Across Difficult Country

People have been asking me to explain a ¡Jeb! Bush mailer depicting him with a black hand (not because I’m a political insider, or a Bush confidante, but because I seem like the kind of guy who would know something about racially anomalous appendages). The story I heard was that one time when ¡Jeb! was visiting his adopted homeland of Mexico he got bitten on the wrist by a donkey . The bite became infected, and ¡Jeb! was forced to have his hand amputated. Everyone knows Americans will not elect an amputee president, so to save his political career ¡Jeb! paid an impoverished negro refugee from Hurricane Katrina $500 for his left hand, which doctors then transplanted onto ¡Jeb’s! stump. Normally ¡Jeb! disguises the hand’s race with white skin cream, obviously the day that picture was taken he forgot.

Campus buildings named after Adam Smith, James Watt, and various other inconsequential “dead white men” will be renamed after women and blacks, Glasgow University has announced . I don’t know who they will honor, but one deserving black did occur to me: Cotton Watts, a comedic genius some believe is one of James Watt’s distant descendants. This revisionism is supported by Nicola Sturgeon, a Glasgow U. graduate and current leader of the Scottish National [sic] Party. According to her, the initiative is “hugely important…Women have done great things and fantastic things, but you struggle to find the evidence of that.” Finding that evidence is a struggle. It’s almost as if it doesn't exist.

Each new accession of an “issue” leads to the demand that we demonstrate our “commitment.” Not coincidentally, the desired commitment invariably involves swelling the bureaucratic class and its power over our lives.  The spirit of neologism is perhaps best illustrated when it fastens on a word in common use. Note the recent career of the word “ diversity .” This term denotes a key conservative theme. As is pointed out by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn in writings including his classic Leftism (1974), a devotion to diversity arguably distinguishes the Right from the Left. The elements of this devotion are many; consider, for example, respect for regional traditions, the insistence that human beings are not interchangeable, the tendency to think in terms of distinct persons rather than large classes of people, support for various institutions that shield individuals from the State, as well as the related belief in decentralization. We are now expected to restrict the term to one expli...

I’ve been thinking up creative ways to implement the economic stimulus. Some Americans could immediately be employed to flush money down the toilet. This may require the waiving of environmental restrictions. Another worthwhile project would be the creation of an American Pundit Hat industry. Pundit Hats will be large conical hats, similar to this fantastic Bronze Age specimen , but instead of gold they will be made out of recycled cans, and instead of being artistically decorated with astronomical symbols Pundit Hats will be inscribed with our highest truths (Diversity is Strength, The World is Flat, Yes We Can, We are the World, etc.) alongside images of our eminences (Bono, Gore, Oprah, Hugo Chavez, Obama, the ShamWow! guy, etc.). All who opine on TV or in establishment newspapers and magazines will be required to purchase Pundit Hats and wear them whenever in public; those refusing will be banished from the pundit class. None will refuse, of course, and most will believe the ha...

Mass immigration makes the United States increasingly “diverse”. Now Daniel Henninger, a member of the open borderist Wall Street Journal editorial collective and a supporter of mass immigration, has discovered : “People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. “Social capital” erodes. Diversity has a downside.” What’s to be done? Henninger suggests: “What's needed now is for a younger black, brown or polka-dot writer to recast the idea in a way that restores the worth and utility of assimilation. Somebody had better do it soon; the first chart offered in the Putnam study depicts inexorably rising rates of immigration in many nations.” He recognizes we are already at the point where certain arguments won’t be fairly heard unless advanced by non-whites (notice the absurd inclusion of a “polka-dot writer”, done to maintain the pretense race never matters, even when it’s being argued race matters). He recognizes the situation is on...

Racial “progress” is everywhere one looks. For the first time ever, both coaches in the Superbowl are black, I'm told an Hispanic and a black are running for president, and in Puerto Rico a Mocha Vampire has been sighted. From Count Dracula to Nosferatu to Keith Richards, vampirism has been a lily-white field, but in 1972 Blacula shattered the vampiric color barrier. 1 Unfortunately, after that the trend toward greater diversity seemed to stall - until now: "[T]he Moca Vampire had its own agenda. On March 18, 1975, two goats belonging to Hector Vega, a resident of Moca’s Barrio Pueblo, were found drained of blood. Puncture marks on the goats’ necks were the unmistakable sign that the strange entity causing the deaths was still at large and hungrier than ever: it returned to Vega’s farm the following night to finish off ten more goats and wound another seven. The horrified farmer also discovered that ten additional goats had gone missing." 1 There is considerable conf...

