Prescient Perceptions

A view of the Cloisters with the Hudson River
in New York City

Laura Wood, from The Thinking Housewife, writes to Lawrence Auster at View From the Right:

You have done a great job over the last several days.

I agree. View From the Right has been unusually active and prescient these few days (and months).

Larry Auster responds to Laura:

But I think my message is too much for people to take. It’s getting too much for me to take.

To which Laura replies:

The alternative is denying reality and denying that things are as bad as they are.

I agree that writing about reality these days is exhausting. It is summer after all, and why not write about the warm weather, and other cheery things? But, each time I am about to do that, right next to what I'm observing, or alongside what I'm thinking, something negates this.

I'm not sure where this will lead, for now, at least. But, still, there are beautiful things to wonder at, observe and record. I will continue to do that as I go along.

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Zimmerman's Innocence and Opposition to the Lawless Regime

Lawrence Auster, at the View From the Right, has posted the links for donations for George Zimmerman. He writes:

If you believe, with me, that Zimmerman is innocent and that the American media and the Florida authorities have treated him monstrously, I urge you to do the same.

Here is the link for the George Zimmerman Legal Defense Fund.

Lawrence Auster continues:

The fact-free, lying Murder 2 indictment, the fact that prosecutor Angela Corey in announcing the indictment openly presented herself as an emotional partisan of Trayvon Martin’s parents, yet was not dismissed from her position or even criticized for this, in addition to the national media lynch mob, aided and abetted by conservatives, that preceded the indictment, all prove, as I said on April 12, that America is now—in key respects, and certainly with respect to this case—not a country under the rule of law, but a leftist ideological state. America to George Zimmerman is as a Communist regime to a “class enemy.”

As I wrote in my entry on the Fourth of July Fireworks Spectacular and Dismantling of Society:

Perhaps Macy's planned this spectacle [of fireworks] to quieten (however temporarily) the agitated mood in American politics, to distract the people, and to let Obama proceed with his dismantling of the fundamentals of the society.

I compare this spectacle of fireworks to the strategy of leftist and Communist governments who appease their people :

...through huge processions, displays of might with military marches, and various mind-numbing techniques like action packed films and streams of empty television shows. It is a strategy to wipe out people's thinking processes by a constant barrage of noise.

with the aim of:

...dismantling of the fundamentals of the society.

In an earlier entry, (June 28, 2012) Auster has written:

[T]he only meaningful form that conservatism can now take is counterrevolution, which means: opposition to the lawless regime that America now is, and the declared intent to dismantle it. Any “conservatism” short of counterrevolution is simply subscription to, loyalty to, patriotism to, subservience to, a leftist unlimited state.

Many comments by VFR readers follow this entry.

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Conservative Babies

Daughter number three, to sexagenarian
(close to septuagenarian) father Brimelow

I make a once-in-a-blue-moon click on the VDare website. I'm often greeted with unpleasant information. I stopped following the website soon after Peter Brimelow, the site's founder, married a woman forty years his junior, and soon after that he became sexagenarian father.

Well, when I checked the site a couple of days ago, after probably a year of forgetting about it, he has another baby to announce. Brimelow is close to seventy, which will make him an nonagenarian at his new daughter's college graduation, if he makes it that long. What kind of life has he subjected her to, with a senior citizen father, with his death imminent?

Such is the way of selfish, narcissistic men that "lead" the world these days. Of course, Brimelow is not a conservative, although that is what he uses to increase his website's readership. He is a libertarian.


The above photo is Brimelow with his family taken soon after his third daughter's birth. The young woman next to him is his now twenty-nine-year-old wife (about twenty five in the photo), who is thirty seven years his junior (all this information is available at Wikipedia).

His daughter from his first wife is in front, holding his daughter by the second wife. Strangely, Wikipedia has no information on the age of his older children. But here is an In Memoriam to his first wife at Vdare. It has a photo with their two children in 1996, which would make the daughter about seventeen now, and the son about nineteen. And a stepmother who is only ten years older than them. Some family.

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How Immigrants are Destroying Toronto (And Canada)

Minister Rona Ambrose (second from left)
surrounded by employees and volunteers from
Changing Together: Centre for Immigrant
Women Association in Edmonton [Alberta].

From the first two paragraphs of the article with the photo:

Edmonton− The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women, announced Government of Canada support for a new project that will help end violence against immigrant and refugee women and girls, and held a roundtable with stakeholders involved in the project.

"This is an important collaborative project between Changing Together and the Edmonton Women's Shelter that can truly make a difference in the lives of immigrant and refugee women, who are victims of domestic violence and human trafficking," said Minister Ambrose.

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The Thinking Housewife has an article on the Violence Against Women Act. She writes on violence between couples:

[M]ore than 200 studies have shown that women and men are equally guilty of verbal and physical aggression in the home. Domestic violence against women is extremely serious and women are injured and murdered by their spouses or intimates more often than men. But conflict is often initiated by women.

Many years ago, I worked for an immigrant agency. My role was a "counsellor" to assist new immigrants with integrating into Canadian life. After several years, I quit, cold turkey. Everyone was surprised. My "clients" as we called the people we gave service to, gave me good reviews. And I seemed to have had a modicum of success.

I quit because I felt that the kinds of immigrants I was seeing, mostly from Latin America (I speak reasonably good Spanish) and at that time many Somali and Ethiopian refugees, were not assimilating, and I didn't see them assimilating, into the Canadian society. Near the end of my post, I openly said that many of these immigrants/refugees should just return to their countries of origin.

During my years in the immigrant agency (early to late 1990s), new "women's issues" agencies started sprouting up to cull the government funds that were being allocated to women immigrants and refugees. Greedy and clever immigrant agencies discovered that there was money to be made on "violence against women" programs from these funds.

Now, a normal society would look at women as part of a unit of a family, either as a wife, a mother, a daughter, a grandmother, etc. But these agencies focused solely and only on women. And since their whole approach was divisive, they only ended up taking care of divisive issues.

