What does Populism Threaten?

First posted on my Facebook page on this date three years ago.
 
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POPULISM is a threat to a leftist internationalism that rejects national borders and denies to nations the right to preserve their cultures, the right to stop illegal immigration, and the right to select those immigrants who are most likely to prove to be a net asset to the host country, and most likely to assimilate. There needn't be anything white supremacist or white nationalist about populism. (By the way, white supremacism and white nationalism are plainly different: a white nationalist needn't be a white supremacist.) And of course there needn't be anything racist or xenophobic or bigoted about either nationalism or populism. It is a mistake to confuse nationalism with white nationalism, a mistake deliberately promoted by leftists.
 
Populism in the style of Trump is not a threat to liberal democracy as the Founders envisioned it, but a threat to the leftist internationalism I have just limned and which contemporary 'liberals' confuse with the classically liberal democracy of the Founders. It is also quite telling that these 'liberals' constantly use the word 'democracy' as if it is something wonderful indeed, but they almost never mention that the USA is a democratic republic. Our republic has a stiff backbone of core principles and meta-principles that are not up for democratic grabs, or at least are not up for easy grabs: the Constitution can be amended but it is not easy, nor should it be.
 
Those who think that democracy is a wonderful thing ought to realize that Sharia can be installed democratically. This is underway in Belgium. Brussels could be Muslim within 20 years. Let enough Muslims infiltrate and then they will decide who 'the people' are and who are not 'the people.' The native Belgians will then have been displaced. Ain't democracy wonderful?
 
Let enough illegal aliens flood in, give them the vote, and they may or more likely will decide to do away with the distinction between legal and illegal immigration as well as the one between immigration and emigration. Ever wonder why lefties like the word 'migrant?' It manages to elide both distinctions in one fell swoop.
 
A sane and defensible populism rests on an appreciation of an insight I have aphoristically expressed as follows:
No comity without commonality.
There cannot be social harmony without a raft of shared assumptions and values, not to mention a shared language. There is need of cultural coherence. A felicitous phrase, that. Our open, tolerant, Enlightenment culture cannot cohere and survive if Sharia-supporting Muslims are allowed to immigrate. For their ultimate goal is not to assimilate to our ways, but to impose their ways on us, eventually replacing us.
 
Can you show I'm wrong?

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Dylan on Rick Nelson and James Burton

Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One (Simon and Shuster, 2004), p. 13:
 
He was different from  the rest of the teen idols, had a great guitarist who played like a cross    between a honky-tonk  hero and a barn-dance fiddler. Nelson had never been a bold innovator like the early singers who sang like they were navigating burning ships. He didn't sing desperately, do a lot of damage, and you'd never mistake him for a shaman. 

Nosiree, Bob, no shaman was he. There is more interesting material on Nelson in the vicinity of this excerpt. Dylan discusses Ricky Nelson in connection with his 1961 hit, Travelin' Man. But the great guitar work of James Burton to which Dylan alludes was much more in evidence in Hello Mary Lou. The Dylan Chronicles look like they will hold the interest of this old 60's Dylan fanatic.

Here is a better taste of James Burton and his Fender Telecaster with Elvis Presley.  And here he is with the Big O dueling with Springsteen.  Here he jams with Nelson's sons.  Orbison on Nelson.

It has been over thirty years now since Nelson died in a plane crash while touring. The plane, purchased from Jerry Lee Lewis, went down on New Year's Eve 1985. That travelin' man died with his boots on — as I suspect he would have wanted to. In an interview in 1977 he said that he could not see himself growing old.

Be careful what you wish for.

Are You Hungry?

Don't let the thought of the pleasures of the table persuade you to eat if you are not hungry. Eat only at meal times, but never because it is meal time. An exception is breakfast for those quitting their domiciles for a sally-forth into a mean world.  To leave your house without food in your gut is like driving into the desert without gas in your tank. You don't know what awaits you. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

The last two horrible years make my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:

And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

Still and all, we have much to be grateful for.  But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, what remains of our liberty, and our "sweet land of liberty."  Patriots are waking up to the depredations of 'Woke' and there is reason to be hopeful. So be of good cheer, do your bit, and long live the Republic!

