Tag Archives: liberalism

Conservatives cozy with the establishment

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The infiltration of conservative and paleo- libertarian circles by progressives continues apace, writes the paleo-libertarian blogger at MoreRight.net:

“Why does a self-admitted liberal have a regular column at a website called The American Conservative, founded by Pat Buchanan, and his column is passed off as a conservative voice?”

It should make anyone wonder about several conservative pundits. Some of them seem to be more interested in their media presence than in supporting traditionalist positions.

Whether they are simply naive or actively working to undermine social conservatism is the question.

MoreRight.net continues:

” If you dig into the archives of this magazine, you see the same refrain again and again:

And what issue is more important than life? As a practical matter, conservatives would probably do better with voters by becoming less rigid on social issues where Americans are becoming more liberal. But they also stand to gain by doubling down on the issue that should matter most.

Translation: we ought to give up on social conservatism because no one will vote for it, let’s just focus on stopping abortion and forget the rest.”

The blogger gets a part of the picture right, although I think there are other reasons for someone to focus on abortion, as recently I have begun to.

He then points out evidence of conservative pandering:

“What else? Articles written by the left-libertarians from the Cato Institute, fawning over Jim Morrison (who was found dead in a bathtub from a heroin overdose), bizarre apologetics for Communist folk musician Pete Seeger, and other one-off oddball articles.”

Lila Rajiva:

I can point out even greater pandering and compromise on paleo-libertarian sites:

  • Using the same scatological and vulgar personal attacks that the left favors
  • Constantly mocking conservatives, right-wingers, and  Republicans (admittedly these aren’t all the same thing), without anywhere near equal time for their opposite numbers, thus doing the left’s work for it
  • Promoting  disinformation sources, such as  Robert Morrow and John Loftus.

MoreRight than traces some  direct links between traditionalists and neo-reactionaries with progressives.

Last year, I  came to the conclusion that Neo-reaction (also called the Dark Enlightenment)  was some kind of leftist/government ploy, but given the anti-Catholic slant of the term “Cathedral,” I also have to wonder why this blogger uses it.

Deep waters indeed….

Imagine the reaction if one were to term the establishment the “Synagogue” or the “Temple”?

Of course, it shouldn’t be fear of reprisal that stops someone from using either of those terms.  It should be the clear evidence that the establishment uses all sides of the debate against each other, Catholic and Jewish among them.

The people who are supposed to be standing up for traditionalists in the “new media” sphere are not-so-subtly stabbing them in the back, not just in their associations, but in their heartfelt beliefs.

In the DC/NYC new media milieu, credibility emanates directly from the center of the Cathedral, that is, The New York Times. Everyone is angling for a spot at the trough, including so-called “traditionalist” conservatives.

Lila:  I was cited by the New York Times a couple of times, a while back. I daresay could have cultivated that route had I the stomach for dissimulation needed for it. Frankly, I don’t.

[Josh] Barro is part of the “media/liberal thought elite,” which includes other mediocrities and Cathedral mouthpieces such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Anil Dash, Dave Weigel, Matt Yglesias, David Brooks, Paul Krugman, and so on.

What of the connection with “paleo”-conservatives? Jonathan Coppage, associate editor of The American Conservative, is friendly with Barro. They’re both connected to Forbes writer and former Business Insider analyst Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, who acts clueless about the decline, calls himself a “former reactionary who now embraces the Enlightenment,” and tells us about how great economic and social equality are. They’re connected to Michael B. Dougherty, another “surf the decline” conservative who openly mocks reactionary politics and argues in favor of “pragmatic” policies such as embracing immigration amnesty.

All these guys are very friendly with left-libertarians like Jason Kuznicki, Cathy Reisenwitz, and Josiah Neeley, who are doing their best to turn movement libertarianism into a subdivision of Frankfurt School progressivism. They’re in turn connected to witch hunters for liberal purity such as Julian Sanchez, also at Cato, and open borders enthusiasts such as Bryan Caplan (Cato), Eli Dourado (Mercatus), and Dylan Matthews (Vox). The relationship between so-called “paleoconservatives” and these left-libertarians and progressives is far too close for comfort.”

 

“Non-interfering” Kerry Cheers Overthrow Of Ukrainian Gvt

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Daniel McAdams at LRC blog comments on John Kerry’s interventionist position on Ukraine:

“I am on RT today discussing John Kerry’s Munich trip, where he met the Ukraine opposition parties and said that the US is “fully behind” those seeking to overthrow the democratically-elected government by force — right before he warned any outside powers against interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs.”

