January 12, 2014

The ideal victims of political incorrectness are the non-victims

I wanted to come back to the growing list at Handle's Haus of the "bullied-and-badgered-pressured-and-purged" victims of political correctness. 

By nature I'm a nice, pleasant, optimistic, think-the-best-of-everyone person, so I've had to train myself intellectuallyto notice the less admirable traits of human beings. One of those is that we are more outraged by indignities suffered by winners than by injustices suffered by losers. Therefore, I suspect that the most valuable members of Handle's list are not those most victimized, but those widely seen as having triumphed over insults. 

For example, consider the campaign that drove Joe Sobran into poverty versus the pouring of a pitcher of ice water on the head of Harvard sociobiology professor Edward O. Wilson at an AAAS meeting in 1978. Now, in objective terms, the crushing of Sobran was a larger detriment to intellectual life in America than the momentary insult to Wilson. 

But the point is that Sobran lost. So, therefore, he is assumed to be a loser. And thus to have deserved whatever he had coming.

In contrast, Wilson, a resilient and resourceful individual, came back repeatedly and has achieved Grand Old Man status in American intellectual life, clearly demonstrating that he is a winner. (Here are some of the many episodes of the Charlie Rose Show upon which Wilson has appeared in recent years.) And winners don't deserve any setbacks.

Human beings like winners (perhaps out of a hope that winners will like them) and tend to dislike losers (perhaps out of fear that their loser cooties will rub off on them).

Thus, the story of Wilson being attacked is a touchstone for anybody objecting to the reign of political correctness, while the fate of Sobran is largely veiled in silence, other than for a few brave souls like Ann Coulter.

Similarly, I have read hundred of times about how Daniel Patrick Moynihan was unfairly criticized for his 1965 report to LBJ on how the black illegitimacy rate had reached 22 percent. And, indeed, Moynihan's career might have suffered a temporary setback because of political correctness. Yet, by 1969 Moynihan was the President's chief domestic advisor and later the U.N. Ambassador. He then served 24 years or 8766 days (some of them, no doubt, sober) as a U.S. Senator (D-NY). Therefore, this horrible, horrible thing that happened to Moynihan in the mid-1960s, which might have slowed his career enough to keep him from someday becoming President, remains a vivid mainstream memory of the excesses of political correctness. 

So, my advice would be to make up a sublist of people who have triumphed almost completely over accusations of political incorrectness. For example, Larry Summers quickly rebounded from outraging feminists to become Obama's chief economics guru. If he'd become Fed Chairman, his comeback would have been complete.

You may think this is, logically speaking, backwards, but this is how the human brain works.

110 comments:

SFG said...

Totally logical, given evolution and our desire to affiliate ourselves with winners. It's like a secret key that opens up a lot of human behaviors.

We ain't nothing but mammals, as a winner once said.

Lamentably, Steve, this does make you a loser.

Anonymous said...

It was easier for Wilson since he stuck to science and didn't mention Jews. Sobran was a political animal and mentioned Jews, indeed lots of times.

As for Moynihan, even his detractors could see that 'his heart was in the right place' when he said what he said. Now, if George Wallace had said it...

As for Summers, yes, he was clobbered by PC feminists, but he also had lots of supporters who defended his freedom of speech in the media. So, he was never totally abandoned by the elites. He just had to say sorry and put it behind him. He had protection since he had so many powerful friends and allies, and in the long run, they have far more power than some antsy feminists at Harvard.

Anonymous said...

"Lamentably, Steve, this does make you a loser."

Technically, Sailer was nipped before he achieved winner status, so he didn't really lose much.

Sobran, in contrast, was once a highly syndicated and well-known columnist.

Anonymous said...

As for Summers, yes, he was clobbered by PC feminists, but he also had lots of supporters who defended his freedom of speech in the media. So, he was never totally abandoned by the elites.

Summers is also a rabid Zionist. In other words, he plays for the home team.

"The singling-out of Israel goes beyond criticism of Israeli government policies to hateful comparisons of a kind appropriately described this fall by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers as being 'anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.'”

http://archive.adl.org/anti_semitism/divestment.html

candid_observer said...

Well, there's another way to explain the preference for winners here.

The winners nonetheless recovered their respectability This shows that, even from the point of view of larger society, the winner was deemed of great value. This proves to the mainstream that political correctness wreaks true damage to our discourse. If PC were to succeed at the suppression it seeks, these important thinkers would have been removed from the scene.

The losers require strained counterfactual arguments, arguing only for the value of what might have been. That always makes for awful politics.

Anonymous said...

But do losers who eventually become winners-in-the-end win by keep on fighting and never giving up the struggle OR are they rehabilitated by the powers-that-be?

(In the case of Moynihan, though he was reviled in some quarters, I don't he really lost-lost.)

Consider the Hollywood Ten. They didn't do much to win-in-the-end but were rather sainted and rehabilitated by a doting liberal-dominated media in the 60s and 70s. In contrast, Kazan who kept working and won in the 1950s later came to be reviled.

While some losers fight hard to win-in-the-end, it seems like lots of losers were made into winners by the powers that be.

http://www.npr.org/2014/01/06/260020686/an-honorable-last-wish-for-a-dying-marine

Take the homo Marine. Why did he win in the end? Because Jews-homos who took over this country anointed him 'winner'. Without the powers-that-be to do him this favor, he would have died a loser.

Also, it's not necessarily true that we look down on those who died as losers. Jesus died as a loser, but He became the King of Kings.
Anne Frank died as a loser, but she's like Virgin Mary.
Alan Turing died a loser, but he's been rehabilitated as a great winner-in-the-end in a big way.

So, winner-in-the-end of the past is determined by the winners-right-now.

Winners depend on spinners.

PS. Orson Welles was pretty much exiled from Hollywood and died rather shabbily and could hardly get anything made in the past 20 yrs of his life, but he's admired as the greatest of directors.


Anonymous said...

If we compare Buchanan and Sobran, why did the former last so long while Sobran just gave up?

Reasons of health? Was Sobran more sensitive to the snubbing and what he saw as betrayal by Buckley? Was he, at heart, a writer and not a brawler?

Buchanan was censured by Buckley, attacked by neocons, mocked by the media in 1996 and 2000, rejected by the GOP, attacked by most rightwing talk radio, and etc.
But he still managed to roll with the punches, and even after being let go by MSBNC(even Fox won't have him), he still writes columns and gives interviews.

So, is Buchanan a winner or loser? Or both? He's much reviled but even his enemies gotta admit he got guts and stamina.

John McLaughlin did help him out after the disastrous 2000 campaign by allowing him back on McLaughlin Group.

Anonymous said...

Winners, losers... and survivors.

TGGP said...

I think you're basically correct. An intellectual being respected today is thought to have been right all along. Ignatz Semmelweiss might be a counter-example since he died a loser though.

Sobram doesn't fit quite so well with the others. He was a political/opinion journalist, and it's to be expected you won't be hired if you have taboo views on those subjects. But academic intellectuals are another story, they have tenure. James Coleman is another example, similar to Moynihan in that his predictions seem vindicated by history and his detractors look wrong.

"Technically, Sailer was nipped before he achieved winner status"
Is there some specific incident you're referring to?

Anonymous said...

If the right dominated the media, Joe McCarthy might be rehabilitated as a winner.

Sometimes, the greatest of losers can sort of win again through opportunism, sophistication, show of repentance, and writing an important book. Think of Albert Speer.

