Two Minutes on the Bus

By Nicholas Stix

Today, at 2:10 p.m.

Big, fat, dark-skinned, black guy in his twenties, weighing about 250, sitting towards the back is playing a tiny radio loud enough for everyone in the bus to hear it. Playing radios is forbidden on all New York City transit.

I just sat down right by the middle-aged, black American driver. I’ll only ride for about two minutes, to pick up my kid at school. I’m sick as a dog, with pink eye, bronchitis, an earache, etc., haven’t slept in days, and am momentarily unarmed.

I’m not going back to confront him. He’ll spit on me or take a swing at me, blah, blah, blah; the black women will all lie for Radio Raheem, while none of the cowardly whites will support me with the police; and my kid’ll end up stuck at school, crying, while I’m in lockup. This is not speculation. Been there, done that.

But I’ve got to say something.

“Hey, you want to turn off the radio?”

He ignores me.

A middle-aged or older black woman looks at me, in an inscrutable fashion.

“He’s acting like he’s deaf,” I say, looking at her.

The other people act like nothing is going on.

“Hey, you want to turn off the radio?”

“Hey, turn off the radio.”

“What you say?,” he says, looking up at me, as if just hearing me.

“Three times,” I say, showing three fingers.

“Yo, suck my dick.”

Guy’s a real poet.

“No shame. No human shame.”

“I’ll fuck you up.”

“You punk. You racist punk.”

I’m at my stop.

Exiting the bus, I tell the Irish immigrant crossing guard lady.

“They [the drivers] don’t want to say anything,” she responds, continuing, “If it was a white guy, it’d be different.”

Note that this bus was driving through a lily-white neighborhood.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa: Build the Dang’ Fence!

 
Read the story here.

Mexico’s Unholy Trinity

 
“Violence against women, dislike of education, fondness for crime.”

[“Texas Suffers Rapidly Increasing Mexification,” by Brenda Walker, VDARE, February 26, 2011.]

Knoxville Horror Update

By David in TN

In today's Knoxville News-Sentinel, Jamie Satterfield reports on the appeals of the Knoxville Horror convictions. Not much new.

Satterfield doesn't give the prospective date for the first hearing, which a local TV station gave as March 25.

Anonymous Black Woman Genius Puts White Male in His Place

By Nicholas Stix

I recently spent a bit of time at the blog, 100 Reasons NOT to Go to Graduate School. I see that some writers both academic and on the Web have in recent years come to the sorts of conclusions that I wrote about largely pseudonymously during the 1990s.

100 Reasons is a well-thought-out blog which will, I believe, eventually make its author some money, in the mold of the David Brooks-inspired site, Stuff White People Like. I wish I knew how to do that!

However, it has shied away from confronting the totalitarian political ideology of multiculturalism, which dominates all social relations in academia, and which has turned the social sciences and humanities into rank propaganda. That somewhat limits its effectiveness and accuracy. And the posters tend to be the sort of folks who write “s/he,” i.e., people who would sooner die than challenge multiculturalism, even behind a pseudonym.

On September 6, 2010, 100 Reasons published the blog entry, “5. Graduate school is not what it used to be.”

Grad school is not what it was, because college is not what it was. Before World War II, about five percent of Americans had college degrees. College was not a common experience, but something enjoyed by a minority of people who had access to the privilege of a college education either by virtue of their social standing or because they were genuinely bright. Colleges drew from a small segment of society and could be quite demanding of their students. Latin and Greek were often required subjects. After the war, as American higher education was “democratized,” state-supported colleges sprung up by the hundreds. As more people graduated from college, more jobs required college educations, and hence the demand for higher education grew. Graduate schools had to produce more and more faculty members to staff the expanding centers of higher learning.

Standards, of course, had to conform to the demands placed on institutions of higher education. Latin and Greek were no longer requirements, and just as the genuinely bright or socially established were no longer the only ones with access to college, graduate programs had to grow to include people closer to the middle of the bell curve to meet the demand for new PhDs. The days of wildly expanding job opportunities in academe are long gone, but the large graduate programs are still around. Graduate students today may be above-average in many respects, but they do not represent, generally speaking, the intellectual elite, and modern graduate school requirements reflect this.

David Brooks, take note!

The entry elicited, among others, the following comment. I wish I could call the poster a troll, but there are too many of his ilk at the blog, and his ilk constitutes the lunatic mainstream in the institution formerly known as higher education.

Anonymous said...

Oh, yeah. That "golden age," when the "genuinely bright" went to graduate school. Provided, of course, that they were white, male, and, at the very least, middle-class.

In general, I'm supportive of your project, but this kind of lazy argumentation, which is premised on racist, sexist, and classist assumptions about the ways in which people of color, women, and poor people--all of whom are still underrepresented in most graduate cohorts--have "dumbed down" graduate school with their very presence undercuts, to say the least, your credibility.

November 10, 2010 11:18 AM

I responded as follows.

@Lazy, Anon PC November 10, 2010 11:18 AM

How can telling the truth “undercut” one’s “credibility”?

Most colored people admitted to highly selective undergraduate and graduate programs are manifestly unqualified, and are admitted via affirmative action. This has been shown to be the case so many times that if you truly aren’t aware of it, you’re unforgivably ignorant. However, your assumption of the validity of “disparate impact” theory (“underrepresented”) points to dishonesty, rather than ignorance.

Admitting unqualified people dumbs down an institution, as the night follows the day.

As for your scorn of history, the most demanding undergraduate college in American history was the old City College of New York (CCNY), before it was destroyed 40 years ago, in order to admit semi-literate and functionally illiterate blacks and Hispanics. As James Traub observed in his book City on a Hill, most of the brilliant, predominantly Jewish students who attended City during its glory years (and a great many of whom later attended grad school) endured much worse poverty than the overwhelmingly incompetent black and Hispanic students who succeeded them, and who destroyed City.

December 17, 2010 12:50 AM

My comment inspired the following response which, until I read its very last word, I wasn’t even sure was directed at me.

Anonymous said...

Obviously, author, you have not been to graduate school. Pity.
(For the record, I'm a black woman studying computational neuroscience at one of the top 10 medical research schools in the nation (I don't put race on my applications). My father, an immigrant to this country, studied organic chemistry at a graduate level and was associate director of a *very* large pharmaceutical company before retiring. Suck it Nicholas.)

February 1, 2011 5:31 PM

My response follows.

Dear Anonymous “Black Woman” Genius (“ABWG”),

The only reason I am even aware that your post was a “response” to mine is that you insulted me by name, though you neglected to sign your own. An oversight, that, no doubt.

Your post does not respond to a thing I said. Still, I know that you are a genius, because you left no doubt, and because I know that all black women are geniuses, except for those who have either been held back by racist white male morons like me (please pardon the redundancy), and those (e.g., meritocrats and conservatives) who fail to recognize the genius inherent in being a black woman. Ultimately, I know of black women’s genius, because black women constantly announce the fact.

In your meta-parenthetical, ABWG, you maintain that:

1. I have not attended grad school;
2. You pity me;
3. You are a black woman;
4. You are studying computational neuroscience at one of the top 10 medical research schools in the nation;
5. You don't put race on your applications;
6. Your father is an immigrant who studied organic (presumably for a master’s, since you would have said if he’d earned a doctorate), and was an AD at a pharma giant; and
7. You are the offspring of a wealthy family.

Even if I were to believe all of your variously unsupported, erroneous, and disingenuous assertions, none is in the least germane to my comment.

The literature, both scholarly and journalistic, on affirmative action in higher ed is copious. As a smugly superior BWG, surely you must know this.

And yet, if you are such a genius, why would you post a comment that is full of irrelevancies?

On one point, however, I do believe you: You are a black woman. Certain characteristics are typical of BWGs, including but not limited to:

• Responding to arguments they hate with irrelevancies;
• Displaying toxic levels of self-esteem; and
• A willful refusal to distinguish between the individual case and the class.

I look forward to the next time you deign to school me, ABWG.

Love,

Nicholas Stix
February 7, 2011 10:40 PM

I have not heard from ABWG since.

VDARE Exclusive: Read the Story the National MSM Have Embargoed!

By Nicholas Stix

Over at VDARE, my fearless editor-publisher, Peter Brimelow, has just published my investigative report, “‘Don’t Raise Your Voice at Me!’ [Click!] ‘Read a Law Book!’ [Click!]—A Pearcy Massacre Update.”

By the way, those were things that people in Garland County, Arkansas were shouting at me, before hanging up on me. I had had the temerity to ask for things like trial dates in a mass murder case.

In case you think you can get this information elsewhere, just by googling, be my guest. There’s nothing to be found nationally, during the past year, outside of my reports. Heck, outside of my new report, there's nothing to be found locally, either, over the past four months!

My previous VDARE exclusive on the Pearcy case was, “Never Heard of the Pearcy Massacre? One Guess Why Not!”

Why, in a nation with tens of thousands of “professional” journalists pulling down full-time pay and benefits, am I, a guerilla freelancer, the only national journalist covering this story of mass murder? And why is the perpetually underfunded VDARE (hint, hint!) the only outlet paying for reports on it? And why does it take a fearless editor-publisher, to run stories on racist mass murders? To paraphrase Peter (he was talking about the public schools), you cannot have a functioning press in a liberal democracy, whose basic model is the hero as journalist.

“I Really Miss My Mom,” Says 16-Year-Old Killadelphian Who Murdered His Mother

 
 
By Nicholas Stix

Kendall Anderson really loved his mother. But when he got in trouble she disciplined him, by taking away his PlayStation. There are limits to a boy’s love for his mother, even if by his own admission, “She was the only person who cared for me.”

