19th-C Duel Between a Lawyer and a Poet: "the actions of the two duellists were strikingly different"

In its 125 Years Ago section, The New York Herald tells of the outcome of a duel in Belgium:

The Laguerre-Déroulède duel has been fought, and both principals are now languishing in [a Charleroi jail]. They have had such an extraordinary hard time of it, trying to find a place to fight, that all Europe has been watching their movements. First, the French police dogged them, then the Belgian police tracked them about, next the Dutch officers objected to any gore being shed in Holland, and so the weary duellists wandered about in search of a nice quiet place, until they reached hospitable Charleroi.

The ending of the combat was characteristic of the two men — one a poet and the other a cool-headed lawyer. It was all business on one side and all poetry on the other. According to the arrangements made in Paris, the duel took place here this morning at eleven o’clock. The conditions called for the use of duelling pistols, the firing to be at the word of command. The distance agreed upon was thirty paces, and the place finally selected was the Bois de Marchiennes-au-Pont.

The four balls agreed upon were fired without result. But the actions of the two duellists were strikingly different. M. Laguerre both times took deliberate aim at his opponent, and apparently did his best to kill or wound him. Not so M. Déroulède [pictured 23 years later, in 1913]. The ‘‘patriot poet’’ each time raised his pistol and fired in the air.

— The New York Herald, European Edition, November 14, 1890

Two years later, Paul Déroulède would fight a duel with Georges Clemenceau…

We "will commentate on current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his 2 surviving sons to become martyrs": No Pasarán Celebrates 12th Anniversary

Twelve years ago, after enduring months of unceasing tirades of criticism and venom from Europe (and especially France) linked to George W Bush's 2003 invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, a handful of independent bloggers (Douglas, Jonathan, and Liminal aka U*2) made good on their vow to unite their efforts and create a single, common weblog, one by the name of No Pasarán! (I would join five weeks later, and N Joe a year or two later.)

Below are the first two days of No Pasarán!

Friday, February 20, 2004

Let's cool off	Il faut décompresser
Being a tad worried about my reputation [over at the blog Merde in France] I have decided to not write any controversial posts on this blog. Therefore, I will commentate on France's current events with all the psychotic calm and serenity of a Palestinian father who explains that he can't wait for his two surviving sons to become martyrs. How's that?	Etant un tant soit peu soucieux de ma réputation, je tâcherai de me limiter à des postes qui ne provoquent point de polémiques sur ce blog. Donc, je vous relaterai la situation en Fwance avec tout le calme et toute la sérenité psychotiques normalement employés par un père palestinien qui vous explique qu'il a hâte de voir ses deux fils survivants se transformer en martyres. Ça vous va?

United States

Le Monde's website is advertising a "lexicon for better understanding the United States" on the right-hand side of its front page. Although you have to pay in order to access the dictionary that contains over 400 "words of America," the advertisement is telling. If you click on the ad, a slide show opens with the following definitions:

(1) Sex: Sodomy remains illegal in a number of American states, and Bush promotes abstinence.
(2) Botox: 7.4 million Americans spent 7.7 billion euros on plastic surgery in 2000.
(3) Televangelists: The successors of nineteenth century traveling preachers, televangelists are television stars.

It's comforting to know that Le Monde is doing its part to break down misunderstandings and stereotypes between French and Americans. Now we just need Conan O'Brien to come up with a dictionary for Americans to understand France.

International Law:

Last month, the ship, Bugaled Breizh, sunk off of southern England. Five Frenchmen died. The culprit was allegedly a Philippine-registered vessel called the Seattle Trader, which may have collided with the Bugaled Breizh. Although the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea indicates that vessels are under the jurisdiction of the country in which they are registered and therefore any action with respect to the Seattle Trader should be authorized by the Philippine government, France is bringing justice to the alleged culprits and is hunting them down. Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has denounced France's actions as "gun-boat diplomacy."

International Law:

Three years after the Convention was created, France has ratified the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, which restricts production of certain pesticides, industrial chemicals and unintended byproducts of combustion such as DDT, PCBs and dioxin. France was the fiftieth country to ratify the Convention, and "fifty" was the number required for the Convention to enter into force.

The United States is a signatory to the treaty, and President Bush submitted the Convention for ratification to the Senate back in 2002.

Posted by Jonathan at 14:37

And here is the second day of the blog: 

Saturday, February 21, 2004

We have no bananas to-day!

Let's check in on our friend Dieudonné. Where do we find his career?



The stunt he pulled seems to be costing him dearly, according to Le Monde. The paper writes that the show he was supposed to have yesterday at L'Olympia was canceled. The venue's directors issued a press release stating that, after receiving anonymous threats, they were canceling the show due to the "climate of extreme tension we have observed over several days." They say that Olympia would "not have the means to guarantee the security of its audience and employees." Indeed, Olympia claim that on Tuesday they received a letter from police headquarters that "reminded [the director] of his responsibilities" and pointed out "that the staff in private establishments are responsible for safety and security on their premises." Contacted by the AFP, Dieudo's agent said the "funny man" didn't want to "react in anger."

