Casual Stupidity

When it comes to op-eds, I think I'm bothered more by casual nastiness, bigotry or stupidity than I am when people are super-explicit about it. Rush Limbaugh's comments about Sandra Fluke, for example, while atrocious, were so over-the-top that people sat up and noticed, and were then able to put pressure on him to own up to the fact that calling someone a slut for advocating a policy shift during a Congressional deposition is over the line.

It's harder-- and in some ways, more pernicious-- when the venom is embedded in someone's article, or speech. Here are some examples from this week's WND:

- Barry Farber championing algae as a gasoline replacement:

I have a dream. About 20 years from now a fifth-grade teacher somewhere in America will ask her students, “Who can name our two most important inventors, and why they are the most important?” And little Cathy stands up and replies, “Thomas Edison and Adrian Vance. Edison lit up the world and Vance put the oil-producing nations of the Middle East in their place – selling pistachios alongside the bagel carts in mid-town Manhattan.”

Dude, really? So Middle Eastern folks' proper "place" is as snack vendors? I love how Barry not only paints an idyllic picture of casually racist 5th graders, but that he also rips of Martin Luther King to do it. Nice.

- Joseph Farah explaining why Christians and Muslims have zero theological common ground:

If you compare the personality of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – the Christian and Hebrew God – with Allah, Islam’s god, the contrast could not be more stark. The Hebrew-Christian God is characterized by love. The Islamic god is characterized by war and vengeance. The Hebrew-Christian God provides a clear path to redemption and personal salvation in a fallen world – through repentance. The Islamic god provides only one certain path to personal salvation – martyrdom.

Put aside Farah's strawman about Islam thinking the only way to be a good Muslim is to martyr yourself. What's with pretending the Jewish (not Hebrew, Joe, Jewish) God says anything about "personal salvation" or even that we live in a specifically "fallen" (as opposed to imperfect) world? Stark contrasts between depictions of God? You can find differences between depictions of God from book to book in the Torah, to say nothing of Prophets or Writings. That's one of the starting points of Biblical criticism, Lurianic Kabbalah, and most lay-led Dvar Torahs. The God of the Bible goes through a myriad of personality shifts, sometimes from sidra to sidra, and that's part of what makes Him an intriguing character. Not only does this Unified God argument go against tons of Jewish textual tradition, it also runs counter to hundreds of years of Christian criticism of Judaism! How often have we heard about the "loving Christian God" being compared to the "vengeful" or "legalistic" Jewish God? Now you want to say there's no daylight between them? I'd be suspicious of this anyway, but all the more so given that now you want to play buddy-buddy so that you can beat up on Islam.

It's ironic that Farah is talking about how Christians need to recognize the important theological gaps between them and Muslims while simultaneously demonstrating he knows next-to-nothing about Judaism or traditional Jewish texts. Recall that this was the guy who fought against an Old Testament scholar questioning whether the Jewish God was really a "creator" of Heaven and Earth by using quotes from the Greek New Testament. Please, Joe, leave us out of your craziness.

- Last, Dennis Prager demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that the goal of university is to get young people to become nihilists, steal their parents' property, and then eat them:

If this [comically hyperbolic] list is accurate – and that may be ascertained by visiting a college bookstore and seeing what books are assigned by any given instructor – most American parents and/or their child or children are going into debt to support an institution that for four years, during the most impressionable years of a person’s life, instills values that are the opposite of those of the parents. 

And that is intentional. 

As Woodrow Wilson, progressive president of Princeton University before becoming president of the United States, said in a speech in 1914, “I have often said that the use of a university is to make young gentlemen as unlike their fathers as possible.” 

In 1996, in his commencement address to the graduating seniors of Dartmouth College, then-president of the college, James O. Freedman, cited the Wilson quote favorably. And in 2002, in another commencement address, Freedman said that “the purpose of a college education is to question your father’s values.” 

For Wilson, Freedman and countless other university presidents, the purpose of a college education is to question (actually, reject) one’s father’s values, not to seek truth. Fathers represented traditional American values. The university is there to undermine them.

First of all, I like how Prager's supposed evidence of indoctrination of students doesn't consist of any actual citation of texts, or even quotes from professors, but rather a list of liberal college strawmen which he claims are backed up by hypothetical reading lists. Second, isn't it fantastic that two quotes from two college presidents (a mere 82 years apart!) about students challenging their preconceptions are used to suggest the existence of an evil college cabal poised on turning young people against their parents? Dennis has a point about universities having political bias, but he loses his credibility once he starts crying about how the evil liberal universities turn innocent college students against their hard-working conservative parents. You may not have noticed, Dennis, but liberals are about half the country, and they send their kids to college, too. My great-grandparents were Jewish socialists. My father is a would-be hippy whose only political rule is "never vote Republican" and is mad at Obama for being too aggressive against medical marijuana. For me to have attended a school that rejected my father's values, I would have had to be going to Brigham Young (with maybe Bob Jones as a safety school).

For the record, I attended a very liberal high school and college, and if anything, it made me slightly conservative (relative to the people I was around) because I was exposed to arguments and people that I disagreed with (particularly on Israel) and it required me to think about why that was so. If I had taken Dennis' advice and stayed home (and done what?), I might have been the very model of the unthinking reflexive young liberal he so decries. And no, I still wouldn't have believed in "traditional American values."

Cry Baby

We all have a cross to bear in life. Ellis Washington's is being a black Conservative. In some of his columns he seems to see himself as a modern-day Cassandra, doomed to spend his days surrounded by his black peers, who hath not eyes to see. One of Ellis' biggest issues with contemporary black America is the old Conservative chestnut that liberals (including liberal blacks) trot out the race card whenever convenient.

For example:

When people point out Obama's daily inconsistencies on economics, public policy, executive power, Congress, education, his past associates, foreign affairs, the United Nations, it is all covered up, or the liberal pundits in the mainstream media like Hitler's Goebbels or the old Soviet newspaper "Pravda" run interference as Obama's ministers of propaganda, raising outrageous allegations like: "racism," "divisive politics," "trying to keep the black man down" or in the words of Michelle: "Republicans are trying to tear people apart, but Barack is trying to bring people together."

And:

The Gates affair took place on July 21 when one of his neighbors called the police because she was concerned that two men appeared to be trying to break into professor's Gates house by repeatedly hitting against the front door. What turned out to be an innocent mistake on the neighbor's part could have been diffused by Gates when the white police officer came to investigate, but the good professor instantly visualized a race card and played it with all the skill of an Al "Tawana Brawley" Sharpton or Jesse "Hymietown" Jackson.

Ok, so Ellis doesn't like people playing the race card, got it. So you can imagine my surprise when I read Ellis' column this week, in which he basically throws a hissy fit over the fact that his (predominately black and liberal) church invited Jeremiah Wright to come speak. The really entertaining thing here is Ellis' main issue does not seem to be the fact that he disagrees with Wright, though he clearly does-- rather, it's that he's personally insulted that his pastor doesn't want to give him, the great Ellis Washington, equal time.