It was PlayStation or Mom, which made it a no-brainer.

According to his (soon-to-be recanted) police confession, Anderson paced about, thinking about the matter for three hours, and ultimately formulated a plan: Smash Mom’s head in with a claw hammer, while she sleeps. And he carried out the plan, beating his mother’s brains in, 20 times. Except that she was still alive…

….

Following a 90-minute argument the day after Thanksgiving, police allege, Kendall went into his sleeping mother’s bedroom, hit her 20 times with a claw hammer and ultimately killed her.

The story of Rashida Anderson’s bloody end - as told by her son in his confession to Philadelphia police homicide Det. Thorsten Lucke - was read to a Philadelphia Municipal Court judge, who ordered the lanky youth to stand trial for murder, possession of an instrument of crime and abuse of corpse.

Anderson, a lanky 5-foot-8 youth … looked quizzically about the courtroom as Lucke read his confession during the preliminary hearing before Judge Karen Yvette Simmons….

“I couldn’t stand the arguing,” Lucke said, reading the youth’s statement.

When the hammer attack did not kill her, Anderson told police, he dragged her downstairs and tried to “cremate her” [NS: alive?!] in the kitchen oven. When that failed, he continued, he beat her in the head with a chair leg before dragging her body outside and hiding [sic] under debris in an alley behind the house.

Lucke said that Anderson expressed remorse for the crime and told him: “If I could, I would not do it again. I really miss my mom . . . she was the only person who cared for me.”

[“Confession: Boy bludgeoned sleeping mom over PlayStation,” by Joseph A. Slobodzian, Philadelphia Inquirer, February 15, 2011.]

(Apparently, an Inquirer editor had initially titled the story, “Boy confesses to bludgeoning, cremating sleeping mom,” but someone decided that it was too harsh, or would offend the “cremating sleeping mom” lobby, and changed it.)

The remorse part is good. I guess that means that after he's been inside a few years, his defense attorney and social worker and community activist can all demand his release, arguing ‘He's been rehabilitated; he says that he'll never kill his mother again.’

What is this, lesson number #3,593 on why women have no business bearing children out of wedlock? Especially black women. (Why black boys require more guidance than white boys would require a separate article.) Of course, a sensible woman just knows this, without requiring “lessons.”

I guess young Mr. Anderson is left to ask the court to have pity on a poor orphan.

A tip 'o the hat to American Renaissance.

“Climate scepticism: not just the new paedophilia, but the new racism [and Holocaust-denial] and homophobia too!”

 
Prof. John Beddington, absolute authority on climate science, the scientific method, and disinterested scholarship.
 

“Uh oh. Just how evil must I be? Not only it seems are we ‘climate sceptics’ the equivalent of Holocaust deniers and paedophiles, but also of gay-bashers and racists….

We have this from no less an authority than the Government’s chief beardie-weardie science advisor Professor John Beddington. Earlier this month, Prof Beddington told a meeting of 300 science civil servants in London:

“We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of racism. We are grossly intolerant, and properly so, of people who [are] anti-homosexuality… We are not—and I genuinely think we should think about how we do this—grossly intolerant of pseudo-science, the building up of what purports to be science by the cherry-picking of the facts and the failure to use scientific evidence and the failure to use scientific method.”

“One way is to be completely intolerant of this nonsense,” he said. “That we don’t kind of shrug it off. We don’t say: ‘oh, it’s the media’ or ‘oh they would say that wouldn’t they?’ I think we really need, as a scientific community—and this is a very important scientific community—to think about how we do it.”

The solution, according to this man, whose generous salary and ring-fenced pension is kindly provided by the British taxpayer, is less tolerance:

“I really would urge you to be grossly intolerant,” he said. “We should not tolerate what is potentially something that can seriously undermine our ability to address important problems.”

Beddington also had harsh words for journalists who treat the opinions of non-scientist commentators as being equivalent to the opinions of what he called “properly trained, properly assessed” scientists. “The media see the discussions about really important scientific events as if it’s a bloody football match. It is ridiculous.”

In closing, Beddington said: “I’d urge you—and this is a kind of strange message to go out—but go out and be much more intolerant.” He asked his audience to forgive him for what appear to have been unscripted remarks, adding: “But it is a thing that has been very much at the forefront of my mind over the last few months and I think we need to do it.”

Well, I agree with Prof Beddington on one thing – as I’m sure do all of us evil, paedophilic, homophobic, Holocaust-denying, racist climate sceptics. If there’s one thing we absolutely can’t stand its scientists who “cherry-pick facts”, who fail to use “scientific evidence” and who fail to use “scientific method.” That’s why we got so worked up over the Climategate emails, which very clearly revealed those “climate scientists” whose expertise Prof Beddington so reveres committing the very crimes he so deplores.

So doesn’t that mean that by effectively endorsing the Climategate scientists disgraceful behaviour and by actively promulgating their shoddy, mendacious work, Prof Beddington is the moral equivalent of a double-double-extra racist, and a paedophile, and a Holocaust denier and homophobe too? Just asking.”

[“Climate scepticism: not just the new paedophilia, but the new racism and homophobia too!” by James Delingpole, The Telegraph, February 14th, 2011.]

Neocons Charles Krauthammer and Stanley Kurtz are Blind to Obama’s Agenda

By Nicholas Stix

Once upon a time, a retarded man named Greg, whom I served as a “house parent” remonstrated with me, “I may be retarded, but I’m not stupid!” So what excuse do men like Charles Krauthammer and Stanley Kurtz have?

Charles Murray, who may be the wisest man alive, has emphasized how brilliant Charlie Kraut is. And yet, Kraut writes about the the John Doe calling himself “Barack Hussein Obama,” as if the latter were motivated primarily by a desire for class war.

Now comes Kurtz to tell us the same thing, by way of explaining “Obama’s” Wisconsin putsch. But unlike Kraut, Kurtz has even written a book on “Obama.”

The fundamental precept of Black Liberation Theology, to which “Obama” has been an adherent for over 20 years, is to “destroy the white enemy.” Is that so hard to understand? I’ll bet Greg could understand it.

Once upon a time, it was possible in America to speak of communism in class terms, without reference to race. That time ended circa 1933.  

John Williams’ Overture to The Cowboys, Conducted by David Matthies

 


 

I saw The Cowboys when I was a teenager, and I recalled it being good, but I had forgotten just how good it really was. Or maybe I needed some years to appreciate it. I just bought the DVD, which I watched with my boy last Saturday, and I’m still savoring it six days later. So is he.

Set circa 1870, the story is about a rancher named Wil Anderson (John Wayne) whose cowhands all get gold fever, just before a herd is due to get taken to market, and who has to choose between some highly suspicious ex-convicts, and boys as young as 11 years old, or losing a year’s investment.

Ably supported by Moses Gunn, Bruce Dern, and eleven young boys, Wayne gives a restrained performance, one of his best, in this powerful character study/adventure, which is one of the 30 or so best Westerns I’ve ever seen.

Anderson is a tough old boot who has to coax young boys, working for men’s wages, into becoming men. And the boys, for whom the “god-damned, mean, dirty, son-of-a-bitch!” becomes a father figure, do not disappoint him.

The language is saltier than Wayne would have preferred, and there is a lot more violence than he cared to show on screen, but times were changing—for the worse—so forewarned is forearmed. Of course, compared to today’s fare, this picture is tame.

Director Mark Rydell had a young composer on hand named John Williams. Williams composed one of the most thematically ambitious scores ever written for a Western—or any other sort of picture, for that matter.

Rydell presents the picture in a way unlike any other Western I’ve ever seen. During the early 1960s’ spectacle period, directors of some long epics with wildly ambitious scores, such as Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick/Kirk Douglas; Alex North) and big musicals, e.g., My Fair Lady (George Cukor), presented them with musical “overtures” and “intermissions” accompanying a dark screen, in addition to the closing credits music. Rydell does just that, and with Williams’ bold score, he can.

Thanks to David Matthies’ talented orchestra, and to Matthies, for his spirited conducting and for uploading the video. But he should have let us see the musicians, and given them their just due. He doesn’t even name the organization.

Norm Matloff on H-1B and America’s Internal Brain Drain

 

1. The H-1B program is causing an INTERNAL BRAIN DRAIN in the U.S. The H-1B program causes displacement (direct and indirect) of U.S. citizens and permanent residents–especially those over age 35–from the tech field, and it discourages young people from going into tech in the first place.

2. Our federal government, especially the National Science Foundation, has played an active role in facilitating this internal brain drain. Back in 1989 the NSF was in the vanguard of those pushing Congress to establish the H-1B program, and an internal NSF paper advocated bringing in large numbers of foreign scientists and engineers for the explicit goal of holding down PhD wages. Moreover, the NSF explicitly stated that this would CAUSE an internal brain drain, as the domestic students would be put off by the stagnant wages.

[“Dr. Norm Matloff on a Brookings Institute/GMU High Tech Immigration Conference.”]

Myron Ebell: The Federal War on the Lightbulb: “Obama” Seeks to Impose California Model of Economic Ruin on the Entire Country

 


 

Ebell: “The Obama Administration is now waging war on the U.S. economy. They are saying, ‘We are going to shut down coal production, we are going to limit oil production, and we are going to start closing coal-fired power plants. Well, our manufacturing productivity depends upon inexpensive electricity, and you don’t get that from windmills and solar panels, you get that from coal-fired power plants.

So, the Obama Administration is now doing to the country what the people of California have done to themselves.

The California economy is in ruins. They are facing economic doom. And one of the principal reasons is that for 30 years, they have been pursuing policies to increase their energy prices, and squeeze manufacturing out of the state. California is no longer a major manufacturer of much of anything. It used to be a leader in a number of fields: Armaments, airplanes, car assembly, steel mill, iron mine. All that’s gone.

