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Memo From Middle America |Puerto Rico Votes For Statehood—Or Maybe Not
“This vote fundamentally alters the terms of the political debate over status in Puerto Rico….after this vote it is not a question of if Puerto Rico will cease being a territory, but of when. “
The New Racism Is…Employers Cutting Hours Because Of Obamacare
Exactly two years ago this week, the Obama administration announced it had issued more than 100 waivers en masse to a select group of companies, unions and other health insurance providers seeking relief from the onerous federal health care law. The Obamacare waiver winner's club now totals 2,000. Where are they now?
Answer: In the same miserable boat as every other unlucky business struggling with the crushing costs and burdens of the mandate.
“Was the Conservative Movement Destined to Go Bad?”
[The following is based loosely on an address I gave to the Fifth Annual H.L. Mencken Club Conference in Baltimore, MD on November 10th, 2012. I am told an audio of the full address will be posted on the Club’s website in the fullness of time.]
[Peter Brimelow adds: I had the job of responding to John’s HLMC presentation, and will post a version when I get the transcript. But, in essence, I don’t really like John’s We Are Doomed stance, not least because I have very young children and therefore can’t surrender. As I concluded an article rallying patriots back in 2006, when it was universally but erroneously assumed that the Bush Amnesty was on the verge of passage, no-one really knows what’s politically possible—or even what’s going to happen next week.]
Destined since when?
Not to waste my precious time on this earth, while walking my dog I listen to lectures from the Great Courses company. Currently I’m listening to Prof. Pangle of the University of Texas, course title: “The Debate Over the American Constitution.”
Pangle works over all the arguments put forward by the anti-Federalists, then gives you the counter-arguments from the Federalists, then the counters to the counter-arguments, and so on. My U.K. education had very little to say about American history, so all this is illuminating for me.
I have, however, been finding myself very one-sided on those debates from 230 years ago, nodding along in agreement with the anti-Federalist arguments but shaking my head and snarling at the Federalist counter-arguments.
Being pretty new to this material, I have not much confidence in my own judgments. Then last night I was sitting at dinner with Prof. Kenneth McIntyre. I told him about my adventures with Prof. Pangle and the Constitution. Ken expressed vigorous approval. Yes, he said, the anti-Federalists did have the better arguments!
It was very encouraging to have one’s private judgments thus confirmed by a credentialed academic. From now on I shall confidently buttonhole people in the street and urge them to ponder William Butler on impost duties or Melancton Smith on consolidation.
My point here is just that American Conservatism goes all the way back to the beginning of the republic. Many of the things we talk about at gatherings like this are in direct line of descent from the arguments put forward by the anti-Federalists.
Thus, to see the history of Conservatism in this country in terms of “going bad”—as a phenomenon somewhat like a living organism, that was born, flourished, then decayed—displays what cognitive scientists call “recency bias,” the tendency to weigh recent events more than earlier events.
Conservatism is a feature of the human personality found in all times and places. Its stock on the public exchanges may rise or fall with circumstances. But it will never disappear.
A couple of years ago I reviewed a book actually titled The High Tide of American Conservatism. It’s about the 1924 Presidential election, when John W. Davis stood for the Democrats and Calvin Coolidge for the Republicans, two gentlemanly Conservatives. Davis was a Wall Street lawyer, and Calvin Coolidge was Calvin Coolidge.
Two gentlemanly Conservatives contesting the Presidency. Let me just pause for a moment here so that we can all heave a collective sigh.
[Collective sigh...]
Twenty years later the Presidential contest featured a liberal Republican versus Franklin D. Roosevelt. So it goes.
Post-WW2 Conservatism: When did it go bad?
All that was just a cautionary note, to add some perspective. We all know that the Conservative movement mentioned in the topic is the post-WW2 manifestation of public Conservatism, and that Conservatism in this manifestation did go bad. So let’s just adjust the question slightly to make this clear: “Was the post-WW2 Conservative movement destined to go bad?”
There is an obvious argument at hand to show that it was. Post-WW2 Conservatives judged that winning the Cold War was sufficiently important to ditch the core principle of American Conservatism, the principle that goes all the way back to those anti-Federalists: the principle of antipathy to a strong national government.