Dear Dr. Charles G. Adams,

...I have been a member of Hartford since 1987, for over 23 years, and not once have I ever been asked to give a conservative point of view at any conference, meeting or before the congregation. For 23 years I have given you books, law review articles and op-eds I have written, and not one time did you ever say "thank you" or "Ellis, come to my office. Let's talk about how you can become a greater resource of intellectual diversity at Hartford."

Wow, sounds like you're really... what's the word? I'm thinking of? It's not Conservative, no, it's... oh yeah, obnoxious. If your real issue is intellectual diversity, Ellis, and not tooting your own horn, you shouldn't be focused on whether or not YOU get to speak, or whether or not the pastor reads YOUR books. You're like the equivalent of everyone's least favorite aunt who constantly sends out emails that are all-but-spam.

Rev. Adams, you are the man who married my wife and me on Sept. 11, 1993, and christened my two children in 1997 and 2001. … Is your treatment of me fair and just? I say not!

What. A. Drama. Queen. Yes, Ellis, truly, you are like a second Jesus.

When will the intellectual racism and discrimination against conservative philosophical thought out of the Booker T. Washington tradition be stopped and a fair and balanced exposition of conservative ideas be allowed at your church? How long, Rev. Adams must I wait for justice?

How long must I wait? What are you, trying out for a play? How can you be paid to write, AND host a radio show? This, methinks, boggles the mind!

As you can guess, only one thing will mollify Ellis. A debate, between him and the pastor, in front of everybody. Yes, EVERYBODY! (Incidentally, he's attached a copy of his latest column. You know, because he thought the pastor might want to read it. Also some pictures of his miniature porcelain dog collection, a link to his Twitter feed, and some haiku he's been working on. Just 'cause.)

Will you accept my challenge, Dr. Adams, or will you and Hartford Memorial Baptist Church continue to treat me as … The Spook Who Sat by the Door?

Seriously Ellis, what the hell is wrong with you? Ending your letter with a reference to an obscure book about the CIA brainwashing black youth as assassins? I guess you're trying to make a point, but why choose the oh-so-condescending-Dennis-Miller approach?

Then again, maybe Ellis is on to something here. Perhaps I should try this the next time my Republican Uncles start bitching about Jews being too liberal. Let's see...

"So, in conclusion, I ask that you, the aforementioned Milt and Moe, stop treating me like Scum. After all, I'm no Fiddler On the Roof, playing for your amusement. Cut it out or it'll be Goodbye, Columbus forever... and I'll go join the Yiddish Policeman's Union. Jerks."

Hmm, maybe not.

Amazingly enough, the worst part of this drivel is not Ellis' terrible writing. It is that he places this argument within the context of, not his own enormous ego, or even irritating church politics. What does he blame? Racism. Yeah.

What is intellectual racism? It is the opposite of intellectual diversity and tolerance. It is the paucity of freedom of thought; a repressive ideology that forbids true freedom of speech and freedom of ideas to such a degree as to amount to a de facto disregard or outlawing of all other competing ideas, worldviews or political ideologies.

...The above letter is demonstrative of the fact that intellectual racism is alive and well in America, particularly in big-city black churches, and that the greatest purveyors of intellectual racism are the progressives, socialists and liberal Democrats like President Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel.

Uh HUH. So, when Henry Louis Gates says that white officers arresting him may have had something to do with him being black, he's a demagogue. When Obama supporters point out that some of the rhetoric criticizing him seems to be beyond the pale, they're compared to Nazis and Stalinists. But when Ellis feels persecuted because his pastor DOESN'T WANT TO READ HIS CRAP, it's "liberal racism." (Which doesn't even seem to be a logical neologism, since it doesn't seem to have much to do with race.)

Hey Ellis, here's a clue. It's not about racism. It's about megalomania. Get help.

I rue the day you learned to type

Another day, another tragic massacre of Americans, and, since the massacre-er was non-white, that must mean it's time for another edition of Pat Buchanan's Crazy Talk.

Pat starts by reminding us of the brilliant insight that in war, people have to choose sides.

"Let none but Americans stand guard tonight," said Washington at Valley Forge. Irish Catholics deserted the Union army to fight beside Mexican Catholics in the San Patricio battalion against what they thought was American aggression. Honored today by Mexico, the San Patricios were hanged when captured by Winfield Scott's army.

In Scott's march to Mexico City was Robert E. Lee. The hero of Buena Vista was Col. Jefferson Davis, who had married the daughter of his commanding officer, future President Zachary Taylor. Davis went on to serve in the Cabinet of Franklin Pierce and the U.S. Senate.

Yet, in 1861, Davis and Lee would depart the service of their country to wage war against the United States on behalf of their new nation and the kinfolk to whom they belonged and whom they believed had a right to be free of the Union. Were they traitors – or patriots?

Isn't the honest answer "both?" Or maybe "Neither?" Or even the always reliable "It depends who you ask?"

This is not to compare the deeds of the San Patricios, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, all of whom declared themselves openly and fought heroically and honorably, with the crimes of Maj. Hasan.

Oh good. Wait, then why did you bring it up?

But it is to raise the issue of conflicting loyalties in the hearts of men in a nation that has declared religious, racial and ethnic diversity to be not only a national good but a national goal.

Whence came this idea? No previous generation believed this.

How are you defining "previous generation?" Which decades are we looking at? Also, if you're trying to suggest that the Founders thought that all Americans should be white Christians, you might be right (kind of-- they weren't all as uniformly Christian as some people like to claim), but so what? Sixty years ago we didn't think blacks were entitled to vote. The fact that an earlier generation may not have thought of something or thought something was good doesn't invalidate it.

In World War I, Wilson feared that if he went to war, German-Americans might march on Washington. FDR was so fearful that the blood ties of Japanese citizens and residents would trump their loyalty to the United States he ordered 110,000 transferred from California to detention camps for the duration of the war.

So the fact that two US Presidents were paranoid AND xenophobic means multiculturalism is bad and suggests that internment was justified (despite there never being a single proven case of disloyalty from Japanese-Americans during the war). There's quite a lot of crap stuffed into that sausage, Pat. By the way, take a good look at that last line in bold. Ok, stare at it, memorize it, no, don't show your card to me, you just remember it, ok? It'll be important later.

In Arkansas last year, a Muslim opposed to the U.S. wars shot two soldiers at a recruitment center, killing one. In Kuwait, before the invasion of Iraq, a Muslim soldier threw a grenade into the tent of his commanding officer, killing two and wounding 14.

So? No one's arguing Jihad is a good thing, Pat, but those cases were never connected with a conspiracy larger than one. The bigger issue should be how is the military screening recruits and then how is it keeping an eye on the "well-being" (very broadly defined for these purposes) of its people, both for their safety and the safety of those around them.

This is not to suggest that all American Muslims or Arabs should be citizens under suspicion. Muslims have died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, as German-Americans died fighting against Germany in two world wars. But it is to say this:

America is unraveling. No longer are we one nation and one people. Tens of millions have come and tens of millions are coming whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind, and to the faith they carry in their hearts. And if, in our long war against "Islamofascism," we are seen as trampling on their nation, faith or kinsmen, they will see us, as Hasan came to see us, as the enemy of their sacred identity.

