View from the Right

The investiture of a president of the French Republic

LA to Tiberge, the author of of Galliawatch:

So, what did the French think of Hollande getting his suit and himself drenched at his own inauguration?
Also, what do the French call the inauguration of a new president of the Republique?

Tiberge replies:

First, there's the "passation des pouvoirs," which simply means that power is being passed from one to the other. It is not exactly a synonym for "inauguration." In the courtyard of the Palace, there is the solemn "cérémonie d'investiture," followed by a series of events similar to inaugural festivities, with speeches, a military revue, etc. However, I do not see an oath, certainly no Bible, no prayer. Here is an official description (in French) of the day.

What's wrong with Obama and his camp

A writer at the race42012 website has some thoughts about the exceedingly odd and revealing circumstance of the Obama campaign accusing the New York Times of biased and incorrect polling techniques concerning one mildly unfavorable poll. He argues that the Obama camp, like its leader, has such a distorted relationship with reality--focused on avoiding blame rather than solving problems, an approach that precludes internal criticism--that they may be unable to mount an effective campaign.

What is European-America?, revisited

Last week I came upon this entry at an Australian blog called Unfashionable Conservative:

White Majoritarianism?
There is an interesting piece at the Commonwealth Contrarian blog about the lack of any explicit white majoritarian movements in the English-speaking parts of the West.
Given the huge immigration-driven demographic changes that threaten to transform whites into a minority in all of the 'Anglo' countries, why haven't we seen the emergence of white majoritarianism as a political force?
The main discernible reason is that the historic white majority populations of the English-speaking West fail to see themselves as a people. They fail to recognise themselves as distinct population groups whose interests are threatened by the never-ending influx of non-Western immigrants into their countries. Rather, whites in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand generally shun a collective group identity and instead tend to view themselves in more individualistic terms (an Anglo-Saxon trait?).
Thus, although they constitute the actual demographic majority populations in their respective countries, they have, to quote U.S. commentator Lawrence Auster, "no political or cultural existence as the majority."
As Auster notes:
Not only do whites fail to represent themselves as a group, but many of them think it is immoral ... for a white person even to think of himself as being white. Whites thus have no identity as whites, nor or they allowed to have any. Within the terms of our current order, whites as whites are nothing, even as non-white groups aggressively assert their own group identities and are endowed--by that same passive white majority!--with official and favored status.
Unless these white majorities begin to develop a sense of collective peoplehood and begin to assert their own group interests, it is difficult to see white majoritarianism amounting to anything more than a pipe dream.

The blogger, Citizen Sane, has accurately represented my thought. The article of mine he quotes is a July 2003 entry, "What is European America?", in which I argue that defending the white race as the white race is an indispensable part of any meaningful and effective conservatism. Though the entry is permanently posted in the sidebar under "Key VFR Articles," and I have re-linked it from time to time, prior to last week I had not read it in its entirety in many years. I highly recommend it. It is central to what traditionalism, as I understand it, is about.

In the long comments discussion that follows the entry, I repeatedly defend my position from intelligent critics, including some on the paleo right, who do not believe, and do not want to believe, that race is important.

Sowell on the black-on-white intifada

Here is Thomas Sowell's syndicated column "A censored race war," which many readers have sent.

While the piece is welcome for its frank characterizations of the black-on-white violence going on around the country, I find it on balance disappointing, for reasons I will explain later.

NB: it is not an NRO article, but a syndicated column which has been posted at many places besides NRO. So please let no one give the boys of NR credit for publishing it.

Another article on the censoring of black violence that I need to write about, much more significant than Sowell's in my opinion, is Kyle Rogers's piece in the May 9 Charleston Conservative Examiner in which he interviews the Newark Star Ledger reporter who wrote about a mob attack at a concert in Newark. The reporter admits that he remained silent about the race of the attackers and the victims and gives his reasons. I found it illuminating.

- end of initial entry -

John McNeil writes:

The main part of the article that I disagreed with was the notion that this black-on-white violence is going to lead to a white backlash. I do not believe that the majority of whites are a capable of participating in a "backlash," and the fact that whites hardly fight back in these incidents shows how weak the white race has become.

Zimmerman had facial injuries, and the FBI is thinking of charging him with hate crime. Not a non sequitur!

ABC News reports that George Zimmerman had a broken nose, two black eyes, and lacerations to the back of the head the morning after his confrontation with Trayvon Martin.

What difference does it make? Zimmerman is guilty. Black-liberal America says he is.

Consider the fact that the FBI is considering bringing hate-crime charges against Zimmerman, for which, in combination with the underlying second degree murder charge, he could receive capital punishment. Absurd, you say? But consider this. As told in Reuters's important article, "George Zimmerman: Prelude to a Shooting," The Retreat at Twin Lakes had experienced a series of burglaries and other crimes, all of them done by blacks in the instances where the race of the perpetrator was identified. In a recent case two blacks had broken into a home while the woman of the house hid from them in terror. And in another case a suspected burglar had gotten away because the police were so slow to respond. So the community was on edge. Zimmerman was on edge. He didn't want another intruder to escape. Now what race were all the intruders? Black. So Zimmerman had it in for blacks. He was targeting blacks. So when he reported Martin's presence to 911, and then (as the prosecutor stated in her affidavit) followed him, confronted him, and killed him, he was racially motivated. So this was a hate crime. If you try to stop criminals from coming into your community, and the criminals are all black, you are acting out of hatred of blacks, and any violence that results is a hate crime.