So much for that. Dieudonné decided to hold his show in the street outside the theater.

They came by the hundred to chant the slogan "freedom of speech" and to support Dieudonné, who decided to have his show on a platform erected on the sidewalk opposite Olympia, the venue where he was supposed to have performed on Friday and which canceled this.

The humorist raised his arms, greeted his fans, the "descendants of slaves," the "Arabs," the "blacks" and also the whites of all ages who had massed on the boulevard des Capucines in Paris, surrounded by anti-riot police. "We love you," shouted young girls, waving their cameras.

Libération is writing derisively that now Diedonné "takes himself for a defender of the black cause" and reports that the "comedian" said "400 years of slavery and we don't have the right to speak!"

Alain Finkielkraut is criticizing those who leveled threats against l'Olympia (causing the venue to fear for its safety), as he thinks they are "transforming [Dieudonné] into a martyr for human rights and freedom of speech."

Dieudonné is now claiming that he's been banned from French public television. "I've been banned from the TV... just like Coluche and Bedos once were." This was categorically denied however by France 2. Do you imagine they have any interest in seeing him ever again? Do you think many other venues will want to book him now? Can we now ask, as W. once did, "Dis donc Dieudo, les recettes de ton dernier spectacle, ça achète beaucoup de bananes?"

reconnaissance

Le Monde is also offering a slide show of reconnaissance photos (note that in French reconnaissance means "gratitude") from World War II. Some are from the Imperial War Museum, some from the Aerial Reconnaissance Achives and some from the Public Record Office. They include that now famous photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau ("at its criminal apex") and of Omaha Beach (on D-day).

On décompresse...

Ça se fait comme ça... con nosotros

Posted by Douglas at 20:32

Star Wars told the story of a scrappy underdog, patterned after North Vietnam, doing battle with a corrupt American empire

In a post on The Force Awakens deploring the fact that "Star Wars has replaced the Bible as Western civilization’s primary cultural commonality" (both relevant and accessible to people across the societal spectrum), Benny Huang writes that

Star Wars has never been what it appears to be—good clean fun with spaceships and laser beams. Don’t feel bad; that’s what I thought it was too when I was a little kid playing with action figures.

Space ships and laser beams are the packaging not the story. To get to the real story it’s necessary to turn the clock back to April 1973, a time of great disillusionment, when the last American combat troops were withdrawing from Vietnam and the Watergate hearings were only a month away. With these generation-shaping events as a backdrop, twenty-eight year old George Lucas began typing the story of a courageous farm boy from the galaxy’s rural backwaters who took on a rotting empire replete with militarism and darkness—and won.
 
He told his audience that it all took place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away” but its actual setting was both contemporary and terrestrial. Star Wars was an allegory for the world as seen through the eyes of a baby boomer who had come of age on a college campus in the 1960s, who had felt the draft board breathing down his neck, and who had imbibed the spirit of San Francisco, where he was living at the time. The militaristic empire he imagined was his own country and the rebels were communist Vietnamese, though they could have been any number of “anti-imperialist” forces around the globe—the ANC in South Africa, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, etc. The Death Star was a warning against the destructive power of nuclear weapons, though it could be seen as analogous to the Pentagon. Darth Vader? Probably Dick Nixon or just a stand-in for the soulless admirals and generals in command of the war machine.

Lucas had other influences, of course, because inspiration is never that simple. Star Wars was also one part Flash Gordon serial and one part gun-slinging western with a whole heap of Kurosawa’s samurai cinema thrown in. The story also paralleled the Third Reich, starring Darth Vader as Hitler and stormtroopers as, well…stormtroopers.

But it was always about America, the only country George Lucas had ever known. If the film evoked images of Nazi Germany, the logical conclusion was that that’s what America had become or was on the verge of becoming. Star Wars could be read as a cautionary tale of what might happen if we didn’t change course.

 … From its earliest drafts, the script told the story of a scrappy underdog, patterned after North Vietnam, doing battle with a corrupt American empire. The underdog had only his convictions to give him heart, while the empire, which seemed invincible, was actually rotten to the core.

Read Benny Huang's account of what a Star Wars movie would look like if, instead of the Richard Nixon and the George W. Bush administrations, it were telling the story of Barack Obama's record and policies…

The Obama Administration has given us so much material to work with, the script would practically write itself.

 … Here’s a good one—the Jedi are prohibited from practicing their ancient religion for fear that some people might get their feelings hurt.

Read the whole thing™

Interview with the Kiwi Author of the Upcoming Documentary, The Enemies Within

Benny Huang interviews a Kiwi author, filmmaker, and prolific blogger. A native of New Zealand, Trevor Loudon is known for his research into the Communist Party and Islamism.

LOUDON: There’s a documentary coming out in May called The Enemies Within which is going to basically expose a whole bunch of neo-Communists, Marxists, and jihadists in your Congress and your Senate. … So we’re saying they’re right in there, right in the middle of your government.