That’s the model that the Obama Administration sees for the whole country. We’ll move all of our manufacturing out, we’ll move it to China, or other countries, and all of us will work in the financial sector, or the information technology sector, or flipping hamburgers. I mean, I think that’s the economic model.”

Actually, it’s worse than that, since the John Doe calling himself “Barack Hussein Obama” not only supports the displacement of all American IT workers with inferior Indian H-1Bs—as did his treasonous predecessor, George W. Bush—but again, following in Bush II’s footsteps, sent $22 million in American taxpayer money to Sri Lanka, in order to train 3,000 Sri Lankans to steal American IT jobs worth billions of dollars, through offshoring. Rob Sanchez suggests that Obama may have undertaken this new program as a favor to his new American-born, professional Indian crony, Rajiv Shah, and to Bill Gates.

Lest I be charged with misrepresenting “Obama,” let me add that he does want some IT jobs to be filled with American workers: He seeks, through affirmative action, to give high-IQ IT jobs to surreally unqualified blacks.

Are Americans European?

by Nicholas Stix

April 6, 2004
A Different Drummer and ‘round the Web.

The European tradition is one of centralized absolutism and obscurantist, metaphysical speculation.


Today, the terms “the West” and “Western” can refer to America alone, to America and her former European allies, or even simply to white folks. The terms are successors to the terms “Europe” and “European.”

Most Americans under the age of 40 know little about Europe, and have only the most tenuous relation to the Old World. What they do know, however, is that we bailed the Western Europeans out of two world wars, and then saved them from communism.

And yet, today our relationship to Europe, even the concept of “Europe,” is typically exaggerated here at home. American socialist writers speak still of our “European allies,” when referring to countries (France and Germany) that can only honestly be referred to as rivals or outright enemies. And multiculturalists, black racists, and white nationalists alike refer to white Americans via the euphemism, “European Americans.”

The socialist writers’ practice is not hard to understand. They are writing not of America’s allies, but of their own. They see themselves as domestic enemies of America, and consider America’s foreign enemies their friends. (Hence, I disagree with Lee Harris’ thesis that American “liberals” have no concept of an “enemy.” Sure they do – the term refers to their own country, and its patriotic defenders.) You can find these traitors all over the world, sucking up to America’s foreign enemies, the latter of whom hold the traitors in contempt, but who find them useful idiots. Sound familiar?

And so, when the Spaniards turned on us, the New York Times’ March 16 house editorial engaged in double-talk: “It is possible to support the battle against terrorism wholeheartedly and still oppose a political party that embraces the same cause.”

No, it isn’t.

In theory, one could “support the battle against terrorism wholeheartedly” while voting against a political party embracing the same cause, if say, that party had botched every other aspect of statecraft, particularly the economy. But before 3-11, the vast majority of Spaniards had never even halfheartedly supported the battle against Islamic terrorism, and the Popular Party’s stewardship of the economy had been excellent. But at the Times, anyone who screws over America is their friend, and must be defended.

Such traitorous anti-Americanism is nothing new. In Oliver Stone’s anti-American movie, Platoon (1986), set during the War in Vietnam, the “good” American sergeant, “Elias” (Willem Dafoe), says, “We've been kicking other people’s asses for so long, I figure it's time we got ours kicked.” The character was a hero to anti-Americans across the land, who saw his murder by the evil sergeant, “Barnes” (Tom Berenger), in terms of the crucifixion of Jesus. That reaction was odd, coming as it did from a group of atheists.

The use of the term “European-American,” has had an even odder trajectory. As far as I can determine, it comes from the Nation of Islam, when it was known as the Black Muslims, under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (aka convicted felon and traitor, Elijah Poole; 1897-1975) and Elijah’s momentary favorite son, Malcolm X (aka convicted felon, Malcolm Little; 1926-1965). The Black Muslims identified the races with continents. Well, sort of. Early on, they referred to blacks as “Asiatics,” so their geography was as nutty as everything else they said.

I think white multiculturalists are simply imitating black racists, as they do whenever they discuss race relations.

The white nationalists are the oddest bunch. The typical white nationalist knows as much about Europe as he does about Timbuktu, and the more intelligent ones, most notably Sam Francis, should know better than to join the words “European” and “American.”

America does have a very close cultural and historical relationship to England, but if there’s one thing I learned in over five years of living in Europe, it is that England ain’t in Europe. (I also learned that I am no “European.”)

I know the Brits are now members of the European Union, but when I lived in the former West Germany, the Brits were part of the EU-forerunner, the Common Market, yet I never heard any Continentals speak of the British as “Europeans.” There was a palpable tension between the Brits and the Europeans, and there still is.

We got our language, our Common Law traditions, our notions of representative government, and our empiricist philosophical tradition from the Brits. The European tradition, conversely, is one of centralized absolutism and obscurantist, metaphysical speculation. Since FDR, unfortunately, we have been moving toward the Old World, as the American people have acquiesced to creeping socialism, centralization, absolutism and anti-scientific thinking.

Europe is for us less an ideal, than a cautionary example.

And yet, I was once in love with Europe. The idea of Europe, at any rate. I got over that love, by living there. And yet, I shall never forget, and never regret, the five years I spent in West Germany, reading old editions of old books; studying philosophy with the world’s greatest living classicist, Hans Joachim Krämer (not that I’m a classicist!); working on the assembly-line, producing the world’s greatest production car (at Daimler-Benz—“Mercedes” to you civilians); falling in love with the German language and one of its speakers; and traveling on both sides of the Berlin Wall.

By the early 20th century, Europeans tended to speak synonymously of “Europe,” “Christianity,” and “the West.” But Christianity was born in the same place as Judaism – the Middle East. Christianity may have achieved its greatest political power in Europe, but by the mid-19th century, at the height of European power, Christianity was a decadent, empty shell. And the ideas associated with “the West” were already moving … west.

Until the past generation, the notion of being a “European,” as opposed to the national of a particular country, was an oddity. There were no “Europeans,” there were only Frenchmen, Germans, etc. Today, since “Europeans” do not identify themselves in opposition to Asia and Africa (and South America isn’t a part of their consciousness), the only reason I can see for their identification with the Continent, is in unified opposition to America. (No, not “North America;” Europeans are indifferent to Mexico and Canada. The term “North America” functions merely as a petty insult to Americans.)

The official story today is that nationalism destroyed Europe. As is so often the case, the official story is nonsense. Nineteenth century European history is largely split between wars pitting nation-states and alliances against each other, and the rise of revolutionary, transnational movements (communism, pan-Germanism). Those two trajectories converged and exploded, in the first half of the 20th century. In each case, a transnational movement (communism, national socialism) bonded with a national base and nationalistic passion (Russia, Germany, Austria). The irony is that one of the reasons that Europe failed to stop Nazism, was due to the interwar influence of a bureaucratic, pacifist humanitarianism. After the war, that pacifist humanitarianism was left standing, unchallenged, in Western Europe, where it still saps the Continent’s strength. Today, corrupt, supranational bureaucracies (the UN, EU) are manipulated by nationalist interests (France, Germany, Russia) in the name of “internationalism.”

And as Europeans permit their nations to be swamped with their Muslim enemies, one wonders if the nations of the Old World will go down with a bang or a whimper. Thank goodness, no American president would be so foolish, as to let the U.S. be overwhelmed by hostile foreigners!

Europe functions today as a grand museum. It is home to much of the world’s great art, literature, philosophy, architecture, libraries, churches and museums in the traditional sense … and oh, the food! Unfortunately, this treasure is largely lost on the Europeans, who have been culturally bankrupt and politically socialist since at least the end of The War. Given their embrace of the inferior fare at McDonald’s, Europeans’ appreciation of even their own food is suspect.

Rather than studying the masterpieces of the past, in order to create new ones, Europeans today often are simply satisfied to know that previous Europeans created great works, to patronize cultures that have not, and to smugly believe that their neglect of one legacy, and frivolous elevation of the other, makes them superior to the rest of the world.

Thus should Americans study Europe’s triumphs … and its decline. For if we are not careful, in the not-so-distant future, Europe’s fate will be our own.

Europe, R.I.P.

By Nicholas Stix

March 26, 2004
A Different Drummer, and ‘round the Web

I am not a European.

Lee Harris argued, "The world changed on Sunday," March 14, with the Spanish elections, but the real problem is that Europe failed to change.

If Europe cannot rouse itself to fight back, after it has been attacked on its own soil, we may conclude that the cowardice we saw after 9-11 was not merely the expression of anti-Americanism and opportunism, but of a deeper paralysis, which is now in its terminal stage. And so, I weep for Europe.

Europe's paralysis is best expressed in the combination of two seemingly contradictory statements, one by David Brooks and the other by Edward Luttwak.

"Now all European politicians will know that if they side with America on controversial security threats, and terrorists strike their nation, they might be blamed by their own voters." (Brooks)

"Any [European] politician who invokes Madrid to demand a withdrawal from Iraq will be inviting terrorist attacks to prove his point." (Luttwak)

Both statements may co-exist in the same universe of discourse, the universe of weakness, the universe of defeat. The vicious circle of weakness dominating European thought is countered by the virtuous circle of strength that George W. Bush has expressed: America takes the battle to al Qaeda & Co. We kill some of their members, and capture others, from whom we get the intelligence necessary to kill and capture other terrorists, and so on. That may seem simplistic, but in fact, a nation will either gain the advantage or steadily decline, in the war on terror; a stalemate is not an option.

