Author: J. Arthur Bloom

J. Arthur Bloom is the blog's editor, opinion editor of the Daily Caller, and an occasional contributor to the Umlaut. He was formerly associate editor of the American Conservative and a music reviewer at Tiny Mix Tapes, and graduated from William and Mary in 2011. He lives in Washington, DC, and can be found, far too often, on Twitter.

Secession lagniappe

Sorry for the long break since the last one of these, I just don’t really have the time to do them weekly, so here’s a Hail Mary request. If there is anyone out there who would be interested in doing a secession link round-up weekly, I’d love to hand it over. Ideally it would remain fairly long, with a good mix of news links, more idea-driven content, images, and videos, collected from around the web. I have a subsection of RSS feeds and Google alerts for the purpose and could get you started, though nothing would make me happier than for someone to make this project their own. Email us if you’re interested at [email protected]

Reason has a new video on the State of Jefferson:

With the feds grabbing Jeffersonian land right and left — with the support of city-slicker California legislators — who can blame them for wanting to take matters into their own hands? Related book recommendation h/t JJ

Bill Gertz reports the Chinese are very interested in the Hawaiian restoration movement:

Chinese threats to back several groups of Hawaiian independence activists who want to restore the islands’ constitutional monarchy, ousted in a U.S.-backed coup over a century ago, has raised concerns that military facilities on the strategic central Pacific archipelago are threatened at a time when the Obama administration is engaged in a major shift toward Asia as part of its military and diplomatic rebalance.

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon consultant and author of the recent book 100 Year Marathon, said Chinese military hawks, known as “ying pai,” told him they are ready to provide arms to Hawaiian independence activists in retaliation for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. …

“A favorite comparison the ying pai has made to me is ‘How would the Pentagon like it if we provide arms to our friends in Hawaiian independence movement?’” he said. “I was incredulous because I had never heard of such a movement in Hawaii, but, after checking I met a few of them.”

Pillsbury said Chinese backing for the independence movement would be a concern. Some U.S. archival material shows U.S. authorities acted on their own in the 1898 annexation, he said, something Congress later investigated.

Let the record show that threats of Chinese support in no way alter this blog’s position in favor of Hawaiian restoration.

Spokane and the Tri-Cities are tired of the tyranny of Olympia and Seattle. Local paper endorses a split.

Mike Vanderboegh on the steps of the WA state capitol raising hell:

Ron Paul’s not shutting up

More talk about a “Third Reconstruction”

Anti-frackers threaten a lefty version of secession in Mora County, New Mexico

*****

Definitely don’t miss First Things’ symposium on American Christianity. Here’s the first essay, and Rod Dreher’s response

Went to an excellent talk at the National Interest last week by Lord Lothian on the legacy of colonial borders, here’s their write-up of his remarks

The New Inquiry on neoreaction and the occult

Tom Woods’s recent secession speech

Adam Gurri on trust in democracies:

One problem that will not go away is this: we live in a time in which numerous rival and incommensurable narratives flourish. These narratives are tied up in membership in particular communities, and they often play a part in defining people’s identities as well as their sense of purpose. The present state of things can be traced largely to the spread of the Internet and the media of the late twentieth century. The thread goes back further still, to the invention of the printing press, and the subsequent beginnings of mass literacy, and the Reformation.

Modern pluralism writ large, and liberal democracy, grew in the soil of this turmoil. But how it came about is less important than the simple fact that this conflict of visions cannot be done away with; it is and will remain the reality on the ground. This means that a democratic government will be responsive to at least some constituents who subscribe to a narrative that you may find repulsive. Similarly, it will be responsive to the constituents who share your narrative, which others may find repulsive. This is the gap at the heart of democracy, the one so many go mad trying to fill.If you let this gap define your entire view of democracy, or even a particular democracy, you will inevitably fall into pessimism and cynicism. This attitude is pervasive right now; we live in a time when negation has replaced aspiration as the primary driver of political activism. No small part of the problem comes from aspirations that demanded too much too quickly and for too little. Tired of seeing such cosmic demands disappointed, the public tips increasingly towardsopen revolt.

