Ayn Rand, Donald Trump and the 1972 Presidential Election

Ayn Rand wrote an insightful series of articles on the 1972 presidential election and its result. These articles were published in her periodical The Ayn Rand Letter. In order of publication, these articles are "The Dead End," "A Preview," "A Nation's Unity" and "The American Spirit." To my knowledge, none of these articles have been anthologized in the several posthumously published collections of Rand's articles. 

Howard Trump Acting on his own Judgement

It is a shame that these articles are not readily available. The Ayn Rand Letter is not cheap and is generally only purchased by serious students of Rand's thought. More casual or impecunious readers are missing out on a treasure trove of some of her best cultural and social analysis. The above listed articles are excellent examples of why the Ayn Rand Institute needs to get its act together and make all of Rand's work much more accessible to readers, students and researchers. 

No short summation will do justice to Ayn Rand's articles on the 1972 election. She did emphatically state her support for the election of Richard Nixon. She did so not because of any special regard for the "pragmatic" (read, unprincipled) Nixon, but because George McGovern was so odious. Besides discussing the dishonest tactics used by the McGovernites to get their candidate nominated at the Democratic convention, Rand recognizes that a historic switch had taken place within the party: 

The real turning point came when the welfare statists switched from economics to physiology: they began to seek a new power base in deliberately fostered racism, the racism of minority groups, then in the hatreds and inferiority complexes of women, of "the young," etc. The significant aspect of this switch was the severing of economic rewards from productive work. Physiology replaced the conditions of employment as the basis of social claims. The demands were no longer for "just compensation," but just for compensation, with no work required. (A Preview, Part II, pp. 100-101. Emphasis in original)

Ayn Rand at her most imaginative could not have envisioned the Left's future policy of virulent anti-white racism and replacement of the American people with "migrants." But, her usual prescience showed with her description of McGovern that word-for-word can be used to describe Bernie Sanders.  

Of course, the appearance of socialist shyster Sanders is not the only parallel between the 1972 and 2016 election. 2016 was the Flight 93 election. Eight years of Hillary Clinton in the White House, supported by the GOP turncoats running Congress, would have killed off what was left of the original American legacy. Even voters who viewed Donald Trump as a dangerous political unknown supported him over the sociopath Clinton. In the summer of 1972, Rand made the same argument:

I am not an admirer of President Nixon, as my readers know. But I urge every able-minded voter, of any race, creed, color, age, sex, or political party, to vote for Nixon - as a matter of national emergency. This is no longer an issue of choosing the lesser of two commensurate evils. The choice is between a flawed candidate representing Western civilization - and the perfect candidate of its primordial enemies. (A Preview, Part III, pg. 110)

Rand was ecstatic over the victory of Richard Nixon mainly because it signified that the American sense of life was not dead. For her, the election meant that the United States was not doomed to continue its downward trajectory. Needless to say, the country was in far more dire straits by 2016. For nearly thirty years the country had been leaderless with "presidents" eager to sell-out the American people at every opportunity. At the end of President Commissar Pen-and-Phone's reign, many Americans had come to understand that their country was being systematically destroyed. Progressives turned to the hard left of Sanders and Clinton who promised to finish the job. Patriotic Americans understood that there was nobody in the Republican Party who could be trusted to change America's course of destruction.

Enter a principled man of action who actually loves America, holds the American people in high regard and doesn't want to "fundamental transform" the nation into a third-world toilet. Donald Trump had been a public figure for four decades prior to the election. His books were best sellers. He is a master builder who can create out of the chaos of the New York real estate business. Until declaring his candidacy, Trump's reputation was that of a successful, "can do," no-nonsense businessman. Even his reality show on business leadership enhanced his reputation. 

As Ayn Rand observed forty-five years ago, in the 1972 election campaign the American people responded to each candidates' sense of life and not necessarily to their policies. To some extent, the same was true in 2016. Some responded by voting for the fascist criminal Hilary Clinton who promised more of the same statism and corruption and treason that was destroying the country. Others more discerning, responded to the representative of a classic American type. 

Americans are men of action; they do not indulge in self-pity, and they do not accept passive resignation to suffering. In the face of hardships or misfortune, their automatic response is to act, to fight, to solve the problem - an attitude for which they are so frequently condemned by the mystics of the intellectual "elite" of European barrooms and basements. To confront Americans with the patronizing "kindness" of a combined social worker and small-town Lord of the Manor, is such an impertinence that a landslide defeat is the least McGovern deserves for it. (A Nation's Unity, Part III, pg. 130) 

The American people went with the successful "man of action" last November. But, the race was far closer than it should have been. One reason is that for decades academia has been indoctrinating America's children to want and need the "kindness" of overbearing authority. The other prong of the pincer movement against the American sense of life is the mass importation of socialists. The American sense of life has been deeply eroded in the last fifty years; but, it's still here. 

