49 Comments

1. Lifeofthemind:

Americans should recognize the techniques in Labour’s Alinskyite campaign to personalize and destroy David Cameron. For years now the British Left have imported American Left Wing media experts to work on their elections. Does anybody know what David Axelrod and Company are up to? The tired program of guilt by third degree association is no longer as effective as it was for two reasons.

1. Repetition has bred resistance in the target population. That is offset by the fact that some have been in fact trained to respond faster without even needing all the messy logical blanks filled in.

2. The looming crisis has focused the attention of the voters and made them less vulnerable to manipulation by distraction than they were in the boom years.

As a tactic we have seen the efforts to vilify by association with persons associated with offensive groups used in politics, internet blog wars and high profile divorces. One problem with the tactic is that it cheapens our sense of outrage and allows some manipulative threats to pass. There are real hate mongers and extremists out there but attempting to demonize the Leader of the Tory party because he associates with the Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia demeans Labour and weakens the ability to confront genuine extremist threats.

Jun 7, 2009 - 8:52 pm 2. john lynch:

Like the Liberal Party in Canada, any orthodoxy can be overthrown even with totally favorable press coverage. Reality cannot be staved off forever.

And to be honest, even the press will turn on a party that loses the confidence of the public.

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:10 pm 3. Beverly:

But are the British Conservatives actually conservative, in the American sense of the word? I had the impression they could be roughly equivalent to our moderate Democrats.

The UK Indy party sounds interesting. Would be nice to have a patriotic party that isn’t tainted with racism; although, knowing the Leftists’ gift for slander, I’m not sure the BNP’ers actually are racist. It is true these days that any Anglo-Saxon who takes a proper pride in his heritage is tarred with that brush, whereas everyone else is praised for the same.

And a lot of us are damned sick and tired of that.

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:11 pm 4. dan:

Victory of UK Independent Party is, from what I understand, a victory of Britain and for us. Not least because they are strongly Euroskeptical.

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:15 pm 5. Walt:

The man now known as Done Up Brown
Whose grasp exceeds his reach
Has flickered out in London Town
Despite Obama beach
Whose glistening sand and cheery mien
Have done no earthly good
So now Gord Brown must quit the scene
As we all knew he would
But does it matter to us here
Across the briny deep
For no one has the least to fear
The British lion’s leap
The day has passed when who it was
In power really mattered
Her steep decline occurred becuz
Her confidence was shattered
As empire came an empty dream
And socialism’s system
Full thrust the labour unions’ scream
Down throats that di’nt resist ‘em
So now it’s gone, that lovely Isle
That source of law and glory
But close our eyes and we can smile
Recounting England’s story

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:38 pm 6. whiskey:

The real shocker is the BNP. Despite being viewed as “racist” by the Press and respectable people, it won two seats, one for the head of the party.

THAT is a shocker for Britain, and a harbinger of Britons fed up with the PC-Multiculti stuff that makes them discriminated against minorities in their own countries.

BNP may or may not be racist, I don’t have enough info to judge. But that they won while being called so means that calling someone racist has become an overused tactic that no longer works.

Britons find a nation awash in crime, PC, multiculturalism, kow-towing to Muslims, and so on, with nothing but MORE of that on the agenda.

What is interesting about the BNP is that they are unabashed social-nationalists (hmmm … I’m thinking of ANOTHER party that was that way). Among the BNP’s platform is making the National Health Care a “first world wonder” or words to that effect, and getting rid of most immigrants.

As a practical matter, Bruce Bawer in City Journal is correct. Socialist welfare states can only exist in homogenous, mono-ethnic societies where everyone is distantly related and has self-interest not to exploit the system, and immigration is a rarety.

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:43 pm 7. Rob:

The world turned upside down.

Jun 7, 2009 - 9:47 pm 8. twobyfour:

The Pirate Party won EU seat

Previously an obscure group of single-issue activists, the party enjoyed a jump in popularity after the conviction in April of four men behind The Pirate Bay, one of the world’s biggest free file-sharing website.
Despite the similar names, the party and the website are not linked.

Okay.;-)

Jun 7, 2009 - 10:02 pm 9. Belmont Club » Gordon Brown on the ropes | Czech Today:

[...] Read more from the original source: Belmont Club » Gordon Brown on the ropes [...]

