02m10s Birthright citizenship. (Ask the people.)
08m04s Peak anti-white? (How will it play in the mid-terms?)
12m55s Brazil goes nuts for Bolsonaro. (Arrogant, corrupt, ineffective elites get comeuppance.)
19m48s Free speech dies in Europe. (Don't make the Muslims angry.)
24m49s A new unit of measure. (Call the ISO.)
26m54s Real-Estate Nationalism, cont. (A city based on money-laundering.)
29m33s Be careful with those spoilers. (Here's a better way to fame.)
31m04s Signoff. (Happy Birthday, Pat!)
01—Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! This is your nomadically genial host John Derbyshire, reporting to you from the fine old city of Baltimore—or, as my pal the Z-Man calls it, Lagos. Z should know, he actually lives here.
I do not live here, I'm only visiting for the eleventh annual conference of the H.L. Mencken Club, being held this weekend. The boss is here, too—Peter Brimelow, that is—so I have to behave myself or I shall be on the carpet when we get back to VDARE head office. Also many other fine speakers, who I had better not name individually in case at some future date they want to work in the White House.
Many thanks to Paul Gottfried, founder of the Club, for his tireless efforts to keep the intellectual side of the Dissident Right lively and sparkling; also to Paul's wife Mary for the work she puts into bookings, organization, registrations, and other administrative chores.
One more person I can name and thank: Bob Weissberg, who is emcee-ing the conference, and who drove me down here from New York. Bob, like Paul, is a Professor Emeritus, so you can gauge the intellectual standard here. I'm way out of my depth. My plan is just to socialize, renew some old acquaintances, and drink until I fall over.
02—Birthright citizenship. [Explosion.] That was the sound of John Podhoretz's head exploding. JPod is the most fanatically open-borders of the Never Trump / Conservatism, Inc. commentators. Long-time readers of VDARE.com will recall that I've done a couple of rounds with him.
JPod is nowhere more inflammable than on the issue of birthright citizenship. When Michael Anton published a Washington Post op-ed against birthright citizenship this July, JPod called him, quote, "unspeakable." Way to conduct a public debate on constitutional points of general interest, JPod.
What just caused JPod's head to explode was of course the President's announcement in an interview published on Tuesday this week that he was contemplating an executive order to stop the awarding of citizenship to all babies born on U.S. territory, regardless of the birth mother's citizenship or immigration status.
I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' babies; but as a nationalist—like our President!—I do believe we should put a high value on U.S. citizenship, guard it jealously and award it parsimoniously, with care and restraint. My wife and I went to considerable trouble and expense to get U.S. citizenship, and I think it's right that should be so.
The actual legal and Constitutional mechanics of birthright citizenship are now being aired all over, with a blizzard of different opinions issuing from law school professors, as well as of course from the commentariat. Having no training in jurisprudence, I shan't offer an opinion of my own on that aspect.
I will give you an opinion on the politics, though. If the voters at large want to end blanket birthright citizenship, they should communicate their opinion to pollsters and to their elected representatives, and blanket birthright citizenship should be ended. And, of course, if not, then it shouldn't.
As for how it should be ended: we're back in the jurisprudential weeds. If the President issues an executive order it will for sure be challenged in the courts; and that will most likely end up at the Supreme Court. The same thing will ensue if Congress takes legislative action. [Laugh.]
If the Supremes rule that, yes, blanket birthright citizenship is guaranteed in the Constitution, then it's up to the people, through their representatives, to bring forth a Constitutional Amendment. There's nothing weird, outrageous, or impossible about that. The number of Amendments was up to 27 last time I looked, the last one in 1992; and that was the twelfth in that century, for a 20th-century average of one Amendment per eight years. In a fast-changing world, twenty-six years is too long to wait for another one.
However this plays out, all praise and glory to President Trump for putting it on the agenda and getting eveyone talking about it. We in the patriotic immigration movement have been talking about it for ever. It's gratifying to know we haven't been talking in vain. Either Trump himself was listening, or someone who has the President's ear was listening, or someone who has the ear of someone who has the ear of the President was listening, … whatever: our labors have not been in vain. Thank you, Mr President!