Then, having let the grizzly bear into the living-room, Conservatives of course could not get him out again.
This argument is quite plausible. Most of the “going bad” mentioned in our title, most of the wrong turns and malign phenomena, do seem to have happened or originated in the 1990s, after the Cold War.
I don’t myself think that the cap of Oakeshottian
Karl Rove—Poster Boy for National Suicide
[VDARE.com note: Virginia Abernethy [email her], Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Anthropology at Vanderbilt University, was the American Third Position Party’s 2012 candidate for Vice-President. Her most recent response to the usual critics is here.]
Karl Rove is a principal architect of the GOP's 30-year advocacy for mass immigration. Karl Rove can also be seen as the principal architect of the GOP's November 2012 disaster—because the large Hispanic vote turned around and bit him.
Rove, who has lived in Texas since 1981, was apparently impressed by the quality of post-Castro Cuban immigration. He must have failed to notice that the professional class was fleeing Castro, so the Cubans he met were not precisely representative of Cuba’s general population.
Unfortunately, Rove's enthusiasm for more and more immigration was welcomed by U.S. businesses who saw, cynically, that they could profit from a policy that depresses wages. They have been the main funders of Rove’s gargantuan PACs.
In 2012, Hispanics seem to have accounted for approximately 10 percent of the total vote. They broke overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. The presence of Cuban Hispanics was felt only in Florida, the closest electoral college race in the county.
If Karl Rove is confused that his indiscriminate welcome mat for Hispanics did not buy forever-gratitude, the explanation is simple: Cubans are not Guatemalans, are not Mexicans. In fact, the 1997 National Research Council report, "The New Americans", showed that the average immigrant from Central American is educated to less than the eighth-grade level. They compete primarily for manual labor jobs.
Such jobs are low paid, and the flood of new immigrant
Camp Bastion Families Want Answers About Afghanistan
While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boozes it up in Australia and the Pentagon grapples with more floozy eruptions, outraged military families are still waiting for answers about the forgotten 9/14 attac
Those Ole Miss Rebels On Election Night…Is The South (And America) Rising Again?
Perhaps it’s poetic fate that ESPN recently aired “The Ghosts of Ole Miss” a documentary on the 1962 football season at the University of Mississippi, detailing the anti-integration riots, federal control, and the undefeated all-white Rebel squad, all centered around the enrollment of James Meredith, the first black student at the school.
For a moment last week, the MSM seemed to want us to believe that those apparitions from the past were stirring again—summoning the elements needed for a perfect cake of hate: white southern males and black victims of “racism”:
A protest at the University of Mississippi against the re-election of President Barack Obama grew into crowd of about 400 people with shouted racial slurs as rumors of a riot spread on social media. Two people were arrested on minor charges.
Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones promised an investigation and said “all of us are ashamed of the few students who have negatively affected the reputations of each of us and of our university.”
[Obama re-election protest escalates at Univ. of Mississippi; racial slurs, 2 arrests reported, AP, November 7, 2012.
The University organized a candlelight vigil—a standard University response to fake hate crimes—and subsequent MSM reports downplayed the disturbances. No need to call out federal troops again to remind these white southern college students that they live under the iron heel of multicultural democracy—yet.
But these tremors just keep happening along the fault lines of America’s increasingly imperfect union. Thus students and alumni at Clemson University in South Carolina booed Obama at a recent football game. Clemson President James Barker was incensed that these white rubes would dare defy the president:
The president of Clemson University reprimanded the school's football fans Tuesday for booing President Barack Obama during a military ceremony last weekend, saying there is only one president, "and he is president of us all."
The display came as students were taking their oath upon being inducted into the university's Reserve Officer Training Corps on Military Appreciation Day during Clemson's 38-17 victory over Virginia Tech at Memorial Stadium in Clemson, S.C. The booing began as the members recited their pledge to "obey the orders of the president of the United States."
