warping Stalinist.

Since I'm no longer under any man's censorship, I'm free to reopen the case.

When somebody shoots up a shrine sacred to Jews, that's not an expression of the cultural Right. It's not cultural Left, either, pace Goldberg. It's straight-up anti-Semitism.

For that, all anti-Semites have to take responsibility. All those in the media - and not just Von Brunn's old hangout - have added to the climate of Judenhass which led him over the edge.

How many references to "neo-cons" have we borne? How many mournful shots of teddy bears, set up just-so in the ruins of some Hezbollard's ammo dump? In Houston on Westheimer I saw "Free Palestine" bumper-stickers. Along the highway 59, inbound, just inside the I-610: a mammoth "Pray4Gaza" sign. Never mind what Hezbollards would do to Jewish children; never mind the prayers of HAMAS.

AntiSemitism is a major problem in the media today. It's the sewer in which rats like Von Brunn flourish.

It doesn't matter that Von Grunn was in the "far Right". That wasn't the story nor the proximate cause. A real "far Rightist" would have attacked the office of the ACLU. Von Brunn was a Jew-hater first.

(By making this out into some uniquely Rightist problem, LGF devolved into propaganda, and we all should have seen where it would lead, and I should have left that place then.)

Labels: antisemitism, fascism, lgf

posted by Zimri on 19:27 | link |

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 |

Monday, October 12, 2009

How Conservatives can question Obama's patriotism

Birtherism is not to be confused with Conservatives questioning President Barack Obama's American credentials generally.

By my definition of "Conservative", and their definition of "American" - Conservatives are being consistent. They even have a political-scientific point. Other nations have had problems with near-abroad foreigners migrating in and taking over. For two examples, Napoleon was born a Corsican and Hitler an Austrian. The law about natural-born citizenship has until now hindered would-be Napoleons.

But now we have a half-African (and half-moonbat), born in frontier Hawaii, raised in Indonesia, with little contact with Middle America. Noel at Cold Fury has more -

Obama is our first hyphenated-President in a way that even Catholic JFK was not. And not just as an “African-American“. He is the first to go completely through our educational institutions since the Hyphenated-Left has held sway. When academia teaches students to be loyal first to their own pigment or identity group and suspicious of the larger culture, that is the very definition of questioning patriotism.
Indeed, for all the hyperventilating cries of “How dare you question my patriotism!”, the Left has literally questioned the very basis of patriotism, the nation-state. And held up Internationalism as a higher value. He is an International-American.
He was exposed to Muslim cultures through his father and step-father; he’s a Muslim-ish-American. Who lived in Indonesia and traveled to Pakistan–a Third-World-American. He absorbed the vicarious victimhood of McCarthyism from all the socialists in his life. A Victim-of-America-American.
So why are you, as a Wondering-American, still scratching your head as to why he keeps siding against America and freedom, and with foreign governments, the UN, Third-World grifters, mullahs and Socialists?

I'm not wondering; Obama has been running this nation as a Third World province of the "international community". He has benefited from the Liberal loophole: since he's legally allowed to be President, he's playing on the same field as a generations-long patriot like John McCain.

It's annoying, and Conservatives have a serious case that Obama's election represents a failure in the birthright prerequisite for office. If we grant that it's a dangerous folly for anyone to call for Obama's ouster by mutiny as the birthers do, it remains legitimate to question whether the birthright law ought to be restricted further for future candidates. It is even legitimate to call Obama out as a Quisling, foreign in his own heart.

Because that's how he's behaved; and that's at least as equally dangerous a folly as birtherism, for a man of his background especially.

UPDATE 10/24/2009: added ColdFury's paragraphs.

Labels: constitution, fascism, nirthers, obama

posted by Zimri on 17:34 | link |