And while I am distributing praise, in a spirit of fairness, comity, and fellow-citizenship, here's some for John Podhoretz.
When JPod can unhook himself from his furious, blinding passion for unlimited immigration, he sometimes says sensible, even memorable things. Recent example: his review of First Man in the October 18th Weekly Standard. I thought it was exactly right: just the review I would have written if I could write movie reviews—which I can't, as I find 99 percent of movies insufferably boring.
03—Peak anti-white? We're coming up to nationwide elections just as elite hatred of white people—including of course by Goodwhite ethnomasochists—is reaching a new level of intensity.
Just in the past few weeks:
Yes, the Establishment's id has been leaking out of its packaging all over. The hate-whitey forces are now so bold and confident, they feel no need to hide their true feelings of seething hatred towards us Deplorables.
Will this frankness on the part of Goodwhites play into next week's midterm elections? It was surely a factor in the election of Donald Trump two years ago. As elite contempt for the people they rule over became ever more obvious, it was natural that we peasants, gullible and dimwitted though we are, should start to notice and develop resentment.
Broad public emotions like that Badwhite resentment of the elites have lives of their own, though—ups and downs, fevers and lulls. It's possible the election of Donald Trump got it out of our system for a while, so that on November 6th we'll vote on other stuff — health care, taxes.
It's also possible that Trump's failure to deliver on some of his key 2016 promises—building a border wall, disentangling us from pointless wars and alliances—has disillusioned many of his 2016 supporters, leaving them less likely to vote.
Contrariwise, it may be that all this anti-white stuff coming out into the open, along with the visuals of thousands of brown people from outhouse countries trying to storm our border, will fire up Badwhites and maybe move some more Goodwhites into the Badwhite camp, reducing the Blue Wave to a mere ripple, perhaps even—who knows?—generating a Red Wave.
We shall find out next week. Meanwhile, last weekend's election in Brazil may give us some insight into our own future.
04—Brazil goes nuts for Bolsonaro. Last Sunday's election in Brazil—the world's fifth biggest nation by area, fifth most populous, eighth by GDP, 110th by GDP per capita—was won by Jair Bolsonaro, who has been tagged as the Trump of South America.
That understates the case somewhat. Bolsonaro is Trumpier than Trump. Here are some of his recorded sayings.
Quote from 1992: "I am in favour of a dictatorship … We will never resolve serious national problems with this irresponsible democracy."
Quote from 2011: "I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son. I'm not going to be a hypocrite: I'd rather my son died in an accident than showed up with some bloke with a moustache."
Quote from 2014, speaking of criminals. There's some background I have to give you to this one. Brazil is racked by organized crime. Police and prison authorities are ineffectual, when they have not just been bought. The biggest gangs, like First Capital Command have leaders actually inside the jails. OK, quote: "Are we obliged to give these bastards [i.e. criminals] a good life? They spend their whole lives fucking us and those of us who work have to give them a good life in prison. They should fuck themselves, full stop. That's it, dammit!"
Quote from 2017: "I've got five kids. Four of them are men, but on the fifth I had a moment of weakness and it came out a woman."
End sample quotes. So, a little rough around the edges. How did this guy get to win the Presidency?
The short answer is the one I hinted at in the last segment: Widespread resentment by ordinary working- and middle-class people towards an arrogant but ineffective elite.
The ineffectiveness is sufficiently well illustrated by the crime issue. The U.S.A. currently runs around five homicides per annum per 100,000 people; the corresponding figure in Brazil for 2017 was almost thirty-one, up three percent on the previous year. Road traffic deaths in Brazil run about 23 per 100,000; so a Brazilian is 35 percent more likely to be a homicide victim than a road traffic fatality.
That's the ineffectiveness. The arrogance of the elite expresses itself, as here, through enforced political correctness. There has for example been a long-running controversy in Brazil over promotion of homosexuality in public-school textbooks, which Bolsonaro capitalized on during his campaign.