Jun 7, 2009 - 10:03 pm 10. EdGi:

Labour has some of the “failed franchise” problems of the GOP, but it also has issues with allowing criminals, eurocrats and islamist thugs to run amuck. The Brits appear to be Osama’s “weak horse” and will appease damn near anything, but, when they are facing impossible odds and totalitarian control, they do the Battle of Britain thing. Odd, and quite confusing to both their friends and foes.

Jun 7, 2009 - 10:38 pm 11. Fletcher Christian:

Ultra-right nationalists and the Right in general appear to have gained ground in the rest of Europe as well. For example, I seem to remember seeing that the anti-dhimmi party in Denmark has won a seat or two.

The left has historically done rather well in hard times – not any more. Maybe Marx’s poisonous legacy is finally disappearing. On the downside, the chance of a quick general election in the UK is now just about zero; to get one many Labour MPs would have to vote for it, and they won’t. To use a well-worn cliche, it would be like turkeys voting for Christmas.

Jun 7, 2009 - 11:38 pm 12. Charles:

‘Spies’ tells how deeply KGB infiltrated America

By Mark Lardas
Correspondent

Published June 7, 2009
“Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB In America,” by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev, Yale University Press, May 2009, 704 pages, $35.

Joe McCarthy was right after all. There were Communists in the State Department. Maybe not the number Tail Gunner Joe claimed — or even the ones he suspected. However, Soviet spies were, indeed, employed by the U.S. government in the 1930s and ’40s.

Documentation of these Soviet espionage efforts in the United States comes from KGB archives — as revealed in “Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB In America.” After the Soviet Union collapsed, the KGB opened up its archives to an American publishing house for a history of the KGB. The Cold War was over. The Soviets lost, but the KGB was proud of its achievements, and wanted to raise money for a pension fund. (Even spies get old and retire.)

The KGB wanted to hold some things back. They hired a former KGB man to vet the material — and serve as a handler of the American co-author. That Russian — Alexander Vassiliev — made separate copies of the material he found, unknown to anyone, Russian or American. He smuggled these notes out of Russia in the late 1990s.

“Spies” is the result. Vassiliev collaborated with John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, two American historians noted for their work on Soviet espionage. The resulting book may be the most authoritative history of the Soviet Union’s efforts to spy on America during the 1930s and 1940s. It may be the first study of Soviet espionage to extensively use both Soviet and American archives.

The most startling aspect of the book is how deeply and broadly the Soviets penetrated. The book has excellent and fascinating chapters on the infiltration of the federal civil service and the atomic bomb program. The KGB and its predecessors had agents in the OSS. Many in the media are shown to have been in the pay of the KGB.

There was even a Congressman on the Soviet payroll during the late 1930s. He even attempted a McCarthy-style witch hunt for truly nonexistent fascist spies.

“Spies” also shows that several people who were used for decades as examples as martyrs of McCarthyism actually were Soviet spies. It also reveals that Soviet tradecraft was often poor. Soviet successes frequently depended upon American indifference to security.

“Spies” is a long book, and occasionally difficult to read. It’s worth the effort. It challenges much accepted conventional wisdom about Soviet spying and American counterintelligence — and explains why those myths are so pervasive.

Jun 7, 2009 - 11:56 pm 13. bob:

With the Swedes showing willingness to fight for Internet Freedom, you know the spine is stiffening! (As I hope it is, all over Europe)

Jun 7, 2009 - 11:56 pm 14. wretchard:

The left has historically done rather well in hard times – not any more. Maybe Marx’s poisonous legacy is finally disappearing.

There’s enough of an experience base now even in Western Europe, for significant numbers to judge programs based on results. Eastern Europe has long had a bellyful of Marx; but for a long time “progressive ideas” maintained the romantic appeal in Western Europe of something glimpsed but not beheld. Western experience with capitalism and individualism is long and established; you could laugh at it with some justification. But now its experience with collectivism is catching up and people can laugh at it too. This levels the playing field. With any luck this voters will now be able to judge things on merit and discount the millenial kooks who use ideology — of whatever type — to advance their harebrained schemes.