[Clemson president scolds students, fans for booing Obama at football game, NBC News, October 23-2012]
Remember, Southern whites were overwhelmingly behind the candidacy of Republican Mitt Romney. Only the black vote in states like Mississippi or South Carolina makes things appear close.
But at Southern universities, academe’s endemic Cultural Marxism is combining with blind football boosterism to facilitate a totalitarian reconstruction of historic identities. Every school’s administration, athletic departments, alumni, and student body worries about how public displays of white pride will reflect on the ability to recruit black athletes:
Former Ole Miss running back Deuce McAllister,[who is black] who went on to be a first-round pick of the New Orleans Saints, understands well how the university's past —and now, its present—impacts the football program's recruiting efforts.
"I feel strongly for the university," he said. "I mean, I'm embarrassed. I'm embarrassed as an alumni, I'm embarrassed as a former athlete. Because I know how hard it is to get minority players to come to the university. That's
No Change
As everybody on the planet knows now, Barack Obama was re-elected President of the United States. Democrats retained control of the US Senate, while Republicans retained control of the US House of Representatives. In other words, the national elections produced no change. But, in reality, we haven’t had any significant change in a national election in many years.
The Fulford File | Mitt Romney Was An Immigration WIMP, Dammit!
One of VDARE.com’s functions is to combat immigration enthusiast myths, for example the claim that George W. Bush got 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004—long-refuted but apparently unkillable.
Now, after GOP Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s (narrow) defeat in the 2012 Presidential election, Americans are hearing from both Democrats and Republicans that his problem was being an immigration hardliner, “giving in” to the “nativist” wing of his party who want immigration laws, well, enforced. See, for example Republicans need to shut up and listen, by Aaron Rodrigues [email him], Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 12, 2012.
This is what John Derbyshire has called “hate creep”—every year, the old mild options become the new “Hate”. Thus “self-deportation”—Romney’s not entirely original formulation for “attrition through enforcement,” which used to be the milder alternative to mass deportation—is now HATE.
Accordingly, President Obama, in the second debate, duly accused Romney of favoring "making life so miserable on folks that they'll leave." (And, typically, Romney promptly backed off his earlier support for Arizona’s SB 1070, protesting that he only favored its E-Verify provisions.)
But what’s going on here is Orwellian: a totalitarian drive to eliminate un-PC facts and ideas from public discourse. Case in point: Kevin Drum’s creepy piece in Mother Jones about Sean Hannity’s attempt to surrender on illegal immigration [The GOP's Immigration Problem Goes Way Beyond Immigration, November 8, 2012] suggested, in Steve Sailer’s tart paraphrase, that
Immigration isn't some technical issue like tax rates where the two sides can reach a compromise. It's a test of morals. Amnesty won't be just a practical tool for Democrats to solidify their majority; it will also be a symbolic milestone permanently delegitimizing
“Slippery Six” Mid-West States Doom Romney—Because Of Low White Share
What can we learn from the 2012 Presidential election?
How about this? In politics (as we might have occasionally mentioned over the dozen years of VDARE.com’s existence) demography is destiny.
Mainstream Republicans appear to be waking up to a reality that they’ve gone out of their way to not think about in the 15 years since Peter Brimelow and Ed Rubenstein pointed out that immigration-driven demographic change was bad for the GOP.
But, not having exercised their intellects about demographics over the intervening years, the first reaction of the Republican brain trust has been to grab the helpful advice of their Democratic colleagues: capitulate on Amnesty!!!
Nothing generates respect more than weakness and surrender, right?
The Democrats, these GOP strategists apparently reckon, have outsmarted us on demographics. So, being smart, they must know what is good for us, right?
After all, the only alternative would be to think for ourselves. And thinking makes our heads overheat.
However, for those of us who do think about demographics, here are two fairly good sources of data. One has gotten close to zero attention.
Here’s a chart you won’t see elsewhere:
Chart By Steve Sailer; Exit Polling By Reuters-Ipsos, Sample Size 40,000.
Before the election, I presented demographic data on 7,500 likely voters
Hitler's Revenge: Why Romney Failed With Northern Whites
NB - The Pacific North West was originally settled by Yankee migrants.
