01m14s — Super Trumpsday. (Is white male guilt over?)
07m53s — Gentry Republicans strike back. (Revenge of the nerds.)
12m58s — Narrative collapse in Albany. (Eternal recurrence of race hoax panic.)
19m14s — Libertarianism in one superstate. (Build walls for liberty.)
24m10s — The nation wreckers. (Britain's very own Clintons.)
29m27s — South Africa's poor whites. (No deliverance for them.)
35m30s — A stalwart patriot. (Give Pat a corner office, President Trump.)
38m01s — Fourteen years of blundering futility. (Your tax dollars at work.)
41m22s — A bolt-hole for liberals. (Friendly giant to our north.)
46m11s — Signoff. (Prepare to bounce.) 01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, from your triumphantly genial host John Derbyshire, here to bring you clips and commentary from the past few days' events.
All is tranquil here at Hate Central, I'm glad to say. Sandy, my research assistant, is away visiting her grandchildren; our technicians are on the threshhold of making the show available via iTunes, they tell me; and my memo to the suits recommending we relocate the entire operation to Uruguay, is, I am assured, being given the most serious attention.
With nothing further to report, let us proceed directly to the week's news.<
02 — Super Trumpsday. Well, Super Tuesday came and went — or Super Trumpsday, as we call it over here in the Trumposphere.
It was a good day for the Donald: He won seven states to Ted Cruz's three and Marco Rubio's one, and he picked up either 237, 247, 257, or 258 delegates, depending which website you check. I don't know why professional journalists can't agree on delegate numbers, but they can't. Even at the lowest number, 237 — that's from the New York Times — Trump got a further 19 percent — damn near one in five — of the delegates he needs to walk into the convention a winner. The Times has Cruz picking up 209 delegates, Rubio 94.The big story from Super Trumpsday was not the state or delegate counts, but the turnout numbers. A picture tells a thousand words, so I'm at a disadvantage here working only with audio; but I urge listeners to put the words "super tuesday turnout" in the Google search box, then scroll down a bit through the results to the NPR report. It was number two on the list when I did it just now.
There's a bar chart there showing GOP voter turnout on Super Trumpsday compared with 2012. In all eleven states with GOP contests turnout was up, mostly way up. GOP voter turnout in Virginia was up two hundred and eighty-six percent.
Turnout for Democrat voters can't be compared with 2012 because they were locked in to Obama, their sitting President, that year. Comparison with the 2008 results were dismal for the Dems. In their eleven states turnout was down in all but one, mostly way down. In Texas it was down fifty percent.
Permit me to pause here and insert a quotation. This is from Madame de Staël, a public intellectual in France during the revolutionary period. Quote from her, writing in 1807: "Once you have made enthusiasm ridiculous, there is nothing left but money and power." End quote.
Not much doubt where the enthusiasm lies in this year's voting; and the combined forces of the leftist media and gentry Republicans have not so far been able to make enthusiasm ridiculous. If they ever do, then as the lady said, there'll be nothing left but money and power. Cue Mrs Clinton.
A side effect of the Super Trumpsday results was to thin the pack a little. Ben Carson seems to have dropped out on the Republican side, although the guy is so diffident and self-effacing it's hard to tell. At any rate, he begged off this week's GOP debate and appears to want to retire back to the fruit salad of his life.
Sorry to see you go, Dr Carson; but thanks for reminding us that being a candidate that nobody can think of any reason to dislike, doesn't translate into a lot of votes.
In the Democrat primaries, Mrs Clinton took seven states, Bernie Sanders took four. Delegate-wise, Mrs Clinton got 504, Bernie got 340. The lady's way up at over a thousand delegates total, though, so Bernie's cause is pretty hopeless at this point.
The life lesson from Bernie is that no good deed goes unpunished. Blacks just won't vote for him: Mrs Clinton has them by 80 percent — ninety percent among black women. This is in spite of the fact that she was a Goldwater Girl while young Bernie was out demonstrating for Civil Rights. Life is so unfair.
Oh sure, sure: Bernie exhibited his revealed preference by settling in the second whitest state in the union, 1.2 percent black; but then, Mrs C showed hers by settling in one of the whitest towns in New York state, 1.9 percent black. So revealed preference is a wash, race-wise.