Lady MacBeth and Mentor

Donald Trump is not a pragmatist as many have attempted to smear him. For example, he has held consistent views on trade for the last several decades. One can disagree with his trade policy. But, it is based on a thoughtful application of principles to policy reality. The irony is that many of President Trump's most vociferous critics are themselves dogmatists who are incapable of inductive reasoning or re-evaluating an issue when new facts become available.

Last week President Trump presented a Trifecta on his alleged pragmatism. He went to Utah to roll-back the land grabbing of two predecessors. Both presidents Clinton and Obama nationalized millions of acres of Utah territory at the stroke of their pens dipped in the bile of environmentalists. Trump reversed these acts and returned the land to the state of Utah, “I’ve come to Utah to take a very historic action to reverse federal overreach and restore the rights of this land to your citizens.” When was the last time anyone heard the phrase "roll back" in reference to federal acts? Next, President Trump took a step back from the destruction of American national sovereignty by pulling out the United Nation's global compact on refugees.

By far the biggest news of the week was President Trump's announcement that the American embassy in Israel will be moving to Jerusalem. Congress authorized this move in 1995. Since then, "presidents" have been signing waivers every six months in order to prevent the move. On this issue it's clear who the cowardly pragmatists are and who the courageous man of principle is. 

I think the American people have fundamentally turned aganist the welfare state and the Left's rabid hatred for their country. Hopefully, there are enough real Americans to vote in a full slate of Making American Great Again candidates into Congress to continue what President Trump has started. 

Boy Clinton and McGovern: Evil is Multi-Generational

Review: Pamela Geller, Fatwa: Hunted in America, 2017

On 3 May 2015 freeborn Americans held a "Draw Mohammed" contest and free-speech rally in Garland, Texas. The event was organized by Pamela Geller. It was her response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris and previous cartoon jihads. The event was attacked by two freelance jihadists with connections to ISIS. Fortunately, it was only the jihadists who died that day. Security was solid, despite the Obama FBI's refusal to notify event planners of their information regarding the planned attack. In response to this jihad attack on American soil, the media blamed the victims and poorly hid their disappointment that Geller wasn't killed. 

Pamela Geller: Speaking Truth

In her new book, Fatwa: Hunted in America, Pamela Geller provides the "rest of the story" on the Garland jihad attack. Less than a decade ago Geller burst upon the public scene as an indefatigable leader of the counter-jihad movement and a courageous warrior for American values. For this crime she has been mercilessly smeared by the establishment of both parties. More importantly, this book shows the power of one determined, and knowledgeable, individual. One of Geller's purposes for writing this book is to explain why a non-political, successful New York businesswoman transformed herself into a Lion of Western Civilization - and why it's up to private citizens to fight this war.  

As with many people, Geller's life changed dramatically after the 9/11 attacks. She was dissatisfied with the "answers" provided by the mainstream media and Bush administration. She, therefore, engaged in the most subversive act possible: she educated herself on Islam, sharia and jihad. 

As I familiarized myself with the enemy and his motives and goals, I began to see truths that I believed should be stated, and courses of action that I thought should be taken. But few people, if any, were stating these things, and no one was taking these actions. So I began to write and I began to act. (pg. 14)

She created her own website that became a "go to" clearinghouse on the global jihad being waged against civilization. 

Pamela Geller was widely known among counter-jihad activists by 2007. But, it was her campaign against the jihad victory mosque at Ground Zero in 2010-2011 that vaulted her into the public eye. She wasn't aware of the proposed mosque until the New York Times published a gushing puff piece (of course) on it in early December 2009. Like any decent patriotic American, Geller was outraged by this proposal. She also had the voice, connections and sheer guts to fight the powers of the land and helped stopped its construction. 

Unlike fools or worse, Geller understood the mosque's symbolism - as would Moslems around the world. As she succinctly explains: 

These mosques were designed to mark Islam's victory over and superiority to the religions that Islam views as rivals. Everywhere jihad attacks have been successful, triumphal mosques have been established. The most famous are the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Aya Sofya Mosque in Istanbul, formerly the Hagia Sophia Cathedral, which, for one thousand years, was the grandest church in the Christian world. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over two thousand mosques in India were built on sites of Hindu temples. (pg. 38) 

It should be of no surprise that the mainstream media, politicians and other pundits are unaware of or evade this history of the jihad. Their mendacity is in full view after ever jihad attack in the West.  