Click to hear Trevor Loudon–Music Hosting – Embed Audio Files – 

Eccentric: Odd British Traditions From Around the Country

The Daily Telegraph features a picture gallery of strange British traditions… Related: 10 reasons to love the British pub

The crudest rule of thumb is buying goods in the U.S. is often cheaper than the UK, but paying for services is far more expensive

Tourists flock to New York from the UK for shopping trips, seeing the US as a cut-price retail mall of their dreams with some spectacular buildings thrown in for good measure.

However, the reality for those of us who moved here permanently is rather different with many services costing considerably more than they do in the UK.

After arriving in 2013, and settling down in Maine, we soon found out that having no credit history in the US can make things a tad on the pricy side.

After comparing prices between the United States and the UK, The Daily Telegraph's David Millward brings it down to this:

Perhaps the crudest rule of thumb is buying goods is often cheaper than the UK, but paying for services is far more expensive.

 … Of course goods are not subject to 20 per cent VAT and though sales tax exists in the majority of states, it is far more modest.

The real delight, of course is motoring. We bought a Ford Escape – the US equivalent of what is sold as a Kuga in the UK. It was about 25 per cent cheaper, saving us thousands of dollars.

Petrol is, of course, cheap as chips – especially now. It costs around £15 to fill up the tank.
 
 … The good news for anyone living and working here is that income tax is lower, but we are paying twice as much in local taxes as we were in London.

Then there is the frightening cost of health care. We pay around £800 a month for a decent policy – and even then we are expected to chip in a substantial amount on top for any treatment we receive.

As I discovered, these bills are not cheap. A brief stay in hospital cost a few thousand dollars even after insurance.

Interview with the Arizona Military Wife Who Is Running Against John McCain

In Arizona, John McCain is up for a challenge in the coming election to the U.S. Senate. By a military wife no less, one who describes herself as

a mom of three awesome kids … a family physician by trade … and … a former Arizona state senator.

During the CPAC weeekend, Dr. Kelli Ward was interviewed by Benny Huang:

HUANG: So … what motivated you to run against John McCain?

WARD: Well, lots of things. You know, I think that thirty years in Washington is way too long for anybody. I’m a supporter of term limits and, I have pledged myself that I wouldn’t stay more than two terms. Twelve years is a long time in Washington, DC. It’s a enough time to get some things accomplished, get some things started and then be ready to pass the torch on to the next generation of people who are studying and learning right now, who will have the abilities and the stamina and the energy necessary to continue our path, you know, our country on the right path. 

I am a proponent of small government and low taxes and low regulations, much less regulations, a strong military, personal responsibility and the Constitution. And what I’ve seen from John McCain, especially over the last several years is that he’s a big-government, big-spending Republican  who doesn’t listen to his constituents, who has lost … the ability to remember who he works for.

Click to hear Kelli Ward: Listen Music Files – Upload Audio –

Prodded by No Pasarán, Ted Cruz Adds Infamous Jimmy Carter Quote to CPAC Speech

At CPAC, Ted Cruz held a rousing speech (that might be your No Pasarán correspondant whooping at, among — many — other times, 39:33 and 39:45) before being joined by Sean Hannity for a question-and-answer session.

About a minute after the Texas senator says (at 31:27) "I'll actually say a sentence that I suspect has never before been said at CPAC", your correspondent can be seen (in a tieless white shirt) in the third row towards the left of the screen (as well as at 3:03, 3:50, and 40:25).

Immediately afterwards, when Cruz answers the Fox News reporter's question about the dire economic conditions facing the American people — "stagnation … misery … drowning in student loans with no hope of a good job" — your correspondent is the one adding Jimmy Carter's "malaise" to the list, immediately repeated by Ted Cruz (and earning a thumbs up from Sean Hannity) who proceeds to bring up the "accomplishments" of America's 39th president.

Enough of that; now watch the speech…

A Cry to Nancy Reagan: "Remember, We Love You!"

In June 2004, a No Pasarán blogger happened to be in Washington when Ronald Reagan passed away. A few days later, Joe N. headed down to the mall, joining the crowds for the funerary ceremony. The crowds were silent. Then Nancy Reagan came walking by.

Joe remembers seeing a young man in a baseball cap who let out a shout.

Remember! We love you! 

The former Nancy Davis stopped, turned her head, and raised her hand to her chest. She placed her hand over her heart. Then, she turned back and walked on…

The BBC (video):

Nancy … is once again with the man she loved…

Related (from the archives):
Ronald Reagan 1911-2004

One MORE Outrage to Be Outraged About

(Non Sequitur)

12 cities that changed their names

The Daily Telegraph presents 12 cities that changed their names…

Need a Break?

If it's true that Ted Cruz as “dishonest,” or “unlikable,” how can we support him for President?

We’ve been asked by many friends to share insight into Ted Cruz 

testify Chip Roy and Brooke Bacak (gracias per Fausta), who "happen to know him quite well" (check out the Texas senator's CPAC speech),

based on the two years we spent working for him in the U.S. Senate. It is clear from these conversations that while few doubt the sincerity of his conservative political convictions, many are struggling to make sense of the way he has been characterized by the media and a few of his Republican colleagues as “dishonest,” or “unlikable.” Many of you are trying to understand who this man is and how can you like him or trust him enough to support him for President of the United States.

