A few additional notes regarding George Hawley’s fascinating look at dissent within the right:

Notwithstanding the Trump Ascendancy, his belief that moderate libertarianism-or conservatarianism, as some have dubbed it-will exert the greatest influence over mainstream conservatism in the years ahead holds some merit. The disdain the modern conservative movement has for genuinely libertarian ideas is reflected in the figure of Jonah Goldberg, someone whom every group described in Professor Hawley’s book would view with contempt, at best. The fact that his publication has gone out of its way to publish writers who present a watered-down, libertarian lite perspective merely demonstrates the resonance of certain libertarian ideas within the broader conservative public.

Much like William F. Buckley’s attempts to modulate and co-opt organic conservatism years ago, the editors of National Review are now attempting to channel popular discontent on the right, this time manifesting itself in the form of libertarian activism, for their own purposes. Personally, I think these efforts will be as successful as NR’s Against Trump broadside. That said, I do believe that the Republican Party will continue to trend in the direction of Rand Paul and Justin Amash as the deep unpopularity of its current Chamber of Commerce/K Street-dominated policy platform becomes inescapable to even the most tone-deaf politician. 

While paleoconservatism, per Paul Gottfried, as an organized political philosophy may well be dead, many of the strands which animated its brief hold upon the public consciousness remain intact. Shorn of useless nostalgia for a bygone era and esoteric, internecine conflicts, its central tenets remain appealing to a broad minority of the electorate. Despite the increasing secularization of this country, there remains a huge portion of the population deeply committed to their faith. With the state’s increasing attack upon their core values, it’s possible that they might make common cause with anarcho-capitalists, i.e. libertarians who actually believe in freedom of association. Although the grip of neoconservatives upon the Republican Party has been permanently broken, they still have a multi-billion dollar intellectual infrastructure and-in the form of Hillary Clinton-an enormous potential influence over future White House foreign policy. Those who considered themselves paleocons still have an important role to play in militating against disastrous foreign policy decisions which further dilute and weaken the Western world. 

Likewise, the millions of Americans who feel burdened by multigenerational chain migration and our government’s open borders mania will not simply remain on the sidelines of history as their country and their cultural heritage is effaced. These patriotic individuals must form the core of any future right wing movement which intends to replace the desiccated conservative establishment. 

One of my only reservations about Professor Hawley’s exceptional work is his classification of Third Positionists as a distinctively right wing political movement. While it’s indisputable that white nationalists don’t believe in equality as the highest good, obviously, and thus would not be considered aligned with the left under Hawley’s thesis, I think it would be a mistake to assume they automatically belong on the right. Even as they militantly oppose multiculturalism, they espouse a racial collectivism which I believe conflicts with the defining feature of right wing thought shared by minarchists, anarcho-capitalists, Objectivists, and even Kirkian conservatives. Namely, the diminution of power exercised by the state in favor of individual autonomy and freedom exercised by non-state institutions, e.g. family, churches, and private entrepreneurs. 

A good example illustrating the division between these 2 philosophies can be found in the writing of one of the men profiled by the author, Samuel Francis. Someone who did not oppose the managerial state per se, but only the structure which opposed the interests of his race. Similarly, Richard Spencer-whose work is described in the chapter Voices of the Radical Right-vehemently opposed Brexit, the single greatest policy victory of the right in recent memory, because he believes in a European super-state, albeit one which is mono-racial. To make an historical comparison, while Otto Von Bismarck is generally thought of as a conservative figure, it’s difficult to reconcile that label with his creation of the first modern welfare state and eradication of local autonomy among German peoples. 

Putting that quibble aside, I can’t recommend George Hawley’s work highly enough. It accurately and objectively examines the contemporary conservative movement’s founding myths while also exploring what might happen when that movement ultimately collapses. I would urge anyone interested in 20th century American history, the history of conservatism as an ideology, or political science in general to read it. As the intellectual architecture of mainstream conservatism slowly but inevitably erodes, it’s worth understanding how exactly we got here. Professor Hawley has provided a coherent, lucid and engrossing answer. 