What more divisive than "violence against women?"

I would say that most immigrant/refugee marital problems are related to the difficult financial and social problems these families experienced. And added to that, many of the men were not used to having their wives in such prominent roles, and sometimes more superior roles (from learning the language faster to getting jobs sooner, etc.). I would say that the women also behaved less traditionally subservient and possibly more antagonistically, with their new-found confidence (and attention). If violence ensues from these changes (I cannot say from my experience who initiates the violence most of the time), the women have a myriad of agencies and shelters to run to, while the men are left bewildered, angry and of course targeted as criminals.

I've had at a few men (often the situation is to embarrassing to talk about for men) recount their ordeals to me in detail, starting with a psychological blockage that doesn't allow them to continue a normal life, to missing their children. They were also profoundly ashamed that they were now known as wife batterers. I never went into the "violent" situations, but it was clear to me that the men lost the most.

I would start saying to my colleagues that such "violence" is becoming an epidemic. Many of these families wouldn't be experiencing such turbulent family lives back in their countries of origin, where there were a myriad of cultural and familial checkpoints to make sure this didn't happen.

First there was the family as a whole. In Ethiopian families (I cannot speak for other families, although I would think the situations are similar), older relatives, fathers and grandfathers (and uncles) played tremendously important roles in making sure that families were as harmonious as possible. Complaining wives did have a say. And a wife who was battered was the most protected of them all.

But of course, situations wouldn't reach the "battering" level. Through strict religious, Christian, mandates families were regularly reminded of the importance of roles and hierarchies. Only two generations ago (my grandparents' time), wives would call their husbands by the formal "vous" (I cannot think of a better word in English). A rebellious wife had many advisers (female relatives, sisters, mothers-in-law, and her own mother) to help her through whatever she was reacting against. And she may be right, so either she found a way to convince her husband of her correct, and beneficial, revolt, or other sources were found, from and elder male relative to approach the husband to the local priest, who could act as mediators and advisers. If divorce or separation becomes inevitable, again every social and cultural channel was used to prevent this. Separation was often used (with the wife "travelling" to visit relatives until tempers cooled off) to stall and put-off divorce .

In the end, although such societies look like they are full of coerced, unhappy marriages, they actually have unions which develop mutual trust, and even love.

I always said that those percentages of real violence against women were extremely small. The large numbers that are being touted everywhere I think are one of those liberal, anti-marriage, feminist propaganda, where everything and anything can become "battery" or "violence." The more one can show the inherent evil of men, the more the world can run according to women's agenda, including doing away all that claptrap on hierarchy and the outdated "king of his castle" role of men.

And women are more equal than men, in feminist language. This has torn society apart, made children fatherless (often living with the mother and with another male member who is not their father), made single women and their children poorer, and impoverished men, who often have to supply their income to two families if they remarry (alimony always comes from the man, in this equal world of ours), etc.

And it is especially brutal to immigrants, both men and women. There was a spike in immigrant men suicides in the 1990s (amongst Ethiopians to be exact, since I don't know enough about how other cultures responded to this problem). Many of these women receive welfare or some kind of government assistance, and stay it for long periods. Children grow up expecting government "benefits" which must affect what they aspire for as adults. Etc.

So, my opinion (although it counted for more than that at my counsellor job since it was based on my observations and research) was that we should find ways for these families to stay together. In terms of Ethiopian families, it was to restore some kind of traditional, Christian element, of male hierarchy within the family.

This, I think, is becoming more and more difficult in multicultural Canada, so I still say that Ethiopians should start a "return of the diaspora" movement (I said this once with a group of people, and someone told me that many, from young Ethiopians born in the West, to older retirees, are actually going back in large numbers).

Dependency on the liberal set up hasn't helped. And often, the supporters of radical liberal agendas, like those who speak for "abused" women and who support dramatic solutions like breaking apart families, are often white liberal feminist women, who have found ways to keep their own marriages and families intact (well, I wouldn't want to go in with a magnifying glass, since I will most likely find a liberal, wimpy, feminist male), but are ready to sacrifice others as foot soldiers for their cause.

The less political, and often non-white, women working at the front desks of the immigrant women's support agencies often have stable and what look like happy families (I noticed this, and mentioned it several times at my job), but they promote these ideas of family separation often because it is their job, and they have to accept it to keep their their jobs. But at some point, they too begin to believe the propaganda they are spoon fed (not for them, of course - there's always a hierarchy of recipients in the accusations and realities of battered women). But, they are participating in the destruction of a society simply because they don't, and possibly cannot, say otherwise.

For the sake of liberal rearrangement of society, everyone becomes a pawn, or at least a propaganda soldier. Those at the very bottom of that hierarchy, a hierarchy that is clearly and hypocritically present in the liberal set up, often have the most to lose. And in the case of battered women, it is the women who have somehow been convinced to discard their husbands as abusers, and who have to live a life dependent on another hierarchical superior: a cold and faceless government agency.

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Those conservatives are the death of her

Kathy Shaidle [Source: Enormous Thriving Plants]

Too bad this blogger is skewed so left, because she's funny. This reminds me that many Saturday Night Live skits were created by Canadian lefties, who put a humorous slant to their anti-Americanism, thereby making people laugh instead of hunt them down with those guns.

But, a funny (far)left-wing humorous Canadian's life is short-lived as Audrey II shows, since she now prefers to be tweetering on twitter, rather than blogging her lonely heart out.

Her blog started off full-steam with Ezra Levant lambasts. It ended about 31/2 years later with Michele Bachmann. Those conservatives are the death of her.

She's way funnier than the F³ blogger, who somehow got a footing into the internet netherworld with what I presume she takes to be (political) humor. I think people just like her crassness. A-II has linked to her here as the "unabashed, ham-fisted defen[der] of racism." Other "ham-fisted" Canadian conservative bloggers are scattered around her posts. Here's one, albeit a little more moderate. And here's an extra "ham-fisted" one, although that could be a prairies thing.