The truth is – you are right to question. This is the political choice of our lifetimes – and we all feel how critical this choice of president will be for the future of America. From concerns about national security to economic growth, from healthcare costs to education opportunity, from mounting debt to a broken immigration system, from religious liberty to questions of life and marriage – all with the 9th Supreme Court seat sitting empty… we feel a sense of duty to get this choice right and at this particular moment. We know we owe that to our children. So how can we hand the reins to that so-called “jerk,” Ted Cruz?

Well, we happen to know him quite well. And we know that the vast majority of these characterizations are completely false; that Senator Cruz is an honest and decent man; that the negative portrayals of him are purposeful and a direct consequence of his willingness to fight for the American people against the massive power of the ruling class that our founding fathers predicted would occur; and that it would be an incredible disservice for you not to take a serious look at him as the only nominee who will lead this country away from its current path and toward the American promise of freedom, security and prosperity our children deserve.

Read why Chip Roy and Brooke Bacak believe this.

Witness the Unbelievable Amount of Racism That Exists Among Conservatives and in the Tea Party

… there’s also … the stain that won’t go away

writes Paul Krugman darkly in his op-ed:

race. 

    This comes at the end of a column in which the New York Times' economist has castigated the right for "Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate" (Re-posted).

    Every time I read a column by Paul Krugman in which he laments the racism he constantly finds among conservative groups (A War on the Poor, New York Times, November 1), I wonder if he has ever heard about Tim Scott.  Given that for awhile, the legislator from South Carolina was the only member of the United States Senate who is African-American, one would think that his name might be — almost — as renowned as Barack Obama's.

    The explanation for Scott's relative obscurity is that he is a Republican — one who is backed by Tea Partiers (endorsed by Tea Party favorite Jim DeMint, Scott's Senate predecessor) and one from a Southern state to boot.  And were Scott better known, it would be far more difficult for people like Krugman to bewail the racism of Republicans and Tea Partiers, not to mention Southerners. 

    You would think that this black pauper's rise from rags to the halls of the U.S. Senate is a living memorial to Martin Luther King's dream.  But because leftists (conveniently and self-servingly) define themselves as the valiant fighters against the racism they (conveniently and self-servingly) constantly find throughout the ranks of the Republican Party, it comes as no surprise that South Carolina's conservative Senator did not even receive an invitation to participate in the 50th anniversary commemorations of MLK's Lincoln Memorial speech.

    Should Krugman need more evidence of his own prejudices, one could also mention Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal, Republican governors (both of Indian heritage) backed by the Tea Party whose skin is about as dark as, if not darker than, that of Barack Obama. Yes, they too were elected in states from the former Confederacy.

    As for blacks who are favorites of the Tea Party, either nationally or locally, they include Herman Cain, Allen West, Darryl Glenn, and Mia Love as well as Thomas Sowell (the Stanford economist who deserves the Nobel Prize in Economics at least as much as Krugman), Walter Williams, Larry Elder, and Stacey Dash.  But all these African-Americans must be ignored, because for the Left, the only good "Negro" is the martyred "Negro" — the one who constantly thinks he and his like are victims and therefore votes for the victimization party (i.e., the Democrats).

    Currently, one favorite of the Tea Party crowd for presidential candidate in 2016 is Dr Benjamin Carson, a neurosurgeon who is offering a free-market alternative to Obamacare that would keep prices down and Washington's brand-new army of bureaucrats out of the health care system.  His skin, too, is darker than Obama's.

    But all these inconvenient facts must be ignored or belittled by media people like Krugman in order to push the narrative that America is an intolerant hell hole of prejudice populated by hordes of despicable racists.

Note: The initial text of this post held that Tim Scott was the only black member of the United States Senate; that was true at the time of the writing of the post, over several weeks, but 12 days before this post was posted, Cory Booker had become New Jersey's junior senator.

Update:  one year after the original post was written, Tim Scott won South Carolina's 2014 mid-term Senate election — in a landslide

Is Uribe's Successor as Colombia's president Throwing His Victory over the FARC Guerillas Away?

At CPAC, on Wednesday, a member of Columbia's Chamber of Representatives made an appeal to Norteamericanos for assistance in persuading the American public to turn against the U.S. government's decision to spend $450 million towards Bogota's "peace process" with the FARC guerillas.

According to María Fernanda Cabal, it seems like Álvaro Uribe's choice to succeed him as president of Colombia has let him down (to say the least), throwing away his hard-won military victory over the FARC guerilla movement. (Shades of the USA's Democrats with regards to Vietnam 40 years ago and to Iraq four years ago…)

"Santos, it's not peace that's near, it's the surrender to FARC and the tyranny of Venezuela."

the Washington Post's Joshua Partlow quotes Uribe, now a senator, as tweeting.

With help from the Castro brothers and their Havana Process (Maria Fernanda Cabal added at Maryland's Gayelord Hotel), Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos (who served his predecessor Uribe as his defense minister) has decided to fuel America's millions towards FARC leaders, effectively reviving the formerly defeated terrorist group doubling as a cocaine cartel.

