Conservative Heritage Times

Everyone is talking about the potential GOP candidates for President, so I thought I might spice things up a bit by discussing the potential and confirmed list of Libertarian Party candidates. I am neither an LP member nor a philosophical libertarian, but I am sympathetic to third party activism, and I enjoy observing the internal wranglings of the LP. Internal wranglings are actually a sign of some health in a party. A lack of internal wranglings would indicate inactivity or that nobody cares.

This IPR article announces the candidacy of Jim Duensing, but it lists the other potential candidates as well.

Duensing’s main “claim to fame,” for lack of a better phrase, is that he was shot by the police and currently has a case pending. He appears to be from the Ernest Hancockesque faction of the party. He is a philosophical anarchist and radical, but “rightish” in feel and a believer in conspiracy theories such as 9/11 truth. While I am certainly not an anarchist nor am I generally inclined to believe in conspiracy theories, I have a greater problem with outright anti-rightists and conspiracy phobics. From my perspective, this faction of the party is easier to work in coalition with in some respects. Many of them supported Ron Paul, and they don’t seem to have that Blue America tendency to want to purge or distance themselves from undesirables because they are the undesirables in the opinion of some.

Jim Burns is a perennial candidate, and I am not quite sure what faction he represents. He has been arrested in the past for tax protesting and once officially changed his middle name to James Libertarian Burns. He generally has a rightist feel. He has gotten grief in the past for wearing a Confederate Battle Flag themed tie in his campaign picture, so the fact that he hasn’t changed it to appease the PC police makes me sympathetic to him.

Wayne Root, the 2008 LP VP nominee, hasn’t announced but everyone expects him to run. Wayne Root is not a plumbline Libertarian, and is alleged to be weak on non-interventionism. He is able to garner a lot of mainstream media attention and is definitely playing to the Tea Party and anti-Obama Red America crowd. Normally, someone similar to him might be the natural choice of realist and pragmatists within the LP, but Root inspires visceral emotions in people for reasons I plan to delve into in greater detail at a later date. Suffice it to say for now that his polarizing effect makes it hard for him to be the realist/pragmatist candidate per se. He is more likely to be the candidate of the Republican Liberty Caucus wing of the LP.

R. Lee Wrights has formed an exploratory committee. He was a supporter of Mary Ruwart in 2008, and is generally considered a radical, but he is a bit hard to characterized entirely as such. He is a prolific writer and is well known in libertarian web circles. Despite being a radical, he isn’t particularly polarizing and seems to be intentionally leading with a unifying message of opposition to war. (His links include the CATO Institute and the Mises Institute.) Of the four candidates, he has the most leftish feel.

Again, I am not an LP member, and so I am not privy to all the internal factions and distinctions in the LP. These are gestalt impressions based upon my outside rightist perspective of things. I welcome corrections and clarifications, but keep in mind these are my impressions, so I hope people won’t nit-pick or blast me especially about my use of left and right which are admittedly imperfect designations.

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Here’s a follow-up on my previous post, “Charlotte’s mayor pro tem pressures hotel to cancel American Renaissance convention.” It’s my Examiner report on Jared Taylor’s press conference, held today — outside, of course — in sub-arctic weather.

Be sure to check out the pics of the “antifa” protestors, who yelled obscenities and promised they would NOT allow Taylor to hold his meeting.

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What the US should do about Egypt:

Chirp…                                               …chirp, chirp…                                                                           …chirp, chirp, chirp…                                                          ,,,chirp…

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Here is what the President should be saying about Egypt:

Chirp…                                                                            …chirp,  chirp…                                      …chirp, chirp, chirp…                                                              …chirp…

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Now that it’s all but certain Mubarak is about to lose power, some Neocons claim it’s a good thing. Why, they’ve always supported democracy, and free elections. Right. So why, one wonders, did these champions of empire freedom remain silent while the US propped up the Mubarak dictatorship with billions of financial support over the years? Why did the US provide arms to this tyrant? The Egyptians know that even the tear gas used against them is American made.

Apparently Neocons haven’t noticed the anti-American rage behind the protests. Or maybe they’re just so ideologically blind and deaf, it doesn’t register.

Let’s see how happy they are about what replaces their puppet in Cairo. Until then, Egyptians are partying like’s it’s 1979.