Pat assumes that everyone thinks like him, that everyone puts ethnic identity first, that no one is capable or interested in having multiple, simultaneous or interactive identities (but Pat, how can you be Catholic and identify as a Southerner?), and that essentially everyone just wants to exist in their own box. There are certainly plenty of box-people in the world, including, apparently, Pat himself. But to categorically write off the patriotism of millions of immigrants (as well as millions of future immigrants) really just shows how little regard Pat has for reality outside his own head. I'd love to see any evidence backing up Pat's implication that there are potential cells of would-be militants all over the US who could turn on us should the government decide to pursue the wrong foreign policy against their motherland. Of course, it'd be easier to check into this were Pat interested enough in specifics to mention a single immigrant group so his readers who don't live in hypothetical-rhetoric-land could actually look into his ramblings. Help me out here, Pat. Are we talking disgruntled Norweigians, or suspicious Bangladeshis? Quakers? Ba'hai? Amish? Who exactly do we need to be on our guard against? Everyone?

There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth

No Pat, the reality is that there never was a melting pot in the first place. It was a flawed model based on biased assumptions about what American culture was or should be. If the idea of America being multiracial, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural makes you mad, all I can say is the idea that the only legitimate America is one populated by white Christians (and they'd better speak English, dammit) makes me pretty mad, too. The difference is that I don't try to ascribe every crime committed before 1965 to the Melting-Pot, whereas you seem incapable of watching the news without connecting every bad thing with multiculturalism and prophesying imminent race wars.

Eisenhower's America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 million, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?

Um, Pat, Eisenhower was President in the 1950s. At that time the total population was approximately 150 million. This included 15 million African-Americans, 380,000 Native Americans, and 320,000 Asian-Americans. Out of around 135 million whites, 5 million were Jewish, and at least 2 and a half million were Latino. Clearly, 127 million white Christians is still a majority, but it takes a lot of balls to willfully whitewash 23 million people out of American history because they contradict your fairy tale that 1950s America was something out of a Lincoln Rockwell painting. Also, you're living in a fantasy land if you don't think that "American culture all its own" wasn't affected by white Christians interacting with different kinds of people.

Now, think back to Pat's earlier comments. You know, the ones about Wilson and FDR worrying about German and Japanese Americans and foreign nationals. Funny thing, Pat, according to my calculations, these messy moments in multiculturalism relations happened BEFORE Eisenhower was President. How could Eisenhower have been President of White-landia when just ten years earlier FDR was interning Japanese-Americans?

Truth time: there have always been different races in America. African slaves arrived in Virginia in 1619. There were Chinese men in California as early as the 1820s. Indians were in the US in the early 1800s. Native Americans were here long before the US was formed and didn't disappear just because we stopped thinking about them. Some of Pat's German ancestors didn't immigrate until the 1830s. Who is he to write off anyone else as not being American enough?

There are other races and cultures whose presence in America predate Pat Buchanan's family, but because they were denied the opportunity to identify as Americans, Pat assumes that they never have considered themselves American. He thinks being an American is synonymous with being a white Christian. Never mind the historical record or the experiences of millions of Americans that says otherwise.

Maj. Hasan may have been a wacko. He may have been a terrorist. He may have been both. Ft. Hood may signify that there is something very dangerous happening within the military, or perhaps within American society itself. But it is not the fact that we welcome people here or encourage ethnic diversity (What is the alternative, exactly? Refuse to allow anyone into the army but white people? Step on down, Pat, and sign up.) America has benefited when it has expanded its vision of who to let into its cultural tent, and when we have persecuted each other for our national origins, as we did with Germans during WWI, and Japanese during WWII, we have come to regret it.

There may indeed be some American Muslims who use multiculturalism as a screen to protect their true intentions. I still say it's worth it. Multiculturalism may not be a perfect system, but it is far more benign an approach to American identity than aggressively enforcing a pan-whiteness on millions of people who have earned the right to live however the hell they please. And at least it's based on the reality of America being composed of many different people and cultures, as opposed to the revisionist whitewashing of history that Buchanan uses to try to show how far we've fallen. We've always been multicultural, Pat. People like you just never wanted to see it.

Play it again, Pat

Actually, don't.

I had the misfortune of reading Pat's 9/11 column the other day, in which Pat engages in a tiring and repetitive display of self-flagellation-- or, rather, it would be self-flagellation, if Pat still identified with this mongrel mess we call a country. Typically, Pat has the gall to piss all over the country, reviling his political and cultural opponents, then shed crocodile tears that we are so divided.

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others’ throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

Egads, people are strongly disagreeing with each other! In America, of all places! It's the end of civilization as we (or rather, Pat) know it!

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore? For what is a nation if not a people of a common ancestry, faith, culture and language, who worship the same God, revere the same heroes, cherish the same history, celebrate the same holidays, and share the same music, poetry, art and literature?

Better question: does it really matter if a country's people all listen to the same radio station? Methinks not. What happened to the free marketplace? What difference does this make to anybody, aside from 70-plus year old cranks like Buchanan?

The issue is not about whether people have common roots, but if they share common values. I know you're not a big fan of "Diversity is Our Strength," (which you inaccurately attribute to Dan Quayle) but it looks like E Pluribus Unum is out. Of course, a common language is important to facilitate interaction and communication between fellow citizens. But there is no reason why immigrants should be forced to abandon their native language, or any other non-harmful element of their home culture. Who are you to arbitrarily decide what works of literature, poetry, music, or art, are authentically American? Was there an election I missed?

By the way, Pat, there are plenty of places in the world where people speak multiple languages and do just fine. Officially bilingual Canada seems to still be doing fine, despite constant Quebecois grumbling. The citizens of Ghana include at least eight major tribes and anywhere from 250-580 languages (with one official language, English) and is considered one of the most successful countries in Africa. Somehow, they make it work, as does Israel.

As an aside: given that the top four spoken languages around the world include Mandarin, Hindi and Spanish, aren't we actually doing U.S. kids a disservice by demonizing bilingualism (to say nothing of the stigma we place on immigrant children through rushed ESL classes)?

Yet, today, Mexican-Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo, a skirmish in a French-Mexican war about which most Americans know nothing, which took place the same year as two of the bloodiest battles of our own Civil War: Antietam and Fredericksburg.

And? Irish-Americans celebrate Saint Patrick's day, which commemorates a Saint about whom most Americans (including the Irish) know next to nothing aside from his love of clover and pathological dislike of snakes. Northern and Eastern-Europeans have all sorts of weird Christmas and Easter-related customs, traditions and folklore. Some elements of national culture are universal, others are specific to an ethnic or religious culture. Not only don't you not explain why this is so terrible, I'm dumbfounded as to what your proposed alternative would be. State-enforced church services, Puritan-style? Personal freedom means just that.

Christmas and Easter, the great holidays of Christendom, once united Americans in joy. Now we fight over whether they should even be mentioned, let alone celebrated, in our public schools.

Boo-freakin' hoo, Pat. This is the logical result of having a democratic state which includes non-Christians in its body politic, and which has no official church. You don't like it, try moving to England, Ireland or Saudi Arabia.

Where we used to have classical, pop, country & Western and jazz music, now we have varieties tailored to specific generations, races and ethnic groups. Even our music seems designed to subdivide us.