Mrs Clinton's weakness is with white men. She splits about even with white women, but loses white men two to one. Possibly white men are tired of living under the Jim Snow regime — tired of being the villains in our national Narrative, the criminal in every crime, the ghost at every banquet.
Perhaps white male guilt is over at last. I sure hope so: my back's sore from all the self-flagellation.<
03 — Gentry Republicans strike back. Just a glance at those combined forces I mentioned.
Liberals are doing their best to wound Trump, but it's feeble stuff.They put out some stories about an off-the-record interview Trump gave to the New York Times in which he intimated that some of his more extravagant promises were just opening gambits in his negotiation strategy.
Well, duh. Anyone who's purchased a car had that figured out already. Radio Derb noted it two weeks ago, quoting commentator Mark Cunningham, quote: "Politicians never deliver everything they promise, but the higher they aim, the more likely you'll actually get something," end quote. I guess liberals have people to do their negotiating for them.
The next ploy from the left was to link Trump to the Ku Klux Klan. [Scream.] David Duke, a pro-white politician who was leader of the Klan forty years ago, on his podcast, urged people to vote for Trump. OK, point by point:
Gentry Republicans meanwhile were doing whatever they could think of to help the left bring down Trump.
House Speaker Paul Ryan was holding a clambake for illegal alien kids from Guatemala when he heard the crack of the leftist whip. Ryan jumped to attention and honked that, honk, "If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party … they must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry," end honk.
Mitt Romney joined in on Thursday, urging GOP primary voters to support the best non-Trump candidate in every state, so as to prevent Trump arriving at the convention with a majority of delegates. I'd give you a quote from Mitt, but I'm afraid he works on me like an instant insomnia cure. I'll give you one of Trump's rebuttal quotes instead. Referring to Romney's 2012 campaign, Trump said:
[Clip: He was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, "Mitt, drop to your knees." He would have dropped to his knees.]I'm glad Mitt came out with that, however. It gave us a perfect contrast between the milquetoast gentry Republicans who run the party and the street-fighting no-apologies insurgent who's facing them down.
Romney's not a bad guy, and would probably have made a no-worse-than-average President, in the league of Poppy Bush or Gerald Ford.
A great many Republicans, though, believe it's time we won something for a change, and stopped apologizing. Trump's our man.<
04 — Narrative collapse in Albany. There was a nasty case of Narrative Collapse this week up in Albany, the capital of New York State.
Just to remind you about Narrative Collapse: The Narrative here is the official story about our society, as promulgated by Cultural Marxists in the media and the schools. It divides us up into Oppressors and Oppressed.In old-style Marxism the Oppressors were the owners of capital, the Oppressed were the working classes. Things are much more complex than that in Cultural Marxism, to the degree that a given group might be Oppressors in one context but Oppressed in another. Muslims, for example, are Oppressed by non-Muslims in the West, poor things; but Muslim men are Oppressors of Muslim women and homosexuals.
Fortunately we Americans don't have to worry too much about these anfractuosities, as the Narrative here mostly manifests itself as stories about whites oppressing blacks. These stories are regular features of our national life, pushed to the front pages of our newspapers and endlessly commented on as showing the wickedness and depravity of white people and the pitiful helplessness of blacks.
Then, much more often than not, it emerges that the narrated events never happened, or happened quite differently from what we were first told. The Narrative suffers a local collapse, and the story disappears from the headlines to be pushed hastily down the memory hole.
Well, that's what just happened in Albany. The initial story was that on January 30th three black female students at the State University up there were insulted and attacked by ten to twelve whites on a bus.
There was the usual shrieking and wailing from the media. Demonstrations were held. Placards were held up by angry-face blacks. A Twitter hashtag was set up: #DefendBlackgirlsUAlbany. Mrs Clinton tweeted her support, tweet: "There's no excuse for racism and violence on a college campus," end tweet. The President of the university, a black guy, put out a statement declaring himself, quote, "deeply concerned, saddened, and angry about this incident," end quote. He left out "troubled," I don't know why.