Sadly, there are those posturing as intellectual leaders who defended the "property rights" of the mosque builders. Although, these people have been answered in detail, they still adhere to their world view of floating, out-of-context abstractions. The conceptual opaqueness of these people is/was quite stunning. One "Objectivist philosopher" with a blog went so far as to blame Geller for not respecting the rights of fifth-columnists at war with the USA: "to forcibly block the construction of the mosque by using unjust laws that violate private property rights is morally wrong, not to mention politically dangerous." This deep thinker then goes on to claim that using zoning laws to stop the mosque would lead the country one step closer to the "gulag." (Seriously) This is one type of the bizarre smears that Geller is subjected to on a daily basis. (To his great credit, Leonard Peikoff set the issue straight. Not that any of these people have learned from such a colossal blunder.)

The main theme or thesis of Geller's book is the difficulty in speaking the truth about Islam and jihad in public. She documents the vicious personal attacks directed at her when she was still just an obscure blogger. One of her finest moments was the defense of Rifqa Bary. Bary fled her devout Moslem home in Ohio to avoid becoming another "honor" killing victim. As Geller documents, the media and court system took the side of the parents. The media were gleeful when the court order Bary to return to Ohio with a murderous fatwa hanging over her head. Saving this young girl from the fatwa was one of the counter-jihad's finest moments. 

The treatment of Rifqa Bary and the suppression of news about honor killings in the United States by the media directly led to Geller's next, and most famous, campaign to get the truth about Islam into the public square. 

In 2010, I was in Florida to attend a court hearing in the Rifqa Bary case. While waiting for a red light at an intersection, I saw in the next lane a bus bearing a huge ad calling people to Islam. It made me think: what about the people who want to leave Islam, like Rifqa, but have no help doing so and know their lives would be threatened if their apostasy were made known? (pg. 93)

Thus began Geller's famous ad campaigns on public transportation to get the truth out. Her ads provided hotlines for those attempting to leave Islam who did not want to be murdered as apostates per sharia law. 

And, you guessed it. The political and media establishments were virulently hostile to the ads produced by her organizations American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA). The level of apoplexy exercised by the country's traitorous elites regarding these ads is breathtaking. Geller provides details on how municipalities and transit authorities in many cities pulled out all the stops to prevent the ads from running. Some went so far as to change their ad policy to rejecting all "advocacy advertisements." The establishment's assault on the First Amendment only induced Geller to create more ads on the topic of jihad and Islam. There are still court cases pending on those ads submitted, but not published.

Pamela Geller's focus on free speech, its suppression by the country's ruling elite and forthrightly arguing for effective measures against the jihad have made her public enemy number one. That this women is continually vilified, while Muslim Brotherhood shills are treated as respectable, indicates the magnitude of the evil that animates our age. Her book should be read by every American, and Westerner, as an antidote to the barrage of lies produced daily by the media. She calls them the "enemedia" for good reason. The "Ground Zero" mosque builders found themselves an appropriate ally with the likes of disgraced degenerate Matt Lauer back in 2010. As with Lauer, the media is filled with creatures who shill for the country's enemies and cover up the actions of their perverted colleagues and Democratic politicians. Ruin their day by purchasing and reading Geller's book.

The Ayn Rand Institute Returns to Its Vomit

With Progressives, the issue is never the issue. This basic principle holds true for the Obleftivists of the Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). The people running ARI live in the cultural left's world. They're "free market" Progressives. Case in point, their support of deconstruction the USA via massive population transfers. 

Recently, ARI's "Chief Content Officer" (seriously) Onkar Ghate again attacked President Trump for his style, rhetoric and policies using media smears as references. They really really hate the man. As with the Bush Crime Family, ARI never criticized Obama or Clinton in such personal terms. In fact, some of the ARI Brain Trust actually voted for sociopath Hillary. The guy who runs ARI last month ranted on Facebook thus: 

BTW, after 9 months of Trump, I can unequivocally say that he is a cancer on this country. He is a product of the Left. This is what nihilism leads to -- and much worst is yet to come from both left and right. I will stick to Objectivism and the truth. I will defend them with my energy, my mind, my life, against those who would sell out to the lessor of two great evils.

ARI is an embarrassment to a great thinker, Ayn Rand. Brook's comment above is an example of how Progressives always project. He accuses Trump of being "a product of the left." Brook admits to once being a socialist and collectivist, two things Donald Trump has never been. Brook still lives in the cultural left. Hence, his and Ghate's hostility to Trump. 

Trump Derangement Syndrome means never having to examine premises or look at reality. As one blogger observed: 

What is shocking is that the Ayn Rand Institute and many of its scholars do not think the President has done anything of value. During his short time in office, however, Donald Trump has massively deregulated the economy (especially the energy sector), unapologetically defended Western Civilization, and he has condemned socialism using the tragic results of Venezuela’s example. 