I suppose the blog's title is some kind of wishful thinking/humor, where A-II imagines her links spreading around the internet like enormous thriving plants. But, sadly, her blog doesn't make it past Michele Bachmann. Those conservatives are the death of her.

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Vdare's Senior Citizen with His Infant Child

Just telling the truth here.

Vdare is in the middle of fundraising for its blog and website. In true coercive manner, it seals off the site (and stops its contributors from posting their recent articles?) until a certain level is reached, and has posted instead a photo of Peter Brimelow with his infant daughter (in case they change it, or resume normal postings, I've posted the photo above).

He looks like a grandfather who is out of his element, with ice cream on his chin and a child demanding to be fed. I suppose there was an attempt at humor here, but Brimelow's wizened face shows a deeper anxiety, and there is no humor in the photo.

Such is conservatism these days, where the interests (best interests) of others are thrown aside for one's gratifications.

I've written about this here.

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Chinese "Canadian" Lawyer who Defended Ernst Zundel is Running as a "Conservative"

Left: Peter Lindsay at Chen's press conference

Right: The photo is a 2005 shot of a Chi-Kun Shi
at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Law
1984 alumni class reunion.

The man in the background of Shi's photo
resembles (greatly) Peter Lindsay.

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Every time I do a close scrutiny of Chinese in the West (Canada and the United States), I find a glitch. Often, it is their subtle, but hardly camouflaged, support for all things Chinese that I find troublesome. This means support for Chinese ethnicity in its broadest sense. There's nothing wrong with supporting your ethnicity, but the Chinese are getting bolder with this, whether it is to gain ethnic sympathy (as in: if you don't agree with us you're racist), or to subtly enter Canadian social, cultural and political spheres only to promote their ethnicity.

The answer I have for this is if the Chinese (first, second, third, tenth generation, or "new" immigrants) are unhappy with the unchineseness of Canada, then they have the real thing to return to: China.

My Canadian co-blogger at Small Dead Animals writes effusively about a Chinese- "Canadian" lawyer, Chi-Kun Shi, who is entering politics. Since my suspicion about the Chinese (in their various hyphenated or unhyphenated identities) will not abate, I did some digging about this possible political candidate, who is running as a "conservative."

Chi-Kun Shi and her husband, white Canadian lawyer Peter Lindsay, worked together to defend holocaust denier Ernst Zundel several years ago. Lindsay's whiteness is significant, since the white liberal male is abandoning his own womenfolk and tying knots with Chinese women at unprecedented levels, at least here in Toronto. As I've written above, Chinese men and women, of any generational residency, or immigration status, or mix, will identify with their "Chineseness" first and foremost. Even Chinese/white offspring lean towards their Chinese ancestry.

Zundel is a virulent anti-semite, who instigates Jew-haters such as White Nationalists that plan for the destruction of the Jews. He was deported from Canada to Germany in 2005 (he acquired refugee asylum in Canada after being deported from the U.S. in 2003). Once in Germany, he was imprisoned for five years, and only released in 2010.

Why defend Zundel at all? The simple argument is that everyone needs a defense lawyer. The longer answer is that if Canadian law is able to discredit this one person because he is "different," then lawyers are necessary to defend those others who also don't fit in to the mainstream Canadian society, like Chinese, black, Hispanic, etc. immigrants. In the pursuit of equality, people like Shi are actually crucifying themselves. Many of these groups, and especially anti-semite brutes like Zundel, have no love for other races.

Still, it is interesting to look at the profile of these defense lawyers that take on these kinds of toxic cases. And Shi doesn't disappoint.

In a National Post article from February 2011, Stephen Harper visited Toronto's Chinatown to meet with a Chinese shop owner who made a citizen's arrest a couple of years ago. Shi is the lawyer defending this shop owner.

According to the Post, Harper's government is amending a bill to allow for citizen's arrests:

The owner or a person in lawful possession of property … may arrest a person without a warrant if they find them committing a criminal offence on or in relation to that property and (a) they make the arrest at that time or (b) they make the arrest within a reasonable time after the offence is committed and they believe on reasonable grounds that it is not feasible in the circumstances for a peace officer to make the arrest.

This, I think is a dubious and dangerous precedence. In the U.S. according to Wikipedia:

Each state, with the exception of North Carolina, permits citizen arrests if the commission of a felony is witnessed by the arresting citizen, or when a citizen is asked to assist in the apprehension of a suspect by police. The application of state laws varies widely with respect to misdemeanors, breaches of the peace, and felonies not witnessed by the arresting party. For example, Arizona law allows a citizen's arrest if the arrestor has personally witnessed the offense occurring.

American citizens do not carry the authority or enjoy the legal protections held by police officers, and are held to the principle of strict liability before the courts of civil- and criminal law including, but not limited to, any infringement of another's rights. Nonetheless many citizens' arrests are popular news stories.

Though North Carolina General Statutes have no provision for citizens' arrests, detention by private persons is permitted and applies to both private citizens and police officers outside their jurisdiction. Detention is permitted where probable cause exists that one has committed a felony, breach of peace, physical injury to another person, or theft or destruction of property. Detention is different from an arrest in that in a detention the detainee may not be transported without consent.

Under "Legal and political aspect", this same Wikipedia article expounds:

A person who makes a citizen's arrest could risk exposing him or herself to possible lawsuits or criminal charges (such as charges of impersonating police, false imprisonment, kidnapping, or wrongful arrest) if the wrong person is apprehended or a suspect's civil rights are violated. This is especially so when police forces are attempting to determine who an aggressor is.

The level of responsibility that a person performing a citizen's arrest may bear depends on the jurisdiction. For instance, in France and Germany, a person stopping a criminal from committing a crime, including crimes against belongings, is not criminally responsible as long as the means employed are in proportion to the threat (note, however, that at least in Germany, this results from a different legal norm, "aid to others in immediate danger," which is concerned with prevention, not prosecution, of crimes).