Police carried out a three-week investigation. It ended with complete Narrative Collapse. Long quote from CNN, February 26th:
"The evidence shows that, contrary to how the defendants originally portrayed things, these three individuals were not the victims of a crime," university Police Chief Frank Wiley said in the statement. "Rather, we allege that they are the perpetrators."Police said Ariel Agudio, 20, faces charges of assault in the third degree, falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, attempted assault in the third degree and attempted criminal mischief in the fourth degree; Alexis Briggs, 20, faces a count of assault in the third degree; and Asha Burwell, 20, faces charges of assault in the third degree and falsely reporting an incident in the third degree …End quotes.The evidence gathered against [the three women] included interviews with 35 bus passengers, video from a dozen security cameras on the bus and mobile videos taken by passengers.
"No male struck the three women," the police statement said. "The evidence indicates they were actually the aggressors … and that they continued to assault the victim despite the efforts of several passengers to stop them." … "What happened on the bus was not a 'hate crime,'" Wiley said. "The only person we heard uttering racial epithets was one of the defendants."
"Racial epithets," eh? Seems to me that means that what happened on the bus actually was a hate crime: but … we all know how that works.
This story will now disappear without trace. Then, after a month or two or three, there'll be another headliner about evil whites being beastly to cowering, fearful blacks. Mrs Clinton will tweet her outrage, the media will chide us for our racism, there'll be a demonstration or two — perhaps a riot or two — and some fool college president will tell us how saddened, angry, and troubled he is, and we'll go round the track once again to Narrative Collapse and silence.
"Eternal recurrence," Nietzsche called it. It's been going on for decades now. I doubt it will ever end.<
05 — Libertarianism in one superstate. Ten years ago I wrote a column for National Review under the title: "Libertarianism in One Country."
If you know your 20th-century political history you'll recognize that title as a spoof on Joseph Stalin's slogan: "Socialism in One Country." Stalin thought the Bolsheviks should abandon hopes for a world-wide revolution and concentrate on building up the U.S.S.R. The point of my article was to urge libertarians to take a leaf from Stalin's book.It seems obvious to me, as obvious as anything could be, that the degree of personal autonomy and respect for private property that libertarians dream of, can only be hoped for in an advanced First World society that very strictly controls immigration. For maximum liberty inside the borders, you need maximum security at the borders.
Contrariwise, Libertarianism with open borders is just a suicide wish by libertarians. Libertarianism is a First World doctrine, in fact almost entirely an American one. It has very little appeal elsewhere. It's not attractive either to illiterate peasants from mercantilist Latin American states, or to East Asians with traditions of imperial-bureaucratic paternalism, or to the products of Middle Eastern Muslim theocracies.
The usual counter-argument from libertarians is to say that OK, libertarianism might be a hard sell to immigrants from very illiberal political traditions, but it will appeal to their Americanized children, to the second generation.
As I said in my column back then, that would need some serious missionary effort. Quote from me:
According to Brink Lindsey, only thirteen percent of Americans currently lean libertarian. If decades of libertarian proselytizing have only achieved that much success with a population rooted in the traditions of Pericles and Magna Carta, of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, how well should libertarians expect to do with the political descendants of emperors and caliphs, of Toussaint L'Ouverture and Mao Tse-tung?End quote. As I said, this all seems blazingly obvious to me. It comes to mind when I'm reading about the current crisis in Europe, with people pouring in from Africa and the Middle East.
Was this really so hard to foresee? When the Schengen agreement was signed thirty years ago, for the removal of border controls between participating EU nations, that was a libertarian move — a huge increase in liberty within the European Union. Instead of having to show a passport and undergo scrutiny from immigration officials when passing from Germany to France, you just drove right through.
Did it not occur to anyone that this was only going to work with maximum controls at Europe's external borders? Most particularly with intensive patrolling of the Mediterranean coastline, from which Europe looks across to the Third World?
Now the EU is crumbling under pressure from the Third World flash mobs. Sure, I know: hindsight is 20-20. Was this really so hard to figure, though? Back in the seventies and eighties, when legions of high-salaried bureaucrats were setting up the system, did this really not occur to any of them? To any of them?