Don't be quick to dismiss what I'm saying. I am simply presenting the underlying reasoning of the liberals who run our society and all its institutions, including the State Attorney's Office of Florida, the FBI, and the major media.

* * *

A reader sends the information that Trayvon Martin had injuries to his knuckles. Well of course he had injuries to his knuckles! He was an unarmed 17 year old black child and a white racist followed him, confronted him, and sought to kill him. So how else could he defend himself from this hate crime except with his knuckles? Sheez, what is wrong with you people?

It's time to stop using Auster's First Law of Majority-Minority Relations under Liberalism (e.g., the worse blacks behave, the more racist whites are for noticing it) as a criticism of liberal society and instead accept it as the TRUTH. If all the recent burglars in the Twin Lakes community were black, and if Zimmerman wanted to stop the burglaries, then he was targeting blacks, and he is a racist. If black mobs are assaulting whites throughout this country with no other intent than to cause them disfiguring injuries, and if you want the media to print the truth about this, then you want bad things to be said about blacks, and therefore you are a racist. It's time to get with the program and stop resisting the truth.

Why I don't like Buchanan

A reader sent an article with this note:

Pat Buchanan on America's and the West's problem
Too many dependants for the welfare state.

LA replies:

This is a typical piece of Buchanan writing, and as such I don't like it. He just puts a bunch of negatives together. He has no point of view, except apparently the pleasure he gets from predicting the ruin of America.
He's the opposite (or maybe the converse?) of the partisan Republicans I always criticize. They don't seem to care about anything, except for the rush they experience from anticipating the fall of Obama and the next Republican victory. Buchanan doesn't seem to care about anything, except the rush he experiences from predicting doom.
The paleocons, Buchananites, and Rockwellites are not patriots and lovers of the good who experience tragic pain at the loss of America and of the good it has represented; they are dead-enders who get a twisted pleasure from the fall of an America they despise.

Personal update

If you're wondering why VFR has been relatively inactive over the last few days, the reason is that I had a much stronger than usual negative response to my treatment last Thursday. Since last Saturday I basically have had no energy for anything beyond lying down and sleeping, which after four days is not much fun. There seems to be no pattern to the degree of the side effects I experience from my treatment. For example, after the previous treatment, four weeks ago, I had almost no negative effects at all.

However, since I've brought the subject up, this might be a good time for an update on my medical situation, as the previous update was posted last fall.

Another kind of separationism

A reader suggests that since it is not possible to destroy or reform liberalism, other measures may be necessary.

President Clouseau

François Hollande got soaking wet riding to his presidential inauguration (not to be America-centric, but I don't know what the French call it) in an open roofed Citroen in the rain. And Carla Bruni, in a stunning "dis" to her husband's successor, wore casual pants at the ceremony. Those are the two most striking impressions from the Daily Mail's photo spread.

Like Inspector Clouseau without the sang froid and
the savoir faire: France's soaking wet new president
shakes hands with a veteran at the Arc de Triomphe.

I don't have a photo from the movie at the moment, but no one could forget the scene from A Shot in the Dark where Inspector Clouseau's car pulls up in front of a chateau, Clouseau gets out and as he shuts the door he falls backward into a fountain. Clouseau then enters the house in his dripping wet hat and trench coat, and with complete self-possession and a touch of Gallic indignation says to the host:

I'm sorry, my idiot driver parked too close to the fountain.

Then there's this:

Right, that's what you wear to the inauguration of your husband's
successor as the President of France. But when the new
president is Jacques Clouseau, who's going to mind?

Bristol Palin in the news

Headline in the Daily Mail:

Bristol Palin sells Arizona home for $175,000 and heads back to Alaska for 'trial marriage with boyfriend filmed for reality TV'

I'm trying to process that phrase:

"trial marriage with boyfriend filmed for reality TV"

Meanwhile, NYT op-ed columnist Frank Bruni is bitterly attacking Bristol for opposing homosexual marriage. Evidently he sees her as a significant conservative figure.

Brooks, husband, to be charged with concealing evidence

Rebekah Brooks as Hester Prynne,
with scarlet hair instead of scarlet letter

The Guardian reports:

The Crown Prosecution Service says Rebekah Brooks will be charged with perverting the course of justice.
Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is to be charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials.
Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, will be charged later on Tuesday with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced.
She is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives. [cont.]

Warren insists on her American Indian ancestry

Meanwhile Elizabeth Warren is doubling down, telling a half-naked hostess on CNN, "I'm proud of my Native American heritage," and accusing Scott Brown of trying to change the subject from Wall Street. See? Brown is racializing the campaign!

New England Genealogical Society refuses to defend or comment on its earlier statement about Warren's ancestry

Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson, after underscoring that the basis for Warren's great great great ancestor's Indian identity is non-existent (as I reported Saturday), writes:

I reached out to Christopher Child, the well-known genealogist who was the source of the claim, and his employer, the prestigious New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), but they have gone silent, refusing to comment on, defend or correct their claim that Warren was 1/32 Cherokee. The e-mail exchange appears at the bottom of this post.

Here is the e-mail exchange:

Jacobson wrote:

Can you provide me with a copy of the 1894 marriage record for the son of O.C. Sarah Smith which you referenced in various media interviews as forming the basis for your conclusion that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee?
Do you still stand by that conclusion? Does NEHGS stand behind it?
Consider this a request for comment. Please respond today.

Thomas Champoux of the New England Historic Genealogical Society replied:

Mr. Jacobson, NEHGS is not conducting research on Elizabeth Warren nor are we commenting beyond what has already been covered by the media. Thank you.

Jacobson replied:

Mr. Child stated publicly on or about May 1 that Ms. Warren was 1/32 Cherokee and that he had a document to prove it. That statement has been reported far and wide.
Does Mr. Child and NEHGS stand by that statement anymore? Is there such a document? I would think you would want to comment on that, since NEHGS is perhaps the most prestigious genealogical society and its reputation has been put on the line by a categorical statement as to Ms. Warren's ancestry. If NEHGS and/or Mr. Child no longer stand by the statement, I would think you would want to correct the record.
Will there still be no comment by NEHGS or Mr. Child either standing by or correcting/clarifying prior commentary?

Jacobson received no further response.

Jacobson concludes:

There is nothing left of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee. The documentary sources have been debunked, and the genealogist and genealogical society which originated the story and upon whom the Warren campaign relies are not talking.

Of course none of this will will be reported in the mainstream media, at least in any factual and definitive way. For liberals, the fraudulence of Warren's Indian ancestry claim has no more reality than ... than ... black-on-white mob violence.

In fact, based on what a liberal acquaintance said to me a few weeks ago about the Martin-Zimmerman case (see entry "How I lost it"), I wouldn't be surprised if liberals now claim that "the Right has racialized Elizabeth Warren."

Fauxcohantas, cont.

Hard to believe, but the Elizabeth ("This is not class warfare, but just a commonsense expression of the social contract") Warren camp is now claiming that because a first cousin of Warren's once gave money to an American Indian museum, that proves that Warren is descended from Indians.

Meanwhile, from a webpage devoted to the purpose, more injun names for the liberal heroine from Harvard:

Sacajawhiner
She Will Sioux
Sackatheeconomy
Wounded Economy

And this comment:

One time in junior high, a kid gave me the most painful Indian burn. Which gives me as much claim to their heritage as Elizabeth Warren has.

John Edwards set the left's pulse racing with his talk about the "Two Americas," and he was the biggest phony anyone's ever seen. Then Elizabeth Warren set Democratic hearts aflutter with her "social contract" aimed at creating resentment of all productive enterprises, and she turns out to be a gargantuan phony. Is there a proportional relationship between conspicuous leftism, and fakery?

UPDATE: And here's another, from a commenter at Legal Insurrection:

Everyone seems to have settled on calling her Fauxcahontas, but I still contend that Taxajawea is a far superior in every sense.

- end of initial entry -

Jonathan S. writes:

Then by this "logic" of the Elizabeth Warren camp, if their candidate has a distant relative who donated to the local aquarium, that could make her a 1/32 Catfish-American.

Those delicate flowers at Powerline

The opening of Paul Mirengoff's post today on John Edwards:

I have tried to avert my eyes from the John Edwards trial...

Isn't that just too precious?

(By the way, it should be pointed out that there are subjects that Mirengoff and his associates at Powerline have managed successfully to avert their eyes from over the years, such as their hero G.W. Bush's betrayal of his solemn 2002 pledge to have nothing to do with the Palestinians unless they renounced terror, such as black-on-white crime in Minneapolis. Indeed, when it comes to black racial violence against whites, the Powerline guys are just like the editor of the Virginian-Pilot: it doesn't exist, and only a disgusting person, the sort of person from whom one must avert one eyes, would notice that it does exist.)

However, after Mirengoff gets over his case of the vapors about the Edwards trial, he makes a valid point:

[T]he key takeaway from Edwards' national political career is this: he rose to prominence among the Democrats for no good reason — he was a one-term Senator of no real accomplishment — based on his pretty face and an ability to package left-wing red meat in an appealing, "two Americas" speech. That's how easily the "reality-based community" was snookered into believing in a transparent phony — a guy central casting would send over to play a huckster — who also turned out to be a despicable person.

And, Mirengoff adds, the Democratic left will never be made accountable for its romance with this transparent phony and huckster.