The two quotes I've bolded above, the first from the National Post, and the second from Wikipedia, are significant in this case:

a. ...if the commission of a felony is witnessed by the arresting citizen...(National Post)

b. ...make the arrest within a reasonable time after the offence is committed...(Wikipeida)

Chen made the citizen's arrest when the shoplifter supposedly returned to shoplift again. This assumes that Chen made the correct identification this second time around, and that he deduced correctly that this (possible original felon) was back again to commit the same crime, and not just to shop for fruits and vegetables. As the Wikipedia quote in the previous paragraph states, "Chen risk[ed] exposing him[self]...to possible lawsuits or criminal charges (such as charges of impersonating police, false imprisonment, kidnapping, or wrongful arrest) if the wrong person is apprehended or a suspect's civil rights are violated."

It is interesting that Canada is essentially taking on a radical approach in allowing individuals ("citizens") a larger role in policing their neighborhoods. Does this look like the infamous Nazi and Communist strategy of turning neighbors into vigilantes? Or, allowing "street" punishments to be meted out by civilians who intercept supposed perpetrators, or perpetrators-to-be?

Chen and his two aides tied up the shoplifter and locked him up in a delivery van until they got hold of a policeman. Chen was later charged with "kidnapping, carrying a dangerous weapon — a boxcutter — assault, and forcible confinement."

Setting aside the legal quagmire that Chen got involved in, he still cannot be denied a defense, although the prosecution's case is simple and clear. But what kind of defense lawyer would take on a case like this?

Shi comes to the rescue. But she doesn't simply do her lawyerly job, but has to add her own social commentary as well. From the National Post article above, Shi says:

"This is a bill that means a lot ot Chinese-Canadians because we are such a quiet lot,” she said. “It is one of the first times when Chinese-Canadians take a leading role in instituting social change.

I don't see the new breed of Chinese-Canadians as "such a quiet lot." In fact, Shi is a testament to that vocal and increasingly belligerent group, which takes advantage of the multicultural ("we are Chinese [fill in your favorite ethnic group here]), and demand a non-discriminatory, privileged existence"). And making appeals to government to make "institutional social change" reeks of the hard-line governments that Shi's ancestors fled in looking for a free country to live in. This does not a conservative make. If they wish to regress to their pre-immigration years, Shi and her ilk should go back to China.

When will Canadians like the blogger at Small Dead Animals foster a healthy skepticism about "model" immigrants, and do the mundane task of unraveling what really lies behind these stories and individuals? I think it is a desperate attempt to find these model immigrants, in the name of multiculturalism, and Canada's favorite hobby of rendering equality to all, that drives such commentators.

On a side note, Shi and Lindsay are now divorced (according to this source). But, it is hardly surprising that with the panoply of weird cases they took on (a virulent anti-semite, pushing for dangerous citizen arrest bills, etc.), their marital environment got tainted. I think, too, that there are larger possibilities for discord in inter-racial marriages. And the demure Chinese woman is actually a myth (as Shi shows us), which, coupled with feminism and multicultural supremacy, makes white/Asian marriages more vulnerable to discord and break ups.

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Exterminationist Liberals

Image via Druge

Here is a comment by View From the Right's correspondent Daniel L. on "exterminationist anti-Semites":

I think there are two possible alternatives to Kevin McDonald being an exterminationist anti-Semite. First, that McDonald supports letting the Jews live in gentile societies, but only with some other method of eliminating Jewish influence--perhaps through a pervasive system of anti-Semitic laws. Second, that McDonald has never actually thought his positions through to their logical conclusion. This second option may seem unlikely, as McDonald would seem a man of some intelligence, but let us not underestimate the mind-rotting effects of anti-Semitism.

I am inclined to believe that one those two options is true, rather than that McDonald is an exterminationist anti-Semite, if only to give the man the benefit of the doubt that he is not a total monster.

Substitute "anti-Semite" with "liberal" (and all else accordingly), and you get the "exterminationist liberal":

I think there are two possible alternatives to [name your liberal (Obama, x?)] being an exterminationist liberal. First, that [x] supports letting the [non-liberals] live in [liberal] societies, but only with some other method of eliminating [non-liberal - conservative?] influence--perhaps through a pervasive system of [liberal] laws. Second, that [x] has never actually thought his positions through to their logical conclusion. This second option may seem unlikely, as [Obama?] would seem a man of some intelligence, but let us not underestimate the mind-rotting effects of liberalism.

I am inclined to believe that one those two options is true, rather than that [Obama, x] is [an exterminationist liberal], if only to give the man the benefit of the doubt that he is not a total monster.

I got this idea of destructive liberals from Jim Kalb's book The Tyranny of Liberalism and his article "PC, the Cultural Antichrist." Here's what I wrote (quoting from Jim Kalb's article):

I've been trying to get fascists and liberals together in my mind for a while now. Kalb writes this, as though in answer to my (silent) quest.

There are two basic solutions to those problems within modernity, the fascist one and the liberal one. The fascist solution is to say that purposes are objectively binding and therefore provide a standard of what's right if you get beaten up when you don't go along with them. On that view the purposes that count are the purposes of whoever's in a position to do the beating--that is, whoever is the top guy on the top team. So the basic principles of government are "we're number one" and "the will of the leader is the highest law."

It sounds like Triumph of the Will, the film produced by Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's visual and artistic spokesman/handmaiden. The film, which every film student watches because it really is a feat in cinematography, begins with Hitler descending the heavens down to Nurenmberg, a divine creature (god himself) come to save the decadent Germans. Little did these common folk know that his project was their annihilation, and to raise something better from their ashes. The great Götterdämmerung. It almost worked, the annihilation part, anyway.

But as Kalb writes, fascism, whether in governments or in day-to-day interactions, loses because how much beating (metaphoric or literal) are people going to take? It seems that liberals are the high I.Q.ers of fascists, and are careful where and how they land their punches.

Kalb writes:

[Facism]'s a nice clear system, and it's got some logic behind it, but it doesn't work very well. It was tried and it lost. For that reason, the liberal solution won out.