We are ruled by idiots.<
06 — The nation wreckers. Here's someone who tells us he's worried — troubled — by the thought of Donald Trump becoming President of the U.S.A.: former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Blair, from Britain's Labour Party, was in charge of government over there from 1997 to 2007. On March 2nd he told CNBC that, quote: "I get really anxious when I think that policy is being made by Twitter feed. Those that shout loudest do not necessarily deserve to be heard the most." End quote.What Blair should really be anxious about is getting lynched by British patriots. A new book just out by an investigative journalist over there confirms what everyone has long suspected: that Blair conducted a deliberate program of mass immigration into Britain for political purposes, and ordered his subordinates to say as little as possible about it for fear of arousing opposition.
We'd already heard about this from one of Blair's speechwriters. Writing in one of the London newspapers seven years ago, this fellow told us that Blair's government wanted to make his country multicultural in order to, quote, "rub the Right's nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date."
This new book confirms that, and adds some details. The author quotes Blair's immigration minister as telling her civil servants that, quote, "Asylum seekers" — that's Brit-speak for "illegal immigrants" — "Asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in Britain. Removal takes too long and it's emotional." End quote.
There is all sorts of other fun stuff in the book about Tony Blair and his creepy wife, Cherie. The couple are a sort of British edition of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Like the Clintons, they've been shameless about parlaying political power into hard cash, and both are now very wealthy.
They've been particularly adept at milking the Saudis and Gulf Arabs for consultancy and speaking fees. That quote from Tony about Donald Trump that I started off this segment with was made in Abu Dhabi, where he was attending the Global Financial Markets Forum last week. Cherie showed up in Hillary Clinton's emails, lobbying for the Qataris.
To be fair to Tony, he's been somewhat more disciplined about keeping his fly buttoned that Bill Clinton was. This new book recycles rumors that Blair had the leg over with Rupert Murdoch's Chinese wife Wendi; but the evidence is circumstantial, and given Britain's tabloid culture, should be taken with a pinch of salt.
Like the Clintons, the Blairs pose as Social Justice Warriors, and belong to the further left of their nation's two big political parties. Britain's Labour Party, in fact, was quite dogmatically socialist until recently. Under the circumstances, you'd think the Clintons and Blairs would be embarrassed at having got stinking rich in what they are pleased to call "public service." I guess they don't embarrass easy.
On a scale of turpitude, in any case, Blair's wrecking of the historic British nation through unrestrained mass immigration is his greatest crime. In a just world, he'd be doing 25-to-life for high treason.
I'm glad he's anxious about a Trump victory in November. And let's look on the bright side: If political events over there and over here run as parallel as they seem to, with them getting Thatcher and us getting Reagan, then us getting the Clintons and Britain getting the Blairs, perhaps a British Trump will come up, and get elected, and clean out the stables over there.
We may yet see the Blairs in orange prison fatigues, doing weed-whacker duty on some English roadside. Hey, I can dream.<
07 — South Africa's poor whites. There was an interesting little photo-essay in the MailOnline, February 24th, headline: The "WHITE squatter camps" of South Africa: Shanty towns built after the fall of Apartheid are now home to hundreds of families, end headline.
Apparently a lot of South African whites are seriously poor. How many? The newspaper says 400,000, which would be close to ten percent of South African whites, but they don't give a source. The photographs show what look like extras from the set of Deliverance living their lives in dirt-floor tin shacks, obviously in dire poverty.Quote from the story:
While most white South Africans still land the plum jobs and enjoy relative wealth, the number of poor whites has steadily increased in the past two decades.Seeking to undo years of racial inequality — when whites were almost guaranteed employment and housing under apartheid — the ruling African National Congress government introduced laws that promoted employment for blacks and aimed to give them a greater share of the economy.End quote.This change, along with the global financial meltdown, has meant many white South Africans have fallen on hard times and are forced to live in slums.
Following the end of apartheid in 1994, many unskilled white South Africans have enjoyed little sympathy from those who believe they profited from the brutal regime.
I doubt these people profited much from apartheid. There have always been poor whites in South Africa; although I'm sure the newspaper is right, that there are a lot more now than there used to be.