For any Objectivist, such as Onkar Ghate, to say a man is anti-intellectual or the villain of our time despite any of the above mentioned outcomes is not only ridiculous, it also calls into question the motives of the people expressing them.

Ding, ding, ding! I believe that the source of ARI's hatred for successful builder Donald Trump stems from the president's statements and policy about immigration. They also hate his campaign slogan of "America First;" although, Ayn Rand was an America Firster. Brook and Ghate's main problem is with American patriotism and the nation-state as it's existed for the last five hundred years. On the other hand, neither have issued such categorical demands that Israel and India erase their national borders and, therefore, their national existence. I'm sure that's just an oversight and that they will soon issue those policy statements. 

As for Ghate's latest public embarrassment, he has received a most thorough fisking at the Rational Capitalist blog. Ghate justifies his nonsense by invoking Rand's disdain for Ronald Reagan. At her last public address in 1982, Rand said she didn't vote for Reagan and that her main concern about him was his connection to the "religious right." Of course, the Progressives at ARI share the rest of the left's nightmarish, apocalyptic views of the "religious right" bugaboo. The left's hatred of Christianity has now morphed into a hatred of white people. The demonization of white Americans is yet another cultural issue that ARI evades. The rationalists and dogmatists at ARI are simply incapable of admitting that Rand was wrong on a current political figure and move on.

Ayn Rand commented on Reagan after only one year of his first term. It is now obviously clear that Rand was wrong about Reagan. Reagan turned the country around and renewed American pride. That the Reagan Revolution was subsequently murdered by RINOs such as the Bush Crime Family was not Reagan's fault. Ghate is just as wrong about Trump, but with far less excuse. Trump is largely secular. But, he is not hostile to Christianity and doesn't seem like the type to have a conniption over a publicly displayed cross. 

ARI Still Clueless After 30 Years

Needless to say, Ghate's latest rant will do President Trump no harm. The same can't be said for the misnamed Ayn Rand Institute. 

In Which Yaron Brook Reveals His Dead Soul

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead, 
Who never to himself hath said, 
    This is my own, my native land! 
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd, 
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd, 
    From wandering on a foreign strand! 
If such there breathe, go, mark him well; 
For him no Minstrel raptures swell; 
High though his titles, proud his name, 
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim; 
Despite those titles, power, and pelf, 
The wretch, concentred all in self, 
Living, shall forfeit fair renown, 
And, doubly dying, shall go down 
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, 
Unwept, unhonour'd, and unsung. - Sir Walter Scott

Unfortunately, there are many people in the West and the United States that perfectly fit Scott's description of the Dead Souls. The most well-known and trenchant analysis of the Soulless is from Samuel P. Huntington's 2004 essay "Dead Souls: The Denationalization of the American Elite." As Huntington explains,

Yes, the number of dead souls is small but growing among America's business, professional, intellectual and academic elites. Possessing in Scott's words, "titles, power and pelf", they also have decreasing ties with the American nation. Coming back to America from a foreign strand [such as Mongolia], they are not likely to be overwhelmed with deep feelings of commitment to their "native land." Their attitudes and behavior contrast with the overwhelming patriotism and nationalistic identification of the rest of the American public.

Yaron Brook is head of the Ayn Rand Institute. He provides an excellent example of the profound alienation that animates the Dead Souls of the transnational types. Recently, Brook posted a shrill, but mercifully short, video explaining his views on patriotism. It's only around a minute and twenty seconds long, so give it a listen. 

Brook rants, "I'm a patriot only to the extent that this country lives up to its founding principle ... only to the extent that this country protects individual rights." 

Brook views President Trump's civic nationalism as "collectivist garbage." Brook "loves" America because of what it "represents" in the abstract. He makes clear that he has no emotional connection to his fellow Americans. He is the quintessential non-American passport holder who needs to go back. As usual, Brook has nothing to say about the cultural underpinnings of individual rights and the American credo. He actually seems to believe that a nation's adherence to liberty is the result of abstract theory disconnected from fundamental cultural values. Note the anger with which his diatribe is delivered. The very idea of genuine patriotism enrages the man. It is also hard to miss his utter contempt for real patriotic Americans. 

Brook engages in crude reductionism with his claim that the only legitimate source for patriotism is the creed. His view that patriotic feelings result from reciting a few sentences of political philosophy (however noble) is the view of an emotionally repressed rationalist who lives in an ahistorical world of floating abstractions. 

In his indispensable Who Are We?, Samuel P. Huntington analyzes at great length the cultural values that made the creed possible and gave it life. 