That solution is a bit more complicated. It starts by noting that all our purposes are equally purposes, and infers that everybody's purposes equally confer value. Each of us is equally able to make things good or bad just by thinking of them as good or bad. That makes each of us in a sense divine. Our will creates moral reality. Instead of the wonder-working leader of fascism you get the divine me of liberalism. It's every man his own Jesus.

So how do liberal leaders get all these equally stationed demi-gods to follow them? It is still sheer will, I would think, of maintaining a semblance of liberal equality, but working with (and secretly ruling with) brute fascistic superiority, through a lot of lying and deceiving.

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Nail Polish that's Good for the Economy

From left to right: Fashion Ave Fuchsia, Spring Street, Central Park,
Lincoln Square Lavender, Uptown, Prospect Park, Mulberry Street
[Photo by KPA]

Bright nails are fun for the summer. NYC (for New York Color) is a nail polish brand that I recently found, where the colors are named after streets and places in New York City. My understanding is that these products are made in the U.S.A., and are not imported from China. I'm not sure if that is the reason for the incredible $2.25/bottle. Overhead costs like shipping, taxes, etc. must be reduced when products are manufactured within the country. I keep wearing the peach/pink Central Park, and have had to buy another bottle, on sale at 20% off! The colors are very good, they don't run, or chip off. They stay on the nails for a good four to five days, which is the norm for most (more expensive) nail polish.

These days, cosmetics are often a cheap (or a cheaper) way to change looks, unlike, say, shoes or even a dress. This is nail polish that is good for the economy, and I'm sure Donald Trump would agree with me.

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"An Aristocracy of Incompetence "

I wrote the post below on June 28th, but I refrained from posting it until the July 4th holiday was over. The article "An Aristocracy of Incompetence" was the subject of my post, and was published in The American Thinker on June 24th. Below is my critique/review of the article.

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Here is an article at The American Thinker titled: "An Aristocracy of Incompetence" by Keith Reiler, who euphemistically writes:

[T]oday's liberal aristocracy has embraced intention-cloaked incompetence as a respectable explanation for each failure, avoiding accountability and substantially lowering the bar for quality public service.

But Reiler ups his ante when the "intention-cloaked incompetence" by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and the recently disgraced Anthony Weiner are revealed to be ideologically tainted . He ends up calling Nancy Pelosi a liar because the "incompetency" label, which may have some truth to it, doesn't work on its own.

He says similar things about Obama's evasion of reality and his joke about "shovel ready" projects. The billions wasted that Obama references may be in part due to incompetence, but a good part of the problem occurred because liberals like Obama and his administration think that their method, a type of expansive Robin Hood equalizing project, is what would solve the problems of the economy.

Liberals may be incompetent (to some degree, but that is simply a technical criticism and incompetence can be corrected), but they don't make bad decisions because they're incompetent, rather because they're following an ideology. Ideology can be corrected (i.e. changed), but it is often as deep-seated as religious belief and often needs a dramatic conversion to change it.

So, I think Reiler underestimates, and scorns, his liberal subjects. That is probably the most common, and the most lethal, mistake that conservatives make when analyzing liberal behavior. They think it is stupidity (which they translate as incompetence) that feeds the recurring theme of liberal policy failures. And for that, liberals are to be scorned. But the leading liberal elite, which determines liberal thought and behavior, behaves the way it does because it believe in its message of equality for all. It believes in the ideology. Of course, the smart(est) liberals realize that equality is not for everyone, and they run to the hills and live in their elitist gilded cages to escape mundane equality. But, they are also ultimately delusional that all these failures will somehow correct themselves over time because the belief (the ideology) is good and correct. In building this utopia, liberals are as likely to destroy themselves as everyone else, and gilded cages are no safeguard. Still, the smartest of the liberals must understand this, but dare not contemplate it in the privacy of their honest thoughts.

Once conservatives realize this, then they will understand that it is a war that has been waged by liberals. More precisely, this is a civilizational war, right to the last gottesdammerung, with the intention of undoing our thousands of years of history and culture, and replacing it with a world organized around equality.

The lessons of modern history, especially the failed socialist and communist experiments, and even those planted by Nazis and Fascists, haven't made a dent in liberal perception and understanding of reality. And one wonders how even the more practical liberals simply don't look around and realize that based on this premise of equality, the world is disintegrating under its own edifices. So, the more destruction there is, the more gilded gates and fascistic jackboots liberals implement, without batting a hypocritical eyelid, in order to protect their exclusive edens.

And like Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations, who sits in her dust-coated room in bitter reminder of her jilted wedding day, liberals will sit and behind their crumbling edifices, numb and actionless, when their great experiment fails.

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Donald Trump for Made in New York

New York Color swatches for nail polish

There is a make-up brand called New York Color (abbreviated simply as NYC which looks like it stand for New York City) available in drugstores. Their In a New York Color Minute nail polish - meant to dry in a minute - are the most fun (if that is a word to use for make-up) since all they're named after neighborhoods in Manhattan, which is of course synonymous with NYC. I think the brand name NYC opened up the creativity of the color designer, since I haven't seen other brands with such an interesting variety of colors.

Imagine wearing an "East Village" turquoise blue, or a "Park Avenue" gray. It would feel at the beginning as though I were living the sophisticated life of a Park Avenue socialite or an East Village artist vicariously through the nail polish.

Toronto Color (abbreviated as TC) just doesn't cut it. Not least because TC doesn't mean anything. During tourist season, T.O. - as in Toronto Ontario - crops up more as a gimmick than a custom. And even if there were a huge campaign to recognize TO (and a catchy TOC for a make-up line?), what Toronto locations would have the same effect as "Prospect Street" or simply "Uptown" when naming the products?

These are the NYC colors and names that caught my attention:

- Mulberry Street - beige
- Central Park - pale orange/pink
- Wall Street - pale translucent pink
- Prospect Park - pink
- Spring Street - orange/brown
- Times Square - red (as in paint the town red?)

