Worldviews

Straw Dogs 2011 a Liberal Screed

September 20, 2011
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Straw Dogs 2011 a Liberal Screed

Why would you remake Straw Dogs? The question enticed me to the local multiplex last weekend. After all, the television advertising campaign for Rod Lurie’s (The Contender) latest film didn’t reveal much about the style and plot, but my fascination with Sam Peckinpah’s original version prompted me to see how such a morally complicated movie could be improved upon nearly 40 years later. Quick answer: It can’t. At least not by Lurie, a script that unabashedly lifts 90 percent from the original, and a cast either too ill-equipped or poorly directed to bring much more than “stand there, say that” chops. James Woods reprises his one-dimensional Southern racist redneck prone to violence role from Ghosts of Mississippi, James Marsden and Kate Bosworth look as if they’ve stepped out of a Vanity Fair photo shoot, the great Walton Goggins (TV’s Justified and The Shield) is totally wasted, and Alexander Skarsgard ping pongs between country-fried wholesomeness and really handsome rapist. The Monkee’s “Going Down” is used for Tarantino effect to show how “cool” the Jaguar XJ-driving protagonists – who know all the lyrics, natch – are, but zydeco and Southern rock (Lynard Skynard? Check. Molly Hatchet? Check.) are the indigenous musical flavors

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Professional Politicians: For the Founders, A Contradiction in Terms

September 17, 2011
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Professional Politicians: For the Founders, A Contradiction in Terms

In his essay, “The Animating Contest of Freedom”, Dr. Marshall Foster reminds us: In 1782, Benjamin Franklin spoke of the differences between America and the statist bureaucracies of Europe. Unlike Europe, there were few political offices in America. None of them was profitable enough to be attractive to men of greed. In fact, all politicians were expected to earn their own living in the private sector. Political office was to be chosen not for profit but for the purpose of sacrificial service. Franklin asserted, in his own very un-PC way: “Industry and constant employment are great preservatives of the morals and virtue of a nation. Hence bad examples to youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable consideration to parents.” According to Dr. Foster, however, Franklin’s “industry and constant employment” have been misdirected by a professional political class that systematically ignores the limitations imposed upon them by God and the Constitution: Most Americans do not know that their “public servants” actually live in a different world and under different laws than they do. Federal and state public employees have their own pension plans and health care that guarantees each person hundreds of thousands of dollars in their

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The Neocon Con

September 16, 2011
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The Neocon Con

David Gordon has a review of Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, on Mises Daily: C. Bradley Thompson … argues that neoconservatism stands in fundamental opposition to individual rights and a free economy. Although neoconservatives have indeed challenged certain aspects of the welfare state, they have no quarrel with it in principle. . . . . why do the neoconservatives criticize the welfare state at all? Aside from the technical deficiencies of particular programs, what concerns them is the way that some welfare programs encourage unvirtuous behavior. Welfare that rewards giving birth out of wedlock, e.g., arouses their protests. This sort of criticism reveals a key fact about the neoconservatives. They have a very definite sense of the proper conduct that the state, or as they are likely to term it, the regime, ought to promote. Not for them is the libertarian view that each person, so long as he does not initiate force against others, is free to lead his life as he wishes. To the contrary, the leaders of the state have as one of their prime duties the development of the citizens’ characters. Accordingly, freedom of speech most decidedly does

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Parents Make Millions for Not Having an Abortion (But It’s Not What You Might Think)

September 14, 2011
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Parents Make Millions for Not Having an Abortion (But It’s Not What You Might Think)

A jury in Florida didn’t think Bryan Santana was worth $9 million, as his parents figured, but half that much: On September 9, a West Palm Beach jury awarded parents Rodolfo Santana and Ana Mejia $4.5 million because they did not get accurate information from Dr. Marie Morel and OB/GYN Specialists of the Palm Beaches. Their son Bryan Santana, now age 3, was born disabled. He has no arms and only one leg. The argument made by his parents was that if the clinic had told them their son was so disabled, they would have aborted him. And since they didn’t get a chance to terminate Bryan in the womb, and obviously they can’t legally do it now, they wanted millions of dollars. — Paul Cooper Apparently, being imperfect justifies abortion in many people’s eyes: In the UK there are limits on when you can abort a baby unless that baby has severe disabilities. The UK law does not define those disabilities but allows abortion up until the moment of birth if the child is disabled. Why? Obviously the message is that a child with disabilities has less value or reason to live. . . . . In America, 90%