Hence there is no validity to the claim that Americans have to choose between a white, WASPish ethnic identity, on the one hand, and an abstract, shallow civic identity dependent on commitment to certain political principles, on the other [the very false alternative that Brook espouses]. The core of their identity is the culture that the settlers created, which generations of immigrants have absorbed, and which gave birth to the American Creed. At the heart of that culture has been Protestantism .... The sources of the Creed include the Enlightenment ideas that became popular among some American elites in the mid-eighteenth century. These ideas, however, found receptive ground in the Anglo-Protestant culture that had already existed in America for over a century. (pp. 62, 68)

Ayn Rand was an atheist. But, as she said, she was not a crusading atheist and had a live and let live attitude towards Christian Americans. Sadly, this is not the case with Brook's mis-named Ayn Rand Institute (ARI). ARI's pathological hostility to Christianity is such that it seeks to erase the historical and cultural context that gave rise to the credo it claims to support.


It is a truism that soldiers fight, and die, for their buddies of their "primary group." Adherence to an abstract creed or cause may motivate young men to join the military in defense of their country. But, it is personal emotional connections to family back home and comrades in the trenches that sees them through to victory or death. The same is true for commitment and loyalty to a country. The fair weather patriots are legend when things are going well. When/if things go south in the USA, and it looks like the country will descend into chaos and tyranny, the Yaron Brook type passport holders will be on the first flight to Thailand. 

Brook doesn't understand this central need for an emotional connection to kin, clan, nation etc. because he was apparently deposited on earth by space aliens. Identifying with such groups seems embedded in human nature. It has obvious survival utility. The utility of patriotism and group loyalty is clear when examining early human societies of pre-literate eras. An isolated individual separated from his family or clan was not long for this world. Survival was a cooperative effort and the only people you could really trust and depend upon were related by blood. In fact, the worst punishment American Indians could inflict on an individual was banishment from the tribe. However attributes of human nature are not "collectivism" (no matter how shrilly argued), they just are. Brook's religious devotion to the thoroughly debunked theory of the "blank slate" leads him into all sorts of conceptual chaos.

Robert A. Heinlein gave an address to the US Naval Academy titled "The Pragmatics of Patriotism" in the early 1970s. Then, as now, patriotism was under attack by the usual suspects. By "pragmatic," Heinlein means necessary and central to survival: 

I propose to prove that that baboon on watch is morally superior to that fat poltroon who made that wisecrack. Patriotism is the most practical of all human characteristics. But in the present decadent atmosphere patriots are often too shy to talk about it - as if it were something shameful or an irrational weakness. But patriotism is NOT sentimental nonsense. Nor is it something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual. A man who is NOT patriotic is an evolutionary dead end. This is not sentiment but the hardest of logic.

The result of normal childhood development and emotional balance is a sense of fellow feeling for one's family - and potentially larger social groupings. Another aspect of patriotism, that is foreign to those with Dead Souls, is a sense of common destiny. If America fails or goes under, so do I. Unlike Brook, America is my one and only country and home. I have nowhere else to go and no desire to go in any event. America means more to me than some amended credo that the Soulless mouth like a quasi religious catechism. The Dead Souls are unable to feel any sense of comradery with their fellow Americans. Instead, they have a thinly veiled contempt for the Deplorables in flyover country. Whether they say they're on the "left" or "right," all "citizens of the world" wish that real Americans would just go away.   

Brook's opening comment on geography in the video is strange. As if loving the land and one's environment (the fruited plains, purple mountains majesty, sea to shining sea) is something beneath him. It is just another example of Brook's extreme rationalism. Good thing the settlers and pioneers who built America - and whose posterity the globalists are at jihad against - had a much more healthy view: 

Even from the earliest records of Captain John Smith, William Bradford, or John Winthrop, the enlarging of knowledge of America was simultaneous with the enlarging of the new American community. We sometimes forget how gradual was the 'discovery' of America: it was a by-product of the occupation of the continent. To act, to move on, to explore meant also to push back the frontiers of knowledge; this inevitably gave a practical and dynamic character to the very idea of knowledge. To learn and to act became one. (Daniel J. Boorstin, The Americans: The Colonial Experience, Vintage Books 1959, pp. 159-160)

Those with Dead Souls are incapable of feeling "love of one's native land" or understanding those who do. The global elite are completely detached from any such experience. Their gated communities and "jet set" life-business style insulates them from any real connections beyond the acquisition of yet more pelf whose main purpose/use is the acquisition of more status and prestige from their ilk. 

Sir Walter Scott and Friends

In the late eighteenth century, Hector Crevecoeur asked the seminal question "what then, is the American, this new man?" In the Federalist #2, John Jay answered this question:

With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people -- a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties.