Or, he might be rehabilitated and even celebrated if he redeems himself by doing some great service for the 'good guys'. Werner von Braun might be one of those.

Age sort of matters too. If some old person said something nasty about homos, he may be more easily forgiven than if a young guy said it.

Some people, reviled as they are, keep sort of winning because their achievements are thought to be too important. So, even as the media endlessly attack Wagner, his operas bring the house down in cities all over the world.
And as much as Heidegger is hated as a Nazi thinker, he has a huge devoted following in the philosophical community.

Some people keep winning and losing and winning and losing. Leni Riefenstahl was sort of fashionable again in the 70s, but then Sontag attacked her, and she was down again, but she later wrote a book that was a best seller and a documentary was made about her, but then she was always discussed in relation to Nazism...

Some people keep losing on their own but the media try to prop them up.

Other people keep winning on their own but the media keep trying to suppress them.

I wonder how it will be with Mel Gibson. If he makes a great epic Viking movie, he might be on top again.

Anonymous said...

Robert E. Lee lost the war but he was much respected by all Americans for a long time after the war, but recently, he too is reviled by the PC machine.

Average Joe said...

The main reason why Sobran's career never recovered is that he spoke out against the Jews and so the Jews destroyed him. Larry Summers is Jewish which I believe helped him make the comeback that Sobran was denied.

anony-mouse said...

Compare what happened to Sobran and what happened to Beck.

Both were forced out of their opinionator positions-indeed Beck's firing was more public.

Sobran decided to start his own magazine and flopped-that's what sent him into poverty. That's why he is considered a 'loser'.

Beck started his own channel and succeeded and prospered. That's why he is considered a 'winner'.

Americans actually like people who are fired IFF they then succeed.

Just as evolution does not reward suicidal behavior (and no, those furry northern rodents don't commit mass suicide) American culture does not reward people who flush their own money down the drain (flush other people's-that's a different story).

www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8581

Art Deco said...

SS, Joseph Sobran's life after 1993 is a cautionary tale, but not about anything done to him.

1. He was insubordinate to his employer, and that got him dismissed from his job. He did not realize that the imprimatur of his employer was crucial to his syndication on radio and in newspapers and that cost him that too.

2. At the age of 47, his utile skills were entirely invested in writing topical commentary and such. He was not adaptable and sensible enough to attempt a career change. He had quite a mess of well wishers, but evidently none who could be a conduit to regular employment.

3. So he embarked on a hopeless 15 year effort to earn a living as a freelancer. Since the man did not write ad copy or undertake travel writing, this was predictably a failure.

4. He had a long history of mismanaging his domestic life. He married at 19 and had 3 children by the age of 24. When he crossed paths with Wm. F. Buckley, he was a graduate student at Eastern Michigan University. He was not studying anything that would help him make rent; he was studying English literature. Buckley rescued him (and his family) by giving him a salaried job.

5. The man continued living in a house in Northern Virginia (not a loci with cheap rents) for at least a decade after his economic fortunes went south. A personal friend (Jared Taylor) said the place was such a sty Sobran could not have any guests. He was wretchedly disorganized (doing things like tootling around town with an expired drivers' license and losing bills in his mess).

6. He was a Catholic who wrote for The Wanderer, yet he burned through two marriages.

7. He had unfortunate personal habits, and these took a toll on his health. The man who railed in print against "people who take wealth from those who produce it..." died in a nursing home a ward of the Commonwealth of Virginia, too sick from diabetes to take proper care of himself.

--

The whole story is terribly sad. However, Norman Podhoretz was not the author of this train-wreck. Joseph Sobran was.

Anonymous said...

I saw Watson on the CR show prostrating himself over his IQ comment.....Rose went after him x2, rebuking him.............

Daniel P Moynihan:
it must have helped his career that he denounced so strongly the Zionism is a form of racism resolution. It is noteworthy that his successor, ex-Governor Scranton of PA, was judged more professional by the world's diplomats. See quote, below,from Scranton's NYT obituary, especially the remark "quiet maturity."

"In 1976, President Ford named him to the United Nations post. Unlike his blunt predecessor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Mr. Scranton made few memorable speeches and aroused little controversy. But delegates said that he brought quiet maturity to diplomacy that had swung from bombast to tirade, and that his finesse made him the most respected United States delegate in years. "

"Quiet maturity": Y'know watching L'Affaire Fischer, I really yearn to live in a country where I can say that our elite manifests quiet maturity. I really doubt if we shall see those days again in the USA.

It may be pointless criticizing Fischer and his kin over his appointment, but what of the genetic descendants of Gov. Scranton? Why are they so buffaloed--they still retain some money if no cultural influence....they have not all intermarried with our new overlords that would lead to embarrassing moments in the drawing rooms.
Genetics may influence IQ, but social conditioning seems to completely control WASP behavior wrt the rise and rise of the Ashkenazi overclass.

Dave Pinsen said...

You're eliding the distinction I noted in your previous post about this. Watson and Summers were victims of political correctness. Sobran spoke to a group engaged in Holocaust denial.

It's one thing to seek the truth and speak about it even when it reflects poorly on protected groups. It's another to distort the truth or give cover to those who do. And it's another to be offensive go the sake of being offensive. It's not fair to Watson to put him in the same list as Sobran or Richards.

You are one of the few bloggers in your eponymous sphere who normals can feel comfortable linking to most of the time. Heartiste, for example, not infrequently links to posts including Nazi iconography. "Lion" often uses gratuitously invidious language. It would be a shame if you went in that direction.

Anonymous said...

Steve, I couldn't bear to read this today. The headline is enough. "Inside Bay Area" is a featured section of the Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, and Contra Costa Times, all owned by the same company.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_24893408/white-professors-still-dominate-bay-area-colleges-student

Anonymous said...


NYT obit on DPM's successor, and his legacy at the UN.....GOTO PAGE 2 OF 2.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/us/politics/william-scranton-former-pennsylvania-governor-dies-at-96.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0

helene edwards said...

Hmm, let's see. The triumphant, Moynihan, Wilson and Summers, were all Harvard-connected. Sobran was not. Also H-bereft: Al Campanis, Jimmy The Greek, Frank Rizzo and Daryl Gates, all of whom were bypassed by Charlie Rose.

Anonymous said...

The more interesting thing is that the people who ruthlessly enforce the bounds of what may and may not be said, and of who may say what, are the nominally "powerless", the "marginalized", the "victims".

Anonymous said...

Conversely, Americans love underdogs and underdog victories. The cliche replays in every movie, in the press, and people try to act it out in real life. Maybe because of 1776.

Michael said...

As with so much of your commentary, you are projecting what are American values onto humanity. Americans have always liked winners. Other cultures have always appreciated losers. Greeks made their most important literary genre about losers, as did the English at various times and indeed the noble and plucky failure is widely celebrated in English culture.

An unsophisticated admiration for brute success and un-nuanced scorn for failure isn't some timeless aspect of the human psyche but a peculiarly parochial American mindset that has been widely noted by European observers. Tragedy as a literary genre could never have originated in America - yet for ancient Greeks and Elizebethan Englishmen it was what moved them most.

Unfortunately much of the writing in this section of the blogopshere is curiously parochial, uninformed by history and knowledge of other lands, and what prevails in America at this particular historical period is thought to be timelessly human. It undermines much of what is written and is a pervasive vice. Mangan, an otherwise fine blogger, suffers from this crippling intellectual defect in a very serious way. Nearly all efforts to explain the obesity epidemic - Taubes, Gueyent, Atkins - have zero value because they simply ignore what goes on outside of America.