What? Only if you buy into the bogus argument that only certain kinds of people can enjoy or listen to certain kinds of music. How many white folks have listened to Bob Marley in the past fifty years? How many white teenagers listen to rap? How many non-Indians were turned onto Indian music through the Beatles? Who CARES?

...Also, Pat, come on now. Just how much Jazz have you really listened to over the years?

One part of America loves her history, another reviles it as racist, imperialist and genocidal. Old heroes like Columbus, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are replaced by Dr. King and Cesar Chavez.

Here Pat gets back on his revisionist and pro-Confederacy high horse again. Look Pat, I don't object to looking to history to provide role models. But I think we can do a heck of a lot better than Columbus and Stonewall Jackson. That isn't about loving or hating history but about looking it square in the face-- exactly what values do you think are communicated to schoolkids when you start praising the Confederacy? States rights? Please.

Pat continues in this vein ad infinitum. Frankly, the whole thing sounds plagiarized from his outrageous columns following the VA Tech shootings.

The European-Christian core of the country that once defined us is shrinking, as Christianity fades, the birth rate falls and Third World immigration surges. Globalism dissolves the economic bonds, while the cacophony of multiculturalism displaces the old American culture.

“E pluribus unum” — out of many, one — was the national motto the men of ‘76 settled upon. One sees the pluribus. But where is the unum? One sees the diversity. But where is the unity?

What chance do we have attracting immigrants to the idea of American unity when the image we present is of hysterical mobs ranting about the evils of foreign food or of "outsiders" speaking another language? When the clear, undisguised goal is not a (theroetically respectful) "melting pot" or a give-and-take tossed salad, but an out-and-out whitewashing? You want to make Asians, Latinos and Africans into WASPs. It's an offensive idea, and it also has no chance of succeeding. So get over it.

Calling out Pat Buchanan

Dear Pat,

It has now been over two years since the shooting at Virginia Tech, in which you accused and maligned immigrants and illegal aliens (typically never bothering to differentiate between the two) as being fundamentally different from the European immigrants who came here before them. For two years, I have watched you railing against the evils of multiculturalism, and claiming that the elemental fact of ethnic nationalism will invariably lead to the Balkanization of America as individual ethnic groups decide to declare war on America to recreate their homelands (apparently these same immigrants are too oblivious to notice that they went to a lot of trouble to leave those same homelands and live freely here). Two years of distortion, fear-mongering and outright race-baiting as you have desperately tried to show that there is something inherently alien about non-white Americans. And very often, you have shamefully gone back to the same shameful argumentation you used after the murders in April 07-- the idea that America was some sort of Caucasian utopia before we opened our doors (after having closed them) and let the colored hordes invade, and that problems in our culture, particularly crime, can all be laid at the feet of these evil, foreign outsiders.

So my question to you, Pat, is this. Exactly which immigrants, legal or otherwise, were responsible for this madman ? He doesn't seem all that different from Cho Seung-Hui: both were longtime loners, burning with the anger stemming from years of rejection, both were deep narcissists with violent inner thoughts, and both ultimately blamed others for their life's problems and sought to achieve immortality through the slaughter of innocents. George Sodini and Cho Seung-Hui, and for that matter, James von Brunn, were not products of their race, or even, arguably, their cultures, but of their own psychotic selves. (How ironic, I thought Pat was supposed to be the straight-talking paleoconservative and I the bleeding-heart, moral relativism liberal?)

Look in a history book or read the news, Pat. White people are just as capable of being crazy and violent, Pat. Legal, naturalized, established American citizens, with no seeming "culture war" motivator, are also capable of slowly, or quickly, snapping, and killing their fellow Americans. And if anyone were to make the same inane connections you have between non-white spree killers and "cultural determinism"and apply it to white people, something tells me you'd be (rightly) frothing at the mouth. Think about that the next time you open yours.

Postscript to Pat Buchanan

I was still steaming about Pat Buchanan's crack about Los Angeles' crime problems (specifically with gangs) being related to the fact that it has so many different nationalities living in it.

Funny thing, is, I just saw "Public Enemies" last night, and the more I read about Dillinger and his cronies, the more apparent it becomes that a pure European-American melting pot is hardly a guarantee against crime. Dillinger associates included Belgians (Baby Face Nelson), Lithuanians (Alvin Karpis), Canadians (Karpis and Red Hamilton), Dutchmen (Homer Van Meter) Scotch-Irishmen (Barker gang) and, of course, the obligatory half-dozen plain old WASPs or as Pat might prefer, unhyphenated Americans.

But wait! There were plenty of other notorious Depression-era gangsters, who, wouldn't you know it, were like, totally white! Mad Dog Coll (Irish), Bugs Moran (Polish-Irish), Charles Dean O'Banion (go on, guess), the Gusenberg brothers (German), Louis Alterie (French), Shotgun George Ziegler (Polish), and so on. That's without even mentioning the obvious ones like the Italian and Jewish mafias (or the new ones popping up in the 80s and onward from the USSR, the Russians, Ukrainians, Armenians, etc). Hell, apparently even the Greeks have a mafia.

Bad news, Pat. All the criminals I mentioned were white, and most were committing fairly atrocious crimes as far back as the 30s, and it doesn't seem to have had a thing to do with immigrants, legal or otherwise. In fact, in a time of severe economic crisis, all these white folks seemed to mainly target other white folks (granted, almost certainly not because of color). It's almost like ethnonationalism played no role at all in their thought process! For a real treat, Pat, why not read Herbert Asbury's Gangs of New York. You'll get to hear about all sorts of white-only gangs, going as far back as the 1860s-- long before Latinos ever darkened our door step.

Well Pat it's looks like yet again we've seen that race, immigration and crime have almost nothing to do with each other, or certainly aren't causal, as you delight in implying.

Your move.

More on Pat and his weird ethnic nationalism fetish, and the strange places it takes him, here. Apparently even neocons think it's creepy.

Pat Buchanan's weird, weird, ideas

I made the mistake of finding Pat Buchanan's blog. On the one hand, this is good because it's one less reason for me to check out WorldNetDaily. On the other, now I have access to all of Pat's brain farts for the past several years.

Pat had one article a while ago which caught my interest, because it happened to combine two of my least favorite things: stupid neologisms, and creepy alter kocker race-baiting.

The larger issue here is the enduring power of ethnonationalism — the drive of ethnic minorities, embryonic nations, to break free and create their own countries, where their faith, culture and language are predominant.

Now, at first blush, this might seem a tad obvious. Yes, ethnic ties and nationalism have historically played a significant role in independence movements and struggles.

But wait! Pat has more.