Thanksgiving Happy

The Trial of Kyle

The Rittenhouse trial was not about the 17-year-old primarily, but about one's right to defend oneself with lethal force against a lethal threat. Hence the great significance of this case. An absolutely crucial moral and legal principle is at stake. The righteous Right won this time, but the fact that the pernicious Left tried to railroad and destroy the intelligent, decent, and well-meaning kid shows that they will stop at nothing to destroy our Anglo-American system of justice, the best the world has yet to see.  Leftists smeared him as a 'white supremacist' against all evidence, and against all sense: Kyle and his assailants are all white. The Democrat 'president' of the United States, Joseph Biden, joined in the smear.  Rittenhouse's defensive actions, and the ensuing show trial, had nothing directly to do with race. And given all the clear video evidence, Rittenhouse should not have been criminally charged in the first place. 

But again, it is not primarily about Rittenhouse.  As bad as the Left's policy of personal destruction is, far worse is their policy of political destruction: the hard Left, which now controls the Democrat Party, aims to "fundamentally transform" (Obama), i.e., destroy, the American polity and system of government by, among many other things, opening the borders to any and all, eliding the distinction between citizen and non-citizen, giving the franchise to non-citizens, conspiring to give the vote to felons while still in prison, defunding the police, emptying the prisons, eliminating cash bail, transforming the public schools and the universities into  culturally Marxist seminaries, erasing the historical record, putting up statues to criminals  . . . .

The battle lines have never been clearer. Get ready. 

The line, it is drawn, the curse, it is cast
The slow one now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now will later be last
For the times, they are a-changin'.
The Biblical Dylan in prophetic mode. The civil rights battles of the '60s were fought and won. Now a different civil rights struggle is upon us, and Dylan's words again resonate and apply.
 
Related: Victor Davis Hanson, Can the FBI be Salvaged?

Why Women are ‘Over-Represented’ among Realtors

Have you ever wondered why women are 'over-represented' among realtors? It is because they excel men when it comes to conciliation and mediation.  I don't mean this as a snarky put-down of the distaff contingent.  I mean it as praise.  And if females do not take it as praise, are they not assuming the superiority of male virtues? 

It is a non sequitur to think that if the Xs are 'under-represented' among the Ys, then the Xs must have been the victims of some unjust discrimination.  Men are 'under-represented' among massage therapists, but the explanation is obvious and harmless: men like to have their naked bodies rubbed by women in dark rooms, but women feel uncomfortable having their naked bodies rubbed by men in dark rooms.   It is not as if there is some sort of sexism, 'institutional' or individual, that keeps men out of massage therapy. If you retort that some women do like massages from men not their intimates, then you don't understand generic statements.  

Blacks are 'over-represented'  in the NFL and the NBA. Is that because of some racism 'institutional' or individual, that keeps whitey out?  Of course not. Blacks are better than whites at football and basketball.  Jews are just terrible.  Chess is their athletics.  Jews dominate in the chess world.  Is that because the goyim have been suppressed?  

Does my talk of blacks and Jews make me a racist and an anti-Semite ?  To a self-enstupidated leftist or 'progressive,'  yes.  For they are too often incapable, or have rendered themselves incapable, of distinguishing between a statement whose content is race and a racist statement.  If you accuse me of retailing stereotypes, I will point out that some stereotypes have a basis in reality.  Leftists tend to embrace negative and groundless stereotypes about stereotypes.

I am treading a via media between the excesses of the neo-reactionaries (NRs) and the even worse excesses of the leftists. My challenge to the NRs:  How can you fail to see the importance of equal treatment of men and women?  One NR of my acquaintance claimed that the notion of equality of opportunity is vacuous. Why?  To require that applicants for a job not be discriminated against on the basis of race, sex, or creed, is not vacuous.  It has a definite content. That it could use some spelling out is not to the point.  

What I mean is this. Some creeds are such that people who hold them must be discriminated against. Suppose you are an orthodox Muslim: you subscribe to Islamic law (sharia) and hold that it takes precedence  over the U. S. Constitution and Anglo-American law. You ought to be discriminated against.  You ought not be allowed to immigrate into the USA.  The U. S. Constitution is not a suicide pact.