(The "circles" are metaphors, rather than discrete, logical units. For we are talking about people and nations, not logic or geometry. In the real world, a strong man or even a strong people can be brought low through the collective cowardice or thuggery of others. And so it is that al Qaeda seeks to beat America through chasing off her allies. And so, we can expect attacks on the United Kingdom, and on or just before our own November 2 presidential election.)

Western European nations increasingly embrace appeasement, while permitting themselves to be overwhelmed by hordes of their Muslim enemies, enemies who hold everything European in contempt, and who increasingly include violent gangs, whose idea of fun is to brutalize Jews and gang-rape Christian girls.

From 1945-1990, Western Europe lived under the shadow of the Soviet "Empire of Evil" (Ronald Reagan), and yet it was safe from being overrun, because we protected it. And so, while America spent billions on Europe’s defense, Europe could spend billions on decadent welfare programs which further sapped its moral strength. The result was the same as it always is, with those who get used to getting a free ride. Rather than gratitude, Europeans felt resentful and superior towards us.

A classic case of a spoiled character feeling resentful and superior towards his betters is the Tom Cruise character (Lt. Daniel Kaffee) in the 1989 play and 1992 movie, A Few Good Men. Defense attorney Kaffee cross examines his nemesis, Lt. Col. Nathan Jessep (Jack Nicholson).

Jessep: You want answers?!

Kaffee: I want the truth!

Jessep: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Who's gonna do it? You? [To Kaffee's co-counsel.] You, Lieutenant Weinberg? I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for Santiago, and you curse the Marines. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know—that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives; and my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall—you need me on that wall.

(Unfortunately, politically correct writer Aaron Sorkin and director Rob Reiner presented Nicholson as the heavy, and Cruise as the hero, but it is a tribute to Sorkin's writing skills that his speech has become a credo for many members of the LAPD and the American military.)

The exchange could just as well have been between Europe and America over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Andalusia, aka the Nation Formerly Known as Spain

By Nicholas Stix

March 22, 2004
A Different Drummer, and ‘round the Web

I am not a Spaniard.

Somewhere, on March 12, I saw the headline, “We are All Spaniards Now.” It was an allusion to the Le Monde headline from 9/12, “We are All Americans Now.”

As we now know, that initial French (and German) sympathy for America was short-lived. In no time flat, the Old Europe of France and Germany sought to appease Islamist terror, and to hurt America, through claiming to be our allies, while betraying us at every step of the way.

Not so, the Spaniards. The 1,300 troops they sent to Iraq were largely a symbolic matter, but the symbolism was powerful.

After 911, when so much of Europe was making mischief at our expense, many Americans assumed that Europe would react differently, if it were hit. I was one of those Americans. But on the Sunday after 311, a majority of Spanish voters—who pre-311 had supported the ruling, America-friendly Popular Party, voted it out, on behalf of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist Workers’ Party. It was as if to say to the Islamists who had attacked them, “See, we’re not your enemy.” It was the worst sort of collective cowardice imaginable, because not only did it hurt America, but it did nothing for the Spaniards. Do they think that Muslim suicide bombers are now going to consider Spain their friend?

In a calculated slap at the U.S., Zapatero said that he looks forward to enjoying a “magnificent” relationship with France and Germany. In another slap at the U.S., Zapatero now says that he will not bring the Spanish troops home, if George Bush surrenders control of American troops to the U.N., a position less honest than his pre-election promise to bring home the troops, period. If Zapatero can manage to be so “courageous” towards the U.S., why is he such a craven coward towards al Qaeda & Co.? And what sort of message is he sending to his own, home-grown, Basque terrorists at ETA?

Let’s see. The last time the U.N. pacified a war zone was … never.

Zapatero claimed, “Fighting terrorism with bombs, with operations of ‘shock and awe,’ with missiles, that does not combat terrorism, it only generates more radicalism. The way to fight terrorism is with the rule of law, with international legislation, with intelligence services. This is what the international community should be talking about.”

Speaking to the New York Times, “David,” the world’s most quoted window frame maker, translated Zapatero’s true sentiments into clear Spanish: “Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq, and Al Qaeda will forget about Spain, so we will be less frightened. A bit of us died in the train.”

Zapatero’s decision to recognize gay marriage or civil unions, will surely also warm the hearts of Muslim terrorists everywhere.

Those Spaniards who changed their votes, spat on the graves of the now 202 dead.
But let us not forget the millions of Spaniards who stayed the course. To them, I tip my hat.

(Sticking to the neocon party line, on March 16, David Brooks wrote in the New York Times, that the Spaniards had betrayed the Iraqi people. As if this were about the Iraqi people! Claims by Brooks & Co. to be “for the Iraqi people” ring as hollow as domestic advocates’ claims to be “for the children.” In fairness to Brooks, however, much of his column does stand up to scrutiny, and he was the first writer to observe that the Spaniards who switched their votes, sought “a separate peace” with al Qaeda.)

Even ordinary extortionists, when they get paid off, always want more. But as some clear-eyed observers, such as Mark Steyn have pointed out, Muslim terrorists are no ordinary extortionists. Whereas the ordinary kind live to get paid, Muslim extortionists live to kill and be killed. And al Qaeda didn’t just attack Spain due to its alliance with America, but as Steyn also pointed out, due to its expulsion of the Moors (Spanish Muslims) in 1492. As far as al Qaeda (Islam?) is concerned, Spain is the property of Islam.

Since Spain expelled the Jews the same year, do I also get to declare war on it, and demand it become a Jewish state?

Knoxville Horror on ID Channel!

By David in TN and Nicholas Stix

David in TN: I just found out the Knoxville Horror will be featured tomorrow night on the Investigation Discovery Channel at 10pm ET. It repeats 3 hours later and on Saturday on the “Sins and Secrets” show.

The victims are described as “wealthy and privileged” on the preview I saw. The premise is the murders “ignited long simmering racial tension in a quaint Southern town.”

NS: I just love this. Since “racial tension” is a euphemism for “racist black-on-white violence,” how can a black-on-white atrocity ignite “racist black-on-white violence”? But that can’t be what they want us to think. No, they don’t want us to think at all.

Since ID didn’t contact me, I don’t expect that they’ll be mentioning my work, though I do expect them to use it without attribution, the way CNN did on May 29, 2007.

Channon Christian’s family was middle-class. Christopher Newsom was a carpenter, which hardly bespeaks “wealth and privilege.” His folks are well-spoken, and have shown great dignity, but one can have the manners and speech with which to present oneself respectably, without having a pot to pee in. That's a matter of character, not money.

This sounds really bad. Describing the victims as “wealthy and privileged,” and broadcasting under the category “Sins and Secrets,” would be wholly inappropriate to this case, and sounds like one of the sick, failed defense stratagems employed by Lemaricus Davidson’s defense team, and supported by racist, local blacks. Then again, maybe the code words are simply euphemisms for “white victims.” After all, aren’t all white crime victims “wealthy and privileged,” with “sins and secrets,” which somehow justifies their victimization?

My Darling, My Blood: Million Dollar Baby

By Nicholas Stix

February 18, 2005

If you give Million Dollar Baby half a chance, you’re gonna cry.

“You’re gonna cry,” the ticket-seller, a Spanish lady in her late fifties, told me. And she was right.

Million Dollar Baby is about two kinds of hunger: The hunger for glory that gnaws at those who seemingly have no chance at it, and the hunger for the love that bonds a father and a daughter, even if the two are not father and daughter.

Clint Eastwood is hot again. In 2003, his movie Mystic River, in which he did not act, was up for all of the major Oscars, and won Tim Robbins an Academy Award for best supporting actor. (That Oscar may have been a payoff for Robbins’ years of leftwing political agitation.) Mystic River, a murder mystery set in Boston, was good, but not as good as its press. Its script, by the usually top-notch Brian Helgeland, was full of red herrings, and contained a scene involving the suspect (Tim Robbins) that, taken in isolation was great, but which contradicted everything else we were shown about the character. Typical for Eastwood’s movies, however, the acting was uniformly excellent.

During the early-to-mid 1990s, the man who learned his trade from Sergio Leone and Don Siegel was the best director in the business, turning out three masterpieces in a row: The western, Unforgiven (1992), for which he won Oscars for best director and best picture, and was nominated for best actor; the road/crime story, A Perfect World (1993), which bombed at the box office and was ignored by the Academy (Kevin Costner gave the performance of his career, but it was too late to win back his lost fans); and the story of romance and adultery, The Bridges of Madison County (1995), a commercial and critical success, which however was only nominated for best actress for Meryl Streep’s revelatory performance, but which I think should have won a passel of Oscars. Pretty good, all in all, for a guy who got his start playing roustabout trail hand “Rowdy Yates” on the TV western, Rawhide, back in 1959.

After Bridges, Eastwood lost his way. He made the entertaining but lightweight Absolute Power (1997), and deteriorated to the point of the muddled Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (also 1997). He was more effective as a moviemaker in True Crime (1999), but too old for the role of reporter “Steve Everett,” in which he botched some good lines. In Million Dollar Baby, Eastwood recaptures that ‘90’s  glory, as producer, director, actor and even composer.

Baby is a boxing picture, only the fighter is a girl.

With “Maggie McNamara,” Hilary Swank paints the most intense portrait of a fighter since Robert DeNiro’s Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980).

Maggie was born and raised as white trash. With her father dead, the lifelong waitress is burdened with an overweight mother, a street scum convict brother, and a sister that gets by through welfare fraud. She never had a chance. But she makes her own luck … to a point.

Eastwood’s “Frankie Dunn” is the greatest “cut man” in the business, and a sometime manager who often hurts more for his fighters than they do. A devout Catholic, though he doesn’t look or preach the part, Frankie goes to mass every morning, prays for his estranged daughter and another female (dead wife? ex-wife?) every night, and grieves over an earlier boxing mishap.