Rosenberg on Chaitgate:

For all I tend to find Chait’s vision of liberalism rather crabbed, there’s something idealistic about his conviction that reasonable debate will prevail promptly against the intransigence of history, without the added spurs of radicalism and intemperate language and positions. The current battles in certain sectors of the left have real costs in burned-out activists and alienated potential allies. But Chait is going to need better evidence if he wants to argue that what’s nice is a better, faster route to what’s right.

 *****

National Review on a “Singapore-style city state” for white South Africans. Punch line: Rich Lowry, my favorite young adult fiction author, wrote a Jaffaite biography of Lincoln and had a recent column going after campus “secessionists”

Grannies for Sarawak secession

Czech mayor floats secession if mining plans go forward in his town

Secession may be the best solution to Yemen crisis

How cantonization can save Israel

Ryukyu/Okinawan independence movement gaining steam (it’s a fair bet the Chinese are watching this one closely too)

Phnom Penh monastery ‘secedes‘ from the CPP:

Am Sam Ath, technical supervisor for rights group Licadho, also said that the city was scrutinizing the pagoda now—some 17 years after it was established—because the pagoda was supporting protesters, and not because of the recent murder.

He scoffed at the city spokesman’s suggestion that a secessionist movement was brewing there.

“They cannot use the word ‘secession’ for the pagoda; it is a serious word,” Mr. Sam Ath said. “Secession means the pagoda wants to separate from the state. But how can they separate when the monks have no weapons?”

Mr. Sam Ath said the new committee was further proof that the government feared losing control of the monkhood.

The BJP loses Delhi

Tobago devolution

Fiji to remove Union Jack from flag

Strong support for South Tyrol-Austria unification; Breton unification

Interesting interview with Birgitta Jonsdottir

Maori sovereignty dispute

Mozambique opposition party to submit secession proposal

Norks persuade Cambodia to ban “The Interview”

Free West Papua!

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Guest hosting the Mike Church Show again on Friday

I’ll be back on Sirius XM Patriot 125 this Friday hosting the Mike Church Show from 6-9 AM.

So far I’ve got Bill Kauffman, Slate’s Betsy Woodruff, and Mike Godwin (yes, that one) lined up, so don’t miss it.

Friday is also the day when, in 1649, King Charles the Martyr was executed, so I’ll have to find some way to work that in.

Update: The other two guests tomorrow morning will be John Gay, of The National Interest, and radio host Steve Deace. The order starting at 6:30 will be Woodruff, Godwin, Deace, Gay, then Kauffman. If you’d like to call in, the number’s 866-95-PATRIOT.

Not all politics are created equal

Congrats to Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig on her new gig at the vertically integrated new media company the New Republic. Her latest is a complaint that, while conservatives admired Pope St. John Paul II’s strong anti-communism, they don’t like it when Pope Francis says political things:

In any analysis of a public figure, partisan interests will influence one’s opinion, and there isn’t anything particularly productive about pointing out that conservatives tend to forgive in conservative leaders what they don’t in liberals. A more helpful question is this: Why has Pope Francis addressed political issues, such as climate change, inequality, poverty, and overpopulation? Is it evidence of abject partisan interest, or a covert dedication to communism, Marxism, or some other insidious ideology?

Or is it just that we now presume that “politics” belongs outside the Church’s purview—despite the Church’s historical record of considering and intervening in political affairs? To me, this appears to be the distortion at hand.

This is partly because the notion that “politics” can be neatly separated from daily life is a new one.

I agree with most of this; it’s impossible, and definitely foolhardy, for a pope to be completely nonpolitical. When Pope Francis denounces trickle-down economics it doesn’t bother me (in fact I think he’s basically right).