Ethnonationalism caused the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913, triggered World War I in Sarajevo, and tore apart the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires. Ethnonationalism birthed Ireland, Turkey and Israel.
Ethnonationalism in the 1990s tore apart the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, and broke up Czechoslovakia, creating two-dozen nations out of three. Last August, ethnonationalism, with an assist from the Russian Army, relieved Georgia of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
Russia has its own ethnic worries in Chechnya, Dagestan and Ingushetia, whose Moscow-installed president was nearly blown to pieces two weeks ago and where a Chechen convoy was ambushed last week with 10 soldiers killed.
The ethnonationalism that pulled Ireland out of the United Kingdom in 1921 is pulling Scotland out. It split the Asian subcontinent up into Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are all threatened.
Persians are a bare majority against the combined numbers of Azeris, Kurds, Arabs and Baluch. Each of those minorities shares a border with kinfolk — in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
Turkey has fought for decades against Kurd ethnonationalism.
If one were to wager on new nations, Kurdistan and Baluchistan would be among the favorites. And Pashtun in Pakistan outnumber Pashtun in Afghanistan, though in the latter they are the majority.

So now ethnonationalism is starting to become a dangerous specter, destabilizing the world? I can't tell if Pat is pro ENism or not.

The contrast between insouciant America and serious China today is instructive. China is protectionist; America free trade. China is nationalist; America globalist. China’s economy is export-driven; America’s base is consumption. China saves; America spends. China uses its foreign exchange to lock up overseas resources; America uses foreign aid for humanitarian assistance to failed states. Behaving like ruthlessly purposeful 19th-century Americans, China grows as America shrinks.

So... China is a bunch of amoral jerks, and that's a good thing we should emulate?

Where Beijing floods its borderlands with Han to reduce indigenous populations to minorities, and stifles religious, ethnic and linguistic diversity, America, declaring, “Diversity is our strength!” invites the whole world to come to America and swamp her own native-born.

Ah. Here we go. ENism is a useful bludgeoning tool. With ENism, Pat can argue for race-based determinism, showing that multiculturalism is naive at best, and national/race suicide at worst. Incidentally, Pat, America doesn't really have native-born people, that's kind of the point.

Observing the lightning breakup of the Soviet Union, the Chinese take ethnonationalism with deadly seriousness. American’s elite regard it an irrelevancy, an obsession only of the politically retarded.

Uh yeah, pretty much. After all, our country's civic culture is kind of predicated on the concept that American nationalism is not based on ethnic background.

After all, they tell us, we were never blood-and-soil people, always a propositional nation, a nation of ideas. Our belief in democracy, diversity, and equality define us and make us different from all other nations.

First of all, why does America have to be different "from all other nations?" I thought we had moved beyond bizarro Puritan "New Israel" theological views on government a while ago. Why don't we shoot for "functional democracy that respects and protects invidividual rights while also balancing them with the interests and rights of the group," and then if we wind up not being unique in that regard, so much the better? Second, yes, America IS supposed to be a nation of ideas and principles. The way in which this is potentially different from other countries is that there is no officially privileged culture, religion or ethnic group in America, as opposed to other countries that were founded specifically for a religion or people. Even from its earliest colonial days, America was being divied up by different groups-- including the French, Spanish and English (all of whom would be very suprised to be lumped in together by the likes of Buchanan).

Indeed, we now happily predict the year, 2042, when Americans of European ancestry become a minority in a country whose Founding Fathers declared it set aside for “ourselves and our posterity.”

So what, Pat? The Founding Fathers said and did a whole lot of things that aren't that relevant to today. Dueling and powdered wigs come to mind.

Without the assent of her people, America is being converted from a Christian country, nine in 10 of whose people traced their roots to Europe as late as the time of JFK, into a multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural Tower of Babel not seen since the late Roman Empire.

That's right, it turns out that America isn't white, or Christian, enough for Pat Buchanan. Which is funny, because a lot of the illegal immigrants he bitches about are Latinos, most of whom are ethnically white and Catholic. But never mind that, Pat's mad that we aren't all WASPS, (or at least people that can pass for-- or be declared-- WASPs), anymore. Oh for the days of the 50s, where non-whites, non-Christians, and non-heterosexuals at least had the good sense to stay hidden from public view! Incidentally, Pat, maybe the reason there isn't that much immigration from Western Europe to America is that Western European countries have finally started getting their acts together (which is funny, given how much you complain about those govts' horrible pseudo-Socialist policies).

The city farthest along the path is Los Angeles, famous worldwide for the number, variety, and size of its ethnic and racial street gangs.

Yes, of course, Pat. Because we all know that diversity leads to street crime. That must be why there was never any crime in, say, lily-white England, before the 1800s, when they started getting all those immigrants in. Or why when people in England today see large groups of strapping young white lads cavorting in the street, they are filled with nothing but feelings of peacefulness and serenity.

I dig a little digging, and wouldn't you know it, Pat's been down this road to Crazytown before. Here's an article from 2008:

Muller argues, ethnonationalism may be a precondition of liberal democracy. Only after all the tribes of Europe had their own ethnically homogenous nation-states did peace and comity come. And what happened in Europe in the 20th century may be a precursor of what is to come in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Really now? So how do you explain functional democracies with large numbers of different ethnic groups, like say, Brazil? And why are you ignoring that ethnonationalism seems to be the flip side of colonialism and expansionism? Maybe part of the reason the British Empire collapsed was that there was no good reason people in India would ever accept the legitimacy of a country ruling them from thousands of miles away. Maybe part of the reason Russia keeps havng to deal with breakaway republics is that the USSR's conquest of Asia and Eastern Europe was done at the expense-- culturally, economically, religiously, etc-- of the native people living there? If there are multiple causes of discontent, it stands to reason that boiling it all down to ethnic groupings is simplstic and misleading.

Americans, writes Muller, “find ethnonationalism discomfiting both intellectually and morally. Social scientists go to great lengths to demonstrate that this is a product not of nature but of culture. …
“But none of this will make ethnonationalism go away.”
Indeed, we see it bubbling up from the Basque country of Spain, to Belgium, Bolivia, Baghdad and Beirut. Perhaps the wisest counsel for the United States may be to get out of the way of this elemental force. Rather than seek to halt the inexorable, we should seek to accommodate it and ameliorate its sometimes awful consequences.

Like how, Pat? I thought you were against interventionism. Wait, don't tell me... does it involve reservations? No? How about ghettos? Miscegenation laws?

And we should look to our own land. According to Pew Research, there will be 127 million Hispanics here by mid-century, tripling today’s 45 million – and almost 100 million new immigrants. No nation faces a graver threat from this resurgence of ethnonationalism than does our own.
Look homeward, America.

Um, Pat... first off, what evidence do you have that all those millions of Hispanics are united towards any common goal other than jobs and living conditions? Second, I like that Hispanics "and new immigrants" are both seen and treated as vague omnipresent threats against America without you ever bothering to explain why. If all those different immigrants come from different places, there is no reason to assume that they will be motivated by ethnic nationalism one way or the other. This is just a rehash of the Nativist song and dance spewed 100-plus years ago about some "horde" or another attacking America's shores. Amazingly, those racist bozos were wrong. Given reasons and opportunities, immigrants will become Americans, and Americanized. Notice that this does not mean that all Americans can, or should, become the same.

One last one. Yes, it gets worse. Back in January, plugging the same professor, Pat claimed that Obama's view of a post-racial America might actually lead to the dissilution of the union and possible race war:

Barack won the African-American vote 97 percent to 3 percent over John McCain, and 90 percent to 10 percent over Hillary Clinton in the later primaries. McCain ran stronger than George W. Bush only in Appalachia, the laager of the Scots-Irish.