Previous NP posts on Uribe and/or Colombia…

The Era of the Drama Queens: Every Crisis Is a Triumph

We live in hard times. [Re-posted — because of eternal relevancy.] This is a hard, hard time for the Republic.

We live in the era of the Drama Queen.

We have been digging ourselves deeper and deeper into that era for the past fifty years.

[Update: thanks for the the links, Ed Driscoll and Bird Dog]

Leftists are drama queens. Leftists constantly erupting in hysterics — male (girly men?) or female — rule the roost.

Racism! Patriarchy! Sexism! Rape on campus! Global warming! Christianity's bigotry! The reactionary average American! Republicans' hate speech and hate thought! US history, a litany of racism and oppression! All the founding fathers, hypocritical sonzabitches! All our ancestors, imperialist mongrels! Oppression of women, and gays, and transgenders!

(The only person, the only people, who come out positive in this (self-serving) world view are — surprise, surprise — the drama queens themselves! Also known as the wise men, and the wise women, arriving as knights in shining armor on their white steeds to fight for the victims and the martyrs of the world.)

Whenever there is drama — whenever there is a crisis (or the semblance of a crisis) — the left's  drama queens win.

There must be constant drama — crises, if you prefer — or the movement loses momentum and/or comes to a standstill and/or dies out.

Related: The Leftist Worldview in a Nutshell: A World of Deserving Dreamers Vs. Despicable Deplorables

We have been in the midst of the triumph of the drama queens and the Chicken Littles and the other arrested-development adolescents since the 1960s, with the movement reaching its zenith with the 2008 election.

Ain't that true? Can't the biggest drama queen of all [Barack Obama] be found in the White House?

When the Republicans won the 2014 elections, they didn't realize that this was actually manna in heaven to the top drama queen of them all.

— I will defend the poor innocent martyred immigrants against the monstrous Republicans, against the ignominious inhabitants of Middle America!

— I will defeat the aggressive and clueless warlike policies of the despicable Republicans, regarding the relations with (say) Russia or Cuba, provide a reset, and open an era of peace and prosperity and friendship with those poor, misunderstood nations!

— I will fight for the American people tenaciously, by attacking the nation's, indeed the world's, main enemy, its only enemy (no, not Isis, not Al Qaeda, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the Iranians, not any foreign dictator), and that as relentlessly and as often as I can — the contemptible members of America's Republican Party and the clueless average American citizen. 

Anything that will provide food for drama, for a crisis, may, and will, be used.
In no sense whatsoever is there the slightest value in unity.

Creating chaos is their raison d'être.

War, and crises, with the opposition must be used all the time, and no event may occur without it being used for political advantage.

All these battles in Congress makes Obama happy. He has created his crises, one after the other. He appears as the knight in shining armor come to save the American people.

With the Homeland Security shutdown, you have to wonder if nothing would make Obama happier if there was a terrorist attack on some place in America. He could blame it, would blame it, on the Republicans. And the media would gobble it up.

Why? Because journalists are drama queens too (they have to be, that is how the "newsmakers" survive). That is why so many of them are Democrats, while that is why so many leftists go into the news business in the first place (I want to fight for the little man).

(And why do the drama queens, in- or outside the media, hate conservatives? Republicans? Fox News? Where does their sense of anger, and revulsion, at Dubya, and Reagan, and Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck originate? The main reason is because the latter are, they were, happy people with a smile on their face, who take pleasure — indeed, pride — in their country, and who are not constantly outraged at everything around them.)

Does Obama deserve to be impeached? Want to impeach Obama?

You know what? Nothing would make Barack Obama happier than to be impeached. Then there would be another drama, another one at which he would be the center, and one which could be milked to increase the fortunes of the Drama Queen Party the Democrat Party.

The numerous pitfalls of Obamacare? The Iranian deal leading to a greater chance of terrorism and war? The drama queens are fine with that, they don't even mind being blamed for having made "mistakes," it all leads to more crises down the road and a greater need for intervention, ever more intervention from politicians and bureaucrats and members of the Intervention Party the Democrat Party, aka knights in shining armor.

Indeed, one of the victories of the drama queens was when even the party of the historically calm and pensive, the party of the grown-ups (or of the alleged grown-ups), turned to the Candidate of Melodramatics and Excitement, which has been, and which is, allowing the Democrats to milk the dramatics for the entire 2016 election season.

Obama wins all the time.

Related: The Modus Operandi — The Vicious Circle
of Crises, Or, How the Drama Queens Operate

PS: Do I doubt that Obama is patriotic and loves America?

What is the American Dream? The dream to be rich, i.e., the dream to be powerful, i.e., the dream to be independent — independent of politicians — the dream to be content and feel secure.

This is the American Dream as far back as the 1770s.

This is the America that statists like Obama want(ed) to "fundamentally transform."

There is nothing Obama resents more than the America where its citizens are independent of the politicians, the élites, and their ever-growing armies of bureaucrats (there to "help them").

The founders' vision was the dream to be rid of Drama Queens — certainly, the dream that we should be rid, that we could be rid, of those drama queens who are in positions of power to rule, or who wish to rule, over us. (For our own good, natch.)