Though I take Michael’s point that Francis’ description of contraceptives as a kind of “ideological colonization” seems like an oddly political way of putting the issue, it’s also an uncomfortable truth for both left and right that the United States is the world’s foremost exporter of secular liberal values. No doubt, there are some who would see this as an anti-American worldview, but it’s also true, and important. The West’s development plan includes gay rights and abortion, not some 21st century version of the British East India Company. There’s a case this sort of thing is better left unremarked-upon, but that seems untenable for some of the reasons Bruenig describes.

Most individual choices, down to the things we buy, are political today. Whether or not that politicization is good, Bruenig contends it at least means religious leaders have to stop coming up with sophistical reasons for opposing socialism and just support the state redistribution of goods:

A stateless response to poverty has not been part of Christian tradition for some time, and to address poverty without implicating politics at this point in history would be nearly impossible.

Didn’t you know Dorothy Day was a Democrat?

Bruenig concludes:

… To expect Pope Francis to remain apolitical or to avoid politics is, therefore, to expect silence or awkward retreat on issues integral to Christian life, and to impose the modern notion of a “political sphere” upon an institution that has never really bought into such demarcations. Appreciate his conclusions or not, Pope Francis’s willingness to address politics makes his witness all the more authentic, and, yes, traditional.

“Authenticity” as a concept is at least as shaky as that of a “political sphere.” And while I’d hate to get in the way of an opportunity to call out the hypocrisy of American conservatives, Bruenig is being cagey about at least two things. First, the relative importance of things popes say. Fr. Hunwicke wrote on this last week:

Is it OK for us ordinary Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and Laics to say publicly, with regard to a non-Magisterial and non-formal papal statement, “Goodness me, what twaddle Bar Jona/Borgia/Lambertini/Pacelli/Ratzinger/Bergoglio did talk this morning”? If you reply to me “No; because of the deep respect and deference owed to the Vicar of Christ”, then I have to say that, by bringing in his status, you seem to me to be smuggling the Magisterium back into the equation. If you suggest to me that it would be OK to talk thus frankly about the non-Magisterial and non-formal utterances of a previous Pontiff but not about those of this one (like all those bishops and journalists who kept moderately quiet during the last pontificate but do not refrain now from public sneers at Benedict XVI), I would have to ask you why the death or resignation of a Roman Pontiff means that the respect and deference due to a Vicar of Christ is no longer due to him.

Second, Bruenig’s piece is nearly devoid of specific examples of how Pope Francis has involved himself in politics. Not all politics are created equal. Maybe she can explain what purpose it serves to hand the population control crowd a cudgel that says, “Even Pope Francis agrees…”

It doesn’t follow from the rather pedantic observation that almost everything is political that it’s good for Pope Francis to be as political as possible. On a prudential level, he has limited political capital that should be spent wisely. The papacy drew a hard political line against Henry VIII that led to hundreds of years of persecution of English Catholics. It seems absurd to speculate whether Pope Clement VII was being “authentic” or “traditional.”

Sacred Harp 61: ‘Sweet Rivers’

Sweet rivers of redeeming love
Lie just before mine eye,
Had I the pinions of a dove
I’d to those rivers fly;
I’d rise superior to my pain,
With joy outstrip the wind,
I’d cross o’er Jordan’s stormy waves,
And leave the world behind.

A few more days, or years at most,
My troubles will be o’er;
I hope to join the heav’nly host
On Canaan’s happy shore.
My raptured soul shall drink and feast
In love’s unbounded sea:
The glorious hope of endless rest
Is ravishing for me.

‘American Sniper’ in Indian country

My review of the movie is up at TAC:

The New York Times review of “Lawrence of Arabia” from 1962 complains that we don’t really get to know the titular character, a fault Bosley Crowther blames on “the concept of telling the story of this self-tortured man against a background of action that has the characteristic of a mammoth Western film.”

“American Sniper” feels the same way, both in character and background. For most people, consideration of the similarities between Western expansion and America’s permanent presence in the Middle East starts and ends with how one feels about “cowboy president” jokes. But in less self-conscious times, no less than the venerable Robert Kaplan once referred to Little Bighorn as “the 9/11 of its day.”