Frankie is a difficult man, who terrorizes his young priest with snarky metaphysical questions, to the point of provoking the young man to cuss him out, and tell him to skip mass.

Frankie: Father, that was a great sermon… made me weep.
Father Horvak: What’s confusing you this week?
Frankie: Oh, it’s the same old, “one God-three God” thing.
Father Horvak: Frankie, most people figure out by kindergarten that it’s about faith.
Frankie: Is it sort of like snap, crackle, and pop, all rolled into one big box?

Meanwhile, Maggie just wants a chance. Frankie tells Maggie, “I don’t train girls,” but she is not to be denied.

With Eddie “Scrap Iron’s” Dupris’ help, each comes to fill the void in the other’s life.

Some critics, like the Daily News’ Jack Mathews, have said that Eastwood’s Frankie Dunn is the performance of a lifetime. They’re right. But Eastwood will almost surely lose the best actor Oscar to Jamie Foxx for Ray. Eastwood is up for best director, and as producer, for best picture. His main competition in those categories is director Martin Scorcese, and producers Michael Mann and Graham King, all of The Aviator. (Aviator is up for eleven awards to Baby’s seven; many observers think Scorcese will win based not on quality, but sentiment and memories of his superior earlier work.)

I had never seen Hilary Swank act before, but somehow I felt as if I knew her work, before I even entered the theater. All I knew of her was her pathetic Oscar acceptance speech for Boys Don’t Cry (1999), when she pleaded with the world “to embrace diversity!,” the winning appearance she gave a few months ago on a late night talk show (probably Letterman), and the ads for Baby. Sometimes you can tell in seconds that a performer has no talent -- think Sean Combs, Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck. Much more rarely, in just a moment, you can tell that a performer has it, whatever “it” is. From those promos, I knew that Hilary Swank had it.

Anyone who was old enough to know what was going on during the 1970s, beheld a colossus in the young Robert DeNiro. He was both a life force and the hungriest actor in the business. DeNiro was always challenging himself, and always willing to sacrifice more for a role than anyone else, whether it was spending weeks learning Sicilian for The Godfather Part II (1974); learning the saxophone for New York, New York (1977); or training for months before filming, and then putting on 60 pounds in the middle of filming Raging Bull, in order to play boxer Jake LaMotta, both as middleweight champ and as a fat, middle-aged, has-been. Hilary Swank, who reportedly put on 20 pounds in training for Baby, has that sort of hunger, ambition, and talent. Her ring work is every bit as good as DeNiro’s (maybe better), and in and out of the ring, she will break your heart. She’s a prohibitive favorite to win her second best actress Oscar. Behold the new colossus!

Morgan Freeman’s one-eyed, old pug, “Eddie ‘Scrap Iron’ Dupris,” has been like a wife to Frankie for about thirty years. Eastwood exploits Freeman both on-camera and as narrator, which is a great advantage for any movie (think Se7en and The Shawshank Redemption). As narrator, Freeman’s pipes sound the worse for wear, but he still uses his voice better than anyone else in the business, managing somehow to give brilliant, clean, line readings in an even tone, yet without falling into a monotone. (Compare that to lazy George Clooney’s monotone.) And Freeman has a stage presence where he can command attention, while doing “nothing.” He is physically convincing as an old man who fought 109 prize fights, and wasn’t retired until the age of 39. His “Scrap Iron” and Frankie trade barbs with the dark humor of survivors who have lost much, but who have not thrown in the towel. Such a dark movie requires as much humor as possible. I’m reminded of O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, and the gallows humor of the ill-fated “James Tyrone Jr.” and “Josie Hogan” (the late Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst).

Freeman is up for best supporting actor, his fourth nomination (following Street Smart, Driving Miss Daisy, and Shawshank), and is favored to finally win it. I hope he does.

The picture has a lean, powerful screenplay by Paul Haggis (thirtysomething, EZ Streets), who does dark better than anyone, based on the stories Rope Burns, by the late F.X. Toole, himself an old cut man (and surely, like Frankie, an Irish Catholic -- Francis Xavier?).

While Million Dollar Baby was filmed in color, for much of the movie, you wouldn’t know it. As shot by Tom Stern, it is a study in shadow and light.

It has a powerful yet restrained score, also by Eastwood, that works on the viewer like Larry Holmes’ jab, and which, like Stern’s cinematography, inexplicably was not nominated for an Oscar.

Eastwood used much of the production crew that has been his mainstay for years. (He founded his own production company, Malpaso, over thirty years ago.) Thus, the editing is by Joel Cox, the production design by Henry Bumstead, and Lennie Niehaus, who used to also score Eastwood’s movies, arranged and conducted his score. You’ve come a long way, Rowdy!

If you give Million Dollar Baby half a chance, like the ticket-seller lady said, you’re gonna cry.

Try to Remember: Jerry Orbach, the Prince of the City

“Try to Remember”: Jerry Orbach: The Fantasticks



By Nicholas Stix

December 15, 2009
The Critical Critic

He was born on Oct 20, 1935 in New York City, lived seemingly everywhere else, and died back in the city of his birth. His friend, the comic and actor Robert Klein, called him “a poker-playing, cigarette-smoking, New York actor.”

He was a star of the musical stage for over 30 years, before becoming an “overnight sensation” on TV’s Law & Order. His name was Jerry Orbach.
 


Jerry Orbach Singing “Try to Remember,” accompanied by a lovely photo montage of his career.
 

Jerry Orbach was the original star of the off-Broadway musical, The Fantasticks, which would run for 17,162 performances from 1960-2002, making it the longest-running stage show ever. He was later the original star, on Broadway, in the puppet musical, Carnival!, Promises, Promises, 6 Rms Riv Vu, Chicago and 42nd Street. He was nominated three times for Tonys for musicals: In 1965 (a Guys and Dolls revival), 1969 (Promises, Promises, for which he won), and 1976 (Chicago). In 1969 and 1976, he was nominated for the Drama Desk Award, which he won, as well, for Promises, Promises.

Orbach married twice: First to the former Marta Curro, from 1958 until their divorce in 1975, and with whom he had two sons, and from 1979 until his death, to the former Elaine Cancilla.

Cancilla was a musical stage performer who, according to the official story, had first met Orbach circa 1976, while they worked together in Chicago. However, she had been a dancer in the musical Fiorello!, when it opened in 1959. Although Orbach’s Internet Broadway Database page does not list him has having performed in that show, a photograph I just saw in the photo montage depicts a scene with him, Fiorello! star Tom Bosley, and a few other men—possibly from the number, “Politics and Poker”—argues for Orbach having joined the cast at some point during its 23-month run, which may be where he and Cancilla first met.

During 2007, Orbach’s widow campaigned for six months to get part of 53rd Street at Eighth Avenue named after her husband. On September 17, 2007, one of the corners at that intersection, near the apartment the Orbachs had lived in for 25 years, was renamed Jerry Orbach Way. After Community Board 4 rejected Mrs. Orbach’s petition, Community Board 5 approved it. Lucky for her, Eighth Avenue was the border of the two boards.

During his second marriage, Orbach used to write little poems on pages from a cat calendar before shoving off for his early morning TV shoots, and leave them for his wife to read when she woke up. At his funeral, his widow read some of them, and friends encouraged her to publish them. She published them in book form, with biographical material, as Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage.

The book was published on November 3. A Publisher’s Weekly reviewer quipped, “Orbach’s love for his wife is evident throughout these cheerful, lyrical tear sheets, a calendar of cats chased by doggerel.”

Unfortunately, Elaine Orbach did not live to see the book published: She had died of pneumonia at 69 years of age, on April 1.

I first saw Jerry Orbach in the movie The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight in 1972, a comedy about the Bonanno (“Bananas”) crime family—I recall Orbach as crime family scion “Kid Sally Bananas” being dragged around by his pet tiger (or was it a lion?)—which bombed, but made lots of money for the author of the eponymous novel, my old friend, Jimmy Breslin. (Another story, for another time.) And that was pretty much it for Orbach’s career as a movie star. In 1989, I saw him play the career criminal brother of the shaky pillar of upper-class, New York City Jewish society, played by Martin Landau, in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors. Orbach was good, but I recall that the role was brief, with little dialogue.

In 2005, the Screen Actors Guild posthumously gave Orbach its Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Drama, for his work in L&O. He was nominated for at least 17 other awards for his TV work.

Orbach died in New York on December 28, 2004, at 69. He had just left Law & Order, whose star he had been for 13 seasons and, according to IMDB, 274 episodes. He had just begun work on a new trial show, Law & Order: Trial by Jury for the same producer, socialist Dick Wolf, and had completed two episodes playing his old L&O character, Det. Lennie Briscoe. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer while working on L&O, been getting treatment, and at one point, seemed to be doing well. The prognosis was excellent. But alas, it was wrong.

L&O: Trial by Jury could not overcome the death of its star, and was cancelled after 12 episodes had aired on NBC from March 3, 2005, until May 6, 2005. A 13th episode that had been filmed was broadcast by Court TV (since renamed TruTV) the following January 21.

In addition to L&O and Trial by Jury, Orbach played Det. Lennie Briscoe as a guest character on the Barry Levinson-Tom Fontana show, Homicide: Life on the Street, and on two other Dick Wolf series: Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Orbach’s L&O character was a recognizable New York type. Investigating cases, Lennie Briscoe would trade in gallows humor, the jokes often Orbach’s improvisations.

* * *(Investigating the murder of an art/art history instructor)
Briscoe’s young partner, Rey: “An art teacher... Who’d she ever hurt?”
Briscoe: “Yeah. An algebra teacher I can understand.”