A wide ranging knowledge of history and an interest in foreign lands would go a long way towards curing this.

Anonymous said...

Steve,

I could not agree more with you on this point.

Please see the following links:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/jul/21/1

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/aug/25/1

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2004/sep/02/1

http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/796391/cummins-may-be-part-of-the-green-ink-brigade-but-he-was-right-about-islam/

AKAHorace

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure it's so complicated. The list of those who triumphed completely or almost completely over charges of political correctness seem to be exclusively Democrats (Summers, Reid, Biden...).

Are there any avowed conservatives on the list?

RT Rider said...

Sobran a loser? Maybe to a collection of cowards and lackeys - persons whose career, or employment, is dependent on the patronage and approval of members of the Tribe. Life is more than money and notoriety.

There are few writing today, who could tie his shoe laces.

Anonymous said...

The problem with Sobran is he inflamed the accusations against him while the others you're talking about cowered or worked to smooth things over.

I do think the neo-conservatives are lucky that Russell Kirk died in the 90s. I doubt he could have lasted the Bush Administration without a purge attempt.

Reg Cæsar said...

Two of the biggest losses to hit any human population were the Holocaust of the 1940s and the Homocaust of the 1980s. Yet the groups that suffered then came roaring back and are stronger than ever. At least for now.

Or does this analysis only apply to individuals?

Reg Cæsar said...

Not long after Wilson was attacked, getting doused became the hallmark of a winner. I'm sure that worked in his favor.

By the way, Wilson had poor vision, and strong phobias of enclosed spaces and of his arms being immobilized. Which genes are responsible for those conditions?

Matthew said...

"So, my advice would be to make up a sublist of people who have triumphed almost completely over accusations of political incorrectness."

Economy of effort would suggest you ignore Republicans and consider only Democrats.

BTW, folks at NRO are beginning to wonder what happened to Mark Steyn. He hasn't posted anything over there in 3 weeks. Did he get Derbed?

Anonymous said...

Long live King Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland!

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Robert Bork became bitter and less sensible, albeit slowly, after his borking. He moved from the A-list to the B-list, but he didn't lose everything.

I think the best of the "mammals" lines was Cole Porter's in "Let's Misbehave," SFG.

Anonymous said...

Two points on Joe S.

1) Joe was an "open Borders" guy

2) He was obsessed about Israel because he felt bad for the Palestinians. That's why he was fighting the Jews.

If you don't want to be a loser, take a position that will get some allies when the shit hits the fan.

Anonymous said...

Hey, no one answered my question in an earlier thread about what examples Washington was referring to in the following quote:

."..the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government."

There must be some pretty knowledgeable history buffs among the iSteve audience? I personally can't think of any examples from the Roman Republic...

Matt Thompson said...

See here's the thing though how do you classify someone like Pat B. He suffered almost the same exact slings and arrows that Steve suffered worse since Buckley explicitly attacked him rather than simply shuffling Steve out the door.

A lot of it is about attitude Sobran and Steve's shoulder's chip really easy whereas Pat is a jolly good fellow who simply got over it an moved on. It really is that simple sometimes. If Steve's little brag list to start things off this post were really accurately things would have come out different.

AWC said...

Steve,

Off topic. But have you seen the new study on Mexicans and diabetes?

http://occamsrazormag.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/mexicans-fattest-people-on-planet-at-genetic-risk-for-diabetes/

..

AWC said...

"Joe was an "open Borders" guy"

I think he was for most of his life but become a restrictionist at the end of his life.

See:

http://vdare.com/articles/vdarecom-100310-getting-to-know-wfb-joe-sobrans-last-testament

and

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/017522.html


..

Anonymous said...

Matthew did you Mark Steyn go after that Steorts ahole's critcisms of his column? It read like someone who all things considered wouldn't mind finding somewhere else to work. But if that got him fired then NR is official over (yes I know everyone else here thinks its been gone for years please spare me).

Robert Bork's most influential book was written 9 years after his failed confirmation. Yea he feel a few notches but that was entirely because he confirmation to the "A-List" was shot down. Who mattered more Douglas Ginsburg or Bork to ask the question is see how silly bringing Bork into this subject was.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like an example of the "just-world fallacy".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

Anonymous said...

Funny how the biggest Sobran supporter there was was constant isteve message board whipping post Ann Coulter. Really palecons don't deserve any breaks. Ironic how the patron saint of the paleocon movement might as well be Gideon. Never has such a marginal movement been so eager to ex-communicate people as paleos are. Like Gideon at the Jordan River the neo-cons must be sent home.

Anonymous said...

1. does anyone remember Robert Bork's WSJ op-ed from circa 2001 asking that PJB be shunned? Note that PJB had defended RB valiantly back in the day......

2. Select your position so that one may have allies.....hmm ahh the death of truth once so integral of Western man...........

countenance said...

Seems like the way to come back from an accusation of Un-PC-ness is to attach yourself to a Democrat President.

SFG said...

"1. He was insubordinate to his employer, and that got him dismissed from his job. He did not realize that the imprimatur of his employer was crucial to his syndication on radio and in newspapers and that cost him that too.

2. At the age of 47, his utile skills were entirely invested in writing topical commentary and such. He was not adaptable and sensible enough to attempt a career change. He had quite a mess of well wishers, but evidently none who could be a conduit to regular employment.

3. So he embarked on a hopeless 15 year effort to earn a living as a freelancer. Since the man did not write ad copy or undertake travel writing, this was predictably a failure.

4. He had a long history of mismanaging his domestic life. He married at 19 and had 3 children by the age of 24. When he crossed paths with Wm. F. Buckley, he was a graduate student at Eastern Michigan University. He was not studying anything that would help him make rent; he was studying English literature. Buckley rescued him (and his family) by giving him a salaried job.

5. The man continued living in a house in Northern Virginia (not a loci with cheap rents) for at least a decade after his economic fortunes went south. A personal friend (Jared Taylor) said the place was such a sty Sobran could not have any guests. He was wretchedly disorganized (doing things like tootling around town with an expired drivers' license and losing bills in his mess).

6. He was a Catholic who wrote for The Wanderer, yet he burned through two marriages.

7. He had unfortunate personal habits, and these took a toll on his health. The man who railed in print against "people who take wealth from those who produce it..." died in a nursing home a ward of the Commonwealth of Virginia, too sick from diabetes to take proper care of himself."

Funny thing is, disorganization and a caustic personality are quite common among writers, particularly of opinion columns. As people here have said, he pissed off the wrong people and he didn't have a Harvard degree.


AVI: Cole Porter. Thanks!

Anonymous said...