Since then, for the past two centuries, drama queens at home and abroad have done all in their power (Norway's 2009 Nobel Peace Prize, f'r'instance) to make America a Drama Queen-run nation…
Related: Bernie Marcus's dependable, mature golf player acting responsibly to prevent the ice hockey players from going berserk (Republicans are playing golf while the Democrats are playing ice hockey)

• The Divine Right of Democrats: Kevin Williamson on the liberation of the Donkey party by the practical elimination of the Republican party (America is  "suffering from a kind of infection in the form of the Republican party, which inhibits the normal and healthy — meaning Democrat-dominated — political life of the United States")

It’s a mystery how homosexuality differs from racism if both are inborn traits

Jim Grimsley penned an editorial last week in the Los Angeles Times that accused white people—all white people—of being racist.

Unfortunately for the gay columnist and playwright, one Benny Huang plans to examine the issue of racism in a dispassionate manner and, indeed, to take the argument to its logical conclusions.

Grimsley, who is white and grew up in Georgia at the tail-end of the Jim Crow era, railed against the cluelessness of white America on the issue of race. Even white people who consider themselves enlightened on racial issues, he argues, are often unaware of the racism that lurks within their own hearts. “…I have found that black people are all too aware that progress on racial issues has hardly moved forward at all, while white people are nearly as blind to their racism as ever,” he wrote.
 
I wish Grimsley had been clearer on one point—that is, whether white racism is cultural or genetic. Within the space of the same sentence he seems to blame both nature and nurture for white racism. Grimsely writes: “…[T]hese are symptoms of the insanity of white culture and our refusal to understand that racism is part of our makeup — each and every one of us, north, south, east and west — from cradle to grave.”

 … The idea that white people are irredeemably racist is central to the social justice movement. All white people are racist, even good white liberals.

 … Enter Tim Wise, another white southerner. He may be America’s best known “anti-racist activist” and he’s pretty extreme in his beliefs. Wise has made a career out of countering anti-black racism, most of which is entirely fictional, with anti-white racism. Even Wise admits to harboring certain racist tendencies though he blames it on growing up in a “white supremacist” culture. He nonetheless believes, despite his efforts to be the best friend black people have ever had, that he has internalized certain racist attitudes. And no, he isn’t talking about racist attitudes towards whites though that would at least be true.

According to Tim Wise, icon of “anti-racism,” even Tim Wise can’t claim to have washed away the stain of racism. Without exception, all white people must be racist.

 … It should be noted here that this attitude [Tribalism] has existed in all time and in all places. The only societies in history that have even tried to resist the tribalist urge are modern Western societies—this is, white societies of the post-World War II era. If you regard tribalism as negative–and in most cases I do—then Europe and North America are actually paragons of virtue. Colorblindness is an idea that modern Westerners have strived for even if they have not perfectly achieved it. Within those societies, it’s the white majority that has been the most willing to suppress their instincts. Other races seem less enthused about colorblindness. They have demanded and received preference which they will cling to from now until eternity.

 … The idea that we’re born racist, something I think at least some social justice warriors would agree with as long as we’re discussing only white people, has certain ramifications. If we accept it (and I do), we must accept that racism will always exist. The war against racism can never be won but we can lose our freedom fighting it.

I’ve noticed that liberals often use human nature as an excuse for behaviors that would otherwise be rejected. If we have an urge, what’s the use of trying to suppress it? Consider homosexuality, for example, a behavior regarded as aberrant by nearly every society prior to the late Twentieth Century. Putting aside moral and religious arguments for a moment, homosexuality comes with certain health risks, particularly the male variety—rectal cancer, AIDS, gonorrhea, etc.

(In a previous column, Benny Huang talked of doctors who, while gallantly joining in the battles on smoking and fast food, live in fear that their careers will be summarily ended if they advise against anal sodomy—which turns out to be far from bad medical advice, no matter how you slice it.)

But don’t tell that to liberals. “Gays” are just “born that way” they argue with very little evidence. No “gay” gene has ever been found and studies indicate that children exposed to sexual abuse tend to become homosexuals. Liberals reject this notion because they believe that homosexuality is not a choice. Homosexuals therefore have no obligation to suppress their urges. Be your true to yourself, they say. Telling anyone that homosexuality is shameful is a form of abuse because it forces that person into the proverbial closet.

It’s a mystery to me how homosexuality differs from racism if they are both inborn traits. According to dogma, “gays” couldn’t stop being “gay” any more than a leopard could change his spots. But isn’t the same true of racists? If racists are born, not made, then even heavy guilt tactics won’t cure them. What’s the point of trying to make racists change? All of this “racist shaming” seems both pointless and destructive to its subjects.

As a certified “homophobe” I am often asked if “gays” choose to be “gay.” I always answer the same: yes, because people choose who they sleep with. That doesn’t satisfy the homofascists who always respond, “If being gay were a choice, who would choose it?”

 … The social penalty for homosexuality is non-existent. The same cannot be said about the social penalty for racism. You can lose your job for the slightest episode of racism, real or perceived, which is really hypocritical in that everyone is at least a little racist.