* * *Divorce lawyer: “Do you know how many matrimonial attorneys were attacked last year?”
Briscoe: “I know one who should've been.”

* * *“Love - a dangerous disease instantly cured by marriage.”

* * *“There’s no such thing as hooker-client confidentiality.”

* * *(After being told a killing was the work of the devil): “No, this was done by someone who knows the neighborhood. Satan's not a local.”

* * *Talent agent: “The man has—had—a lot of energy. I, on the other hand, have a wife.”
Briscoe: “My condolences.”

* * *“Great. If we knew who it was, we’d know who it was.”

* * *“Maybe some guy didn’t wear his aluminum hat and some rays told him to knock on doors and kill people.”

* * *The show’s writers also borrowed from Orbach’s life, in making Lennie Briscoe the son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother.

In 2002, Orbach told TV Guide’s Charlie Mason,

“It may sound a little off the wall to say this, but having the opportunity to do this in this long an arc has given me — and is continuing to give me — a feeling that I’m doing something for the city and for the people of it and for the cops,” the 66-year-old Bronx native says. “I see it every day on the street — the profile of Law & Order has gotten bigger and bigger. And the way the city feels about us [cast members]... it’s like we’re part of the good things that happen in the city.”

At the end of his life, Jerry Orbach was the prince of the city. L&O was shot in New York, he was instantly recognizable, and unlike so many of today’s stars and “celebrities,” was a sweetheart to fans who greeted him in eateries. He was also known for private kindnesses, such as when he had delivered groceries, unasked, to then struggling screenwriter, Joe Eszterhas. According to IMDB, “The New York Landmark Conservancy declared him a Living Landmark.” He died on top.

When New York TV channels notified viewers that Orbach had died, at least one local news show ended its broadcast with a recording of the young Orbach singing “Try to Remember,” and a photo montage of his career (I guess the one that John posted). The city watched, and wept for its prince.
 


A 1960 recording of Orbach singing “Try to Remember.”
 

Both of the above videos were posted by Youtuber john170252, whom I thank for his efforts. John has assembled a video page full of different performances of the song, by Roy Orbison, Ed Ames, Julie Andrews, even a duet between Harry Belafonte and Nana Mouskouri, as well as other video memories of Orbach, (John has also posted a 1960 performance by Orbach of “Try to Remember,” which I placed at the end of this essay.)

John’s backgrounder follows:

Try to Remember is a song from the musical comedy The Fantasticks. It is the first song sung in the show, to get the audience to imagine what the sparse set suggests. Its lyrics, written by Tom Jones, famously rhyme “remember” with “September”, “so tender”, and “December.” Harvey Schmidt composed the music.

Try to Remember was originally sung by Jerry Orbach in the Original Off Broadway production of The Fantasticks. “Try To Remember” made the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart three times in 1965 in versions by Ed Ames, Roger Williams and the The Brothers Four. However, in 1975, Gladys Knight & The Pips had a huge international hit with their version of “Try to Remember,” combining it into a medley with a cover of Barbra Streisand’s “The Way We Were”. It reached #11 on the Hot 100 chart. In Knight’s version, she recited some of the lyrics from “Try To Remember” in spoken-word fashion before beginning to sing “The Way We Were.” The Greek singer Nana Mouskouri also recorded it in three languages: German, French, and Italian.

Try to Remember was also used in the soundtrack of the film The Man Who Fell to Earth, the video game Chrono Trigger, and the Hong Kong film City of Glass (Boli zhi cheng).

P.S. Should it be the case that Dick Wolf considers himself a communist, I want to apologize for calling him a “socialist.”

Facebook: I am an Invalid Name

“Creating content with this name is not allowed. Try another name.”

That’s what I was told tonight, when I tried to edit my “job.”

Here is what I tried to write for my job profile:

Job: Really insecure, the kind that some multiculturalist or Republican could get me fired from, if I were so inspired, as to list it on Facebook.
City: Ubiquity, America
Firm: Megalonational Intelligence
Job: I spend all day developing profiles via reading the Facebook pages of geniuses who were so inspired as to put their business in the street.
Now the link for “job” has disappeared altogether.


Earlier, I was able to post under education, but the only line remaining is Employer: “Why the hell would i tell you?” But I typed a capital “I.”

Employer: Why the Hell would I tell you?
College: Graduated Some Came Running from UCLA: The University at the Corner of Lenox Avenue. Sorry.
High School: Valedictorian, The School of Hard Knocks.

At “religious views,” I typed in “testing,” because I was. I wasn’t going to risk killing myself writing a dissertation, only to find that I am an “invalid name.”

I wonder if this is because there are two Facebook imposters claiming to be me?

Yet Another Wikipedia Cover-Up!

 
Alleged murderer Chaudry Rashid.
 
By Nicholas Stix

(For background, see:

“Wikipedia on Race: ‘World’s biggest encylopedia’ serves up propaganda”; and

“Wikipedia’s Censors are Hard at Work, Ensuring That Readers Do Not Learn about Crimes Committed by Members of ‘Protected Classes’ Against Members of ‘Non-Protected’ Classes.”)

Who is Chaudhry Rashid, and why should he matter to you?

As my VDARE editor-colleague James Fulford reports, Rashid is a Pakistani living in Georgia charged with having murdered his own daughter in an honor killing, two-and-a-half years ago.

But the censors at Wikipedia—you know, the cult co-founded by Jimmy Wales, who just raised $16 million in record time, under the fraudulent pretext that it was so that The Pretend Encyclopedia, as I call it, could keep readers better informed—are dedicated to keeping the public in the dark about this case, and millions of others that similarly show how multiculturalism is destroying America, according to plan.

Mr. Rashid is suspected of killing his daughter to preserve the family honor, an act not characteristic of actual "Georgia Men"--in the old stories about shotgun weddings, the shotgun was pointed at the prospective (if he knew what was good for him) son-in-law.

This custom has died out--who wants Levi Johnston for a son-in-law? But the custom of killing your daughter if she misbehaves is regrettably common among Pakistanis.

Police Say Georgia Man Killed Own Daughter to Protect Family Honor, July 08, 2008
I can't find much more about Rashid. I'll just point out that WikiPedia deleted the article on him. The reasons given were that it wasn't notable enough--because of the lack of mainstream media coverage. Also I'll note that other stories about Mr. Rashid called him Georgia Dad and Jonesboro Man.

[“‘Georgia Man’ 1, ‘Georgia Man’ 2, and Immigrant Familicide–Elvis Has Left Central America,” by James Fulford, VDARE, February 13, 2011.]

A “Brooklyn man” Named “Maksim Gelman”? CBS News and Associated Press Seek to Hide Nature of Yet Another Case of Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome (IMMS)

 

Maksim Gelman

By Nicholas Stix
Updated at 4:28 a.m., on Sunday, February 13, 2011.

NEW YORK - A 23-year-old Brooklyn man accused of going on a wild stabbing rampage Friday and Saturday that killed four and wounded two others was finally caught in a tunnel in the New York City subway system Saturday morning.

Maksim Gelman is accused of first stabbing his stepfather, Aleksander Kuznetsov “numerous” times early Friday morning, according to the New York City Police Department.

Just 11 hours later, Gelman allegedly drove a few blocks away and stabbed his 20-year-old girlfriend Yelena Bulchenko, and her mother, 56-year-old Anna Bulchenko.

All three were found dead by police….

[“Stabbing Rampage Suspect Caught in NYC Subway; Man Accused of Stabbing 5 People, Running Down Another With Car, 4 Dead in All; Captured in Subway Tunnel,” by Anonymous, Associated Press/CBS News, February 12, 2011. ]

According to police, Gelman stabbed three people to death; committed carjacking against Art DiCrescento, 60, whom he sought to stab to death; murdered a 62-year-old man by running him down with DiCrescento’s Pontiac; and committed attempted murder by slitting the throat of a 40-year-old passenger on a subway train, over 24 hours after starting his rampage. Police caught Gelman trying to escape by running down a subway tunnel, after jumping off the train.

Police charge that before Gelman stabbed the subway rider, he pounded on the motorman’s door, shouting, “My girlfriend ruined my life!”

By then the girlfriend, Yelena Bulchenko, had been dead for about 16 hours; the passenger is in critical condition.

Supplemented by an anonymous report in LALATE. (What is it, with these anonymous reports? Editors, give your reporters the credit they deserve!)

I guess now the feds will have to ban knives and girlfriends, at least for men.
For a wealth of information on Immigrant Mass Murder Syndrome (IMMS), hit this link.

Youth for Western Civilization’s Kevin DeAnna at CPAC

 


 

A tip ‘o the hat to Conservative Heritage Times.

Makem & Clancy: The Minstrel Boy, Let Erin Remember, Leaving of Liverpool

 


 

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,
In the ranks of death you’ll find him;
His father’s sword he hath girded on,
And his wild harp slung behind him;

“Land of Song!” said the warrior bard,
“Tho’ all the world betrays thee,
One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,
One faithful harp shall praise thee!”

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman’s steel
Could not bring that proud soul under;
The harp he lov’d ne’er spoke again,
But he tore its chords asunder;

And said, “No chains shall sully thee,
Thou soul of love and brav’ry!
Thy strains were made for the pure and free
They shall never sound in slavery!

* * *

Let Erin remember the days of old,
Ere her faithless sons betray’d her;
When Malachi wore the collar of gold,*
Which he won from her proud invader,
When her kings, with standard of green unfurl’d,
Led the Red-Branch Knights to danger!**
Ere the emerald gem of the western world
Was set in the crown of a stranger.