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Coming as a surprise to some, George Allen announced that he will seek his old job – U.S. Senator of Virginia – running against Jim Webb if he wins the GOP primary.

While some paleoconservatives, angry over the neocon nation building in the Middle East, supported Jim Webb in 2006, I suspect that many will be reluctant to do so this time. As James W. Antle III has pointed out, Jim Webb has been a big disappointment.

Webb idly has sat by for the past couple years while Obama increased Bush’s military budget and expanded the “war on terror” (i.e. interventionism and billions of dollars in nation building) in the Middle East.

And while Webb has criticized affirmative action and discrimination against European Americans, his very actions belie such criticism. On immigration, he has been abysmal, and it’s often continued Third World immigration that provides non-whites the alleged justification they need for continued affirmative action programs  – not to mention the fact that immigration drives down American wages as well as causing many other problems (crime, ethnic divisiveness, etc.). Does Webb not “get it”? Apparently not, as he recently voted for the DREAM Act, which would have potentially amnestied anyone under the age of 35, creating an even greater demand for non-white racial quotas.

It’s becoming clear that Webb is not on “our side.” Were I in Virginia, I’d vote for Allen, who is not without flaws (most notably, his support of neocon foreign policy) but in many respects is superior to Webb.  At least Allen would not have voted for the DREAM Act.

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Jefferson’s Monticello makes ale inspired by past

Among the third president’s lesser-known pursuits was making beer, and modern-day visitors to his mountaintop estate at Monticello can soon get a taste of the past.

…

Thompson calls the unfiltered wheat-style beer “very light on the palate with a clean finish,” with citrus and earthy aromas.

The ale will make its public debut at the Thomas Jefferson Visitor Center museum shop with tastings on Feb. 21. The ale will be sold at Monticello and Charlottesville-area restaurants.

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“Teenager showed me teargas canister ‘made in USA.’ Saw the same thing in Tunisia. Time to reconsider US exports?” CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman in Cairo.

In other words, this is just another dictatorship we’ve been propping up with OUR tax dollars — since 1975, US aid to Egypt has exceeded 28 billion dollars.

And we wonder why they hate us. Oh, yeah, it’s because of our freedoms.

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Maurice’s BBQ Takes Down Some Confederate Battle Flags:

Maurice’s Gourmet Barbeque’s Maurice Bessinger, who hoisted the stars and bars over his nine Columbia-area restaurants on the day, almost a decade ago, when South Carolina permanently lowered the Confederate flag from its capitol dome, told a local television station this week that he could no longer afford to keep his controversial flags flying — and it’s not for the reasons you’d think.

Bessinger’s empire, built on a secret recipe for yellow sauce and his reputation as an old-style Southern charmer, was once the nation’s biggest commercial barbecue operation. But his open embrace of a symbol indelibly associated with slavery disgusted many of his customers and dismayed most of his business associates. Walmart pulled his Southern Gold sauce off its shelves, and, according to Bessinger’s autobiography, Defending My Heritage, the company lost 98 percent of its wholesale business.

Still, Bessinger claims he isn’t trying to woo back barbecue fans who were repelled by his rebel politics. He’s instead blaming the recession for the rising cost of dry cleaning.

Continue Reading »

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There was interesting story which popped up over at IPR (Independent Political Report) last week about a former Libertarian Party committeeman in Wyoming who has broken away from the national LP and, with a few like minded fellows, started his own party which is known simply as the Country Party.

It will be interesting to see if this new party works for this reason: Continued weakness on the part of the Democrats in states with large white middle and working class and a small base of post-graduate, college educated voters. In other words, states like Wyoming simply don’t have a strong base for a vibrant Democratic Party other than as a protest vehicle every so often against Republican arrogance. So to avoid Wyoming from becoming another, say Tunisia or Egypt, for example, a new party is needed which breaks from the unpopular labels of current non-major parties, can tap into a large pool of disaffected independent or soft-partisan voters with a few basic principals all can support. If it works, you could see this spread to other “red” states where the Democrats are virtually non-existent.