So... we can therefore conclude that only the Scots-Irish still see themselves as white? Or could it be that those sneaky German-Americans were really energetic in pulling for "their" candidate, seeing as he descends from Stuttgart emigres? Doesn't Obama's election (made only possible by many, many white voters casting their ballots for him) suggest that, at least in at this point in America, ethnic background may not be the primary concern when it comes to elections for higher office?

In Jerry Z. Muller’s “Us and Them: The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism,” in Foreign Affairs, his thesis is summarized:
“...Once ethnic nationalism has captured the imagination of groups in a multiethnic society, ethnic disaggregation or partition is often the least bad answer.”
Disaggregation or partition, the man said.
Are we really in a post-racial America, or is our multicultural multiethnic America, too, destined for Balkanization and break-up?

No, because he said that this only happens when ethnic nationalism CAPTURES THE IMAGINATION of members of that society. So unless we start seeing large groups of Americans declaring individual states "Blackville", "Casa del Second Generation Hondurans" or "Scots-Irish Free State", I don't think we have much to worry about, as much as you enjoy being an alarmist crank.

Sorry to break it to you, Pat, but yes, the days of "Americans" being synonymous with "WASPs" are over (actually, they never really existed). And it happened a long time ago. If the Founders had wanted to stay "pure" and European, they should have all stayed on the East Coast and build a little wall around themselves, stopped having sex with Indians, stopped bringing over slaves, and oh yeah, stopped admitting immigrants in. Then we could be pure like Greenland. But shucks, that's not the way things turned out. You can whine about it, but the fight is long over. And, psst! For the record, we're better for it.

They're nothing if not efficient

Sure, some people are mad about crap like this:

















But look at it this way: at least they managed to get all their disinformation onto a single billboard. That's something of an accomplishment, right? (At least there's only one of them.)

"Look out! Obama will turn your aborted fetuses gay, have them get gay marriages, tax them for it, AND deny them the right to carry guns!

... Oh, and he's a Muslim."

Also, who does this bozo think he's convincing with his sign? Last I checked Missouri wasn't exactly a contested state.

A scary trip to Pat Buchanan's Brain

Pat Buchanan has been on a roll for the past few weeks. Rolling exactly where, I leave that to you to decide.

First, there's Pat's bitter lament for an America that seems to be fading away. Ordinarily I'd just make a a "Leave it to Beaver" joke and move on, but there's a weird racial overtone here that frankly creeps me out a bit:

In 1950, whites were 28 percent of world population and Africans 9 percent, a ratio of three-to-one. In 2060, the ratio will remain the same. But the colors will be reversed. People of African ancestry will be 25 percent of the world's population. People of European descent will have fallen to 9.8 percent.
More arresting is that the white population is shrinking not only in relative but in real terms. Two hundred million white people, one in every six on earth – a number equal to the entire population of France, Britain, Holland and Germany – will vanish by 2060.
The Caucasian race is going the way of the Mohicans.

Ok... And? Should we try to build a reservation?

Arabic peoples, 94 million at the birth of Israel in 1948, outnumbered seven to one by Europeans, will rise to 743 million in 2060, a tenfold increase, and will be 75 percent of the white population.

Wait, first you're differentiating Arabs from Whites, now you're saying they'll be statistically included? Doesn't that throw off your earlier numbers?

Fleshing out the NPI picture is the U.N. population survey of mid-2007 that points to the 21st century disappearance of Western Man.

Western Man? You make it sound like White people are their own damn genus, Pat!

By 2050, a fourth of all the people of Eastern Europe will have vanished. Ukraine will lose one-third of its population. Russia, 150 million at the breakup of the Soviet Union, 142 million today, will be down to 108 million. Such losses dwarf what Hitler and Stalin together did to these countries.

But of course, since NOT HAVING children is not the same as someone actively KILLING someone (abortion issue aside), it would take a major bonehead to conflate a decrease in birthrate and a loss of theoretical, nonexistent people with actual GENOCIDE.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said this week that Russia will have to import workers from the Caucasus, Central Asia and China, exacerbating already serious racial and religious tensions in a nation with thousands of nuclear weapons.

With Russians east of the Urals outnumbered 100 to one by the Chinese, there is little doubt who will control the oil, gas, gold and timber of Siberia and be staring hungrily across the Bering Strait at Alaska.

And of course, White Americans have never had any problems with other countries populated by White people.

By 2050, Iran's population will have risen from today's 71 million to 100 million. Pakistan will add 84 million to reach almost 300 million, the U.S. population today. Afghanistan's population will triple from 27 million to 79 million. Iraq's will go from 29 million to 62 million. The destinies of these nations will be beyond the capacity of an aging, dwindling, dying West to dictate.

We can't control other countries' destinies? Noooo! How we will feel important and relevant? We can't become another Norway!

Western Europe's populations are being sustained by immigrants from the Maghreb and Middle East, Asia and Africa – and the baby boom among these black and brown peoples is lifting and changing the face of the Old Continent forever. Islam is returning to Iberia, Italy and the Balkans. The Third World is coming to colonize the mother countries.

Thereby, of course, turning the whole idea of "Third World" vs. "First World" on its head. And I'm not so sure that your "colonies coming home" model is really all that accurate, Pat. When was Turkey a colony of Germany, for instance?

According to the Pew Research Center, the Hispanic population of the United States will triple to 127 million by 2050, as Mexico's population grows to 130 million. An erasure of the U.S. border, or merger of the two countries, or the linguistic, cultural and social annexation of the American Southwest by Mexico appears fated.

Why? Why does exchange have to be synonymous with annexation?

Yet, last October, in another Pew poll of 45,000 people in 47 countries, a majority in 46 expressed fear of a loss of their traditional culture.

In which case they should proactively do something to preserve their culture and make it attractive and appealing, as opposed to only focusing on newcomers as problems. Make new immigrants want to be a part of the culture of the country, instead of making everything into a damn color war.

Hopefully, the peoples of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, who are about to inherit the earth as we pass away, will treat us better than our ancestors treated them in the five centuries that Western Man ruled the world.

Let's hope, given that we were oftentimes a bunch of bastards. Hey, you don't suppose now would be a good time to try to build some goodwill with them, do you? Nah.

But it gets better. White people's birthrates aren't the only ones that make Pat all a twitter. He's also worried about his good friends the Jews.

Israel became home to the largest Jewish population on earth in part because American Jews in the 1990s fell in number from 5.5 million to 5.2 million, a loss of 300,000, or 6 percent of the U.S. Jewish population.

According to Charles Krauthammer, by 2050, the U.S. Jewish population will have shrunk another 50 percent to 2.5 million. American Jews are slowly vanishing. How and why is this happening? 

It is the collective decision of American Jews themselves, who have led the battles for birth control and a woman's right to choose.

Those principled bastards! Stop lobbying and jump in the sack! And then visit the doctor to get some in vitro. (Actually, that could solve most of the demographic problems Pat mentions...)

Incidentally, I really like the presumption that having a political position on something all but guarantees that you will be chomping at the bit to exercise that right or privilege. Observe, if you will, the myriad of male abortions performed every year, or how every supporter of the GI Bill is about to enlist.