See also “US and Europe stand with people of Ukraine, says John Kerry,” The Guardian, Feb. 1 , 2014

NATO has joined Kerry to bully the Ukrainians government not to crack down on violence:

“Nato’s chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said he was “very concerned by attempts to involve the military in the crisis”.

The equivalent in terms of international provocation would be if the Russian President were to proclaim solidarity for the Occupy movement on US soil and warn American police against any militarized response.

While Kerry was double-dealing with the Ukrainians and thumbing the American nose at Russia, a little research turns up the interesting point that the largely peaceful Ukrainian protest suddenly turned violent at the same time as  Kerry’s visit and stepped-up support for it.

“Russia slams West’s support for Ukraine opposition,” AP, The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2014

“The protests had been mostly peaceful until mid-January, when demonstrators angered by the new anti-protest laws launched violent clashes with police. Three protesters died in the clashes, two of them from gunshot wounds. Police insist they didn’t fire the fatal shots.“

See also “Russia slams as circus Kerry Ukraine opposition meetings,” Daily Star, Feb 1, 2014

“Russia’s outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin called Kerry’s upcoming meetings a “circus” in a tweet on Friday.

“It’s also necessary to involve Verka Serdyuchka in the talks,” he said in apparent sarcasm, referring to Ukraine’s bombastic drag queen pop star.

“Her/his authoritative opinion should be heard by the White House and taken into account!”

Is this another covert destabilization effort in the tradition of the color revolutions?

Evidently so.  At Storyleak.com, Michael Thomas breaks down the history:

“What is particularly surprising about the current color revolution unfolding in the Ukraine is that this nation was the site of the very same CIA implementation plan back in 2004/2005.  The Orange Revolution, as it was known at the time, was a classic CIA-engineered plot to impose their political outcome on the Ukrainian people. And they succeeded with flying colors.

That CIA-sponsored coup d’etat was so successful that it has since been used as a model for every other CIA-manufactured scheme that has toppled governments and reversed fair election outcomes the world over. In fact, the Ukraine is where the various social network utilities were used so effectively that the new MO has become known as the digital blitzkrieg. Never in human history have so many citizens been stampeded in the direction of overthrowing their government while being completely ignorant of the real forces manipulating the cattle prods.”

The article suggests that the Ukrainian government seems to be master-minded, as well the protesters. The result is that the Ukraine is being shepherded into the Eurozone, a communistic/fascistic scheme that will allow the patrons of the Eurozone to replenish their depleted treasuries:

“…. the Ukraine is looked to as a temporary savior because of its many large and robust markets, well established industrial base and transportation links to Asia, as well as it vast natural resources and raw materials.”

Gore Vidal WAS A Pedophile, Says Family

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UPDATE

Further substantiating my accurate analysis that Vidal’s “anti-establishment” stance (including his “antiwar” stance) was not in anyway a principled objection to abusive power, notice from this report that he craved the status granted by elite institutions like Harvard (not having gone to college himself); notice that his hatred of the state was mixed with feelings of thwarted ambition because he’d always wanted to be president; notice that his anti-establishment rants were mingled with constant remembrances of status symbols and the upper-class gilded life to which he belonged and in which he reveled; notice the opulent life-style he lived (not that I have anything against that) and his $37 million estate); notice the deep alcoholism and madness in which he ended his life.

Now put against that the FACTS about Gandhi:

1. Was in excellent physical and mental condition late into life, when he was undergoing month-long fasts.

2. Was repeatedly offered leadership positions in the state and turned them down. Counseled against imitating Western state structures.

3.  Although once prosperous, gave away most of his belongings and was left with nothing more than a watch, his glasses, his loincloth and shawl, and a bowl out of which he ate.

4. Died not from alcoholism and insanity, but from a bullet delivered by an assassin. His last words were “He Ram” (Oh God).

No need to demonize Vidal, of course.

He was a talented, clever, witty man, who said many true things about history and government and he was a prolific, popular novelist of varying ability. He was a fine essayist, no doubt.

But he was also a compulsive  promiscuous pedophile (and most likely a child rapist) who publicly defended  other child rapists (Roman Polansky, Catholic priests).

He was nasty to friends and foes, envied others and relentlessly slandered them. He harbored demons to the end of his life that he was too weak to overcome. He deserved  the prayers and intervention of his friends and family in life, not the mindless adulation of strangers in death. He doubtless victimized scores of children, Thai children, whom we’ll never hear about. Safe Horizon, so exercised about the Indian nanny fake-slaver case should perhaps be called in about this compelling example of real child-sex tourism.

The American media can keep Gore Vidal for a hero. He fits their values.

I’d rather look among hundreds of unsung activists/writers for mine.