For sure these people don't have a bright future. South Africa's taking longer to collapse into Zimbabwe-style gangsterism than any of us expected, but the smart money has to be that it will happen, sooner or later. It's pretty much the rule for black-run societies.
This story takes me back to about 1960. My main interest in life at that point was in reading all the science fiction that had ever been published. In pursuit of that goal, I read Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 novel Childhood's End.
The novel's plot begins in the late 20th century, at that time of course several decades in the future. The Cold War is getting hot. Then huge alien spaceships arrive and position themselves over Earth's main cities. The aliens announce they are taking over international affairs, ending the Cold War and rectifying major injustices, to save humanity from itself. Quote from the book:
For more than a hundred years, the Republic of South Africa had been the centre of social strife. Men of good will on both sides had tried to build a bridge, but in vain — fears and prejudices were too deeply ingrained to permit any cooperation. Successive governments had differed only by the degree of their intolerance; the land was poisoned with hate and the aftermath of civil war.When it became clear that no attempt would be made to end discrimination, [the alien leader] gave his warning. It merely named a date and time — no more. There was apprehension, but little fear or panic, for no-one believed that the [aliens] would take any violent or destructive action which would involve innocent and guilty alike.End quote. That was Clarke writing in 1953, about a world thirty or forty years in his future. His timing was off, and there's no sign of the aliens yet; but he got the main point right.<Nor did they. All that happened was that as the sun passed the meridian at Cape Town — it went out. There remained visible merely a pale, purple ghost, giving no heat or light. Somehow, out in space, the light of the sun had been polarized by two crossed fields so that no radiation could pass. The area affected was five hundred kilometres across, and perfectly circular.
The demonstration lasted thirty minutes. It was sufficient: the next day the Government of South Africa announced that full civil rights would be restored to the white minority.
08 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Just a final point on Trump. His success reminds us of the importance of showing up at the right time.The key name here is Pat Buchanan. I've been a fan of Pat's from way back; shared a platform with him a few times; own most of his books — the last three or four because Pat has sent me copies of them, always with a friendly inscription.
Trumpism is just Buchananism. Like Pat, the Donald thinks the first priority of the U.S. government is to mind the interests of Americans.
It's a measure of how far we have drifted from rational politics that this sentiment is astonishing and revolutionary to so many Americans, and to a great many foreigners, too. On immigration, on trade, on foreign policy, we have for decades now been governed by globalist world-savers who gave the impression they found Europeans, Iraqis, Israelis, and Mexicans much more interesting and important than their own countrymen.
All through those years, Pat Buchanan's voice was one of the firmest, most consistent, most per-sistent in speaking up for we, the people.
A prophet is proverbially without honor in his own country. That fits Pat pretty well. He's often been treated disgracefully by the media. It's way too late for him now to get any kind of political career going. Pat kept the torch of National Conservatism alight, though, and now it has passed to Donald Trump, who may carry it to the Presidency.
If that happens, I hope President Trump will defy the proverb and accord some proper national honor to Pat. At the very least, Pat should be given some not-too-demanding post in the Trump administration, with a pleasant corner office in the White House. It's the least we can do for a true and stalwart American patriot.
Item: If you're not mad as hell at the waste and stupidity of U.S. foreign policy under the last two Presidents, read Matthieu Aikins' article on Afghanistan in the March 7th issue of New Yorker.
I know, I know, it's a far-left magazine. Aikins' article is nothing to do with domestic politics, though; and as I said, it covers the entire fourteen and a half years of blundering futility under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama impartially.
The article is about the money side of the Afghan war, in particular the huge fortunes made by Afghan contractors — money that comes from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. Sample quote:
The U.S. and its allies eventually built more than five hundred military bases in Afghanistan. Many of them had hot showers and Internet cafés. Soldiers who patrolled mud-walled villages without plumbing or electricity, in temperatures that rose to a hundred and thirty degrees, slept in air-conditioned tents so cold that they needed blankets. It all consumed enormous amounts of fuel: in 2010, Bagram Airfield … used nearly 1.6 million gallons per week.End quote. Most of that fuel was carried by trucks belonging to Afghan contractors, who got very seriously rich from the business. The Taliban got rich, too: where the Taliban controlled the roads, they exacted tolls, and the contractors paid them. Rival contractors played the U.S. military and judicial system like violins. All that money seeped upwards and corrupted the whole Afghan system, which was not exactly pristine to begin with.