Update: A great account of the evening on Yahoo Sports.

Those were not jubilant  Texans waving their state flag last night at the Copa America, but ecstatic Chileans celebrating their nation’s victory over El Tri. Their team’s 7-0 ass-kicking of Mexico’s hapless squad of sulking incompetents, to be precise. We don’t often discuss soccer tournaments at American Rattlesnake, but anytime the most loathsome fan base in the Western Hemisphere is forced to bathe in its own tears-on American soil, no less-we feel compelled to report the news.  

Just remember, Mexico fans, the beautiful trophy whose image you see above will not be visiting your nation’s capital anytime in the near future. It couldn’t happen to a classier bunch.

As the Long March of the left burns and hacks its way through the nation’s remaining cultural institutions-reenacting the Cultural Revolution on American soil-and Europeans who balk at being invaded by the vanguards of Islam are condemned as Islamophobic bigots, it’s appropriate to reflect on the words  of a woman who is considered by many to be America’s greatest poet. She captures the surreality of living in a time and place where rational thought has been cast out of the public square. 

Much Madness is divinest Sense –

Update: Here’s a link to a somewhat more concise review I did for Goodreads. 

One of the most common critiques of contemporary American society, and Western culture more broadly, is its purported enthrallment to the opiate of celebrity. The notion that ordinary Americans are so dumbfounded by popular entertainment that they can’t understand linear, logical thought, let alone come up with workable solutions to complex problems which require such understanding, is not new. The late Neil Postman wrote an entire book exploring the damage wrought by modern communication techniques-namely, television and advertising-to the process of information-gathering, and by extension, rational argument and inquiry. However, even Henry David Thoreau-who lived before radio had attenuated the attention spans of humans weaned on the printed word-lamented the prospect of instantaneous communication.

Even so, you can’t properly understand the term celebrity until you’ve looked at a totalitarian state which is dominated not so much by an ideological impulse or dogma as by a cult of personality. That’s why the book written by celebrity ghostwriter Michael Malice-seen above in his dashing North Korean suit-about the late despot Kim Jong-il serves as an invaluable resource.  Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il-gives a western audience the rare opportunity to peer into the mind of someone who stood at the apex of a regime in which there was only one family and one person who was to be celebrated-upon pain of imprisonment, torture, and death. 

The unique nature of the North Korean state lies not so much in its depraved sadism-although it’s difficult to argue that it doesn’t equal or exceed even the most barbarous governments on the planet in this regard-but in the fact that it has managed to extirpate any public expression of individuality. Not only has the Kim dynasty suppressed any and all political dissent for the better part of seven decades, it has succeeded in effacing the personality of 24 million Koreans. In the tropical gulag that is Cuba you will find exuberantly defiant bloggers standing up to the Castro brothers tyranny. In the despotic theocracy that is the Islamic Republic of Iran, you will find courageous resistance to the Khomenist regime and first-hand accounts of what it’s like to be incarcerated in the notorious Evin Prison.

You won’t find internal dissidents in the DPRK, because to all intents and purposes, they do not exist. To dissent is to sign your own death warrant-not only for yourself, but for three generations of your family. You won’t hear the conditions inside of kwan-li-so described, because-with a few exceptions-no one leaves these concentration camps alive, and the only way outsiders are able to view them is through satellite photographs.

The brilliance of Dear Reader is its ability to convey these horrific truths in a way which compels the reader to look at North Korea in all its unvarnished brutality. At first glance, the concept of writing a book about an ongoing holocaust which relies upon humor to any extent is controversial, if not revolting. One of the reasons that a film like Goodbye Lenin can be enjoyed by ordinary people is because they recognize that it satirizes ugly crimes perpetrated by a regime which is safely immured in the past, and which will in all likelihood never be resurrected. The atrocities being committed in the DPRK, on the other hand, show no sign of abating.