Maybe the US must itself experience what it’s like to live under a “progressive” leader in order for voters to disabuse themselves of its dubious advantages. The danger is that the learning experience is likely to prove traumatic and maybe unrecoverable — like the “coffin corner” envelope that Air France flight 447 might have got itself into. Europe could afford to screw up because it lived under the post-War US umbrella. It had training wheels. It got second chances. But if the US itself malfunctions, then the main props of the international system will have to collapse before voters realize their mistake and recalibrate. There are no training wheels for America and no brake except one’s face on the pavement.

Jun 8, 2009 - 12:05 am 15. dtmack:

Wretchard – well said. I wonder how many Europeans are awakening to the fact that the US has no training wheels, or have truly thought about what their societies will be like when the US face hits the pavement?

Europe has become the soft underbelly of Western civilization, and the consequences of a US collapse will hit them the hardest.

One of your commenters (on some previous thread), I forget who, made a point that he believed the coming political argument will be between Centralizers and Decentralizers, not DEM and GOP. I agree.

I don’t know much about the BNP, and it may truly be a piece of Nationalist, Xenophobic work, but one of their main tenants appears to be disunion from the EU. We’ll see more of that as things get worse there.

I hope that we can rethink things in this country, and put forth an agenda that promotes decentralization of political power (to the State level), without demonizing people, especially immigrants. I don’t think that any reform movement will be successful as long as we continue to consolidate power in DC.

Jun 8, 2009 - 1:37 am 16. Rob:

What will be interesting is to see when it becomes obvious that Obama’s policies have wrecked our economy whether Americans have enough independent thought left to bestir themselves from the media’s constant Obama-glorification to follow our UK cousins and embrace the right.

I’d lay about even odds on it.

Jun 8, 2009 - 2:10 am 17. wretchard:

As best I can make out, and I am not an expert on British politics, the BNP is a truly racist party; but it is racist in the same way that Al Sharpton is racist. The BNP’s Nick Griffin has evolved a set of talking points which takes the terms and rhetoric of the Left and applies it to ethnic Britons. He gleefully goes around talk shows talking about indigenous rights and about rediscovering cultural roots. The same sentences the BBC uses he uses, except that he applies logic of affirmative action to the English, the Scots and the Welsh. The BNP is like a reductio ad absurdum. It’s the Left looking at itself in the mirror and yelling “racist”! without quite realizing what they are looking at.

While doesn’t improve the logic of anything it makes the BNP anti-establishment and with the British voters seething at all the Conservatives (think RINO) and the Labourites (think far Left Democrat) — who they suspect are all the same — parties like BNP are bound to gain seats. But I think that neither the BNP nor their logical equivalents on the Left can govern viably. The Left likes to project itself as mainstream but they are really an extremist idea which if allowed to themselves for long enough simply push themselves over the cliff. The hope I suppose is that common sense will eventually prevail in governance.

Jun 8, 2009 - 2:26 am 18. lc:

There’s a line in Purnell’s resignation letter that to my simple mind seems a fundamental contradiction. “This moment calls for stronger regulation, an active state, better public services, an open democracy.” My problem is with “open democracy” in a list with his other items. Regulation is a bureaucratic function, not a legislative one. Not necessarily better, but in a democracy, legislation implies some kind of accountability, and, more than making something “legal”, is a mechanism against the capricious and arbitrary use of the coercive power of government (the so-called Rule of Law). An “active state” is the same mush. What belongs to the government belongs to the government…what belongs to me does too.

Jun 8, 2009 - 3:38 am 19. Pajamas Media » Gordon Brown on the Ropes:

[...] Read the entire piece here. [...]

Jun 8, 2009 - 4:14 am 20. RWE:

Everyone’s out of step but Obammy.

The election of G.W. Bush heralded, if not led to, the election of governments across Europe that saw things much more like Pres Bush.

The election of Obama heralded the election of government across Europe that are much more like Pres Bush.

Perhaps the people of Europe have figured out that they are going to have to look after their own interests and not defer that task to the Great White Father across the sea.

Looks like they decided to start their own bus line rather than attempt to board Obama’s and, inevitably, end up under it.

Jun 8, 2009 - 5:14 am 21. "progressive"watch:

I am overjoyed. Maybe there is hope for the old historic,before-socialism British. As for racism,who is doing the defining. A lot that which is called racism is not and whether you define it as racist or not,the drive for a multicultural brotherhood is suicidal,just like unilateral disarming.

