Hail the day so long expected,
Hail the year of full release.
Zion’s walls are now erected,
And her watchmen publish peace.
Through our Shiloh’s wide dominion,
Hear the trumpet loudly roar,
Babylon is fallen to rise no more.All her merchants stand with wonder,
What is this that comes to pass:
Murm’ring like the distant thunder,
Crying, “Oh alas, alas.”
Swell the sound, ye kings and nobles,
Priest and people, rich and poor;
Babylon is fallen to rise no more.Blow the trumpet in Mount Zion,
Christ shall come a second time;
Ruling with a rod of iron
All who now as foes combine.
Babel’s garments we’ve rejected,
And our fellowship is o’er,
Babylon is fallen to rise no more.
Author: J. Arthur Bloom
The brown scare goes after libertarians, endorses throwing rocks at Pope Benedict
Once more
My quondam dean in University Hall
Stands in the breach of peace, whence he will call
Down fire on the bald, woolly heads of all
Professors of the other point of view,
Who, flanked and enfiladed and too few,
Will soon throw down their dated arms of course,
And yield themselves to a superior force
Of well-drilled intellectual police,
Sworn on honor to enforce the peace.— L.E. Sissman, “Peace Comes to Still River, Mass.”
I got in trouble on Twitter the other day, for quoting a post by Henry Dampier. Jesse Spafford, a writer who has contributed to the flagship magazine of Brooklyn leftism, the New Inquiry, says I shared “an essay lamenting that the Nazis lost WWII.” Readers can decide whether the following passage “laments” that:
Imagining that the Nazis won World War II is a popular jumping-off point for a lot of speculative fiction. The reader is supposed to feel glad that the Nazis did not in fact, win. Unfortunately, a more brutal, cruel, and anti-human government won World War II — the Soviet Union.
This is a heterodox version of the story, maybe, but not that controversial, and certainly not the exclusive domain of Nazi apologists.’Yalta could have gone better’ is a fairly well-accepted point of view. That Dampier quote is straight out of Pat Buchanan, though by no means confined to the populist corner of the right. Or even just the right. The independent left Tribune, of which George Orwell was literary editor, objected to the Yalta agreement. And here’s Dwight MacDonald in the 1952 debate with Norman Mailer at Mount Holyoke:
… the only historically real alternatives in 1939 were to back Hitler’s armies, to back the Allies’ armies, or to do nothing. But none of these alternatives promised any great benefit for mankind, and the one that finally triumphed has led simply to the replacing of the Nazi threat by the Communist threat, with the whole ghastly newsreel flickering through once more in a second showing.
Who knew MacDonald was a Nazi apologist? I’m sympathetic to Christopher Lasch’s criticism of him famously, and grudgingly, “choosing” the West, which he lodges in The New Radicalism in America, that “to “choose” between the two, however, was to assume that conflict between Russia and the West could not be avoided. If one assumed such a conflict, one had to choose — as most people had felt obliged to choose between Hitler and the West.”
At this point, I suppose it’s worth noting that by the standards of the anti-colonial style that dominates the left today, to “choose” the West at all is to side with a kind of fascism. You’d have to ask Spafford about that one, but it is at least clear that, to our Pomona philosophy graduate, it is impossible to think both that Nazis are bad and the post-World War II peace conceded far too much to the Soviet Union; the only person who could possibly think that is a Nazi apologist. It went on like this for a while before I blocked him and he tweeted about it.
I’d go so far as to say there’s one thing about about all of this that resembles the way the Stalinist left in America behaved after Operation Barbarossa, insinuating pacifists and Trotskyites were on Hitler’s payroll. In his tweet, Spafford cc’d Michael Goldfarb, the registered foreign agent and chairman of the Free Beacon, a neoconservative website that publishes unverified, fake propaganda from Senate offices intended to gin up the case for war in Ukraine. Spafford, a committed leftist, is not only aping Debbie Wasserman Schultz, but making common cause with neoconservatives to do so. This is interesting not just because the Free Beacon is staunchly pro-Israel (Spafford thinks Israel is fascist too). It also speaks to the idea that the neoconservative and left-wing narratives about World War II are roughly the same.
William Tyler: ‘Cadillac Desert’
From Riboflavin at TMT:
I have no idea what the Carter years were like; I was born in 1985, the year after 1984. The year after we got over/past 1984. 2013 is that year in some regards: the year we got over 2012. Either you were a practitioner of pseudo-scientific, misplaced Mayan anxieties or you were a concerned person in a t-shirt on a northwestern February day. Anxieties can and will occur, and for good reason. But what happens when the spaces in time that breed reactionaries subside into anxiety loss? Does the severed dread lead back to the multi-lane freeway? Some are still anxious for good reason; time doesn’t solve problems for us, either going forward or moving backward. …
But life is often like a science fiction film, a good science fiction film, where remnants of the past (often our own present) remain, even just as set pieces. People still drive 20- to 30-year-old cars, live in old buildings, etc., etc. This is the case in music — especially in music. Sure, keep it new, be new, blah blah new blah blah… but don’t actually. A creative condition is set more in the execution of aspects that support an idea, and to what ends make something “creative” rest more on every aspect about the art in question.
In this context, Impossible Truth makes sense to me as a very good album about nostalgia, and not in the way where I feel compelled to criticize it on a “sound-contemporary” basis or on the critical level where I knock people down for fucking with my childhood.
The teaser video is pretty good too:
Sacred Harp 288: ‘White’
Ye fleeting charms of earth farewell,
Your springs of joy are dry;
My soul seeks another home.
A brighter world on high.I’m a long time trav’ling here below,
I’m a long time trav’ling away from home,
I’m a long time trav’ling here below,
To lay this body down.Farewell, my friends, whose tender care
Has long engaged my love;
Your fond embrace I now exchange
For better friends above.
Guest hosting the Mike Church Show Tuesday morning
The King Dude has been kind enough to have me back again tomorrow, so if you’re a Sirius XM listener, consider making it a part of your morning commute. The show runs from 6-9 AM on Patriot 125.
So far the guests I’ve got lined up are Edwin Black (author, IBM and the Holocaust), Roger Stone (you should know him), Jack Hunter (editor of Rare), and Jay Cost (writer at the Weekly Standard and author of the new book, A Republic No More), plus a mystery person I haven’t nailed down yet.
Update: The fifth guest will be Breitbart’s Milo Yiannopoulos.
Update II: Someone’s put my interview with Milo online re: Gamergate, Law & Order, Brianna Wu
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!