I’m not the only one, it seems, as new research has found increased diversity means decreased trust . [via Mangan ]

At a recent lecture, Janet Helms a “professor of counseling, developmental and educational psychology at Boston College” 1 surprised her audience by stating some well established (but rarely acknowledged) facts about racial differences on standardized tests : On average, she said, 20 percent of a person's test score is explained by race. On the old, two-part SAT, that could translate to more than 200 points. While some researchers say poverty explains this difference, Helms said the black-white gap remains even when socioeconomic status is considered. The achievement gap is so pervasive, Helms said, she's been unable to locate any study in which blacks and whites were tested in the same setting and blacks outscored whites. After admitting these truths 2 , what does Helms conclude? That's led her to conclude tests somehow measure race in addition to achievement. If scores correlate with racial identity, Helms said, "that ought to mean the test is not valid." ...

Can you guess the author of the following ‘hate speech’?: “I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I have any intention of seeing it. In fact, cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears….I just don't want to watch two straight men, alone on the prairie, fall in love and kiss and hug and hold hands and whatnot.” No, not me . It was Larry David , writing a brief review in the New York Times of a movie he hasn't seen. Imagine the reaction if those same words were written by Mel Gibson, for example, in another newspaper. The New York Times would probably publish an editorial condemning him as a ‘homophobe’ and demand he be re-educated via diversity training. It’s a double standard, but we should be happy that someone got to say it. Another double standard brought to mind by David’s essay: why is it acceptable to have straight actors play homosexualists...

"Steered west-southwest; and encountered a heavier sea than they had met with before in the whole voyage. Saw pardelas and a green rush near the vessel. The crew of the Pinta saw a cane and a log; they also picked up a stick which appeared to have been carved with an iron tool, a piece of cane, a plant which grows on land, and a board. The crew of the Nina saw other signs of land, and a stalk loaded with rose berries. These signs encouraged them, and they all grew cheerful. Sailed this day till sunset, twenty-seven leagues." - the journal of Columbus in his voyage of 1492 . It’s become unfashionable to celebrate Columbus Day. The campaigners against Columbus Day hate Columbus because they hate Western Civilization in general, but they also despise him for a more specific reason: Columbus risked life and fortune to sail across uncharted waters and discover The New World. The achievement of greatness through daring and adventurousness is intolerable to the various mediocrities...

The interminable Israeli-Palestinian conflict takes a darker turn : it appears that young followers of Hamas are now engaging in Minstrelsy . A Palestinian boy in blackface sings ‘Swanee'. Will the world ignore this situation? Or will the UN and the international community do what’s right for once, and dispatch a multi-national team of diversity consultants to the Gaza strip to conduct a series of workshops about hurtful stereotypes? Sadly, probably the former.

When I hear the phrase 'celebrate diversity ' I’m tempted to reach for my gun, because the few occasions when I’ve been forced to ‘celebrate diversity’ were not celebrations at all, but attempts at indoctrination. But things were not always so, as this description of an event held at the 1904 Saint Louis World’s Fair reminds us:  Sept. 13, 1904: The Negritos won a fire-making competition against the Ainus of Japan and the African pygmies. The Negritos used friction between bamboo sticks to get a spark in 58 seconds. They had a fire going in less than two minutes. Anthropology Professor Frederick Starr said it was apparent that the Negritos were a more developed race. Doesn’t that sound like fun? It saddens me that such a fascinating and educational competition that illustrates and celebrates real diversity is unthinkable today.

Sad news, former NFL great Reggie White has died. You may recall the late Rev. White was vilified for daring to broach the subject of human biodiversity in public. White observed : Why did God create us differently? Why did God make me black and you white? Why did God make the next guy Korean and the next guy Asian and the other guy Hispanic? Why did God create the Indians? Well, it's interesting to me to know why now. When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down, because they really get into it. White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people do around the world. Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20...