Jun 8, 2009 - 5:46 am 22. elby:

Extremist parties like the BNP rise when the left shuts down any attempt to discuss matters important to the populace, such as immigration. For the past 20 plus years, no one could discuss limitations on immigration in Britain or continental Europe without being shouted down as a racist. Therefore, no national debate took place, and no national compromises were worked out. Instead the problems resulting from large numbers of unassimilated third world immigrants were ignored, the difficulties faced by the native population as a result of immigration were ignored, and the can was kicked down the road.

When the economies of the world were chugging along doing well, this was tolerable. Now that there is a severe economic crisis, this refusal to discuss the elephant in the room will only cause people to turn to extremist parties. John F. Kennedy said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” The problem is that the leftists, who control all levers of debate and expression, from kindergarten through college and in the news media, refuse to allow peaceful discussions of important issues. It is like keeping the lid on a pressure cooker. It might just explode.

The refusal to allow a discussion of immigration is only one among many examples. The Tories effectively silenced themselves on a whole host of issues in fear of the media manipulators. The room is so full of elephants that we’re all suffocating.

Jun 8, 2009 - 6:03 am 23. ajacksonian:

I may be the culprit on Centralizers/De-Centralizers as it is an ongoing theme in Western politics and gets concentrated in America due to the conditions of the continent and how we populate it. The ‘Anti-Federalists’ of the US were not against a stronger Union, but were against vested sovereignty in a National government without harsh checks and balances by the States and the people: indeed they argued for a stronger federal system in the sense of checks and balances and against that concentration of power. That isn’t ‘Anti-Federalist’ but strongly Federalist in conception, but the emphasis is taken away from centralizing a system and ensuring it is decentralized enough to allow liberty to thrive. Europe has had this, too, but density of population in cities has generally overwhelmed the countryside for the centuries post-Westphalia. The horrors of that, and the many Germanic Principalities needing to get some coherence (The German Question) swung Europe from de-centralization to centralization. Those wanting to leave that system came to America and started forming a more de-centralized system with greater individual liberty.

Europe is now having the exact, same, discussion that the US had in 1787-89, and the strong arguments of the US ‘Anti-Federalists’ now appear in Europe. Europe, however, does not have a starry-eyed Hamilton to deftly pick his way amongst arguments and ignore the bulk of criticisms of a ‘robust’ federal government able to intervene in the economy. Quite the opposite, Europe has now had over 60 years of just that sort of intervention and the results are clear: extremely high taxes, low productivity, a loss of enervation in society, and the decay of a system over-reliant on large scale government. Just the things the US ‘Anti-Federalists’ had warned about, and their warnings (pre-de Tocqueville by decades) are now the lights flashing of warning along the path we are on and have been on for decades. Europe is near the end of that road, and finding that the bridge is out, the ruts are deep and the chasm that should have a bridge ‘to the future’ has nothing across it save a fall into tyranny of government everlasting.

In the US the break is cultural and harsh, washing right up to the interstate bypasses. They have been present ever since colonial governments in towns and cities attempted to put high taxes and confiscation of land for non-payment on poor farmers in the countryside. Cities got that taste when Great Britain treated the whole of the Colonies like that, and then that was flipped around in 1783-86 with the uprisings against centralized State government repeating the exact, same mistakes. The need to lift the burden of paying off the Revolution and yet retain personal liberty was a hard one, and hard argued. While the drafters of the Constitution got their way, by and large, the Bill of Rights was a pay-off to get some written assurances that the government would not attempt to seize power via taxes or just taking over private concerns. Left without harsh checks and balances outside of the national government, it was argued then and now, left the system open to corruption, centralization and abuse. For over a century the US walked a very fine line on that, and only the Progressive movment gaining sway over both parties changed that, very slowly. Now that the social and political views of those giving warning are bearing fruit, we no longer want to hear them… for they do not lead to a good end as they had seen in previous Republics and Democracies. It is a well trod path to problems. We were warned about them. We think we are too advanced to be swayed by human nature… yet just the opposite is true as overly sophisticated humans use intricate arguments for their getting more power… and the end of that is not a good one as Europe now finds out. What comes when we close our eyes to this reality and plug our ears against the warnings is not pleasant. Not pleasant, at all.

Jun 8, 2009 - 6:13 am 24. cjm:

i think the English nationalist party (Independence Party, I think) has a better chance than the BNP.