One can certainly dispute whether common ancestors are a requirement for being a member of the American people even in the eighteenth century. However, the rest of Jay's list is not contentious either then or now. The attempt to strip the credo from its context will render it inoperative and (ironically) open the door to the ethnic nationalism that Brook so abhors.  

"Genocide," The Left's All Purpose Smear Term

George Orwell wrote extensively on how the Left abuses language to engage in thought control and further its evil agenda. A case in point is the abuse of the term "genocide." No doubt, it's an emotive word which contains much moral freight. As with the all purpose smear term "racist," the Left has hijacked the word to attack the object of its Two-Minute Hate. 

Thomas Nast: Our Standing Army

Recently I discovered a book due to be published this November 1. Written by a Robert Aquinas McNally, It's title is The Modoc War: A Story of Genocide at the Dawn of America’s Gilded Age. By the way, "Gilded Age" is another all purpose smear term directed at the glorious period of almost pure laissez-faire in the late 19th century. I haven't read this dreck and never will. The title alone demonstrates the author's fundamental dishonesty. 

The Modoc were a tiny tribe on the California-Oregon border. Since time immemorial, they had subsisted by raiding, robbing and murdering settlers who passed through "their" territory. During the latter half of the 19th century they numbered around 600 individuals. Apparantly, that's how many identified Modocs are still living in the area. We will leave aside the utter absurdity of imparting the status of nation-state to 600 marauding stone age savages. 

In any event, in 1872 the US government decided to force a renegade band of Modocs back to the reservation. This band numbered less than 200 people with an estimated 60 warriors. The Modoc War is one of the most colorful episodes of the American West. Obviously, it is not an example of genocide. 

Nevertheless, the academic Left has created quite the cottage industry (on the taxpayers dime, of course) of made-up genocides. The Ur Text for these creatures is David E. Stannard's American Holocaust: the Conquest of the New World. It was originally published in 1993 during a high point in pathological Columbus hate. Published earlier this year is another work that will undoubtedly be assigned in every course on Hating Whitey An American Genocide: The United States and the California Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873 (The Lamar Series in Western History) by Benjamin Madley and thoughtfully published by Yale University Press. Madley's book has the odor of a reworked dissertation. This is the sort of rubbish one needs to publish in order not to perish in the academia of today.

Thomas Nast: Food for Our Tricky Statesmen and Death to Our Honorable Army

For reliable work on the American frontier that is not filled with white leftist self-loathing, the gold standard is still Robert M. Utley. For authoritative and objective books on the American Indian consult the works of Francis Prucha. As with many subjects on History and America, use extreme caution when referencing recent products of academic presses. Many departments and scholars today are agenda driven hacks and should be avoided.  

Review: Edward Cline, China Basin, Patrick Henry Press, 1990, 2011

China Basin is set in 1928 San Francisco. Edward Cline presents an American city of cable cars, plain speaking and Prohibition. As the author observed in the book's forward, "The country was unhampered by political correctness in speech and manners, and uninfected with other cultural maladies, the seeds of which were just beginning to sprout in art and ethics, as the reader of the novel will see." Except for the Progressive hangover of Prohibition, Cline presents the country and city as the Founders largely intended it to be. 

Cyrus Skeen's San Francisco

China Basin could be identified as neo-noir detective story in the classic tradition. There is some truth to this judgment, but it's not the whole truth. The reason is the character of the detective-hero Cyrus Skeen. Skeen is a hero, not an anti-hero. He is a self-aware man of intelligence, breeding, and above all moral rectitude. He is also a man of action who places his life on the line in the pursuit of justice and truth. Skeen's moral compass places him a world away from such protagonists as Sam Spade or Jake Gittes. 

Roman General Agrippa: Skeen's Doppelganger

I've known Ed for nearly three decades. I remember talking to him on several occasions when he was plotting and writing China Basin. Two things have stuck in my mind ever since. First, Ed's explanation for the book's setting. He didn't much care for the world inhabited by Sam Spade of Maltese Falcon fame. It is a grubby world and Spade's is a barren, unexamined life. He wanted to present a happy detective of intellect. Skeen's perspective is much wider and grander. Unlike other neo-noir detectives, Skeen is a bon vivant who spends much time in the sordid world of crime, but doesn't become a part of it. He also wanted to recreate a bygone, and better, era. On both counts, China Basin is a roaring success. 