(Source: American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America
Over at Occidental Dissent, Hunter Wallace has expanded
Peter Morrison Report: Obama’s Anti-White Coalition Triumphs—Time For Texas (And Others) To Think Secession?
I know a lot of you are in shock with the results of the election. In the Peter Morrison Report, one of my continuing themes is that the problems America faces demographically are becoming more and more intractable. I kind of expected this to happen, though like a lot of you I was hopeful over the last few weeks.
The root of the word “patriotism” is the Latin word for father, and I would compare the emotional hurt washing over the conservative movement to that of caring for an aging parent with a degenerative disease. You know how the story is going to end, but it is very painful every step of the way as you see it happen.
On Tuesday America took one more step towards the abyss.
It’s 2006 All Over Again!—Another GOP Amnesty Must Be Defeated
The idea that the Hispanic vote cost Romney the election, and that therefore the GOP needs to support amnesty to survive, has been repeatedly debunked on VDARE.com. But facts and argument have no effect the Main Stream Media or its GOP Establishment poodle.
As expected, most of the usual pro-amnesty hacks, many of whom predicted that the GOP would win this election, are now saying the GOP needs amnesty to survive. Thus Senator Marco Rubio (R-Cuba) wrote on his Facebook page:
The conservative movement
Ignore Mainstream Media AND Mainstream GOP Spin On Romney Loss—It Was His Failure With The White Working Class That Did Him In
Before I knew the election results, the demographic breakdowns, or read any of the spin from the Mainstream Media, I had a pretty good idea of how I would write up the election if Romney lost.
I would just Google “Hispanic vote” and find a bunch of MSM articles quoting Republican strategists and politicians about how poorly Romney had done among Hispanics. I knew they would bring up the phony 44% Bush supposedly won in 2004 and how Romney alienated Hispanics with his talk (back in the primaries) about “self-deportation.”
Is the GOP Headed for the Boneyard?
After its second defeat at the hands of Barack Obama, under whom unemployment has never been lower than the day George W. Bush left office, the Republican Party has at last awakened to its existential crisis.
Eighteen states have voted Democratic in six straight elections. Among the six are four of our most populous: New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and California. And Obama has now won two of the three remaining mega-states, Ohio and Florida, twice.
Only Texas remains secure—for now.
John Derbyshire’s Election Diary: “Thanks A Lot, Willard. You Couldn’t Have Taken Just ONE Strong Conservative Position? “
Tuesday, 6:30 pm. Friend DK came round to watch the election results. Power’s still out from Hurricane Sandy in his neck of the woods.
DK has recently been traveling abroad, brought a bottle of duty-free Glenfiddich with him. We toasted confusion to the President’s party and settled in front of Fox News.
There was very little happening at this point, most of the polling places still open. Bret Baier and Megyn Kelly earned their salaries, filling dead air very professionally.
With no real news to think about, my mind drifted into regrettable frivolities—mainly the appearance of the two Fox presenters. For the first time I noticed how odd-looking Baier is: Hobbit-like, with strange ears and hair that, from a certain angle, looks like it’s been painted on. Kelly has that terrifying man-jaw that is supposed to signify an excess of testosterone in the female metabolism . . . Oh, I know, I know, I’m no oil painting, and I should concentrate on the important things about to happen. Concentrate, concentrate.
7:00 pm. Still nothing to look at but man-jaw and Hobbit ears.
Romney's White Share Fell Short Of 2010, So He Lost
Only one metric really matters in the close 2012 Presidential race: according to CNN's exit polling (scroll down), Mitt Romey's share of the white a.k.a. American vote was just 59%, for a twenty-point lead over Obama among whites. That's at the high end of the mediocre post-Reagan range, and four points above the hapless John McCain in 2008, but just not enough—as VDARE.com repeatedly remarked during the campaign as we prised white share data out of relectant MSM polls. (Counting is not complete as I write this, and the Pacific Coast results may reduce Romney's white share and some other details).
In comparison, the Congressional GOP got a 60% white share in 2010. Ronald Reagan got a 64% white share in 1984. George W. Bush won, narrowly, with a 58% white share in 2004, but