The only problem I have is with the Wall Street very pale, feminine pink. But perhaps it makes sense since I would assume that the male to female ratio is quite high in Wall Street, and whatever women are there would have to tone down their femininity.

The NYC make-up line is very cheap. The product labels say: "Designed in New York. Made in the U.S.A. Dist. Coty US LLC: New York, NY 10016." I would think that "Made in the U.S.A." has a lot to do with the low prices.

So much for cheap Chinese products. I would support Donald Trump's presidency purely for his stand against cheap Chinese products, and his promise to reduce the Chinese hegemony on our daily products while building up Made in America.

Here is Trump talking about China and cheap Chinese products on CNN (the full transcript is here):

They're making stuff that you see being sold all the time on Fifth Avenue, copying various, you know, whether it's Chanel or whatever it may be, the brands, and just selling it ad - ad nauseum. I mean this is a country that is ripping off the United States like nobody other than OPEC has ever done before.

These are not our friends. These are our enemies. These are not people that understand niceness. And the only thing you can do, Wolf, to get their attention is to say either we're not going to trade with you any further or, in the alternative, we're going to tax your products as they come into the United States...

We would - I would lower the taxes for people in this country and corporations in this country and let China and some of the other countries that are ripping us off and making hundreds of billions of dollars a year, let them pay...

They're going to make General Motors build the cars in China. They're not going to let China - they're not going to let General Motors take their cars from this country and sell them in China. They want General Motors to give up all of its intellectual rights and at the same time have Chinese workers build the cars, something which we are not doing, to that extent. If you look at what's happening with China and what they're selling to this country - or take South Korea, with the television sets and everything else, they're making it over there. China wants General Motors to build the cars in China.

At the end, Wolf Blitzer asks Trump if he's going to run for the US presidency. Trump answers that he's "giving it serious thought." Since then, Trump has said that he will officially announce his bid for the presidency on the finale of his show "Celebrity Apprentice," a show which I'm sure taught him some hard lessons about race reality in America, and in the West in general. Trump may seem to have brushed off all those ugly "celebrity" incidents, but as a hardened businessman, I don't for a (New York) minute think he will take any of them lightly.

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Keeping Good Company

Jim Kalb's website Turnabout has a link called "Other Trads" which is a short list of bloggers who write about traditional issues. I have made that (undeserved) shortlist with other bloggers like Bruce Charlton, Mark Richardson, Laura Wood and the team at What's Wrong With the World.

Mr. Kalb recently sent me an email, commenting on my post on the actress Helen Mirren "Elimination of Beauty" where I wrote:

Ugliness rules. In clothing, in films, in art and even in our "representatives" of beauty. I don't think it is a lack of knowledge about beauty. We've developed standards and often unanimous agreement about what constitutes the beautiful. So I'm not going to into the beauty-hater's argument that beauty is relative; beauty can be objectively measured. What's going on is that people are hating beauty. It is a form of envy. If I cannot be beautiful, then why is she beautiful? It is like wealth, or intelligence, or a sense of entitlement to live anywhere one pleases. Spread the wealth, accept I.Q.ers of 91 into Harvard, let everyone from every corner of the world come into the prosperous West. Or youth. Why cannot I be as young (and attractive) as any fifteen-year-old, at my ripe old age of seventy? Such are the mantra of the equal-opportunity narcissists.

Helen Mirren in forty years of photos. From the "English Rose"
of the 1970s to the disheveled senior citizen in 2011.
From Camera Lucida blog post "Elimination of Beauty"

Here is what Mr. Mr. Kalb emailed me:

Dear Kidist,

For some reason I hadn't been a regular reader of yours, but I subscribed just recently and wanted to tell you how much I enjoy your blogging.

Your comments on Helen Mirren (who I had never heard of) are very much to the point. She's evidently clued into the fashion world, and youth substitutes for class and beauty there today. So that's what she aspires to.

I agree that indifference to aesthetic and cultural issues is a major weakness on the right. There's not much interest in the big picture, which is one reason the right keeps losing.

All the best,

Jim Kalb

There are moments when I go into into pure politics, mostly on my "Islam" blog Our Changing Landscape. But my efforts at Camera Lucida have always been to record and analyze how our aesthetics are being influenced by our politics, and that often art (or the corruption or the dissolution of art) is an early indicator of where our culture is headed.

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Vdare's Woes

Photo of Peter Brimelow posted at VDARE.Com
during their current fund raising drive

I wonder why Peter Brimelow decided to post the above photo for his fund raising drive at Vdare? Is it because it is the most current? It looks it. But, how "old" are photos which are a year or two old? Isn't better to have a complimentary photo, taken a year or two ago, rather than an uncomplimentary one taken recently?

I believe that people demonstrate their inner conflicts and troubles in their expressions. Trying to cover them up only results in conflicted manifestations. Also, I believe that people with inner conflicts have a hard time deciphering their (and others') expressions. What looks strong may be weak, what looks attractive is subtly devious.

I don't mean to malign people, but Brimelow is a leaders of some kind who is asking us, mere plebs, to be his followers of sort. Brimelow wants us to read his online magazine Vdare. I recently wrote about his marriage to a woman almost forty years his junior, whom he met...through his online magazine! And now they have an infant daughter together. A sixty-some-year-old man with a twenty-something wife, and a new baby. Old enough to be the grandfather of his daughter is one unpleasant factor. But I wonder how this young girl will grow up, with an aging father who by the time she is ready to get married - the norm being in her twenties, like her is mother now - will be a real senior citizen who should be getting ready for his last rites?

My understanding is that Brimelow is a libertarian. Libertarians' overriding motto seems to be "don't harm anyone" which gives them license to do whatever they desire, as long as it doesn't violet their sacrosanct motto. I write here [1, 2] about my email interactions with another libertarian, Ilana Mercer, and her sly revelations (they never come out with it directly, do they?) that I had to glean from her abusive emails to me that absolution through the miraculous grace of "not harming anyone" seems to be the way out for libertarians to allow the supreme individual to triumph.