Jun 8, 2009 - 6:19 am 25. Sebastian Shaw:

Gordon Brown is an idiot. How can you spend money you don’t have? The backlash is inevitable considering the leaderless jelly currently in the UK.

Jun 8, 2009 - 8:01 am 26. starling:

Whiskey @ 7: “As a practical matter, Bruce Bawer in City Journal is correct. Socialist welfare states can only exist in homogenous, mono-ethnic societies where everyone is distantly related and has self-interest not to exploit the system, and immigration is a rarety.”

Having spent the last weekend in Berlin, the last month in Stockholm, and the last four years in the Arabian Gulf, I’ve come to more or less the same conclusion as Bawer. Though I haven’t read his piece yet, from your summary I gather that a key insight is that the franchise can only be extended so far. In Europe, yes limiting immigration is key. In the oil-rich states of the Gulf, they allow immigration but very tightly control who gets to become a citizen and thus limit who can benefit from the state’s extraordinary largesse.

Jun 8, 2009 - 8:16 am 27. Charles:

21. “progressive”watch:

A lot that which is called racism is not and whether you define it as racist or not,the drive for a multicultural brotherhood is suicidal,just like unilateral disarming.
………………
What most people don’t quite understand about multiculturalism is that it has a religious component at the center of which is homosexuality. …— which in turn tends to rule all things homo as sacred and all thing hetero as profane. There are very real world consequences over time to this method of framing discussions.

Jun 8, 2009 - 8:17 am 28. Charles:

26. starling:
they allow immigration but very tightly control who gets to become a citizen and thus limit who can benefit from the state’s extraordinary largesse.

……….
What’s happened in the USA has been that the whole world has learned how to game the system’s largesse.

the first casualty of the gamed system is california.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:13 am 29. Mark:

Wrichard writes:

“Even the Conservative’s David Cameron is finding that he may have to shift further to the right simply to remain in step with the European Electoral results.”

Cameron and the conservatives have not been leaders; they have their fingers in the air to test the direction of the wind all of the time. That’s not surprising, but their apparent lack of enthusiasm for conservative principles (at least based on what I see during ‘Questions’) is disappointing. But if the electorate moves to the right, the party will drift to the right to take advantage of the trend. Labor will not maneuver to the right of the Conservative Party.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:17 am 30. TonyB:

The BNP are not just a robustly right wing “racist” party.

The BNP’s leadership have played a smart game in propitious circumstances and while many decent people dissillusioned with mainstream politics have become attracted to them either as voters or activists in recent years, be in no doubt as to the beliefs of the cadre and leadership – Hitler worshipers who would have the gas ovens running again sooner than you could say “Juden raus” if they ever had the chance.

They are on the same page as the Stormfront types in the US.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:19 am 31. Charles:

30. TonyB:

They are on the same page as the Stormfront types in the US.
………..
I think this overstates the case. Meyer Kahane never considered American racism to be very serious during his American days. When he went looking for real enemies of Zion–he had to go to Israel. He was too zionist for even the Israelis to stomach. The guy who killed him wasn’t a “McCarthy” conservative but rather a moslem.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:46 am 32. Fletcher Christian:

TonyB: Actually, this time it would be more likely to be “Muslime raus”. In fact, it already is. And I agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment. It is my opinion that being a good Muslim in a non-Muslim country, if you are a citizen of it, necessarily involves being a traitor. And if you are not a citizen, you are an enemy agent.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:48 am 33. kevIN:

The BNP gained seats not due to being explicitly racist, but from the general concerns of rampant immigration not being addressed. Britain is for the British is certainly a strong tribal message that must resonate well with many voters. Where this will all eventually lead we can only find out by waiting and watching. I certainly don’t think the Storm troopers of the BNP will be marching en masse anytime soon.

On another note, I’m happy with this Euro shift to the right – at least it may provide a possible bolt hole if things get (more) sour here in ye old U.S. of A.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:59 am 34. watcher:

Gordon Brown should by rights never have been Prime Minister; he was an incompetent Chancellor who raided the wealth of the nation to fund a host of disastrous and ill-considered “initiatives” and having brooded under the shadow of the self-serving Tony Blair for ten years was finally given his heart’s desire of becoming PM. But in true socialist style, he was made leader unopposed and unelected.