The truth is that this book is suffused with humor, but not the type of humor that most people associate with Kim Jong-il or Kim Jong-un. It’s not designed to focus on the trivial manifestations of their well-cultivated international image of eccentricity, e.g. the goodwill tour by washed-up  NBA power forward/media spectacle Dennis Rodman. It’s used as a means of illustrating a lethally serious point. Namely, that this ruling clique has successfully employed an architecture of myth-based upon fear, ignorance, anger, and the desire for vengeance-in order to not only immiserate the Koreans under their rule materially, but to also impoverish their spirit and their souls.

One of the ways the author makes this viscerally disturbing narrative digestible is by contextualizing the Kim dynasty. People today can’t comprehend how a state created out of the spoils of World War II, a vestige of the Cold War conflict between the United States and USSR, became a singularly isolated and defiant  national socialist, i.e. fascist, regime predicated upon the worship of a single individual and intense, multigenerational racialism.

He does this in a number of ways, most interestingly perhaps by humanizing his subject, i.e. one of the most loathsome dictators of the past half-century. As off-putting as this might seem to the uninitiated, it’s a surprisingly effective means of explaining how and why the North Korean state exists, in spite of an increasingly porous web of information control. Taking traditional biographical tropes about family life and adolescent angst and transposing them into a story about Southeast Asia’s most iconic despot is an unconventional technique, but ultimately a successful one. A particularly affecting anecdote involves a young Kim Jong-il guarding the study of his father, Kim il-Sung, as he sleeps. Oddly moving, it serves as a metaphor for his guardianship of his dad’s legacy, even at the cost of the enforced starvation of over a million of his countrymen.

This highlights another aspect of North Korea’s unique regime, which is later revealed explicitly by Kim himself, when he admits that his advisors are not chosen because of any technical competence or foresight they may display, but because of their intense loyalty to Kim il-Sung, i.e. Kim Jong-il, thought. The consequent economic, social, and environmental disasters that resulted from this leadership method are, naturally, a necessary evil for preserving the sanctity of the true Korean state in the eyes of the Dear Leader.

Malice makes the sclerotic nature of this system comprehensible, which might come as a surprise to many of us who have been repeatedly told that there is no rhyme or reason to the actions taken by the DPRK’s leadership. In fact, there was a brutal internal logic and rationality to the actions of Kim Jong il, from extolling a juche philosophy that seemingly prized autarky-even while living parasitically off the extorted handouts from hostile neighbors and the United States-to an incomplete series of garish monuments exalting the only family to have ruled North Korea since its creation.

Therefore, the Agreed Framework between the United States and the DPRK was not a shameful capitulation, but a necessary expedient to preserve the Juche ideal, while also debasing both a former and current President of the United States. True to the promise on Dear Reader’s book jacket, this part is 100 percent “true,” as a perusal of Bill Clinton’s letter to Kim Jong-il at the time demonstrates. The bellicose rhetoric emanating from North Korea is not the rantings of a paranoid lunatic, but Songun diplomacy, which, regardless of its dubious morality, was extraordinarily efficacious. Kim’s explanation of an humanitarian aid package accepted five years later illustrates why:

After much grandstanding and hyperbole, the American and Korean negotiators reached a compromise. The Americans claimed that they were neither rewarding me nor condoning my violent rhetoric. That is absolutely true. They didn’t “reward” me or “condone” my rhetoric. On the other hand, they did financially compensate me because of my aggression. 

Accepting charity from the Yank devils was not a repudiation of the principles undergirding his very regime, but a brilliant strategic maneuver. And it wasn’t charity but reparations for the harm inflicted upon the DPRK for decades by the American imperialists.

This didn’t contradict the Juche principle of self-reliance one bit. I didn’t look at the package as aid so much as the repayment of a debt. The US imperialists had been threatening Korea for decades. It was entirely their fault that I’d had to expend such enormous sums on the military. 

Even actions that seem completely inscrutable to outside observers, e.g. the North Korean government’s evident pride in being lavished with praise by equally dysfunctional nation-states like the West African, Marxist backwater Burkina Faso or the South Asian dumpster fire that is Pakistan, become explicable once you understand them from the perspective of the man pulling the strings. As absurd as having Mali as one of your strategic partners might seem to us, it serves the interests of the Kim regime. Just like its arsenal of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons, the International Friendship Museum is intended for domestic consumption, not for our benefit.