* * *

On Lough Neagh’s bank as the fisherman strays,
When the clear cold eve’s declining,
He sees the round towers of other days
In the wave beneath him shining:
Thus shall memory often, in dreams sublime,
Catch a glimpse of the days that are over;
Thus, sighing, look through the waves of time,
For the long-faded glories they cover.***

So fare thee well, my own true love
When I return united we will be
It’s not the leaving of Liverpool that’s grieving me
But my darling when I think of thee.

Thanks to vlikavec.

A Lost Art: Gilbert Highet's The Art of Teaching Turns 50

By Nicholas Stix

The Art of Teaching
by Gilbert Highet
Vintage/Random House, 1989 (1950),
268 pp., $11.00.

March/April, 2001
The American Enterprise

Teaching is NOT a science. So underscores at the outset of The Art of Teaching its author, Gilbert Highet. Highet (1906-78), a sort of "Yankee Don," was an Oxford-educated Scot who spent a long and illustrious career at Columbia University teaching, and writing on, the classics.

The Art of Teaching may have just turned fifty years old, but I can think of no timelier book than this classic, which has remained continuously in print, as a corrective to almost a century of progressive pedagogical destruction.

Gilbert Highet warns the reader that he will not be offering any curricular proposals, or telling us how to teach particular subjects. His concern is with teaching in the broadest possible sense. Thus, while he discusses with great candor and not a little irony different types of pupils, and the respective virtues of the lecture and tutorial systems, he devotes one-third of the book to teachers, none of whom are educators, as far as today's "professionals" are concerned: "Great teachers and their pupils," and teachers "in everyday life." Highet points out that we are, all of us, constantly learning from, and teaching others, whether or not we are conscious of this, or even wish to do so.

The great teachers and students range from the Sophists on through the 19th and 20th centuries. He is especially fond of the Jesuits, and of 19th-century pedagogues. Teaching in everyday life concerns everyone from fathers and mothers, and husbands and wives, to clergymen and advertisers.

There is a delightfully generous pragmatism to this man, who, just as he is able to appreciate parents' primary roles in education, is able to learn from Soviet and Nazi educators alike.

In some ways this book is quaint, and in others prophetic; but in every way, it is of perennial interest to the intellectually curious and spiritually hungry.

Its quaintness obtains in telling, in shocked tones, of the then-extraordinary case of the school boy who urinated on a textbook in front of his teacher and class. Today, I can see more than a few New York City assistant principals breathing a sigh of relief, upon being confronted with the same situation: 'Well -- it's not like he raped somebody!'

The book becomes prophetic, when Highet explains why teachers cannot also be social workers charged with improving their students' extra-curricular lives. Teaching, as Highet points out, is exhausting work. At the end of the school day, a dedicated teacher has no energy left to solve problems for which he has no expertise. (Were Highet alive today, I think he'd see that no one possesses such expertise.)

But we live in an age of activist teachers, who claim to be able to fix students' sex, family, and -- though they are hostile towards religion -- spiritual lives. Today's teachers have so much time and energy for ruining students' extracuricular lives not because they are more dedicated than their predecessors. Rather, teachers' indifference toward trivialities such as grammar, math, and history, frees their energy up for urgent pedagogical concerns such as sex, death, and race.

A good teacher, says Highet, has three primary characteristics.

"First, and most necessary of all ... he must know what he teaches. This sounds obvious; yet it is not always practiced."

Second, a teacher must LIKE what he teaches. Highet tells of an ignoramus he once encountered who was trusted to teach introductory French, yet who had never read Moliere, and "never will. I don't really like French at all. What I like is basketball. We've got a great little team at Woodside.

Highet continues that, "The third essential of good teaching is to like the pupils."

Well, that's three strikes against most of today's public school teachers and tenured, university professors.

Ideas Highet champions that were already then unfashionable, include teachers' need to have, and to teach, will-power. He similarly praises the central role of a powerful memory in teaching and learning, which today's progressive pedagogues deride as "mere rote memorization." And although writing at a time of relative safety in the schools, Highet addresses the problem of thuggish boys, for which he has a simple, no-nonsense solution: Such boys must be taught by MEN who themselves exude the sort of masculinity and toughness that the boys will respect.

While Highet does not polemicize, he is at sword's point with much of his age's progressive pedagogy, and is anathema to the radical feminists/multiculturalists, who for the past thirty years, have eliminated more intellectually demanding, pre-1970 literature, have henpecked the teaching profession and teacher education, and emasculated the boys in our nation's classrooms, all the while denying responsibility for what they have wrought. ("Education merely reflects society.")

To gauge how far we have fallen, and thus how much we need to re-learn Highet's lessons, consider the contumely recently heaped on him by some American feminist graduate students of teacher education at amazon.com (where this writer's serious reviews are unofficially banned):

"... a very out-dated [sic] book that should not be used in any classroom."

"His exultation of the Jesuit methods of teaching focusing on memorization and recitation are very out of line with current educational theory" [amen!].

"Highet, the author, does a very good job of ostracising [sic] his readers with his use of elaborate vocabulary and his extreme use of historical figures I have barely heard of."

As Descartes (1596-1650), who was educated by the Jesuits, pointed out, all education depends on memory. Which raises the question, Why would progressive/constructivist pedagogues be so hostile towards any method that increases children's memory?

The most general answer I came up with was anti-intellectualism. If children grow up to be citizens with poor powers of concentration, short attention spans, and the weak memories that flow from them -- the exact same characteristics which "progressive" pedagogues decry, and blame on the mass media -- they will be all the more pliable for the progressives' experiments in social engineering.

Another, in some ways more sinister explanation beckons, as well: The progressives wish to rewrite history at will, and so seek not only to weaken the individual student's memory, but to destroy the collective memories of civilization.

You don't have to be a parent or educator, in order to enjoy reading Gilbert Highet. But if you are responsible for a child's education, you might consider employing the principles he enumerates as part of a home-schooling program, in the selection of a private school, or as a subversive program for when your child is at home from government school.

Mass Murder and Race in Philly: What the MSM Won’t Tell You!

 
James Fulford has the story at VDARE.

Warning: Not for the squeamish!

Muzzammil Hassan, Who Valiantly Fought Stereotypes Depicting Moslem Men as Violently Abusing Women, Found Guilty of Beheading His Wife

By Nicholas Stix

My VDARE colleague, Brenda Walker, has the story: “Muslim Wife Beheader Found Guilty of Murder in Buffalo.”

Thinking Aloud

By Nicholas Stix

I wish Pat Buchanan would write a biography of Richard Nixon. Buchanan has the advantages of:

1. Having worked for Nixon for several years, and thus having seen him up close and personal;
2. Being uniquely qualified to explain Nixon’s political shortcomings; and
3. Being America’s greatest living political writer.

I realize that I risk being charged with sycophancy for writing this way, but I don’t see any other way to go about it. I’d love to write such a book myself, and think I could nail factor #2—hence my preoccupation with the project—but Buchanan can match me on that point, and beats me on the other two. Besides, I’ve got a crime project on my hands, and if I ever finish a book in the next, say, two years, that would still make Buchanan about ten times faster than me at finishing these things. (I’m great at starting books.)

Steelers Cut Packers’ Lead to Four

By Nicholas Stix

The Steelers marched downfield, Pittsburgh’s Rashard Mendenhall ran for a touchdown, and that inspired the Steeler defense to mash Green Bay. Although Green Bay leads, 21-17, with 7:34 left in the third quarter, the momentum is presently completely in Pittsburgh’s favor. One of the members of Green Bay’s bedraggled defensive unit had better step up and make a play, or the Steelers are going to steal the game from them.

You know what they say about what so often happens when you let a team hang around.

The Super Bowl Has Already Met Its Annual Obscenity Quota

By Nicholas Stix

I just saw a mention of "Aguilera" flubbing the National Anthem before the start of the Super Bowl. I only turned on the game 1:40 into play, so I missed the "Star Spangled Banner"--I didn't want to watch interminable nonsense. And a good thing, too. Why would someone hire a female who presents herself like a 10th Avenue streetwalker to sing the National Anthem? That was already an obscenity that would be hard to top.

Super Bowl Update: 21-10 Packers, at Halftime

By Nicholas Stix

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger threw two picks, both of which led to Green Bay touchdowns, putting the Steelers up, 21-3. The first interception came when Roethlisberger got hit on his own goal line, while throwing a pass. That one was run back by Green Bay for a touchdown.

The second pick came when Roethlisberger hooked up over the middle of the field with hot-shot young wideout Mike Wallace, who got hit on both sides by Packer DBs, one of whom stripped the ball. GB QB Aaron Rodgers quickly cashed in with a touchdown pass to Jennings over the middle, between two Steelers defenders.

The Steelers got the ball back with just over two minutes left before the half, and with the Packer defensive secondary banged up—Charles Woodson and [name?] had both been both knocked out of the game—drove down the field, by the method of Roethlisberger and Steelers legend and Super Bowl XL MVP Hines Ward playing pitch and catch for 18, 14, and 18 yards for a wild, sandlot-style touchdown.

It’s a game.

Super Bowl XLV: Go Pack, Go Steelers!

By Nicholas Stix

Heck, I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I’m watching it. Both teams are evenly matched. After years of defensive decline during the Brett Favre era, Green Bay has put together a very solid unit, though I don’t know any of these guys’ names.

Pittsburgh has a better running game, but Aaron Rodgers has the hot hand. (Ben Roethlisberger does not have such a great track record in Super Bowls.)
The Steelers have the Super Bowl experience, while the younger Pack crew has the hunger. All of the factors cancel each other out.