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A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. And Two Pictures?

Mr. and Mrs. Brimelow, with infant child in tow.
(Photo from the H.L. Mencken Club site)

I've been debating whether to post these photos. But, they are on public sites, and are obviously meant to be looked at and commented on.

Look at the first photograph, with Peter Brimelow as a "new" (old) father but closer in age to being a great-grandfather. He's with his new wife, Vdare contributor Lydia Sullivan who writes under the pen name Athena Kerry, who is holding their infant child. From what I've read at Brimelow's site Vdare and what Wikipedia tells me, his new wife is forty years younger than him! Still, Sullivan has a hard glint in eyes like someone that goes after what she wants, and gets it. Such character doesn't discriminate by age.

The top photo was taken at the 2010 M.L. Mencken conference where Brimelow presented a paper. He took the infant girl along. I presume he did this to show her. But why that awkward expression, as though he's in the wrong place, with the wrong people, at the wrong time? Also, he shows a strange deference towards Sullivan, the way he's leaning a little too humbly towards her and the infant. Usually, a new father stands proud and straight next to his family, especially in a public setting.

Didn't Lydia Sullivan, a.k.a. Athena Brimelow, have any family members, a concerned and conservative mother who said "under no circumstances" at the prospect of this marriage? Brimelow is close to seventy. Some father he will be to a young child. Was there no one thinking of the ensuing babies, who was concerned by the prospect that they might be born, and endure such a life?

Such is the case with "conservatives" these days, who really behave like liberals. But Brimelow is an avowed libertarian, so his motto is, "I'll do what I wish, and apres moi le deluge." Yes, the whole thing is as pompous as Louis XV's famous phrase. At least his excuse was that he was King of France. What does Brimelow have? And look what happened to Louis and his reign. Or more like, what Louis wrought.

L-R: Genevieve Sullivan (sister), Grandmother Von Talbot,
Mother Deonne Sullivan, and Lydia Sullivan. (Photo source)

The second photo is of Sullivan with the female members of her family: her grandmother, mother and sister. Sullivan is at the far right. Again, I am struck by the hard edge in her eyes. Her sister is on the far left. What a difference. One would have thought that the grandmother, who looks strict and principled, might have been the one to rein things in.

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Manhood without the Validation of Women

Why homosexuals shouldn't write about manhood

Continuing with the theme from my last post on a homosexual as the main contributor for the Virtus blog of Alternative Right, this same writer has a new post up titled; "MAN vs. 'Person'." The article got quite a few negative responses.
Read the article if you will, but here is the crunch of it all. Voicing his surprise

Has Alternative Right now finally reached the level of importance where it attracts obsessive Marxist/feminist concern trolls, Trojans and evangelists?

Donovan, the author of the article, ends one of his comments by saying

if your manhood needs a woman's validation -- the feminists have already won.

It is frighteningly misogynistic and weirdly narcissistic. Why show "valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth" if not partly to validate the other 50% of the population, which is made up of women as sisters, mothers, and, of course, wives? Donovan seems to buff up his masculinity just for the sake of masculinity.

No one in the fifty-strong list of commenters has picked up on this loosely placed sentence. The conservative ones are probably got taken aback by the feminist connotations. The "manly" ones have bought the idea that men can do their thing without women telling them what to do.

But, I think Donovan is more hardcore than that. He seems to be saying that since he doesn’t need women to be virile, neither should other men.

Alternative Right is progressing into a strange site. It has embraced those elements which contribute to our culture's decadence and decline: homosexual virility, neopaganism, anti-Christianity, anti-Semitism, atheism, anti-Americanism (here is the strange article where the author denounces – crucifies – American women), and even to some extent a subtle misogyny (those "Gamers" seem to post there).

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More Strangeness at Alternative Right

A homosexual contributor for Virtus

The main contributor to the section called "Virtus: Men's Studies" at Alternative Right is a homosexual.

This is how Wikipedia defines "Virtus."

Virtus was a specific virtue in Ancient Rome. It carries connotations of valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths (from Latin vir, "man"). It was thus a frequently stated virtue of Roman emperors, and was personified as a deity.

But, once again according to Wikipedia,

Virtus applies exclusively to a man's behaviour in the public sphere, i.e. to the application of duty to the res publica in the cursus honorum.

And,

His private business was no place to earn virtus, even when it involved courage or feats of arms or other qualities associated to it if performed for the public good.

Thus,

While in many cultures around the world it is considered "manly" to father and provide for a family, family life was considered in the Roman world to be part of the private sphere. During this time there was no place for virtus in the private sphere.

This separation of the public from the private makes sense if one accepts that having children is a natural aspect of being a male (anyone can have children), whereas courage in war needs to be cultivated, as does good judgment in public office. In addition, these two public duties are selective – some are more courageous than others, some have better judgment.

While any man can have children, being a good father and family man is not intrinsic to everyone. It is something that needs to be taught and cultivated. And some are better fathers, and better at maintaining their families, than others.

At the cost of refuting a whole tradition of Ancient Rome, I will say that at least in our modern world, a man as a heterosexual being, who has a family of a wife and children, and who maintains that family through the years, ranks high with the virtue of Virtus. Various levels of heterosexual men (married without children, unmarried) can also subscribe to this virtue.

In my humble assessment, I think to qualify for Virtus, a man needs to exhibit both these private and public qualities. This sounds harsh, but look at our modern leaders. Although the attention given to spouses and children is unduly high these days, there is a greater respect given to a leader if the public feels that the leader has accomplished an exemplary private life together with a noteworthy public career.

A homosexual can never achieve both conditions.