A simple question demands to be answered: do people choose to be racist? If say you say no, then what’s the point of shaming them? They’re beyond reformation. If you say yes, that necessitates a follow-up question—if racism is a choice, who would choose it knowing that it would mean living life as a pariah? Certainly no one I know would knowingly accept the social penalty that comes with harboring forbidden thoughts. It must therefore be an inborn characteristic.

Trump is the Republican Party’s monster, yes; But what he represents is also part of the Obama legacy

THE spectacle of the Republican Party’s Trumpian meltdown has inspired a mix of glee and fear among liberals

writes Ross Douthat in the New York Times (echoing Glenn Reynolds's columns in USA Today) — 

glee over their rivals’ self-immolation, and fear that what arises from the destruction will be worse.

What it hasn’t inspired is much in the way of self-examination, or a recognition of the way that Obama-era trends in liberal politics have helped feed the Trump phenomenon.

 … Trumpism is also a creature of the late Obama era, irrupting after eight years when a charismatic liberal president has dominated the cultural landscape and set the agenda for national debates. President Obama didn’t give us Trump in any kind of Machiavellian or deliberate fashion. But it isn’t an accident that this is the way the Obama era ends — with a reality TV demagogue leading a populist, nationalist revolt.

First, the reality TV element in Trump’s campaign is a kind of fun-house-mirror version of the celebrity-saturated Obama effort in 2008. Presidential politics has long had an escalating celebrity component, a cultish side that’s grown ever-more-conspicuous with time. But the first Obama campaign raised the bar. The quasi-religious imagery and rhetoric, the Great Man iconography and pillared sets, the Oprah endorsement and Will.i.am music video and the Hollywood stars pledging allegiance — it was presidential politics as one part Aaron Sorkin-scripted liturgy, one part prestige movie’s Oscar campaign.

 … If Obama proved that you can run a presidential campaign as an aspirational cult of personality, in which a Sarah Silverman endorsement counts for as much as a governor or congressman’s support, Trump is proving that you don’t need Silverman to shout “the Aristocrats!” and have people eat it up.

He’s also proving, in his bullying, overpromising style, that voters are increasingly habituated to the idea of an ever more imperial presidency — which is also a trend that Obama’s choices have accelerated. Having once campaigned against his predecessor’s power grabs, the current president has expanded executive authority along almost every dimension: launching wars without congressional approval, claiming the power to assassinate American citizens, and using every available end-around to make domestic policy without any support from Congress.

 … that [right-wing] Caesarist, crucially, is rallying a constituency that once swung between the parties, but that the Obama White House has spent the last eight years slowly writing off. Trump’s strongest supporters aren’t archconservatives; they’re white working-class voters, especially in the Rust Belt and coal country, who traditionally leaned Democratic and still favor a strong welfare state.

These voters had been drifting away from the Democratic Party since the 1970s, but Obama has made moves that effectively slam the door on them: His energy policies, his immigration gambits, his gun control push, his shift to offense on same-sex marriage and abortion. It was possible to be a culturally conservative skeptic of mass immigration in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton. Not so anymore.

  … liberalism still needs to reckon with the consequences. As in Europe, when the left gives up on nationalism and lets part of its old working class base float away, the result is a hard-pressed constituency unmoored from either party, and nursing well-grounded feelings of betrayal.

Hence Marine Le Pen and the nationalist parties of Europe. And hence, now, Donald Trump.

He is the Republican Party’s monster, yes. But what he represents is also part of the Obama legacy — a nemesis for liberal follies as well as conservative corruptions, and a threat to both traditions for many years to come.

Double Standards: Women Should Have As Many Rights As Wusses Do

(Dilbert)

"In Britain, you read about all the deals going on" says one young expat exilé; "In the French papers, you read about taxes, more taxes, economic problems, and the state’s involvement in everything"

Guillaume Santacruz, an aspiring French entrepreneur, brushed the rain from his black sweater and skinny jeans and headed down to a cavernous basement inside Campus London, a seven-story hive run by Google in the city’s East End.

Thus writes Liz Alderman in the New York Times.

A year earlier, Mr. Santacruz, who has two degrees in finance, was living in Paris near the Place de la Madeleine, working in a boutique finance firm. He had taken that job after his attempt to start a business in Marseille foundered under a pile of government regulations and a seemingly endless parade of taxes. The episode left him wary of starting any new projects in France. Yet he still hungered to be his own boss.

He decided that he would try again. Just not in his own country.

“A lot of people are like, ‘Why would you ever leave France?’ ” Mr. Santacruz said. “I’ll tell you. France has a lot of problems. There’s a feeling of gloom that seems to be growing deeper. The economy is not going well, and if you want to get ahead or run your own business, the environment is not good.”

 … From 80 to 90 percent of all start-ups fail, “but that’s O.K.,” said Eze Vidra, the head of Google for Entrepreneurs Europe and of Campus London, a free work space in the city’s booming technology hub. In Britain and the United States, “it’s not considered bad if you have failed,” Mr. Vidra said. “You learn from failure in order to maximize success.”