I believe that this is an accurate extract from the 2000/2001 WSJ article that R Bork penned on PJB

"...There is certainly a role for optimistic conservatism but no excuse for overlooking the very real and degenerate state of much of our politics and culture. Not even replacing the current occupant of the White House with someone of higher moral caliber will do much to improve the culture. Mr. Reagan, after all, could not. --- Finally, there is a degeneracy that Mr. Bush not only overlooks but encourages. Many of Patrick Buchanan's old friends cannot bring themselves to admit that the man has added to a general kookiness a fondness for anti-Semitic rhetoric. But from his statement that the Gulf War was drummed up in Tel Aviv and its "amen corner" in the U.S., to his charge that Jews have divided loyalties, to his demand that elite universities adopt quotas for white Christians, his course has been documented beyond the possibility of quibble by commentators such as William F. Buckley Jr., Charles Krauthammer, and Michael Kelly. His animus is probably political rather than personal, but that doesn't help a great deal. Hatred of an ethnic group has always been a serious moral flaw, but after the Holocaust to toy with the politics of anti-Semitism is nothing less than evil. To tolerate it, to court an anti-Semite for political gain, bespeaks at best blindness to danger and at worst a willingness out of personal ambition to risk making the danger a reality. That is itself a sign of a serious moral deficiency. Yet that is precisely what Mr. Bush has done in begging Mr. Buchanan to remain within the Republican Party. No tent can afford to be that big. Talk about slouching, how about slumming? George W. Bush may be the only chance to hold off the even worse Al Gore and Bill Bradley, but that we are reduced to such a choice merely shows how far we have slouched. "

Did an aging RB really believe this, or did he believe that he needed to?

Steve Sailer said...

George Washington was mostly referring to the tremendous divide that opened up in the Revolutionary 1790s between the partisans of France and Britain, even within his cabinet.

Washington himself stiffed the French government on the mutual defense agreement they had signed, arguing that chopping off the king's head rendered it null and void. Adams got into a small war with the French in 1798 and Madison into a big war with the English in 1812. Those were difficult times.

Mr. Anon said...

"Michael said...

Unfortunately much of the writing in this section of the blogopshere is curiously parochial, uninformed by history and knowledge of other lands, and what prevails in America at this particular historical period is thought to be timelessly human. It undermines much of what is written and is a pervasive vice. Mangan, an otherwise fine blogger, suffers from this crippling intellectual defect in a very serious way. Nearly all efforts to explain the obesity epidemic - Taubes, Gueyent, Atkins - have zero value because they simply ignore what goes on outside of America.

A wide ranging knowledge of history and an interest in foreign lands would go a long way towards curing this."

That is untrue. A lot of people who follow HBD blogs are familiar with foreign lands and ways. Mangan, in particular, is an especially erudite and sophisticated blogger.

Harry Baldwin said...

BTW, folks at NRO are beginning to wonder what happened to Mark Steyn. He hasn't posted anything over there in 3 weeks. Did he get Derbed?

I've been wondering that myself since he took on NR editor Jason Lee Steorts.

As to Sobran, I was a fan and even subscribed to his newsletter for several years after his defenestration. He lost me with his open-borders position ("I can't imagine Jesus standing on the border to turn [illegals] back"), his peculiar obsession with "Who was the real Shakespeare?" and an increasing tendency to keep writing the same things over and over.

Art Deco said...

Funny thing is, disorganization and a caustic personality are quite common among writers, particularly of opinion columns. As people here have said, he pissed off the wrong people and he didn't have a Harvard degree.

"The wrong people" would be his employer. And you miss the point.

Over a period of more than four decades, the man could not make a sensible decision to save his life, and he eventually ruined it. Deal with it and quit trying to send the bill to Norman Podhoretz.

Anonymous said...

"Two of the biggest losses to hit any human population were the Holocaust of the 1940s and the Homocaust of the 1980s."

...said someone without any historical perspective whatsoever. There have been many cases in human history when entire ethnic groups were wiped out, with no full-blooded survivors. If their genes survived at all, it was through some of their women being expropriated by the winners. The native Tasmanians, the Amerindians of the Caribbean, Negritos in many parts of Asia, etc., plus a million groups whom history didn't record.

As for sheer numbers, it is thought that Black Death killed around 25 million Europeans, perhaps a third of Europe's population, in 1346-1349. A third of all Germans, about 8 million people, are thought to have died during the 30 Years' War in the 17th century. If I remember correctly, China's population, as recorded by censuses, fell from 100 million to 60 million after the Mongolian invasion of the 13th century.

Steve Sailer said...

"Michael said...
"As with so much of your commentary, you are projecting what are American values onto humanity. "Americans have always liked winners."

"Americans love a winner."

G.S. Patton

Anonymous said...

Reasons of health? Was Sobran more sensitive to the snubbing and what he saw as betrayal by Buckley? Was he, at heart, a writer and not a brawler?

Buchanan had spent decades in Washington as a political insider with lots of connections. And he was well off.

Anonymous said...

Over a period of more than four decades, the man could not make a sensible decision to save his life, and he eventually ruined it. Deal with it and quit trying to send the bill to Norman Podhoretz.

The point is that he wasn't able to continue his career as a conservative opinion writer because he was blackballed by people like Podhoretz. This isn't about his family or person life, or about how he didn't quit writing altogether and changed careers in his late 40s. Even if he got his Commercial Driver's License and started a new successful career driving trucks in his 50s, he would have been loser as a writer.

Anonymous said...

The English sometimes claim that they love losers. I'm assuming that this wasn't true during their imperial heyday though.

Reg Cæsar said...

...said someone without any historical perspective whatsoever

…to someone without any reading comprehension skills whatsoever, evidently. I said "two of…", not "the two…"

Jeez Louise… the pettiness to which some comments descend!

Svigor said...

"The singling-out of Israel goes beyond criticism of Israeli government policies to hateful comparisons of a kind appropriately described this fall by Harvard University President Lawrence Summers as being 'anti-Semitic in their effect if not their intent.'”

I suppose coming right out and saying "we want to operate with impunity" would be too blunt?

24AheadDotCom said...

Doing something about PC isn't impossible, it's just that those who oppose it aren't willing to do much or don't know what to do.

If a witness in a courtroom says "I saw Joe standing on the corner at 8pm", Joe's lawyer will attempt to show that the witness isn't credible.

That's how you deal with PC. If @MHarrisPerry says "I saw Mitt kicking a dog", then you show how MHarrisPerry isn't credible. You look through past things she's said and show how she lied or misled. And, you point out to *her fans* that she isn't credible.

Things like that rarely happen on a large scale. Instead you get things like TPers calling @MHarrisPerry names and nothing more, or HotAir and especially Hannity railing at unidentified foes in ways that will have no impact on those foes whatsoever.

In the case of Buchanan, it would have been pretty easy to discredit VanJones if I'd gotten some organized help. Instead, well, we see what happened.

Anonymous said...

"George Washington was mostly referring to the tremendous divide that opened up in the Revolutionary 1790s between the partisans of France and Britain, even within his cabinet.

Washington himself stiffed the French government on the mutual defense agreement they had signed, arguing that chopping off the king's head rendered it null and void. Adams got into a small war with the French in 1798 and Madison into a big war with the English in 1812. Those were difficult times."


Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Nixon

Anonymous said...

"A lot of it is about attitude Sobran and Steve's shoulder's chip really easy whereas Pat is a jolly good fellow who simply got over it an moved on."

Buchanan worked in government, so that gave him relevance and connections.
Also, Buchanan first made his name in less PC times, so he could get away with more stuff. In the 80s, on tv and in print, he railed against sodomoites and 'homo-fascists'. No one would be allowed to make such comments today, not even in conservative publications.
If Buchanan were starting out now, no one would hire him.

Also, Buchanan had an entertaining warring personality--like Robert Novak--and made for fun TV. He was also a political junkie who followed politics like sports.