I expect a very close, hard-fought game, decided by three or four points, but it could go either way: Say, 10-7, or 34-31.

Headline: “As Somali gangs evolve, so does enforcement”

By Nicholas Stix

That’s one headline for a story in the Minneapolis “Red” Star Tribune.

How about this one: “Feds Solve Somali Gang Problem, by Barring Somalian Immigration”?

If you solve the problem, you don’t have to “evolve,” or engage in other sophistic rationalizations for surrender.

Well, I can dream, can’t I?

A Member of the Foreign Service Looks at the Federal Government’s Longtime War on the Historic American People

By “Albert”

As a man who is both living in Europe and who works for the State Department, I feel it is my duty to comment on this post and those prior speaking to Department initiatives with regard to minority populations in Europe and elsewhere. Obviously, I am not using my real name and the views I express here are my own personal views and are in no way sanctioned by the USG, which would be appalled that I was reading such sites, let along commenting on them.

I apologize in advance if this goes long, but I believe that given the New Right’s interest in Wikileaks and the stories that have arisen out of it that my observations from the inside are relevant and would be of interest to my fellow heathens.

To be immersed in the Department for any length of time is to know with absolute certainty that the battle of ideas, for the highest seat of power, for the basic outlook of the United States of America is over and it has been won by globalist, multi-culturalist, liberal capitalism. That is to say, the USG is currently fanatically devoted to a world-view that can best be described in shorthand as a mix between the Wall St Journal pro-global business and open borders stance and the ideology one would find in the Office for Multi-Cultural Affairs at a major liberal arts university.

Mencius Moldbug (whose father was in the Foreign Service, and as he once pointed out to Larry Auster, when a person IN the Foreign Service and a person who grew up in the Foreign Service are telling you, who are NOT in USG that USG is fully and completely committed to the modern liberal revolution and is not capable of being reformed, one should LISTEN) is completely correct in noting that this view has hardened into an ideology and has intertwined itself so thoroughly in the popular mind with what it means to be “American” that nothing short of an intense crisis or a complete breakdown will bring about any change. Certainly, electing this or that Republican makes no difference to the Permanent Government.

You may have noticed that President Obama’s policies are not significantly different than President Bush’s, which are both similar to President Clinton’s and, rhetoric aside, not very different from President Reagan’s. The reasons for this would take a book, but put simply Mencius is correct that liberal capitalist democracy is both universalist and a form of religion, arising out of deep Protestant and Quaker roots, and that what we are witnessing is merely the playing out of that tendency to its logical conclusion.

I say this as a way of putting my comments into context. While I remain because there is still a possibility for change (rationalization or not, I keep thinking that there must have been some members of the Soviet diplomatic service who realized that their nation’s devotion to an outdated ideology that didn’t work would someday come to an end and it was his duty to the Russian people to remain at post to help when that day came, but I’m probably kidding myself), the points raised in the comments about Conservatives not getting the fundamental nature of USG is not only true, its extremely true. As the post both here and at Alt Right demonstrated, not even clear-thinking members of the New Right have fully taken in that the USG is now the enemy.

Because, let’s fact it, bravado aside, that’s a difficult thing for an American to accept. It’s much easier for Europeans to accept this; they have a history of governments who need overthrowing. But in the long history of the American Republic, never, I think, has there been a time where the Government of the United States was ideologically committed to the wholesale destruction and replacement of the American people, their history, their identity, their ideals and their very being. The Civil War is a partial exception to that and, I’m starting to believe, a lesson that we Americans for too long smugly ignored.

In any case, on to the matters at hand with that background in mind. With regard to the post American Diversity Outreach, it is my sad duty to report to you that the USG is actively promoting this not only in France but throughout the European Union and elsewhere. The USG views the future and the meaning of the very word “democracy” to mean a democracy on the modern liberal capitalist globalist United States model, i.e. mass democracy with an extremely multi-ethnic population. To that end, historical nations are merely administrative bodies with particular historical backgrounds. A Turkish German is German. A Muslim Frenchman is French. Anyone who says otherwise is evil and will not be tolerated. Moves by any European government to treat their citizens differently based on ethnicity are viewed by USG as the same a denying Blacks in the U.S. civil rights and sends them into a shrieking frenzy. Any political party that opposes this is “monitored” by the U.S. and U.S. political and diplomatic capital is spent to discredit them.

In addition, the U.S. is fully committed to the proposition that the U.S. and Europe are Muslim as well as Christian and Jewish and Whatever entities. To that end, the U.S. has supported Albania and has created the new Muslim state of Kosovo. Kosovo and Albania are both led by criminals and murderers but in our ideological zeal this is not seen for what it is. It is seen, typically, as a need for MORE U.S. involvement, more “good governance” programs, more lectures to other Europeans that they’re not doing their part to integrate these countries into the European family.

A quick example suffices to make my point. As is now well-known, USG has come down squarely on the side of the protesters in Egypt, calling for Mubarak to step down. In doing so, we have trumpeted the right of the Egyptian people to freedom of speech and assembly and their right to petition to government as to their greivances.

However, in Kosovo, when in the north a group of ethnic Serbs gathered peacefully to demonstrate against the Kosovo government by picketing outside a local government office, which resulted in someone—presumably a Muslim—rolling a grenade into the demonstration, killing some demonstrators, our USG man on the spot reported that while the situation was lamentable, true responsibility for the deaths fell to the Serbs, who should have known that such an open demonstration would provoke Muslim violence.

So much for freedom of speech and assembly! So much for the right to petition a government of one’s grievances!

I see this sort of thing many times a day. The only thing one can conclude from this is that the USG has become fanatically ideological and will cram any facts into contortions to fit its ideological world-view. That this crazed body carries such immense power and weight bodes extremely ill for both the American people and the world.

Second, with regard to this report on Muslims in Europe, it makes a point that I have long ago seen clearly here in Europe: American conservative crowing over the death of Europe and the coming of Eurabia are wildly overblown and assume that Europe and its people won’t tell USG to piss off at some point. (Exception: The United Kingdom, which has terminal cancer, is dying and should serve as a warning to all Anglo nations, but hasn’t to date. It’s almost impossible to overstate the abject ugliness and dysfunction of this nation that once ruled the world, a nation whose capital you can fly to today and literally see the barbarians walking the streets of Empire, streets they themselves lack the capacity to build).

Note that the figures, even taken as they are, show no significant minorities anywhere, with the possible exception of France. Even there, the numbers are ridiculously small compared to the Black and Latino populations in the United States, especially in my native California. Europe has nowhere near the minority problem that the U.S. does and could rid itself of it, even at this late stage, with ease. While the State Department reflects its ideology and is chock full of Asians, Latinos, Arabs, Indians, Mexicans, Blacks and just about every other minority you could think of (all of whom are totally 100% American, in the modern, globalist multi-cultural sense), you’d be hard pressed to find any such diversity in the government service of any European country.

Keep in mind also that this study includes the Balkans, with its large Muslim population left over from Ottoman times.

In this respect, Fjordman is quite correct: USG is an enemy not only of its people but of the European people. While it is true that the European elite is as compromised on the USG-led ideology as the U.S. elite is, the fact on the ground here is that the common European people have NOT bought into this view. Among the common folk here, even on the left, there is much less tolerance for “diversity” than among average Americans. Thus, the reaction begins quicker.

France is a special case in this regard since its official ideology—like that of a triumphant liberal America—is universalist. However, on the ground, the French still know who is French and who just carries a French passsport—and the French are not known for going quietly when the chips are really down.

So, given this, what is to be done?

Three things, I think.

First, domestically, the New Right has to convince Americans that the USG no longer represents them or their interests, in an out-of-control behemoth and needs not reform but a wholesale political movement to perform deep and quick change. It’s time to stop beating around the bush and to talk straight to the American people about where we are and where we are headed. The U.K. is doing the Anglosphere a final service by demonstrating in real time where we are all headed. It needs to be pointed to and its warning heeding. Only a popular movement which approaches this issue with intelligence, wit and insight, bold and fearless about speaking the truth out loud and proud, stands any chance. Not a good chance, mind you, but a fool’s chance. Still, duty is duty and I don’t see how we can avoid taking this chance.

Second, with regard to Europe, the New Right has to convince the traditional, nationalist parties and people of Europe that if they tell USG to fuck off and to remove troops, stay out of our affairs and to accept that Europe is a continent of ethnic nation-states that they will enjoy the support of the American people, if not the American Government. This also can be used as a wedge between the American people and USG.

Third, we need at the same time as we proceed along the lines above, realize that we are dealing with an immense monster of incredible power and influence, one that has had the world by the throat now for decades and which as educated many generations of Americans to believe sincerely that everything USG stands for is hope and light and anyone who opposes is merely the first step to Auschwitz.

Given that fact, it is very likely we shall fail. We should therefore be also planning amongst ourselves what we should do if it becomes clear that we have failed. Some sort of withdrawal or alternative community is necessary if we are to preserve our culture and our heritage and not enough serious thinking has been put into Plan B at the moment.

While our elites are flying high at the moment, their ideology is unworkable. While they appear more vigorous, they in reality are not much differently placed than the frozen leaders of the CPSU waving from atop Lenin’s Tomb.

While we are few, so were those few in Prague who decades before the Iron Curtain fell put on plays in secret demonstrating the foolishness of the ruling ideology.

This is the task before us: to accept that we are dissidents and opponents. To accept that it is our duty to resist. To use art to express that resistance, the win intellectuals and people of ability to our side. To forge contacts with supporters in the outside world. To slowly expand our influence and never, ever stop laughing at the State.

And when it comes crashing, and I believe it will, we will be there, smiling and laughing.

A tip ‘o the hat to Mangan’s.