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A Western Government Declares BC/AD To Be Un-PC

September 13, 2011
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A Western Government Declares BC/AD To Be Un-PC

— and some people aren’t at all happy about it: Australia is to remove the birth of Jesus as a reference point for dates in school history books. Under the new politically correct curriculum, the terms BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini) will be replaced with BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era). The Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, yesterday condemned the move as an ‘intellectually absurd attempt to write Christ out of human history.’ He described the phrase ‘common era’ as ‘meaningless,’ and compared it to using ‘festive season’ instead of Christmas. The changes, introduced by the government, were supposed to be pushed through next year, but have been delayed by the row. The terms CE and BCE have been popularised in academic and scientific publications. One of Australia’s political party leaders, Christopher Pyne, also registered his objections: ‘Australia is what it is today because of the foundations of our nation in the Judeo-Christian heritage that we inherited from Western civilization,’ he said. ‘Kowtowing to political correctness by the embarrassing removal of AD and BC in our national curriculum is of a piece with the fundamental flaw of trying to deny who we are as a people,’

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Dead Hand of Government Monopoly Impedes Indie Publishers

September 9, 2011
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Dead Hand of Government Monopoly Impedes Indie Publishers

The so-called “Internet Reformation” is a hopeful alternative to business as usual, for both the purveyors of political facts and even traditional fiction publishers: Over the last few years, the publishing world has begun to change drastically. As with the music industry in recent times, people no longer need large firms to get published. With the rise of the e-book and print-on-demand services, a writer can now circumvent the traditional system and release their work directly to the public themselves. — Reagen Dandridge Desilets A more “democratic” intellectual development is hard to imagine. Nevertheless, the federal government wasn’t content to permit the “reformation” without hindrance: One of the first things an author needs in order to self-publish is an International Standard Book Number, better known as an ISBN. It’s not required in some cases with ebooks but to maximize your sales and get listed in large name distributors and retailers, an author really does need one. In order to get one, the author has to go to the only company allowed to sell them in the United States: Bowker. I suppose the idea is that it is easier to have one company managing the numbers, but a closer look reveals

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Britain’s Dysfunctional Welfare State — Is This America’s Future?

September 8, 2011
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Britain’s Dysfunctional Welfare State — Is This America’s Future?

Liberal Progressivism is evidently an infectious “meme” throughout Anglophone culture. In the wake of the rioting in Great Britain last month (often perpetrated by “children” raised by the welfare state), Melanie Phillips offers her diagnosis of the etiology of this “meme” and a prognosis for how to deal with it: The social and moral breakdown behind the riots was deliberately willed upon Britain by Left-wing politicians and other middle-class ideologues who wrap their utter contempt for the poor in the mantle of ‘progressive’ non-judgmentalism. These are the people who — against the evidence of a mountain of empirical research — hurl execrations at anyone who suggests that lone parenthood is, in general, a catastrophe for children (and a disaster for women); who promote drug liberalisation, oppose selective education (while paying for private tutors for their own children); and call those who oppose unlimited immigration and multiculturalism ‘racists’. And the real victims of these people ‘who know best’ are always those at the bottom of the social heap, who possess neither the money nor the social or intellectual resources to cushion them against the most catastrophic effects of such nonsense. From this side of The Pond, what Phillips says sounds awfully

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The Acceptable American Hatred

September 6, 2011
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The Acceptable American Hatred

There will be blood, suggests columnist Kevin Jackson at The Black Sphere. The author of The BIG Black Lie deftly critiques U.S. Rep. Andre Carson’s (D-IN) calumnies against the Tea Party and by extension all Caucasian non-statists, explains why this summer’s U.S. mob violence is just the beginning, and, most important of all, sardonically identifies a central assumption of today’s American culture: it’s quite all right to hate . . . the right people: In an America where black achievement can be seen and heard everywhere, Andre Carson and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are crying foul, saying that the Tea Party wants to take America back to the ‘60’s. Don’t believe your lying eyes showcasing black achievement all over America, because black people are being oppressed.  By the Tea Party who wants black people “hanging from trees.”Yes, the three-year old Tea Party movement is responsible for the decades of degradation within the black community, according to Carson and other members of the CBC. Who knew it was the Tea Party doing all those drive-bys in black neighborhoods, and robbing black folks. Here I thought it was black thugs and gang members. Who knew it was the

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Vampire Culture

September 6, 2011
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Vampire Culture