As Jews were roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population from Roe v. Wade to today, perhaps 2 percent of the 50 million legal abortions since Roe were likely performed on Jewish girls or women, resulting in 1 million lost members of the Jewish community in 35 years.

Among other problems, this presumes that the Jewish population numbers were consistently remaining stable, particularly tricky and dicey because you have to self-identify as Jewish in order to be counted within Jewish population studies. From a demographic perspective, a Jew having a large family and raising them Hindu is the same as a Jew having a bunch of abortions. Given that the trend of the past half-century has been a dramatic intermarriage rate, it seems downright silly to attribute a lack of growth to abortion alone. It also assumes that the women who had abortions (many of whom were likely on the liberal side of the spectrum) would otherwise have raised their children to self-identify as Jewish, and that this would have been perpetuated through at least another generation- another major gaffe.

Then again, it's really just another example that not knowing what he's talking about has never stopped Pat Buchanan from opening his mouth.

We end our trip down painful memory road with Pat's analysis of the recent court decision in California declaring that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Pat, master of the understatement, says this is proof we are living in a post-Christian era.

there may be hugging around the newsroom at the Times, where one senior writer said, a few years back, three-fourths of the folks who make up the front page are gay. But this is just another streetlight on America's darkening path to perdition as a society and republic.
To declare that homosexuals can marry is patently absurd. The very definition of marriage is the union of a man and woman, first and foremost, for the procreation of children.

REALLY now? Then how come you're married but have no kids, Pat? Should we say your marriage is absurd? What's that? Oh, you're an exception. How nice for you.

To say two men who live together and engage in sex can be married renders the idea and ideal of marriage meaningless.

Why? Where does the original meaning come from in the first place? Using whose criteria?

"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder," Christ taught. Through the Old Testament and into the epistles of St. Paul, homosexual sodomy is an abomination leading to personal destruction and damnation, one of the five sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance. How, then, can four judges declare it to be integral to the sacrament of marriage?
Well, we don't believe all that rot, comes the reply.

Especially those of us who aren't Christian, don't have sacraments, and don't have specific sins that cry for vengeance.

Fine, but Christianity is the cornerstone of Western Civilization.

Bull.

Since the fall of Rome to our own time, nations have believed and acted on the belief that marriage and traditional families are the cinderblocks on which a society must be built. When these cinderblocks crumble, the society collapses. The truth has been born out in our own time.

They believed a whole lot of other crap, too- and acted on it. Racial superiority, the divine right of kings, and the subjugation of women come to mind. (Also: "cinderblocks" of society? Ow.)

Homosexual marriage is not in the California Constitution, or someone would have discovered it in 160 years. Where, then, did the state Supreme Court find this was a right?Four of seven justices unearthed this right by consulting what Orwell called their "smelly little orthodoxies."

Check your notes, Pat. Three of the four justices who voted in favor are moderate Republicans, appointed by Republicans. Exactly which orthodoxy is that?

They then decided to overturn the expressed will of the voters, declare their opinion law and order the state of California to begin recognizing homosexual unions as marriages. And they did it because they know the Times types will hail them as the newest Earl Warrens.

Um, actually, it probably has more to do with the Court's reputation as being one of the most closely-followed and influential district courts in the country, and they know that their opinion will have impacts in other places.

Not long ago, a governor of California would have laughed at the court and told the justices to go surfing, and ordered state officials not to issue the marriage licenses. The voters would have put the names of the four justices on the ballot in November and thrown them off the court, as they did Chief Justice Rose Bird a generation ago.

A regional stereotype joke, there's an old classic. But really, Surfing? That's just stupid. Here's another fact check, Pat: all three of those Republican justices have been there for at least fourteen years; one has been there for almost twenty and has been retained by the voters three times. These are hardly slack-jawed beach bums.

Thus concludes our visit to the dark continent of Pat's brain. I hope you all got your shots.

Kidding on the Square, or, Getting a Pass on Being an Ass

Around these parts, Pat Boone is not well-known for his sense of humor. What he IS known for, however, is being an ass. However, despite his tough-guy, "I'm descended from Daniel Boone" persona, Pat frequently doesn't like to actually put his money where his mouth is and explicitly say garbage that could be attributed to, well, himself.

Case in point: his "article" this week, in which he pictures newly-minted President Obama visiting with some random "jihadist dictator", presumably Ahmedinajad. One of the most striking things is how much they seem to stick to the personal insult:

We jihadists have often referred to Jews and Americans – in fact, all non-jihadists – as 'pigs and monkeys.' No offense, just a little humor.

Pause. "Well, OK. I'll pass on that, too. I do appreciate your willingness to dialogue, without any preconditions, and I guess I'm prepared for little slurs like that."

"Oh, it's not a slur. No, we do see you and all like you – who don't realize that we are holy to Allah and commissioned by Him to convert the rest of the world to our view – as subhuman and not worthy of life. Unless you give up your ignorant and blasphemous notions of Jesus and a Hebrew God and bow to Allah as we know him. Perhaps you would like some corn cobs and table scraps?"

Ok, first of all, as much as I think Ahmedinajad and the jihadis are douchebags (and I do), you DO KNOW that Muslims believe Jesus was a Prophet and that Allah and the Hebrew God are the same, RIGHT? I'm not saying they're going to start their own Muslims United for Israel (though if they tinker with it a little, they could get some good acronyms), but damn, at least get the bare-bones theology right. Next you'll be having them rant about how they won't rest until all America bows down before Buddha.

Incidentally, I'm not sure if the corn cobs and table scraps are supposed to be a reference to pigs or blacks. Careful there, Patty.

The silly thing is that all this boils down to the fact that Iran, Hamas, Syria, etc., don't like us very much. Which, of course, we all knew. No one debates this point. The question is to what degree is any of this hatred, disgust, or just dislike in any way malleable, are there really no areas of commonality where anything can be worked out. THAT's the premise of Obama's argument, not that he's going to walk in front of Ahmedinajad's desk and bend over. The fact that Boone's imagined jihadists can't get past calling Obama a pig and monkey just demonstrate how shallow his understanding of the jihadists and Obama is. You can be opposed to almost everything the jihadists believe in while still understanding that their ideology is more complex than, "everyone else is a pig." What purpose does dumbing down our enemies serve?

The other thing is that Pat's pulled this sort of crap before:

Whose voice is it that we hear exclaiming, "Daddy, that Hillary lady looks like Bill Clinton in a pant suit!" And "Mommy, is that Obama or Osama? They sound sort of alike to me." And "Look, Daddy, that little kid Johnny Edwards is trying to be president of the United States!" Who's voice?

Why, it's the conservative media, with childlike clarity, actually telling it like it is, revealing the underbellies and warped political ploys of the liberal favorites! There's Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and a host of other articulate and informed talk-show hosts...Thank God for the other voices, the honest, childlike observations of the biased reality we voters are facing in this country.

...Thank God there are spokesmen and women in the land who can see as if through a child's eyes and help us separate reality from naked ambition.

I came across a term in an Al Franken book a number of years ago called "Kidding on the Square," meaning, "kidding, but not really." Presumably, this is what's going on in this article. And that's ok. But Pat trying to put this garbage in the mouths of Ahmadinajad is also illustrative of how little he thinks of the whole process of diplomacy, and of how much he underestimates Obama as well as the jihadists.