Sailer has a blander personality that isn't saucy enough fot tv hysterics.
He also entered journalism in the 90s when things were much more PC. He got hell from conservatives(of all people) for the harmless 'let the good times roll' comment.
And Sailer is not a political junkie. He follows politics but is more interested in ideas and trends than up-to-date scorecard of who is doing what.

Thomas O. Meehan said...

Joe Sobran had certain self destructive traits and ended poorly.

That said, the idea that Podhoretz and tribe aren't responsible for setting out to destroy him is risible. To destroy a man who writes things that displease you, knowing that he has no other way of supporting himself is something that should never be forgotten or forgiven.

The Neoconservatives are nothing less than pseudo-intellectual gangsters. And not one of them can write with half the art and pinnace as Joe did on his worst day.

Anonymous said...

"I saw Watson on the CR show prostrating himself over his IQ comment.....Rose went after him x2, rebuking him............."

Avoid Whoring People

Anonymous said...

@Michael @530

Who's being parochial? You think other cultures don't like a winner? My gosh, Americans are in some ways less obsessed with ostentatious display than other cultures. Face-saving, honor, etc. is all about winning.

Ancient Greek tragedies? That's all you got. Reread the Iliad, friend. Particularly the section where everybody gangs up on the ugly loser Thersites. Indeed, reread mythology in general. And take a look at all those statues of gods with alpha bods.


Besides reviewing mythology, get out and travel man. You spend anytime abroad, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Humans are status-obsessed.

Anonymous said...

I'd only add to my reply to Michael.

The Greek tragedies prove Steve's point. They are about indignities heaped on winners.

Anonymous said...

I assure you that 99.9% of the tribe has never heard of Sobran (or writing with "pinnace" for that matter).

BenTzotAbrit said...

I'm a Scotch-Irish who knows of Sobran. Not from his writing, but as a sad story about a lover of truth ensnared in our perfidious Scotch-Irish web. Maybe he was that, I don't know. But if it's true he spoke at an Institute for Historical Review conference, then he sounds like he was deliberately courting pariah status. Plenty of less professionally damaging (and more interesting) people to speak with out there.

Simon in London said...

You are completely right, Steve. Heartiste has made similar points re human psychology - a winner's attitude is all-important.
For the UK, historian David "The English have become black" Starkey is a good example of a man too thick-skinned to be cowed by PC. The spluttering of the cultural Marxists when they realised they couldn't get him to apologise was hilarious.

Simon in London said...

"Anonymous said...
Funny how the biggest Sobran supporter there was was constant isteve message board whipping post Ann Coulter."

Coulter is not a nice person - she's the only right-wing commentator who often reminds me of the typical left-wing commentators in terms of actual nastiness - not loathsomely vile like say Tim Wise, but she gets pretty nasty like your typical Huffington Post type. She'll do th kind of ad hominems that are otherwise the near-exclusive preserve of the Left.
But she is absolutely 100% fearless, and I have to admire that.

Bert said...

Why do people take Ann Coulter seriously? I've never understood that. She was always just a prop, a pretty blonde face that GOP talking heads could put on TV to attack liberals and write garbage books that Bush dead-enders could read to make themselves feel better. It was a pretty sweet gig back then, but now she's in her fifties and the entire thing has gotten long in the tooth.

Anonymous said...

Its a shame about Watson, he really could have turned the tide. If he'd stood his ground, he was famous amongst scientists and even the public had some idea who he was. He even had a movie!

If he had stood his ground us anon online types would have gone to war behind him.

I did my best at the time, I wasnt alone. But when the general surrenders it leaves the army in a bit of a bind.

Anonymous said...

Greeks made their most important literary genre about losers, as did the English at various times and indeed the noble and plucky failure is widely celebrated in English culture

I often think of this as a form of celebrating victory though. eg Dunkirk as the prelude to D-Day.

Like the movie hero who fights bravely but his family are killed. Then he goes on the rampage and wipes out the bad guys. "See, look what you made me do! Now you're sorry you losers."

The plucky failure early on was needed to justify the big win later.

BenTzotAbrit said...

Anyone who thinks being "a nice, pleasant, optimistic, think-the-best-of-everyone person" is a shortcoming is someone I want poisoning Stanley Fischer's team, not mine. There is the zeal of the convert in the way the Steve-o-sphere echoes "a winner's attitude is all important." Did people just discover The Good News that confidence matters, and banish all other false gods?

One of life's happier discoveries, according to dear old "alpha" Dad, was that being decent is not only right but also more effective. Brittle Roissy shrieks his dissent, but people continue to shout for winners and underdogs and champions and longshots. Simplified formulas are helpful in remedial coursework, profoundly unhelpful when trying to understand something complex like how best to fight a cultural battle.

BB753 said...

Coulter can get away with almost anything because of her... err "fanny pas". Pussy -whipped Americans havse a thing for sassy non-ugly broads speaking their minds.
As for the infamous list, I miss Sam Francis, Lawrence Auster and our own beloved Steve Sailer. Sailer was on tv when the GOP found it convenient to make Dubya's IQ público. Then Steve got blacklisted and sacked from the American Conservative because of his comment after Katrina that Blacks need adult supervision and that let the good times roll is very bad advice for the vibrants.

Anonymous said...

"she's the only right-wing commentator who often reminds me of the typical left-wing commentators in terms of actual nastiness"

Savage? Levin? Limbaugh? Malkin?

Anonymous said...

http://www.redstate.com/2013/12/22/national-review-editor-mark-steyn-is-a-big-meany/

Anonymous said...

http://www.redstate.com/2013/12/22/national-review-editor-mark-steyn-is-a-big-meany/

"At one time National Review was a proudly conservative publication. No more.

Mark Steyn made the mistake of taking the side of Duck Dynasty patriarch, Phil Robertson, in the fascist assault carried out on him by the lobbying group for deviant sexual practices, GLAAD. This got the knickers of his editor, someone named Jason Lee Steorts, in a twist.

I don’t know Steorts… and don’t much wish to… but he comes across as one of those “reasonable” conservatives, part of the Stepin Fetchit wing of the conservative movement. The cute little house pet conservatives that hang onto the fringes of liberal society craving approval. (In viewing his work I couldn’t help but notice that he had pronounced judgment on George Zimmerman long before his trial… Zimmerman was not in danger despite having his head bashed against the sidewalk:

"If we set aside legal arguments and assumptions about people’s motives, this much remains: George Zimmerman saw Trayvon Martin and made a false and unjustifiable judgment that he was a threat."

and he is in favor of gay marriage.

[Steorts is also an advocate of AGW (h/t to commenter ntrepid for reminding us of this gem.)]

Steorts felt it necessary to take to the pixels in The Corner to castigate one of his own writers for opposing the attempt by GLAAD and their fellow travelers to make quoting 1 Corinthians an offense that justified public shunning.

He generates this mealy-mouthed defense:

"When it comes to the legal restriction of speech, or the legal coercion of dissenters, I’ll storm the barricade with Mark."

This is pretty much like Paul Ryan on the budget: We’ll cave on the sequester and raise spending by $60 billion but we will TOTALLY KICK ASS on the debt ceiling. When he patently won’t do so unless the people on our side are sufficiently polite.

Where Mark Steyn has actually put himself in legal jeopardy defending free speech in the hostile environment in Canada. It was doubly dangerous as he criticized Islam in a nation that is lurching towards dhimmitude. I don’t know what Stoert’s credentials are but I’ve seen nothing that indicate they exist."