If there’s one thing to take away from Dear Reader, it’s that there is a calculated reason for every decision made at the upper echelons of power within North Korea. As Kim Jong-il avers himself, he was “no buffoon,” and his actions-however clownish they may have seemed to foreigners-had deadly consequences which were methodically plotted out beforehand. This is a book worth reading, if only because it illuminates the dark corners of a society whose people have suffered for too long in the shadows of their loving parents.

It should come as no surprise to anyone paying attention that among the jihadists responsible for perpetrating this massacre, several hail from the community of Somali Muslim refugees resettled in the United States. A community whose troubles have been amply documented on this site, among others. Rather than belabor a point which we’ve explored on numerous occasions, I ask you to listen to the profoundly moving words of a man who, controversial past aside, embodies the resolve of a nation determined to withstand the unholy war waged by civilization’s foes. 

Tomorrow morning, around 11 o’clock or so, I’ll be joining others from Iran180 who are protesting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s address to the den of iniquity in Turtle Bay, otherwise known as the United Nations. I’ll be posting my thoughts-and some photos-of the event later this week. Until then, you can follow timely updates of rat-face’s visit through Iran 180’s Twitter account.

Today is the federally designated holiday commemorating our separation from Great Britain, despite the fact that the adoption of the Declaration of Independence  by the Second Continental Congress occurred on July 2, 1776. Even so, this is a great day to reflect upon how our country arrived at this point in its history. Which is why I’m providing you with audio from one of Professor Thomas E. Woods Jr.’s brilliant lectures exploring the all-too-often obscured history of the United States.

This particular lecture examines the early colonial history of America-up to and including the decision by the thirteen colonies to sever ties with its mother country-and how individual states asserted their rights in the face of collectivist aggression. It’s a talk that is pertinent to our current political climate, which finds the very concept of federalism under relentless assault from all quarters.

The author of this nation’s political and legal cornerstone knew more than anyone else how destructive the the powers of a centralized state could be, which is why uncovering the true history behind our forefathers’ audacious endeavor-at a time of unparalleled attacks against the Bill of Rights and individual autonomy-is such an urgent task.

Happy Independence Day, readers! I hope that you’ve spent some of it contemplating the beauty of our nation’s founding document, and hopefully examining what makes this country a unique experiment in republican self-governance.

That is a picture of the border fence that now stands between Tijuana, Mexico and the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector in the United States. To see an enlarged version of the same image, check out All That Is Interesting, a neat compendium of fascinating photographs from around the globe.

USA Today is reporting on a new strategy self-entitled immigration scofflaws are using to stay in this country.  They exploit public sympathy and liberal news outlets to publicize their illicit immigration status and demand the right to stay in this country:

Abdollahi’s parents immigrated to the U.S. from Iran on a student visa when he was 3, but did not return when the visa expired, so the entire family was living in the U.S. illegally. Abdollahi heeded his parents advice, until two years ago when he felt they were getting close to being deported.

That’s when Abdollahi did the unthinkable — he got himself arrested during a May 2010 protest of immigration policies and had a friend alert immigration officials of the arrest. He figured that if his case was made public, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials would be hard-pressed to deport him.

As the case of Daniela Pelaez proved last week, this strategy can work when uncritical media reports manage to pull the heart strings of a well-meaning public.

The problem of birth tourism is one usually associated with the United States, although as the above Sun TV segment points out, it plagues Canada as well. The fact that both North American nations practice jus soli invites fraud and abuse, as has been pointed out on this website repeatedly.

No one has been more articulate in exposing the perils of extending birthright citizenship to the children of non-resident aliens than John Derbyshire, and this story by Brian Lilley’s Byline demonstrates that this debasement of citizenship is occurring in Canada as well-most often by wealthy Asian women seeking to advance the fortunes of their children. It’s well worth watching and sharing with those friends who still operate under the misconception that this is a “minor problem,” or that initiatives like those advanced by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney are unnecessarily punitive in nature.