The book's plot is complex, but not overly so. There are no loose ends and the resolution is most satisfying. I won't go into details here and give anything away for people who haven't yet read China Basin. The story takes place in December 1928 after Skeen's return from a month-long trip to Europe. The plot revolves around Skeen's attempt to recover a lost artifact for a client. Of course, during the search both villains and femme fatales are encountered and dealt with.There is also a riot or rebellion against Prohibition officers at a local speakeasy where Skeen was meeting suspect: 

"Let me through, damn it!" shouted the lead Federal agent as he banged through the onlookers. Skeen did not get a good look at his face, and he did not think the man got a good look at his, for a shot glass sailed through the air and struck the agent on an ear. He cursed in pain and held a hand up to it, and with the other reached inside his coat for his revolver. But an arm reached out and yank it from his fingers the moment is appeared, while another jerked his shoulder around and ripped off the whistle and chain that was around his neck. A beefy ship's stoker turned him around again and pushed him, and the agent toppled backwards over the kneeling figure of a railroad fireman to the sawdust. A waitress calmly walked up a dumped her full tray of drinks on top of him. And all hell broke loose. (p. 155)

China Basin is the first of what are now twenty-nine Cyrus Skeen mystery and suspense novels. Their world of the late 1920s is believable with many interesting details of the period included. Ed did a prodigious amount of research for these books, and it shows. If you're interested in good stories, with memorable characters set in a colorful and exciting time, the Cyrus Skeen series is for you.

 

Delphin Enjolras, "La Lecture Pres De La Lampe"

Surprise! The Statue Jihad Began in California Decades Ago

Thomas Fallon was a leader of the Bear Flag Revolt in 1846. He is credited for raising the first American flag over San Jose, California on 14 July 1846. He later became mayor of San Jose. Back in the bad old days, it was routine to commemorate the services of patriots like Fallon. 

Thomas Fallon Building America

In the 1980s the city of San Jose commissioned a statue of Fallon that was to be placed in a prominent public place. The statue was completed. But, it was not put on public display. Instead, it was warehoused. The reason for doing so was because some la raza types objected to the existence of the United States of America.  

Protests from local Mexican American and Chicano groups derailed that plan. Latino activists argued that honoring Fallon, who raised the American flag over San Jose two months after Congress declared war on Mexico in 1846, was a symbol of oppression.
"In the 1990s, we went to the city and told them that this (statue) is a racial insult to people of Mexican descent," said Raul Estremera, a member of the group Pueblo Unido. "Last time this happened, the mayor backed down. We are hoping to do that once again."

Instead in April 2000, the city decided to take the statue out of cold storage and display it in an obscure park. They also commissioned three other statues to celebrate "San Jose's history and cultural diversity before the Fallon statue was put in place."

While the Fallon statue was in the cultural Marxist Memory Hole, the city commissioned another statue. The statue is of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. Seriously. The symbolism is obvious. It puts on notice the few real Americans left in the San Francisco Bay Area that they and their culture are scheduled for replacement. Although, I doubt most of them care. 

Quetzalcoatl or A Steaming Pile of....

Symbolism matters. It's why the current statue jihad matters. It's why President Trump's wonderful proclamation commemorating Columbus Day in a purely positive light matters. Self-loathing is for losers.  

Review: Leo Hohmann, Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and Resettlement Jihad, WND Books, 2017

Hohmann's Stealth Invasion is a comprehensive and readable explication of the ongoing Moslem invasion of the West. In fundamentals, there may not be much new here for those who have studied in-depth the issues raised. For concerned citizens who don't have the time or stomach to delve into this depressing topic, this volume covers the most important points.

The two central topics that Hohmann addresses are the ongoing, massive hijrah and the red-green alliance. The hijrah refers to the strategy used by Mohammad to invade and take over Medina in the 620s A.D. He brought in his own people from Mecca and began converting the tribes native to the Medina area. When a certain threshold was reached, Mohammad forcibly converted the recalcitrant. The Jewish tribes that refuse to convert were simply exterminated. For the last 1400 years the hijrah has been a model for Islamic takeover by non-military means.   

Can Your Rulers be more Explicit?

 As Hohmann recommends, 

We'll pay particular attention to a little-known Islamic concept called the hijra. Many Americans have heard of sharia and jihad, but few know about hijra, an Arab word that means "journey" or "migration." If you take away nothing else from this book, the hijra is key to understanding the mind-set of Muslim leaders when it comes to conquering new territories for Allah. (pg. 25) 

The global elite have made it clear that they are supporters of the hijra. The evil elite, and their self-loathing followers, generally cloak their agenda with appeals to "humanitarian" concerns while they bleat that the nation-state is obsolete (for them). Hohmann spends much time illustrating the nature of this diabolical alliance of evil. He names names and identifies the leading organizations involved from Muslim Brotherhood front groups to putative Christian churches making bank off the "refugee" scam.