ORIGINAL POST

Gore Vidal’s family supports the long-standing rumors of Vidal’s pedophilia that I published here and that I decided, after analysis, were credible.

For that, this blog was hacked, and a week or so later, some spooky electronic harassment took place. I’m not really sure how that happened. I only know it took place.

I think I was alone among antiwar bloggers, most of whom praised Vidal to the skies, ignoring everything except the fact that his position on war was theirs.

I usually wouldn’t criticize a man on his death, but the universal praise of such a deeply flawed man, just after the contemptible and untruthful slurs against Gandhi, cried out to be corrected.

So here’s the post I wrote: Vidal, Polanksy and Kinsey, August 4, 2012.

In contrast, here’s Justin Raimondo’s piece “The Last Jeffersonian,” August 3, 2012

[I have always liked Raimondo’s investigative pieces on the Israeli lobby, one of the more dangerous areas for writers, so this isn’t meant as an attack on him.]

Here’s another libertarian Bill Kauffman on Vidal.

Now for the main points from the Daily Mail piece on Vidal:

“In a feature that appeared in the New York Times, Ms Straight – who had a ‘turbulent though close relationship’ with Vidal – said the openly-gay author had had sex with underage men.

“She described the alleged circumstances as ‘Jerry Sandusky acts’, referring to the former Penn State assistant football coach convicted of child molestation.

“Mr Steers – who directed the Zac Efron film Charlie St Cloud – said that conservative columnist William F. Buckley – who had a long-running public feud with Vidal, which also played out in court – had evidence linking Vidal to the alleged crimes.”

AND

“The New York Times article also says that the ever-opinionated Vidal had a strange and controversial take on the abuse perpetrated by Catholic priests.

“‘He would say that the young guys involved were hustlers who were sending signals,’ Mr Steers said.

[Lila: Based on this statement alone, I would give credibility to the charges against Vidal.]

“However the author of the article, Tim Teeman, wrote that ‘other friends of Mr. Vidal told me they doubted he had sex with underage men’.

“I”Vidal suffered from dementia and alcoholism towards the end of his life.

“Mr Steers said he would drink single male scotch ‘until he collapsed’.

Vidal also had ‘wet brain’ – proper name Wernicke-Korsakoff – a syndrome characterized by a number of symptoms, including confusion and hallucination.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2496631/Family-Gore-Vidal-allege-pedophile-challenge-writers-37-million-will.html#ixzz2q2g6wNOz
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Vidal was not only a pedophile, it seems he beat up gays, so intense was his own self-loathing.

[Lila: I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not his “pedophilia” but his involvement in even worse – violence against  male child prostitutes that might be the real story and the “yes he was a pedophile” simply a diversion. After all, pedophilia apologias have already appeared in mainstream media, like The Atlantic.]

Consider the reverential treatment given to this insane, addicted, unpleasant man, who was a self-confessed pederast. His well-documented compulsive lifestyle was passed over in silence by the establishment media, since he was “one of them,” from the ruling class.

But of Gandhi, a man who fought his devils all his life bravely, with the utmost candor, and engaged, successfully or not, in one of the biggest social upheavals in modern history,  the same media has recently had nothing but scurrilous and easily discredited innuendo.

Malicious critics called him a bisexual pedophile molester, based on deliberate falsification and exaggeration of historical evidence. They called him a hypocrite, whereas the truth was he was compulsively open to his critics, even begging them to write the worst they knew about him.

Why so much venom? Because Gandhi was Indian and the media in the West has over the last two years been engaged in a systematic campaign of vilification and half-truths against India, along with literal provocations, as I’ve amply documented.

While Vidal,  a hero of  modern liberals, lived in terror of the truth about himself coming out, Gandhi courageously reported every passing sexual feeling in his diaries, urged his critics to say the worst about him that they could, and berated himself endlessly for even mental failures of continence.

Here’s more about  the new claims about Vidal:

“Vidal accused Buckley of being a “crypto-Nazi”; Buckley responded by labelling Vidal a “queer” and telling him to stop his insults or Buckley would “sock [him] in the goddamn face”.

Their argument ended up in the courts, where Buckley first lost an expensive lawsuit against Vidal for libel, before winning a settlement from a magazine that republished Vidal’s written attack years later.

Vidal once estimated he had slept with 1,000 men before he was 25, and boasted of having had sex with Fred Astaire, Rock Hudson and Noel Coward, according to Mr Teeman.

While enjoying a 53-year relationship with his long-term partner, Howard Austen, before Austen’s death in 2003, he wrote in his 1995 memoir, Palimpsest, that he was “attracted to adolescent males”…….