It's a sorry tale: a trillion dollars and upwards of your money and mine, all sluiced through to Swiss bank accounts and luxury apartments in Dubai, all to no purpose whatsoever of benefit to our country in any way at all. That's not to mention 2,400 dead Americans.
Donald Trump is right: our leaders are stupid. Stupid and vain, to let this extravagant folly continue year after year just so they won't be the ones who lose face by winding it up. The Afghan campaign should have lasted a month and cost half a billion; it's lasted fourteen years and cost a trillion. "Stupid" is too feeble a word.
Item: I guess I gave away there the fact that I read lefty periodicals. I read them so you don't have to, listeners! In any case, it's wise to keep track of what the enemy is saying.
Since I have given away that personal failing, I may as well air another piece from the lefty press, this from the London Guardian newspaper, which is so far left it makes the New Yorker read like a John Birch Society pamphlet … That's for those of you who remember the John Birch Society.
OK, the Guardian, March 3rd, headline: Liberal Americans: come to Canada!, by one Heather Mallick. Subheading, quote:
If Trump becomes president, there's a multicultural democracy north of the border where you can enjoy free healthcare, the absence of guns and legal pot. What are you waiting for?You get the general idea. Ms Mallick is advertising the delights of Canada to liberal Americans who can't bear the thought of living under President Trump, and who think that benefits paid for out of general taxation are "free."
What are those delights? Well, instead of having a successful, forceful, mature, and patriotic businessman as your chief executive, you get to have a nineteen-year-old substitute drama teacher whose principal achievement in life prior to getting elected Prime Minister of Canada last fall, was having a former Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, for his father.
That's according to the lad's birth cerificate, anyway. Given what we know of the late Pierre Trudeau's amorous proclivities, assignment of parentage must be regarded as theoretical. The infallible Kathy Shaidle, for example, assures us that, quote, "Trudeau Sr. slept with lots of female 'journalists,'" end quote. Let's just bear that in mind as we read Heather Mallick's column.
What else does Canada have to offer? Quote from Ms Mallick: "We have free speech but there's no call for rudeness," end quote.
Sorry, lady, but there's a Jupiter-size missing of the point there. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to be rude. If my freedom of speech is limited to speech that is nice, then I have yielded up my freedom to schoolmarms, puritans, and the thin-skinned — as well as, of course, Muslims.
Continuing, quote:
Our current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, said in his funeral oration for his father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau … that his father taught him to show respect to every person. I cried at that, but maybe that's just me.She cried, huh? My suspicions about little Justin's parentage deepen. And then, final quote:
We have commissions, tribunals and secretariats to fight racism.End quote. If you want to know what that's all about, listener, go to YouTube and look up Ezra Levant's interrogation by the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 2008. The commission had pulled Mr Levant in for publishing the Mohammed cartoons. Mark Steyn suffered similar indignities.
But hey, what am I doing here? Heaven forbid I should discourage any liberals from taking up Ms Mallick's suggestion. By all means, if the thought of living under a Trump Presidency is unbearable to you, please go. Don't let the border pole hit you on the way out.<
09 — Signoff. That's it, ladies and gents. Thank you for listening; I hope nobody suffered any microagressions there.
For signoff music this week we'll take another one of my excursions into pop music archeology, this one with a deeply nostalgic appeal to me, my kids, and, I am sure, several million other people.One of my earliest memories is of course of being bounced on my Dad's knees. There was a song he sang as he bounced me. Fifty years later, I sang the same song to my kids as I bounced them. I hope they'll sing it to their kids when they get around to producing some.
Well, I was noodling around on YouTube the other day when by chance I came across that song. It was a novelty song back in vaudeville days pre-radio. This YouTube recording is from 1907. The artist is Stanley Kirkby. If you have a toddler close to hand, get him on your knee and prepare to bounce.
More from Radio Derb next week!
[Music clip: Stanley Kirkby, "The Galloping Major."]