-------

With cons like these...

whores bending over to homos

Anonymous said...

"Unfortunately much of the writing in this section of the blogopshere is curiously parochial, uninformed by history and knowledge of other lands, and what prevails in America at this particular historical period is thought to be timelessly human. It undermines much of what is written and is a pervasive vice."

Not timelessly human but powerfully relevant.

In the game of power, the 'here and now' is everything, especially if the 'here' happens to be the center of power.
Whatever happens elsewhere and whatever happened 'elsewhen' matter only in relation to how those with power in the 'here and now' wish to use them, spin them, or suppress them.

So, the entire histories can be suppressed, forgotten, or vilified while others are reiterated over and over. Who decides? Histories have no power to survive on their own. News don't travel of its own accord. History lives on by life-support supplied by the powers that be. Holocaust lives on because it is kept alive by those with power. Jewish role in the bolshocaust is dead because its life support system has been pulled.

Homo agenda spread like wildfire because the powers-that-be made it do so. But there is silence in opposition to the homo agenda because even cons are afraid of Jewish power.

And we don't hear of Zionist oppression of Palestinians because it's ignored by both lib and con media beholden to Jews.

So, if you want more discussion of 'inconvenient' histories and news, you have to tackle the powers in the here and now.
Whatever happened in Roman Times or whatever is happening in Pakistan, your freedom to know and debate more about history and the larger world is totally dependent on who has the power here and now.

It's a big world out there and history has a long past, but all of us inside a compound, and its gates and windows are controlled by other people. Who are they? What do they block from us? Why do they shut the gates when we want to go to certain places.

It's like the TRUMAN SHOW. For Truman to see and know the bigger world, he better first deal with the powers-that-be that control him in the here and now.

While there is sufficient freedom for American INDIVIDUALS to know the truth, isolated individuals without power don't make history and the difference. History and the Difference are made by elites and the masses of people manipulated by elites and don't seek truth on their own--and few people do.

In the past, journalists took on the main powers that be.
Today, most journalists serve the powers that be that are overwhelmingly Jewish and homo.

We have to deal with the here and now of power to gain a fuller and deeper understanding of histories and world events.

Anonymous said...

1. He was insubordinate to his employer, and that got him dismissed from his job. He did not realize that the imprimatur of his employer was crucial to his syndication on radio and in newspapers and that cost him that too.

2. At the age of 47, his utile skills were entirely invested in writing topical commentary and such. He was not adaptable and sensible enough to attempt a career change. He had quite a mess of well wishers, but evidently none who could be a conduit to regular employment.

3. So he embarked on a hopeless 15 year effort to earn a living as a freelancer. Since the man did not write ad copy or undertake travel writing, this was predictably a failure.

etc
------------

He was a bohemian at heart

Anonymous said...

"Two of the biggest losses to hit any human population were the Holocaust of the 1940s and the Homocaust of the 1980s. Yet the groups that suffered then came roaring back and are stronger than ever. At least for now."

Many Jews died in the Holocaust but worldwide Jewry won WWII with the defeat of Germany.
Similarly, USSR may have lost tremendous numbers of lives but it was on the winning side.

Homos won because they were favored by Jewish media, lawyers, entertainment, and finance.

Those who control the here and now control history and the perception of world events.

Anonymous said...

"You're eliding the distinction I noted in your previous post about this. Watson and Summers were victims of political correctness. Sobran spoke to a group engaged in Holocaust denial."

Sobran didn't know the nature of the group he was invited to. Also, he did that considerably AFTER he was destroyed by others. That was not the reason for his downfall. As everyone had shunned and attacked him, he was grateful to be invited by any group.

Also, Buchanan himself dabbled in Holocaust Denial rhetoric in some of his columns, raising questions about the use of diesel in the killing of Jews. And he wrote a totally nutty book about WWII.

Another thing. A whole lot of people who have out-and-out associated themselves with Stalinists and Maoists were protected by the media.

The much celebrated Howard Zinn hung around Stalinists and Maoists to the end of his life.

http://www.insight-press.com/

Bob Avakian is a thoroughly unrepentant Stalinist-Maoist but he has many powerful friends, none of whom suffered as a result of such association.

Bill Ayers is a total scumbag but he's been given a plush job, funded generously, and had his books published by big media.



Anonymous said...

Winners today rehabilitate the losers of the past into winners-in-the-end.

Anonymous said...

Anon:

John McLaughlin did help him out after the disastrous 2000 campaign by allowing him back on McLaughlin Group.

What makes you think the campaign was a disaster?

Buchanan did exactly what his mentors in the Republican Party wanted - he got a hold of the millions in Federal funds due the Reform Party from their 1996 showing and wasted it on consultants connected to the conservative wing of the the GOP, all without costing Bush the election by not actually campaigning in a serious manner.

After he was done driving a stake through the Reform Party, Buchanan was welcomed right back into conservative GOP circles as if nothing had happened.

If Buchanan had not done this, its possible some politician who actually might have campaigned would have gotten the Reform nod and gone about like 1992 and 1996 and cost the Republicans the election by siphoning off right-wing votes into the 3rd party like Perot had done. Rove and Co. made sure this would not happen in 2000 - they had learned their lesson and took steps to prevent it.

Bill said...


Simon in London said...
Coulter is not a nice person - she's the only right-wing commentator who often reminds me of the typical left-wing commentators in terms of actual nastiness - not loathsomely vile like say Tim Wise, but she gets pretty nasty like your typical Huffington Post type. She'll do th kind of ad hominems that are otherwise the near-exclusive preserve of the Left.
But she is absolutely 100% fearless, and I have to admire that.


There are three related asymmetries here. First, just as you say, "right" wing commentators do not call their opponents evil as a matter of course, while left wing commentators do.

Second, if you ask lefties why it's OK for their commentators to call righties evil but not OK for rightie commentators to call lefties evil, they will respond, "because righties actually are evil."

This brings us to third: as a result, rightie commentators give off the strong odor of not believing their own bullshit, whereas leftie commentators give off the strong odor of believing their own bullshit. This is probably because the official right actually does not believe its own bullshit.

As confirming evidence, observe how quickly and easily they abandon this or that tenet of rightiedom when such becomes convenient. Just how long is it going to be before NRO starts editorializing that we have to blow up the Muslims because they hate us for our gay rights?

Art Deco said...

The point is that he wasn't able to continue his career as a conservative opinion writer because he was blackballed by people like Podhoretz. This isn't about his family or person life, or about how he didn't quit writing altogether and changed careers in his late 40s. Even if he got his Commercial Driver's License and started a new successful career driving trucks in his 50s, he would have been loser as a writer.

Your moderator made use of the phrase 'driven into poverty'. Mr. Sobran's bad decisions on his career and finances antedate by more than 20 years any known notice taken of him by Norman Podhoretz and continued for 15 years after Podhoretz interest in the man had ceased.

And there is nothing that prevented him from writing avocationally. He could not make a living as a purveyor of topical commentary. Newsflash: the number of people who actually do make a living doing that are numbered in the low four digits if not in the three digits and many of them work in the philanthropic sector.