Gretchen Wilson – I’m here for the party

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From SARTRE at BATR: “Free Trade Created Chinese Model”

J.J. Jackson’s latest at Liberty Reborn:  “A Call for Reason”

Rev. Chuck Baldwin’s latest” The Second Amendment, the Arizona Shootings and Aaron Zelman”

Our friend Jerry Sayler has a piece at Front Porch Republic “Much Ado about Inflammatory Rhetoric”

Kelly Vlahos at Antiwar.com “The Battle for Conservative Hearts and Minds”.

And last but not least, my latest at Etherzone.com : “Reaching Across Party Lines: Opposition to U.S.-South Korean Trade Deal Could Create Alliances”

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Good riddance! Apparently he was fired but details remain sketchy. While Olbermann was right about the Irag War and civil liberties among other issues, he is in general a cookie-cutter modern elitist liberal. His snide, snarky condescending elitism in lieu of argument was infuriating to watch. Olberman epitomizes the “ruling class” Blue America stereotype. I couldn’t stand the guy, and I’m glad he is gone.

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Robert Bentley at Conservatives for Change has the story. Local boy Mitt Romney finished first.

The continuing popularity of Mitt Romney is both mystifying and embarrassing. The guy is a transparent flip-flopping opportunist. Are voters really so shallow as not to realize that?

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Ralph Nader has been talking up a libertarian and progressive alliance against corporatism recently. He and Ron Paul were on Freedom Watch with Judge Napolitano to discuss it. They touched on many things, but in keeping with our recent focus on the Korea – US FTA I have chosen to highlight what both men had to say about NAFTA and the WTO.

Paul said:

Paul added that he agreed with Nader on a host of issues, such as cutting the US military’s budget, ending undeclared US wars overseas, restoring civil liberties and civil rights by dumping from the Patriot Act, and withdrawing from the NAFTA and World Trade Organization agreements.

Nader called NAFTA and the WTO “sovereignty shredding and job destroying” (about min 5 of the video). I don’t normally associate liberals with concerns about sovereignty (although Nader is not your typical modern liberal) so that Nader would cite sovereignty concerns speaks to the power of that issue.

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Check out this article by Justin Raimondo. He is making essentially the same argument I have made several times, especially with Daniel Larison. See my comment #5 here. And see this post.

Phillips:

But the more important overreaching point is that a number of significant figures within the movement conservative orbit are trending toward non-interventionism (Norquist, Vig, Weyrich [R.I.P.], Armey, Scarborough, etc.). Ideological non-interventionists are MUCH more in evidence among the base, not to mention nation building skeptic Jacksonians and the foreign policy disinterested. Non-interventionists such as Antle and Bandow are tolerated at former bastions of interventionism. Non-interventionists are all over the forums and blogs. The alarmist uber-hawks are a shrinking core of bitter-enders. There is no audience for their message outside the already converted.

I’m not sure how continually reaffirming that you believe we are arguing from a position of weakness does anything except perpetuate that weakness. The trends are going in our direction. The other side is weakening and losing their grip, and they know it. That is why their rhetoric gets shriller and more alarmist all the time. It seems to me a better strategy to emphasize the trend in our direction and the fragile hold of the opposition and to welcome the partially converted to our side. This is arguing from a position of strength.

The relentless message needs to be that non-interventionism is the authentic historic conservative position and that uber-hawk interventionism is the aberation. This needs to be asserted self-confidently.

I’m not naive. I recognize we are a small minority at present. But much of the hawkishness that remains strikes me as mindless repetition of conservative conventional wisdom and an effort not to offend the hawkish bitter-enders. The ideological hawks are flaking off and those that remain are increasingly insular.

Raimondo:

Yet there is an extra note of hysteria in this latest hyperbolic tantrum, as if the prospect of facing a rebellion within what the neocons regard as their base is driving Boot over the edge of credibility. Because what’s laughable isn’t Norquist’s raising of this issue, but the efforts of Boot and his dwindling band of dead-enders to stamp out the rebellion before its gains enough momentum to have a real effect.