How does one explain the efflorescence of the vampire in popular culture? David Solway has an idea: One can’t help but notice the growing prevalence of the vampire archetype in contemporary fiction and film, corresponding to the popular fascination with the Titanic story. The vampire and the Titanic constitute cultural paradigms, aspects of the subliminal awareness of deep social currents, suppressed forces, and nocturnal apprehensions expressed as aesthetic configurations. It used to be “sympathy for the devil.” Now it’s sympathy for cognizable evil: The premonition that something is awfully wrong haunts the imagination, although much of the time we cannot isolate precisely what it is that lurks in the shadows of our doubts and misgivings. Terrorism and a revived Islam, for example, clearly stalk the collective psyche. According to ancient lore, the vampire must first be invited into the premises he subsequently terrorizes, and this is certainly the case with the Islamic demographic. At the same time, all too many of us refuse to consciously acknowledge the threat and strive instead to prettify the image of Islam as a “religion of peace” — just as the modern vampire tends to be nipped and tucked into a cosmetic semblance of nobility

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Death Cult Sacrifices Could Soon Be Coming to Your Neighborhood

September 4, 2011
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Death Cult Sacrifices Could Soon Be Coming to Your Neighborhood

Because of a virtually uncontrolled southern border (thank you, Washington), a bizarre, inchoate collection of rituals — including human sacrifice — might soon be generating headline news where you happen to live (and it would have to be local news — mainstream national media shy away from reporting negatively on the current administration’s “immigration” policies): . . . the cult itself is not an actual religion so it’s unclear who actually belongs to it. The veneration of Santa Muerte is a magical tradition that has little in the way of moral or philosophical instruction. Instead it simply transmits a series of rites designed to appease a being devotees think is an ancient goddess of death who once demanded people be killed in horrible ways to appease her. And while not all of the cultists commit crimes, a significant number of them come from the ranks of violent gangs, the virulently racist and anti-Semitic Reconquista movement, and impressionable dabblers in the occult seeking thrills. While not the organized threat of militant Islam, Santa Muerte’s spread into our major cities among those who are part of the unseen underground is still a potential danger we need to recognize. — Rob

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Pedophiles Push for Acceptance — With a Little Help from Their Friends in Academia and Government

September 3, 2011
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Pedophiles Push for Acceptance — With a Little Help from Their Friends in Academia and Government

On Townhall.com, Matt Barber registers his reactions to a recent conference: On Wednesday, Aug. 17, I – along with the venerable child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman – attended a conference hosted by the pedophile group B4U-ACT. Around 50 individuals were in attendance, including a number of admitted pedophiles (or “minor-attracted persons” as they euphemistically prefer), a few self-described “gay activists” and several supportive mental-health professionals. World renowned “sexologist” Dr. Fred Berlin of Johns Hopkins University gave the keynote address, saying: “I want to completely support the goal of B4U-ACT.” The aim of these groups is what Barber terms “sexual anarchy” (although they probably wouldn’t characterize it as such): Make no mistake: Children are the target of what I call the “sexual anarchy movement.” Whether it’s the movement’s pedophile wing that seeks to literally rape children, or its radical pro-abortion, homosexualist and feminist wings, which seek to rape the minds of children, the larger sexual anarchy movement has a shared goal: Attack, corrupt and destroy God’s design for human sexuality. Children are just collateral damage. Sexual anarchists know that to own the future, they must own the minds of our children. Hence, groups like B4U-ACT, GLSEN (The Gay Lesbian Straight

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Scaring Us to Death — Literally

August 29, 2011
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Scaring Us to Death — Literally

Dr. Kesten C. Green and Tom Harris note how past scares about such things as mercury levels in fish, EMF powerline emissions, and DDT in the environment correlate closely with the alarmism ginned up over “manmade global warming” (AGW): . . . vivid, alarming forecasts, even those based on weak foundations, are persuasive. For a while at least. Unlike “global warming,” however, these scares truly are anthropogenic in origin: In modern times, when we are safer than we have ever been, some activists have become rich and famous by exploiting our ready acceptance of alarming scenarios: “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have.” This statement about global warming by climatologist Professor Stephen Schneider (now deceased) serves as a warning to us all that we should always be ready to ask hard questions of alarmists. The victims of these baseless alarms should not only “ask hard questions” but also make an effort to interrogate these “activists’” bank accounts. Time not only heals all wounds, but it also tends to wound all heels: When people learn more about an issue, the persuasion formula that initially worked so

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"Culture is the expression of the guiding philosophy of the day."—Murray Rothbard
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