Political correctness on race is even more vigorously enforced in Brazil than here in the U.S.A. There have been laws against racial discrimination on the books since the 1950s. The current constitution, which dates from 1988, specifies imprisonment for one to three years, plus a fine, should you, quote: "Scorn someone, offending the dignity or decorum … If the injury is the use of evidence relating to race, color, ethnicity, religion, origin or condition of elderly or disabled." End quote.
The topic of race is well-nigh excluded from public discourse. The evidence from last Sunday's vote is pretty clear, though. Of Brazil's five major regions, the South and Southeast, which are the whitest, voted more heavily for Bolsonaro than the Northeast, which is blackest.
Conversely, the left-wing Worker's Party, which has dominated Brazilian politics for most of this century, but which Bolsonaro defeated on Sunday, draws its support from the poorest and least educated people, disproportionately blacks, and a radicalized intelligentsia. The Worker's Party has been sensationally corrupt, though. Masses of ordinary Brazilians were fed up with it. Whatever they thought of Bolsonaro personally, they voted for him as many Americans voted for Trump: as a wrecking ball, a murder weapon against the elites.
This is the pattern of our age: Politicians who, if not actually corrupt, are much too comfortable, too detached from ordinary people, and ineffectual at dealing with big national problems. They are supported by a media-academic complex whose heads are stuffed with false ideas about human nature.
Beneath them seethe Joe and Jane Citizen, increasingly aware how much the elites despise them, increasingly noticing how much at odds elite dogma is with the evidence of their senses, increasingly ready to vote for any candidate willing to poke a collective finger in the elite's collective eye.
05—Free speech dies in Europe. Muslims have it on good scriptural authority that the prophet Mohammed married Ayesha when she was six years old and consummated the marriage when she was nine and he was 53.
By the standards current in the Western world today, that makes Mohammed a shameful pedophile.
An Austrian woman who, in a public seminar, said the thing I just said, was convicted of "disparaging religious doctrines" and fined $500 plus court costs. The woman, who we know only as Mrs. S., appealed the ruling on the grounds that her freedom of speech had been infringed. The case reached the European Court of Human Rights.
October 25th they issued their ruling. They found the conviction was just; Mrs. S.'s free speech rights had not been violated. Quote from them:
It held that by considering the impugned statements as going beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate, and by classifying them as an abusive attack on the Prophet of Islam which could stir up prejudice and threaten religious peace, the domestic courts put forward relevant and sufficient reasons.
You may say that what Mrs. S. did—wait a minute: shouldn't it be "Frau S."?—that what the lady did was analogous to shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. Outraged Muslims will go a-rioting, windows will get broken, heads will get cracked. Who needs it?
There are several problems with that. For one thing there's the truth issue. If there actually is a fire in the crowded theater, you are not only allowed to shout "Fire!" you are morally obliged to. According to the scriptural sources, the Hadith, Muhammed did do the thing Frau S. claimed. Since this is as close as we are ever likely to get about the true facts of Mohammed's life, truth is a legitimate defense.
To the counter that Frau S. did not merely say the thing objected to, she said it in an obnoxious way: Well, saying things about other people's cherished beliefs in an obnoxious way is a thing we do here in the West. Muslims who find this intolerable have a plain remedy open to them: they can go live in one of the forty-odd Muslim-majority countries.
After all, citizens of Austria and other Western countries have to put up with much obnoxiousness from Muslims in our countries. Why is Frau S.'s name not being revealed to us? Because of the reasonable fear that if it were, she would be killed by crazed Muslims. That we live with such fears is pretty damn obnoxious.
Mass immigration of Muslims into Europe has been a colossal act of folly. There is now a town in Yorkshire, in the heart of Northern England, with only 48 white British inhabitants out of four thousand. Everyone else is a Muslim from South Asia. A whole town! Forty-eight white Britons out of four thousand plus. Does that count as "diversity"? Discuss among yourselves.
Whole regions of England's big old cities—and France's, and Germany's, and Italy's, and Austria's—have likewise been taken over. It's a demographic catastrophe.
All the Europeans can hope to do is what the ECHR just did: to keep social peace by crushing ancient liberties. Lots of luck with that.