…Buckley’s son, Christopher, has said that while clearing out his late father’s study, he found a file labelled “Vidal Legal”, which he threw into a dumpster…….

An unidentified “longtime friend” of Vidal’s added that the author had once shocked a guest at his home in Ravello, Italy, by announcing: “You know I’m a pederast”.

This friend focused on Vidal’s time spent in Bangkok, Thailand, a city notorious for its sex trade. “He did go to Thailand every year, and he was definitely having sex with male prostitutes there, and they weren’t older male prostitutes,” the friend said.”

Evil people lie about good people for one principal reason – vanity.

They cannot stand being shown up by anything or anyone better than they are.  A couple of years ago, the Catholic Archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote about the profound intolerance of sin for anything that rebukes it, in an essay, “Evil preaches tolerance only when it’s weak.”

So also lies cannot tolerate truth.

But  the world is not built on lies.  And man cannot live on lies.

At the end, when the mud and the bile and the envious distortions of petty men have had their day, the truth will be vindicated.

The Daily Bell Gets It….

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The Daily Bell on why the show trial of Goldman (albeit a worthy target, in my opinion) is most likely to be just another ruse of the powers that be:

“The progressive press, in our estimation, tries to blame individuals or certain corporations (Enron comes to mind, and now Goldman) to distract from the larger issue, which is the corruption of civil society itself by this horrid, pernicious mercantilism. Continue reading →

Bush Redux: The Obama Doctrine

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Glenn Greenwald on the Obama Doctrine:

“Indeed, Obama insisted upon what he called the “right” to wage wars “unilaterally”; articulated a wide array of circumstances in which war is supposedly “just” far beyond being attacked or facing imminent attack by another country; explicitly rejected the non-violence espoused by King and Gandhi as too narrow and insufficiently pragmatic for a Commander-in-Chief like Obama to embrace; endowed us with the mission to use war as a means of combating “evil”; and hailed the U.S. for underwriting global security for the last six decades (without mentioning how our heroic efforts affected, say, the people of Vietnam, or Iraq, or Central America, or Gaza, and so many other places where “security” is not exactly what our wars “underwrote”).  So it’s not difficult to see why Rovian conservatives are embracing his speech; so much of it was devoted to an affirmation of their core beliefs.

The more difficult question to answer is why – given what Drum described – so many liberals found the speech so inspiring and agreeable?  Is that what liberals were hoping for when they elected Obama:  someone who would march right into Oslo and proudly announce to the world that we have a unilateral right to wage war when we want and to sing the virtues of war as a key instrument for peace?  As Tom Friedman put it on CNN yesterday: “He got into their faces . . . I’m for getting into the Europeans’ face.”  Is that what we needed more of?”

Norman Podhoretz Admits Liberalism is a Religion..

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From The New York Times blog, a round-up of reasons why American Jews have identified so much with liberalism.

There’s a moment of candid speaking from the arch neo-conservative himself:

“Liberalism, he [Norman Podhoretz] argues, “is not, as has often been said, merely a necessary component of Jewishness: it is the very essence of being a Jew. Nor is it a ‘substitute for religion,’ it is a religion in its own right, complete with its own catechism and its own dogmas and obdurately resistant to facts that undermine its claims and promises.”

Michael Medved, the conservative cultural critic, goes past ‘support for Israel’ as the irreducible core of Jewish political belief:

“Jews, like all Americans, vote not so much in favor of politicians they admire as they vote against causes and factions they loathe and fear. Jews fear the GOP as the “Christian party,” and as the sole basis of Jewish identity involves rejection of Christianity, Jews will continue to reject – Republicans and conservatism.”

This is territory most non-Jewish writers would hesitate to explore for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. But the more relevant question might be whether it’s completely accurate. A liberal commentator, Ron Rosenbaum diverges. He has another explanation of Jewish liberalism:

“I won’t say that it isn’t difficult, that there aren’t contradictions with being Jewish and liberal, but I’d rather associate my political orientation with those who supported the Civil Rights movement than with those who have yet to repudiate the racism behind the Southern strategy.”

Another writer, Robert McCain, adds the suburban-urban divide to the mix:

“Most American Jews are fundamentally urban in their orientation, while most American conservatives are fundamentally rural.”

My Comment:

It’s an interesting piece to read, but for me it raises a question about definitions. Most Jewish people might identify with liberalism. But is liberalism itself identified with Jewishness? I may be wrong, but surely it’s not. And surely a great deal of the purported venom of liberalism against Christianity arises from Gentiles.... from former Christians….from lapsed Christians…or from cultural or secularized Christians who loathe the religious aspects of their culture.