Diplomacy does not solve every problem, but part of any successful fight against the enemy, whether at the bargaining table or on the battlefield, is good intelligence. Reducing everything wrong in the jihadist psyche and ideology to a series of animal insults isn't just stupid, it's dangerous. And all so he can sneak in some more swipes at Obama. I can't help wondering if part of the reason for this waste of keystrokes isn't just that Pat couldn't resist the opportunity to make a "Obama is a monkey" joke without getting slammed for it.

Flogging Dead Koreans

Apparently today was supposed to be blog of silence day. Sholom has more, including the reasons why he thinks this is horsecrap.

Following his lead, I once again feel the need to yell about VTech- or rather, more BS the right is throwing at it.

Pat Buchanan, take it away.

Almost no attention has been paid to the fact that Cho Seung-Hui was not an American at all, but an immigrant, an alien. Had this deranged young man who secretly hated us never come here, 32 people would be heading home from Blacksburg for summer vacation.

Pat, are you high? You're half German and a quarter Scots-Irish and Irish each. Does that make you an alien? Cho was a legal immigrant to this country, and there's no suggestion that the fact that he was an immigrant was what set him off. His whole family had the same status as him, and I don't know of any information that suggests they hated America. Besides, Cho came here at age eight. How do you know if he hated America then?

Cho was among the 864,000 Koreans here as a result of the Immigration Act of 1965, which threw the nation's doors open to the greatest invasion in history, an invasion opposed by a majority of our people. Thirty-six million, almost all from countries whose peoples have never fully assimilated in any Western country, now live in our midst.

People said the same thing about the Irish in the 1800s and Jews in the 1900s, Patty. Just because you think so doesn't make it true.

What happened in Blacksburg cannot be divorced from what's been happening to America since the immigration act brought tens of millions of strangers to these shores, even as the old bonds of national community began to disintegrate and dissolve in the social revolutions of the 1960s.

What immigrants AREN'T strangers? It's a new country with new customs and, in all likelihood, a new language. Am I missing something here?

To intellectuals, what makes America a nation is ideas – ideas in the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, Gettysburg Address and Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
But documents no matter how eloquent and words no matter how lovely do not a nation make. Before 1970, we were a people, a community, a country. Students would have said aloud of Cho: "Who is this guy? What's the matter with him?"
Teachers would have taken action to get him help – or get him out.

That's bullcrap, Pat. The fact is that America is a huge country with a large population. Add new technology and an influx of people to urban centers and you're going to have cultural alienation and a breakdown of community. That's just how it goes. Not only that, your conception of peoplehood and community is flawed. Even a supposedly ethnically homogenous country like England or Germany still has all sorts of divisions based on geographical, cultural and linguistic differences (watch a soccer game sometime if you don't believe me).Furthermore, there were violent rampages before 1970. Like, say, Bath School (1927), Howard Unruh (1949), Charles Starkweather (1957), the University of Texas (1965), and Richard Speck (1966).

Since the 1960s, we have become alienated from one another even as millions of strangers arrive every year. And as Americans no longer share the old ties of history, heritage, faith, language, tradition, culture, music, myth or morality, how can immigrants share those ties?

As I said, Pat, go to England, go to Germany, go to Scandinavia. There are always differences and rivalries within cultures. Besides, that's like saying that Italian-Americans and German-Americans can never get along because they have nothing in common. This is just crap. Faith? That's hysterical considering how much infighting there's been in America between Christians and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Protestants against each other, not to mention various outsider groups like Mormons, Amish, Quakers, etc. Music? Are you serious? Yeah, if only we all could learn to appreciate waltzes, military marches and country music that would fix everything. If you think music is going to fix the problem of immigrants not assimilating, you're really off your rocker.

Many immigrants do not assimilate. Many do not wish to. They seek community in their separate subdivisions of our multicultural, multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual mammoth mall of a nation.

And? Don't they have that right? Why is this not ok? Who decided the melting pot was the only legitimate model?

And in numbers higher than our native born, some are going berserk here.

Prove it!

The 1993 bombers of the World Trade Center and the killers of 9-11 were all immigrants or illegals.

First, an illegal is not the same as an immigrant, Pat. Even a moron like you should be able to understand the difference here. And those guys were terrorists whose goal was to infiltrate the United States as a strategic maneuver to inflict damage. That's not even close to coming here and then "going berserk."

Colin Ferguson, the Jamaican who massacred six and wounded 19 in an anti-white shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad, was an illegal. John Lee Malvo, the Beltway Sniper, was flotsam from the Caribbean.
Angel Resendez, the border-jumping rapist who killed at least nine women, was an illegal alien. Julio Gonzalez, who burned down the Happy Land social club in New York, killing 87, arrived in the Mariel boatlift.
Ali Hassan Abu Kama, who wounded seven, killing one, in a rampage on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, was a Palestinian. As was Sirhan Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy.
The rifleman who murdered two CIA employees at the McLean, Va., headquarters was a Pakistani. When Chai Vang, a Hmong, was told by a party of Wisconsin hunters to vacate their deer stand, he shot six to death. Peter Odighizuwa, the gunman who killed the dean, a teacher and a student at the Appalachian School of Law, was a Nigerian.
Hesham Hadayet, who shot up the El Al counter at LAX, killing two and wounding four, was an Egyptian immigrant. Gamil al-Batouti, the copilot who yelled, "I put my faith in Allah's hands," as he crashed his plane into the Atlantic after departing JFK Airport, killing 217, was an Egyptian.
Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the UNC graduate who ran his SUV over nine people on Chapel Hill campus and said he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah," was an Iranian.
Juan Corona, who murdered 25 people in California to be ranked with the likes of Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, was a Mexican.
Where does one find such facts? On VDARE.com, a website that covers the dark side of diversity covered up by a politically correct media, which seem to believe it is socially unhealthy for us Americans to see any correlation at all between mass migrations and mass murder.

Nice cherry-picked stats, Pat. Of course, anyone willing to do a basic google search will quickly discover that us Native Americans aren't too shabby in the killing each other department. What about other mass murders that "real" Americans committed? Like the Amish schoolhouse murders, or all those postal workers, or all those school shootings in the 80s and 90s, or Hastings Arthur Wise, or Brenda Ann Spencer or Mark Barton or James Pough or Theodore Strelski or John List or Brian Uyesugi? (Wait, are we counting Hawaiians as Americans? What about American Indians?) Are you really going to blame this all on immigrants? What about other serial killers, like Bundy or Gacy? What is this supposed to prove, exactly?

are we really a better, safer, freer, happier, more united and caring country than we were before, against our will, we became what Theodore Roosevelt called "a polyglot boarding house for the world"?

The two have nothing to do with each other, Pat. There will always be crazies, there will always be assholes, and there will always be criminals. The BS factor comes in when you try to act as if the problem is with crazy berserker immigrants instead of us lilly-white "real" Americans, a position particularly ironic since the original Nativists would have run a kraut-mick like yourself out of town as soon as look at you.

Get a clue, Pat.