That is the kind of thinking that drew Mr. Santacruz to London. “Things are different in France,” he said. “There is a fear of failure. If you fail, it’s like the ultimate shame. In London, there’s this can-do attitude, and a sense that anything’s possible. If you make an error, you can get up again.”

Mr. Santacruz had a hard time explaining to his parents his decision to leave France. “They think I’m crazy, maybe sick, taking all those risks,” he said. “But I don’t want to wait until I’m 60 to live my life.”

France has been losing talented citizens to other countries for decades, but the current exodus of entrepreneurs and young people is happening at a moment when France can ill afford it.

 … Some wealthy businesspeople have also been packing their bags. While entrepreneurs fret about the difficulties of getting a business off the ground, those who have succeeded in doing so say that society stigmatizes financial success. The election of President François Hollande, a member of the Socialist Party who once declared, “I don’t like the rich,” did little to contradict that impression.

 … Today, around 1.6 million of France’s 63 million citizens live outside the country. That is not a huge share, but it is up 60 percent from 2000, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Thousands are heading to Hong Kong, Mexico City, New York, Shanghai and other cities. About 50,000 French nationals live in Silicon Valley alone.

But for the most part, they have fled across the English Channel, just a two-hour Eurostar ride from Paris. Around 350,000 French nationals are now rooted in Britain, about the same population as Nice, France’s fifth-largest city. So many French citizens are in London that locals have taken to calling it “Paris on the Thames.” …

Taxes, Frustration, More Taxes

 … “Making it” is almost never easy, but Mr. Santacruz found the French bureaucracy to be an unbridgeable moat around his ambitions. Having received his master’s in finance at the University of Nottingham in England, he returned to France to work with a friend’s father to open dental clinics in Marseille. “But the French administration turned it into a herculean effort,” he said.

A one-month wait for a license turned into three months, then six. They tried simplifying the corporate structure but were stymied by regulatory hurdles. Hiring was delayed, partly because of social taxes that companies pay on salaries. In France, the share of nonwage costs for employers to fund unemployment benefits, education, health care and pensions is more than 33 percent. In Britain, it is around 20 percent.

“Every week, more tax letters would come,” Mr. Santacruz recalled.

 … Diane Segalen, an executive recruiter for many of France’s biggest companies who recently moved most of her practice, Segalen & Associés, to London from Paris, says the competitiveness gap is easy to see just by reading the newspapers. “In Britain, you read about all the deals going on here,” Ms. Segalen said. “In the French papers, you read about taxes, more taxes, economic problems and the state’s involvement in everything.”

 … Mr. Hollande’s government is now trying to re-brand itself as business-friendly, especially for start-ups. … These changes were welcomed by business, but the more than 20 French expatriates I interviewed said their country was marked by a deeper antipathy toward the wealthy than could be addressed with a few new policies.

“Generally, if you are self-made man and earn money, you are looked at with suspicion,” said Erick Rinner, a French executive at Milestone Capital Partners, a British-French private equity firm, who has lived in London for 20 years.

Mr. Hollande’s election, and especially his proposal — since ruled unconstitutional — to impose a 75 percent tax on the portion of income above one million euros (about $1.4 million) a year, have only reinforced that perception.

“It is a French cultural characteristic that goes back to almost the revolution and Robespierre, where there’s a deep-rooted feeling that you don’t show that you make money,” Ms. Segalen, the recruiter, said. “There is this sense that ‘liberté, égalité, fraternité’ means that what’s yours should be mine. It’s more like, if someone has something I can’t have, I’d rather deprive this person from having it than trying to work hard to get it myself. That’s a very French state of mind. But it’s a race to the bottom.”

Sharing Space, Waiting Tables

“In London, every day is a fight,” [said Emilie Bellet, 30, who in less than a year raised a half-million pounds to finance her venture, SeedRecruit, which finds talent for other start-ups]. “But then you get rewarded. I don’t think this would have been possible in France.”

 … Back in France, Mr. Santacruz’s parents were still trying to grasp their son’s decision. Having spent her career at the state telecom company, his mother, like many others in her generation, assumed that her children’s main aspiration would also be lifelong job security. …

France? Maybe for Retirement

 … Guillaume Santacruz was grateful for the benefits that his country gave him. But he wanted something else — to innovate. By September, his project was not where he wanted it to be. Yet he maintained that he was better off pursuing it outside France.

 … Even if [the company that Mr. Santacruz was trying to build (Zipcube)] fell apart, he told me one chilly weekend at his Kensington flat, where paint was peeling off the walls, “I would not change my mind and head back to France; I see only cons to doing that, no pros.” He was skeptical that the government’s recent offensive to spur France’s entrepreneurial environment would quickly bear fruit.

Several of his French friends in London felt the same way. “I asked them, if things don’t work out, will they go back? Not one of them would,” Mr. Santacruz said. “Maybe for retirement. But not for work — we’d rather go to the United States or Asia before returning.” France seemed to have lost another citizen in the prime of his productive working years.

 … And while the bar to succeed was high, “I’m confident I’m going to make it,” he declared.