The problem for the neocons, however, is that the revolt has already spread far beyond the possibility of suppression.   Bubbling up from the grassroots, this is a revolution on the right, and it portends a struggle that is truly existential as far as the neocons are concerned. Having attached themselves to the conservative movement in the 1980s, this mini-movement which traces its origins back to a schismatic variety of Trotskyism would be content to suck the very life out of its conservative host — but it looks like the host is finally waking up to the danger…

… Reality has finally caught up with the conservative movement, however, much to the neocons’ intense annoyance. Let Boot have hysterics:, and let the Huffington Post liberals throw their mudballs. As Chris Middleton, of the Ohio Liberty Council, a leading tea party group, put it the other day: it’s all about the math, and the numbers don’t lie. With military spending accounting for 56 percent of discretionary spending, and the US about to lose it’s triple-A credit rating, the inexorable logic of the budget-cutters leads to one and only one conclusion: it’s time to rein in the War Party, and abandon our foreign policy of imperialism — because empires are a luxury that no modern nation can afford any longer.

Mind you, I’m not suggesting that Raimondo has been pirating my ideas, just that great minds think alike.

Editor’s Note: The link above (comment #5 here) has been fixed. Before it wasn’t actually going to my comment.

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Over at David Horowitz’ NewsRealBlog site, Rob Taylor makes the case for a bold, modern version of conservatism that is so bold and so modern that it should be called liberalism — because that’s exactly what he’s selling. He opens his strange piece with this:

American values are also universal values, and it is in our best interests as a nation to encourage the ideals of liberty, economic freedom, personal autonomy and the right to self-determination that are so central to conservative thought.

Ah, yes, “universal” values — the very essence of liberalism, which proponents of “muscular government” refer to whenever they call for the use of force at home and abroad. In fact, universalism is the Bizarro World opposite of conservatism, which stresses tradition, continuity, and affection for the particular while shunning abstractions. Affection for one’s own people is basic to true conservatism. Continue Reading »

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Must-See interviews with speakers at the 2010 HL Mencken Club:

Derek Turner:  Political Correctness is a Clown with a Knife

Paul Gottfried:  How the Left Won the Cold War

Steve Sailer: What is HBD?

Peter Brimelow:  How to Elect a New People

Henry Harpending:  Race & Evolution

John Derbyshire:  Optimistic Doomsayer

Srdja Trifkovic:  Is PC Worse than Communism?

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What’s refreshing about the story behind the revolt in Tunisa is it has nothing to do with ideology or religion. It is simply the boiling over of the passions of ordinary persons tired of the state’s petty interferences in their daily lives. A street merchant, perhaps someone in the desperate situation of needing to feed his family, can’t set-up a market stall to sell fruit because he hadn’t paid off the powers-that-be for the needed permit. In his desperation he immolates himself, and his example sparks a rebellion of the middle class against the state and its crony capitalism, bringing down a once seemingly all-powerful leader.

Sadly, if the violence and demonstrations continue, Tunisians might well get a military dictatorship (which might or might not be an improvement over the current ruling clique that masquerades as a “republic”). But the revolt as a whole is a good example for organizations like the Free State Project in their struggles for liberty in the state of New Hampshire. It’s encouraging to see there are people the world over who feel they get nickled-and-dimed daily from fines to fees to the proverbial “cost of doing business”, by those in power, without much to show for it. These same poor souls are ready to vent and offer support to those who will stand with them, will stand against the powers-that-be at any level of government which doesn’t serve their common interests.

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Yesterday, a bomb was discovered along the Martin Luther King parade route in Spokane, Washington:

A bomb left along the route of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade was sophisticated, with a remote detonator and the ability to cause many casualties, an official familiar with the case said Wednesday.

“They haven’t seen anything like this in this country,” the official said. “This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I’ve ever seen.”

No one was hurt (the bomb didn’t go off, thankfully).

It’s rather suspicious however:

Three parade workers spotted a backpack with visible wires on a bench at North Washington Street and West Main Avenue in downtown Spokane about 30 minutes before the parade was scheduled to begin Monday.

Is this the work of a false flag (Democratic pollster: Obama needs an Oklahoma City bombing moment to reconnect with the American people)? Hopefully there’s no link to anyone on the right or faux-right, though the mass media is working diligently to make such a connection.
Continue Reading »

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NumbersUSA 2012 Presidential Hopefuls’ Immigration Stances:

Obama: F
Barbour: D-
Gingrich: D-
Palin: D-
Romney: D-
Huckabee: D-
Paul: C-
Thune: C-
Pawlenty: C

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