The hijrah is just one part of the Davos Man's plot to destroy the nation-state, Balkanize the West, eradicate the American middle-class and rule as a global aristocracy over the ignorant peasants who don't understand the rudiments of liberty. Moslems share many of these goals. They just differ on what a one-world state should look like. Apparently, the cultural Marxists believe that once the Westphalian nation-state is gone, the Moslems will just peacefully step aside. Or, more likely, the elite will convert to Islam. As with the rulers of Saudi Arabia, adhering to the Medieval cult will detract little from their creature comforts and impart them even more power.
 

While these ruling elites may call themselves Democrats or Repulicans, Tories, Christian Democrats, or Social Democrats, they share one unifying trait. They work to implement secret trade deals and mass immigration policies that inevitably erode national sovereignty, divide national populations against each other, and cause civil strife. Open borders are a part of a political philosophy they espouse with religious fervor. The enemy is taking full advantage, building the ranks of its army a little more every day, every week, and every year. They're preparing the battlefield. (pg. xi)

The globalist border erasers are as evil as their Moslem allies. There are few innocents supporting the destruction of Western Civilization. They make their hostility to the West and their anti-White racism clear to everyone with ears to listen and a brain to think. 

Nearly thirty years ago, Leonard Peikoff wrote an analysis titled "Fact and Value." In it he argued that there are few innocently mistaken leaders or followers involved in today's almost endless nihilistic movements.    

The originators, leaders and intellectual spokesmen of all such movements are necessarily evaders on a major scale; they are not merely mistaken, but are crusading irrationalists. The mass base of such movements are not evaders of the same kind; but most of the followers are dishonest in their own passive way. They are unthinking, intellectually irresponsible ballast, unconcerned with logic or truth. They go along with corrupt trend-setters because their neighbors demand it, and/or because a given notion satisfies some out-of-context desire they happen to feel. People of this kind are not the helplessly ignorant, but the willfully self-deluded.

I would add those who champion the end of the nation-state by means of "multiculturalism," "open borders" and globalist "crony-capitalism" (however undefined) belong on the list of "inherently dishonest" movements reference by Peikoff.

Differences between Migration (Settling) and Immigration

I'm currently rereading David Hackett Fischer's masterpiece Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America. This classic work should not need much introduction for informed readers. Basically, Fischer documents four British sub-cultures, their migration and settlement in America and their impact on subsequent American culture. No brief review can do it justice. 

These "immigrants" were colonizers. They had no intention of assimilating into the native Indian cultures. Most insisted that the Indians assimilate into their British Christian culture or move west. There is a vast difference between subsequent immigration to America and settler/colonization movements. The words "migrant" and "migration" are used as convenient weasel words to obfuscate the central issue involved. 

Fischer illustrates that British settler leaders in the 17th and 18th centuries well understood the distinctions between different types of immigration. Their explicit intention was to plant the "seed" of British culture in a new land. They came to make North America British in culture, norms and politics. 

Fischer provides two telling quotes as chapter epigrams to make his point. Here's is William Penn's explanation of his purpose for settling the land that still bears his name (but, for how much longer?):

Colonies then are the Seeds of Nations, begun and nourished by the care of wise and populous Countries; as conceiving them best for the increase of Humane Stock. William Penn, 1681

Needless to say, this process is now ongoing in Western Europe and the southwest of the USA. The "populous" countries encouraging the "migration" are not wise, but they are brutal. From the perspective of the "mother countries," the purpose of "migration" is for the expansion of their political power and increased revenue (often to the determent of the colony).

Nearly a hundred years later Samuel Johnson commented on the issue even more explicitly: 

Whole neighborhoods formed parties for removal; so that departure from their native country is no longer exile. He that goes thus accompanied...sits down in a better climate, surrounded by his kindred and his friends: they carry with them their language, their opinions, their popular songs, and hereditary merriment; they change nothing but the place of their abode. Samuel Johnson, 1773

It is no accident that Johnson's quote can be easily applied to the current Mexican invasion of the United States. It is the whole point for the West's traitorous elites support for so-called chain migration. Such policy slows down or ends assimilation as the settlers form enclaves in the host nation. 

Any objective observer - much less self-defined intellectual - should understand the differences between legitimate immigration and settler colonization. Instead, they create an inexcusable package deal in which the former requires the latter. Sadly, today this dishonest package deal is being most vociferously promulgated by the libertarian-left and the "Objectivists" running the misnamed Ayn Rand Institute. Don't be fooled by these dishonest poseurs. The national self-interest of the United States or European nations is not their concern.  

Whatever their economic rationalizations, the destruction of the West is what they support. This is what they champion as legitimate immigration: