The fight stage

It looks like Ron Paul has made it past the “laughter” stage:

According to the New Hampshire State Republican Party and an Associated Press report, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul will be excluded from an upcoming forum of Republican candidates to be broadcast by Fox News on January 6, 2008.

Based on the increasing amount of hatred expressed by anti-Paul Republicans and declarations of their preference for Hillary Clinton in his place, he might do even better than I’ve been expecting in Iowa and New Hampshire.

UPDATE – The man himself speaks on the matter: “They are scared of me and don’t want my message to get out, but it will,” Paul said in an interview at a diner here. “They are propagandists for this war and I challenge them on the notion that they are conservative.”

He’s right. They’re little more conservative than the Clintons.

Posted by Vox Day.

A rare planetary alignment

There must be something strange going on in the rotation of the celestial spheres, because I completely agree with PZ Myers on this subject:

Here is all that torture is good for: inspiring fear in a population. If you want it widely known that your ruling regime is utterly ruthless and doesn’t care about individuals, all you have to do is scoop up random people suspected of anti-government activities, hold them for a few weeks, and return them as shattered wrecks with mangled limbs, while treating the monsters who would do such a thing as respected members of the ruling clique, who are immune from legal prosecution. The message gets out fast that one does not cross the government.

It’s worth reminding everyone of Winston Churchill’s statement about the way in which World War I reduced the Allies to near-total barbarism.

All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived — not without reason — that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them to win. Germany, having let hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. When it was all over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

As I pointed out more than a year ago, the bestial Bush administration has now openly embraced torture, and judging by the barbaric enthusiasm many of its more wild-eyed supporters have shown for this position, if one could make the case for cannibalism helping win the War on Terror, they’d be the first to reach for the barbecue sauce.

Posted by Vox Day.

Mailvox: Jew != neocon

Kidist raises a point worth underlining:

[D]isproportionate number of Jewish columnists in one newspaper, which I agree happens to be neocon, doesn’t mean that Jews are the sole proprietors of neocon philosophy.

Of course they’re not. Neocons come in various shapes, sizes, colors and creeds. But it’s important to keep in mind that it is the neocons, of all persuasions, who have attempted to argue that Jew = neocon in order to render their revolutionary political philosophy immune from criticism. This reached absurd proportions back when Joel Mowbray was calling General Anthony Zinni a “ninny” while complaining about the “anti-semitism” of his attack on a number of neocons, precisely none of whom were Jewish.

Now, there is a lot of anti-semitism around the world, in fact, there is far more anti-semitism in Europe today than there has ever been in the USA, but no one realizes this since Jews are not overrepresented in the European press the way they are in the US media, both mainstream and conservative. So, we have the bizarre situation of Jews in the American media constantly complaining about nonexistent anti-semitism in the USA while no one ever says anything about actual anti-semitism in the very place where it has historically been most viciously exhibited.

I could not care less who the New York Times hires. If they want to establish a Jews-only policy for its editorial page, that’s their business and it should be – though I suppose under current labor law, it isn’t – their right. I’ve never read the NYT regularly and I’ve also never had any more desire to write for it than for Pravda or the Rénmín Rìbào. But you can bet that there are an awful lot of non-Jewish writers, especially on the left, who aspire to that kind of high-profile position and are going to harbor an awful lot of resentment about the Kristol hiring. And unlike me, they’re never going to utter a word in public about it.

This is one way the seed of anti-semitism is planted. As Thomas Sowell has chronicled across numerous cultures, preferential treatment for a minority tends to create hatred for that minority on the part of the majority. This effect occurs regardless of who the minority or the majority happen to be.

Posted by Vox Day.

The menorah of minorities

The Huffington Post has learned that, in a move bound to create controversy, the New York Times is set to announce that Bill Kristol will become a weekly columnist in 2008.

This is EXACTLY what the New York Times needs, a second Jewish faux conservative to provide balance to the Jewish liberal, the other Jewish liberal, the other other Jewish liberal, the black liberal and the woman liberal. Which makes me wonder, where’s the Hispanic liberal and the gay liberal needed to complete the set? Instead of a credibility-challenged neocon, you’d think they could have found a gay Judeo-Hispanic liberal woman and killed five birds with one hire.

Posted by Vox Day.