06—Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: That reference in my intro to not being able to work at the White House was to Darren Beattie, who was fired from the Donald Trump White House back in August, to the President's shame, for having attended the 2016 Mencken Club conference. Beattie is another professor, or rather ex-professor: he taught Political Science at Duke University before going to work at the White House. I tell you, the Mencken conference is a real egghead show.
Well, after Darren got fired I signed up to follow him on Twitter. He makes some good witty comments.
In a recent tweet I especially like Darren proposed the word "caravan" as a unit of measure for immigration, equivalent to seven thousand souls.
I have proposed that a "Caravan" ~7k people-- be adopted as a standard unit of measure for immigration
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) October 31, 2018
In 2016, a record 1.75 million immigrants entered our country---roughly 250 Caravans https://t.co/EvqCD42I4G
So for example, my wife and I, who are both immigrants, quantify as 0.000286 of a caravan, or 0.286 millicaravans, or 286 microcaravans.
Darren notes that according to the latest numbers from the Census Bureau we took in 1.75 million new immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the year 2016, which means that 2016 tied with 1999 as the highest single year of immigration in U.S. history. That 2016 figure, 1.75 million, is 250 caravans.
Item: I'm trying to float the concept of Real Estate Nationalism. Just a year ago I reported that New Zealand was going to ban foreign buyers from purchasing existing homes in that country. Foreign buyers, mostly from China, were buying up land and homes in New Zealand. Quote from me:
From a National Question point of view, it seems to me the Kiwis have the right idea. First dibs on a nation's housing stock should go to citizens of that nation. If working New Zealanders are living in their cars because they can't afford a home, something needs to change.
End quote. I noted in that piece how the city of Vancouver in Western Canada had passed a 15 percent tax surcharge on foreign buyers of real estate. Well, here's an October 20th report from Bloomberg: Vancouver: The City That Had Too Much Money.
It seems that tax surcharge had some salutary effect; Residential sales have been falling, prices have been declining, and houses are staying on the market longer.
It's still a very pricey city, though; and according to the Bloomberg report there's an awful lot of money, mostly Chinese and much of it illicit, flowing through the city. This, they say, is a consequence of one of the largest financial flows of the 21st century: money being shuffled by millions of wealthy Chinese into safe assets abroad, in defiance of their country's capital controls. The Institute of International Finance estimates that in the past four years close to a trillion dollars has fled from China.
Personally I wouldn't want to live in a city whose principal industry was money laundering—even if I could afford to, which in Vancouver's case I couldn't. Real Estate Nationalism aside, though, think what this tells you about China.
Item: Finally, I could not resist this story. Headline: Scientist in a Remote Outpost in Antarctica Stabbed Man Who Kept On Telling Him the Ending of Books.
It's awfully lonely in those Antarctic research stations. Here were two Russian scientists in such a place, names Savitsky and Beloguzov, with nothing to do when off-duty but read novels. Beloguzov kept telling Savitsky how the stories ended, though. At last Savitsky got fed up with this, took a knife, and stabbed his colleague in the chest.
Beloguzov is now recovering in hospital in Chile. Savitsky is under arrest. This is apparently the first attempted murder in Antarctica.
It's a way to get your name in the record books, I guess. Attempted murder isn't very glamorous nowadays, though. If I were going for real fame, I'd want to be the first person to commit sexual harassment or racial discrimination in Antarctica. That's the way to get the world's attention in 2018.
10—Signoff. That's all I have for you from sunny Baltimore, folks. Thank you for listening, and please be sure to vote on Tuesday—to vote, I hope, for whichever candidate on offer to you takes the most Derbish approach to National Question issues.
Today, November 2nd, is Pat Buchanan's 80th birthday. I have a slight personal acquaintance with Pat, and have received many kindnesses from him. It would be remiss of me to sign off without adding my own voice to the many congratulations he's received, including an eloquent one by Wayne Allensworth here on the VDARE.com website, which says everything I'd like to say. Happy birthday, Pat!
So long as Antifa doesn't storm the conference hotel and burn it to the ground, I shall be safely back home next week and reporting with more from Radio Derb. Here's Gracie to sing up out with some uplift.
[Music clip: Gracie Fields, "Sing as we go."]