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Another Middle-Aged Man Still Adrift on the Sea of Life

And his adolescent obsessions

The new "right wing" website Alternative Right is becoming a source brimming with amusing articles. There are several political issues I will take on later, as I did with Peter Brimelow of Vdare (here), Ilana Mercer (here), Conservative American Indian David Yeagley (here) the Secular Right's Heather MacDonald (here). The question of right wing and conservative seems to be an elusive one, and many of these attempts reveal strange, weak points, which even I, an amateur, can identify.

Well, here is an article at Alternative Right  by some guy called Scott Locklin, which he titles "The Case For Open Borders." It is about finding non-American women for dating purposes. Locklin doesn't seem too concerned about marriage and children, although from his photo he looks like he's in his early forties. What man in his early forties obsesses about dating, like some adolescent? I noticed this same adolescent streak in another recent contributor to Alternative Right, Denis Mangan.

Locklin writes:

My F.O.B.-dar [Fresh off the Boat-dar] is so finely tuned, I can spot a Russian, Eritrean or Serb at 50 paces, and I'll know if a Korean in America was raised in Los Angeles or is from the old country long before she opens her mouth. They seem to do a decent job of finding me as well; perhaps they notice my surfeit of self-respect compared to other American men -- that's how I spot my xenosexual brothers.

What a moron. Maybe what these astute women are seeing is some American male, who looks a little lost and indecisive, who seems bent on chatting them up in a clumsy adolescent fashion, and who will certainly make a great catch for THEIR "status monkey games (muuuust get big house)," as he writes about his fellow-American women. He doesn't know the half of it.

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Libertarian Manifestos

Back by popular demand

I had been meaning to write about Ilana Mercer's reprinting of her book Broad Sides: One Woman's Clash With A Corrupt Culture for a while now. What surprised me about this was that she has clearly abandoned her paleo-libertarian and classical liberal positions, and publicizes this book as her libertarian manifesto.

Of course, libertarians are not evil incarnate, but it is interesting that she had tried to modify her libertarianism before embracing it fully once again.

As I've written before, my brush with Mercer occurred when I emailed her a few times over a span of a year on her articles at WorldNetDaily. Her replies had always been pleasant and thoughtful until in one email, I dared to voice the superiority of the Jews over the Chinese, and the possiblity for collective grief. Taken aback by her unpleasant and impersonal reply, I later figured out that my comments violated the sacrosanct belief in the individual that libertarians hold dear.

Lawrence Auster, at the View from the Right, has a post on Randians, in which he explains some of the positions of libertarians in general, and Randians specifically. It is a real worthwhile read, and actually helped clarify a few points along the way for me.

Interestingly, why is there a popular demand for Mercer's book, which she happily publicizes as:

By popular demand, my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society, is back in print. The Second Edition features bonus material. Get your copy or copies now!

Jim Kalb writes here about libertarians:

While such people aren't as numerous as their opponents, they've established an intellectual presence and influence beyond their numbers. Their advantages have been the clarity, force and refinement of their arguments, and the obvious failures of bureaucratic management.

I’ve done a small informal survey, and was astonished at the number of "conservatives" who also call themselves libertarians. With this "intellectual presence" that Kalb talks about, there is also certainly their growing numbers. Hence, Mercer's "back by popular demand" book.

By the way, the rest of Kalb's article discusses why it is difficult for traditional conservatives, and conservatives in general, to have "clarity, force and refinement of their arguments." It is not necessarily the failure of conservatives, but the inherent properties of conservatism itself.

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OK, I Understand

Our Girls

Lloyd Marcus over at American Thinker, who signs off as (black) Unhyphenated American, has written a heart-felt ode to conservative women.

He rewrote the words to the Temptations' song "My Girl" and changed the title to "Our Girls." Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham and of course Sarah Palin feature in his song. It is cute and sincere. I think is an American tradition to have such "gung-ho" women, in the mold of Annie Oakely of "Annie get her gun" fame, and many other brave and dare-devil women who are not afraid to shoot (words or bullets).

OK, I understand. 

Also, I doubt these same women would mind being called "Our girls." Ideologically leftist women are often die-hard feminists, and would never acquiesce to being mere "girls." But Marcus's phrasing is part endearment, part admiration. It fits perfectly.

Here is the link to the savvy Marcus's version, which he cuts off before the end (the album is for sale. That is also the American spirit). And he has a very good voice too.

And here is the link to the Temptations' original "My Girl."

Why don't black Americans write and sing such lovely melodious songs anymore? Well, as usual, I have my own ideas about that, and will post about it sometime soon.

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The Law of Nature and the Demise of Liberalism

Jim Kalb's calm assessment

Jim Kalb has a great article up of his speech at the recent conservative convention, the H.L. Mencken Club 2009 Conference. I mention the conference briefly here. Noteworthy was the title of the conference "We Are Doomed!" with an exclamation mark, no less.

Kalb's presentation was about the global ambitions of liberalism, and how that is moving forward in this century with the ascension of the European Union. I won't go into more details. I recommend reading the clear and concise article and also getting a hold of Kalb's recent book The Tyranny of Liberalism.

But this is what set Kalb apart from the rest. He writes of the horrendous power the EU is amassing, and predicts that all this will inevitably collapse since the principles that liberalism abides by are built in to cause that collapse.

His final statement is a matter-of-fact

So if you don't like it [liberalism], you should feel free to oppose it. It is not a law of nature that you lose. In fact, in the long run it's a law of nature that they lose.

That was what I was really trying to say in a previous post that conservatives should continue to be conservatives, since they have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. I wrote:

But, one important thing is to DO things...where small steps a movement make. This is where each individual behaves like a conservative, and not just talks about it.

Later on, I write how the traditional world is actually more innovative and more progressive than the modern one:

The funny thing about tradition is that it changes subtly through time. Innovations happen by building the new from the old; by adapting the past into our own present environments. This is what modern artists just don’t get. They are stuck in a rut with their experimentations and self-expression. The true inspiration and, paradoxically, change comes by pursuing tradition.

So while liberals stay "stuck in a rut," true conservatives are actually able to build a better future, which the conservative system allows, and which the liberal system doesn't, to its ultimate demise.

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