Mr. Meehan, I will say this:

You people are so wedded to the nefarious Jew wire-puller meme that you have effectively disposed of any notion of personal agency. Norman Podhoretz is a man about as stealthy as a steam calliope. He persuaded Wm. F. Buckley (who was no fool and a more erudite and savvy creature than NP) that he should issue a pink slip to Sobran. Since Sobran was offering qualified praise of a publication called Instauration (and later wrote mash notes for the director of the risible "Institute for Historical Review"), I am not the least bit surprised that Podhoretz was making the case to Buckley that Sobran was damaging his brand. It was nothing new for Buckley; in 1959 he had adopted the editorial policy of not publishing anyone on the masthead of The American Mercury for similar reasons. Sobran's tangles with Buckley on these issues took place over a period of six years and concluded with a very public act of insubordination. He drove his own car over the cliff.

Neither Podhoretz nor Buckley were ethically obligated to employ Sobran. Neither were obliged to see his signature interests as congruent with the educational mission of the publications they edited.

While we are at it, you all might ask yourself why the Rockford and von Mises Institutes never put Sobran on salary. You might ask yourself why his oldest son, an attorney living and working in Ohio, could not or did not arrange for some sort of regular employment for his father.

Anonymous said...

Anon @ 6:20p:

I personally can't think of any examples from the Roman Republic...

Maybe you are restricting your inquiries into Republics too much by thinking only of pre-Imperial Rome.

In the more immediate past, the Founders were also students of the political history of Italy, which included the Republics of Venice, Ragusa, Genoa, Pisa, and Florence among others, with the Florentine and Venetian examples being very famous. There were also the examples of the Dutch Republic and Switzerland. Federalist No. 20 discusses the example of the Dutch Republic. The example of Florence is an apt one, with the outside influence being termination of the Republic by the Pope. The Dutch Republic might also have been in mind, as Napolean had recently terminated its existence a couple of years before Washington's speech.

David said...

>Winners depend on spinners.<

You win.

Anonymous said...

For the record, I read in an on-line tribute by a friend of Sobran's that he had faced his last illness bravely. Diabetes as a way to slowly die is extremely difficult.

Cail Corishev said...

Nearly all efforts to explain the obesity epidemic - Taubes, Gueyent, Atkins - have zero value because they simply ignore what goes on outside of America.

Clearly you haven't read Taubes, so I'm guessing the same is true regarding the others.

keypusher said...

George Washington was mostly referring to the tremendous divide that opened up in the Revolutionary 1790s between the partisans of France and Britain, even within his cabinet.

I thought he was referring to Persian influence in the Greek democracies and stuff like that.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, but the whole winner-loser thing is a double-edged sword. You can tell a lot about a society 's future prospects by whom it classifies as "winners."

What constituted a "winner" in France, circa 1770, is what resulted in the societal collapse two decades later.

Frankly, a society which regards Charles Krauthammer, Larry Summers, Tim Wise (Uncle Tim), Malcolm Gladwell and Kanye West as "winners" is not one on whose long-term success I am willing to bet.

Sobran was silenced because he was right. That's the problem -- not that he was a "loser".

Anonymous said...

Re: "If we compare Buchanan and Sobran, why did the former last so long while Sobran just gave up?"

Pat was never completely ostracized in the manner of Sobran. The fact he appeared on MSNBC for as long as he did underlines the difference between them.

Pat had a much larger presence in the media and the Beltway than Sobran and a lot more influential friends. He was simply more powerful and far harder to destroy.

But make no mistake, Pat Buchanan is slowly but surely being removed from the public scene as well.

Anonymous said...

Re: Simon in London said...

"For the UK, historian David "The English have become black" Starkey is a good example of a man too thick-skinned to be cowed by PC. The spluttering of the cultural Marxists when they realised they couldn't get him to apologise was hilarious."

Yeah, but Starkey as a public figure is a militant homosexual and vocal atheist. So he's got one grievance group -- er -- behind him and a a large intellectual camp friendly to him.

Other, less well-connected, people saying far less racially charged things in the UK have fared considerably less well.

Anonymous said...

Why didn't Sobran start a blog in 2000? Sounds like he was on a downward spiral by then, but some of his friends could have help him with the logistics.

Anonymous said...

"You are completely right, Steve. Heartiste has made similar points re human psychology - a winner's attitude is all-important."

I'm still confused about the meaning of 'winner'. Moynihan, for example, was a mild-mannered guy who wasn't trying to win anything. He just made a point he thought was worth making.

Thatcher, in contrast, fought to win big all the time, and in a way, she did win big enough to be one of the giants of British politics in the 20th century. But she has lost in the history sweepstakes as the elites who control the UK felt 'good riddance, ding dong the witch is dead' after she died.

Reagan was a big winner, but with more movies like THE BUTLER, he too will be relegated to loser status in the long run.

So, some winners are born, some winners are made, and some winners are chosen.


Anonymous said...

What are the three little words for truth?

Honesty, courage, and integrity?

But suffer the consequences.

Anonymous said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4Xxq7QAcsw

Maybe there is hope in the regression to the bean.

Don't eat it. Plant it.

Art Deco said...

Why didn't Sobran start a blog in 2000? Sounds like he was on a downward spiral by then, but some of his friends could have help him with the logistics.

He had a newsletter and an online column distributed by a company called Griffin. The proprietress was a supporter named Fran Griffin. They also held a testimonial dinner for him each year. He admitted that by 2002 they were not making any money off him.

Steve Sailer said...

Okay, I'm stealing "regression to the bean."

Anonymous said...

"Its a shame about Watson, he really could have turned the tide. If he'd stood his ground, he was famous amongst scientists and even the public had some idea who he was. He even had a movie!"

No, if he hadn't apologized, he would have been dismissed as senile.

Btw, even though what he said had much truth to it, he could have worded it better. The way he said it, it sounded like 'blacks I've been around are such dummies... so, all Africans must be like that too.' It's not scientific to take one's narrow personal experience and project it on the whole world even if there may be essential truth to his views of racial differences.

Same with William Shockley. I don't know why he had to boil his views of race into such simple binaries.

ben tillman said...

"Americans love a winner."

G.S. Patton


That must be why everyone pulls for the Miami Heat.

Sam said...

Joe Sobran from wikipedia-"He believed about the Jewish people that "History is replete with the lesson that a country in which the Jews get the upper hand is in danger.""

ATBOTL said...

It's about who the thought criminal criticizes. You can criticize blacks.

Simon in London said...

"Anonymous said...
"she's the only right-wing commentator who often reminds me of the typical left-wing commentators in terms of actual nastiness"

Savage? Levin? Limbaugh? Malkin?"

I don't know the first two well enough to comment. Limbaugh is blustery, not particularly nasty. Malkin is quite aggressive but not nasty at all, and far more sinned against than sinning. A good looking non-white right-wing female drives the Left into paroxysms of rage and some unbelievably horrible stuff.

Simon in London said...

>>Bill said...

Simon in London said...
Coulter is not a nice person - she's the only right-wing commentator who often reminds me of the typical left-wing commentators in terms of actual nastiness - not loathsomely vile like say Tim Wise, but she gets pretty nasty like your typical Huffington Post type. She'll do th kind of ad hominems that are otherwise the near-exclusive preserve of the Left.
But she is absolutely 100% fearless, and I have to admire that.

There are three related asymmetries here. First, just as you say, "right" wing commentators do not call their opponents evil as a matter of course, while left wing commentators do.

Second, if you ask lefties why it's OK for their commentators to call righties evil but not OK for rightie commentators to call lefties evil, they will respond, "because righties actually are evil."

This brings us to third: as a result, rightie commentators give off the strong odor of not believing their own bullshit, whereas leftie commentators give off the strong odor of believing their own bullshit. This is probably because the official right actually does not believe its own bullshit.

As confirming evidence, observe how quickly and easily they abandon this or that tenet of rightiedom when such becomes convenient. Just how long is it going to be before NRO starts editorializing that we have to blow up the Muslims because they hate us for our gay rights?<<

Yeah, I agree. I'm conflicted myself - I don't like it when right-wing commentators engage in ad hominems, it seems ungentlemanly. Yet I know many on the Left are actually evil, and well deserve the strongest attacks, which they never get since the right fights with both hands behind its back, in UK as in USA. But because the Left control the narrative they can often succeed in getting me - even me - to think it must be wrong to go after them in the kind of way they routinely go after non-leftists.

Simon in London said...

>> Anonymous said...
Re: Simon in London said...

"For the UK, historian David "The English have become black" Starkey is a good example of a man too thick-skinned to be cowed by PC. The spluttering of the cultural Marxists when they realised they couldn't get him to apologise was hilarious."

Yeah, but Starkey as a public figure is a militant homosexual and vocal atheist. So he's got one grievance group -- er -- behind him and a a large intellectual camp friendly to him. <<

Starkey a 'militant' homosexual? How he is any more militant than Simon Schama, fellow homosexual and our other celebrity historian? I don't see him campaigning on either homosexuality or atheism, though I'm sure you're right that these attributes do help protect him.

>>1/13/14, 1:03 PM
Anonymous Anonymous said...
"You are completely right, Steve. Heartiste has made similar points re human psychology - a winner's attitude is all-important."

I'm still confused about the meaning of 'winner'. Moynihan, for example, was a mild-mannered guy who wasn't trying to win anything. He just made a point he thought was worth making.

Thatcher, in contrast, fought to win big all the time, and in a way, she did win big enough to be one of the giants of British politics in the 20th century. But she has lost in the history sweepstakes as the elites who control the UK felt 'good riddance, ding dong the witch is dead' after she died. <<

Thatcher achieved what she set out to do, which was entirely about economics. Labour have accepted free-market economics. Communism is dead. She never fought the culture war, so naturally she didn't win it. Cromwell is reviled too, but like Thatcher he was a success in his lifetime, and he moved the debate - no more economic Socialism, no more Divine Right of Kings. The people who revile her now, the cultural Marxists, are people she thought were irrelevant, at most a minor irritant like Ken Livingstone at the GLC. She always had her guns trained on the Unions and the USSR. She ignored the ants at her feet. Yes, they rule now, yes, she was shortsighted not to see the coming doom. England died seven years after she lost power. She still achieved a lot.

Art Deco said...

If Buchanan had not done this, its possible some politician who actually might have campaigned would have gotten the Reform nod and gone about like 1992 and 1996

Reform decayed into a microscopic hobby party, which is what the more prominent 3d parties generally do within about eight years of their formation. Doubtful that Buchanan could have prevented that. There have been several examples of minor parties which at least retained a six digit base of support for a period of decades, but all of them were far less inchoate and dependent on a particular personality than was the Reform Party (the four examples were the Prohibition Party, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party, and (ongoing) the Libertarian Party)

Art Deco said...

Joe Sobran from wikipedia-"He believed about the Jewish people that "History is replete with the lesson that a country in which the Jews get the upper hand is in danger.""

Forgot about that little gem.

http://www.sobran.com/jewid.shtml

Bela Kun and Ana Pauker - such enduring colossi of world history.

The man was an elegant stylist. And a disagreeable crank.

started in the UPI days said...

"By nature I'm a nice, pleasant, optimistic, think-the-best-of-everyone person, so I've had to train myself intellectuallyto notice the less admirable traits of human beings." -- That's great to hear; because from the tenor of your blogging you sound petty as hell. Sure, you're insightful part of the time too, but if you don't have a mean streak a mile wide it must be some kind of meticulously studied literary simulation. Anyway as I said, for the sake of your family & neighbors I'm glad it doesn't carry over to the corporeal world.

Simon in London said...

>> started in the UPI days said...
"By nature I'm a nice, pleasant, optimistic, think-the-best-of-everyone person, so I've had to train myself intellectuallyto notice the less admirable traits of human beings." -- That's great to hear; because from the tenor of your blogging you sound petty as hell.<<

I'm guessing that must be Projection. Claiming Sailer, of all people, is petty and unfairly mean to people?!

Mike said...

James Watson bounced back.

Thomas O. Meehan said...

ART DECO,

You choose to refer to me a “You people.” Curious. Do you know me? Am I unwittingly the head of some group? I knew Joe Sobran as a friend. I doubt you did, given your sad small-minded litany of all Joe’s imperfections. May I ask, did you go at him hammer and tongs while he was alive and writing, or are you just now getting around to urinating on his grave?

You seem to imply that I hold to some secret conspiracy theory about “String pulling.” Podhoretz’s demand for Joe’s head was no secret and I never claimed that it was. The Neocons and Buckley made an example of Joe. They purged the National Review of a number of people. The names of O’Sullivan, Bremelow , and of course Sailer come to mind.

As to Joe, he did indeed have anarchic and self-destructive traits. He lived a disordered life and was impractical. So did Van Gogh. He wasn’t hired as office manager. He was hired to write spirited and beautiful prose about things others were afraid to address. He did this for a long time and was dumped only when he wrote things at odds with the Neocons who were taking NR over. He was indeed fired for insubordination. Buckley made the calculation that Jewish Neoconservatives were much more valuable to him than the truth. He was within his rights to fire Joe. Whether that was the virtuous thing to do is another matter. As to what you describe as NR’s “Educational mission,” perhaps if more Sobrans and Bremelows and fewer Goldbergs had been writing for NR, the magazine wouldn’t have been a propaganda organ for the war against Iraq.

Judging by your blog, you are a devout Roman Catholic. I’m guessing that Joe fell short in your eyes in his less than reverent attitude to Jews. Are you aware of a single Jew who was affronted or harmed personally by the great Anti-Semite Joe Sobran? Barring perjury you will find none. Joe was one of the most kind and jolly people I ever met.

You are right that Joe “Drove his own car over the cliff.” He was all too likely to do that. Perhaps it was inevitable. That has nothing to do with the fact that a political/ethnic zealot and a very real cabal drove him from his job. They chose to attack his livelihood rather than his ideas. Isn’t it a bit obtuse of you to defend this given that the interests of that cabal are hardly yours as a Catholic. If you really don’t think that organized pressure is involved in this and similar purges, try this. The next time you see the Catholic Church defamed in print by a Jewish writer, call the publisher and demand the man’s job. I’d be interested to see how you do.

Finally, much has been made of Joe’s communication with some holocaust denial group. Joe was pretty far gone by this point, but given that he also didn’t believe that Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, I see this as just more of his orneriness. Joe was prepared to question pretty much anything at any time. Did Joe ever say that it never happened? I personally see no reason to question the Six Million statistic as it is pretty consistent with the Nazi’s own count.

If we are honest we must admit that endless remembrance of “The Holocaust” has become a racket. Prominent Jews have said the same. The continual laying of one’s dead before others as an instrument of social intimidation is a very insulting and ultimately self-defeating behavior. If this is not so, why is the Holocaust Museum in the capital of my country and not in Berlin?

Svigor said...

Joe was prepared to question pretty much anything at any time.

Oh, Heaven forbid.