And like all socialists, Brown simply can’t handle money and certainly doesn’t understand wealth and how it is created. He can tax and he can impose more regulations. He can strangle but he can’t revive. Yet in the face of overwhelming opposition the dull man hangs on grimly, pretending only he can lead Britain – and the world, he likes to think – out of the recession.

But now Cameron (or whoever is the next British PM) has a huge problem. The way of the socialist is to create a swathe of public servant jobs, establish dependency on the state, so now the majority of Brits work for the government in one way or another, be it as teachers or nurses or in town halls or police or in a hundred other largely unknown areas of control. The unemployed are rewarded with healthy benefits so they never need work. The fabric of the country is weighed down with quangos and regulatory bodies.

The next administration can’t get rid of this socialist legacy; all the extra jobs can’t go unless the Tories want to look like they don’t care. Thus the Tories will be inheriting – and have to maintain – a ruinous socialist system. The taxes can’t be cut because of the endless squandering of monies under Blair and Brown, so there will be no relief from the punitive tax rates.

The damage has already been done with unfettered immigration, coupled with our endless submission to Europe (who make our laws, not Westminster) and that will not be challenged.

And any hope that we have seen the end of the monstrous, debilitating grip of socialism won’t happen. All the lefties say that Labour wasn’t socialist enough – that was the problem. In their jaundiced view we need even more of the things that have ruined the country. They see more control, more dogma more narrowing of hope as the way forward.

So socialism is not dead. It has done enormous damage over the last twelve years, and its legacy is to carry on screwing up the UK.

Jun 8, 2009 - 11:48 am 35. buckets:

elby – exactly

I agree completely with the sentiment, it’s one that many people here share. The inability to even discuss a move away from centralization and mindless multiculturalism in the EU is exactly akin to putting a lid on a rapidly boiling pot. I believe we will, unfortunately, see more of the far-right nationalist parties gaining adherents in the coming years.

I doubt there is a practical way to avoid it. Look at that dbag resigning in Brown’s cabinet – “We need more socialism, more centralization, stronger government, more reverse racism, more nanny state.” It might get ugly.

Jun 8, 2009 - 11:50 am 36. John Lynch:

Brown should hold on. If there’s an election, perhaps 100 current Labour MPs will be out of power, perhaps forever. Changes of government in Britain tend to be long-lasting. Labour ousted the Conservatives in 1997, and before that the Conservatives had been in power since 1979. It seems to me that an election now, which Labour would lose, is madness for any Labour MP. Even if they manage to hold onto their seat, they may be in opposition for a decade or more. The economy will improve, and an election now would give the credit to the Tories.

Hanging on for a year is the right way for Labour to bet.

It’s interesting to contrast the British parliamentary system with American term limits. It’s possible in America for a politician to end his career on a high note, and it’s possible for a deeply unpopular politician to continue governing to the end of his term.

Jun 8, 2009 - 11:52 am 37. Roderick Reilly:

“”"”"Despite a friendly press and decades of political correctness, their program might be described as having struck the iceberg of reality.”"”"”

May the same happen here in the U.S.

The biggest iceberg is a fiscal one. There is no way in Hell, Heaven, or on Earth that the federal government is ever going to be able to collect enough revenue to cover federal budgets from here on out. Not ever. We are almost certain to have a $4 trillion fiscal year budget for no later than 2012 (and that’s just the fiscal year budget that does not include TARP, stimulus, or bailouts, OR supplemetray war funds), with no prospects of being able to raise even as much as $3 trillion per year for the forseeable future.

Jun 8, 2009 - 11:52 am 38. NahnCee:

“There are no training wheels for America and no brake except one’s face on the pavement.”

We have enough farm land to feed ourselves; enough water to drink, to dam and to irrigate; enough coal and gas to heat; and enough guns to defend ourselves. And a pretty hefty stock of gold bullion to use for trade with the world’s barbarians, as well as two oceans to protect us against missiles put together by illiterate third-world terrorists.

America collapsing is not the same thing as Russia, or Zimbabwe or Venezuela collapsing.

Jun 8, 2009 - 11:57 am 39. Mark:

Can’t let the topic of fascists in Britain go by without a reference to that most entertaining specimen of the tribe, via Wiki):

“Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character from the Jeeves novels of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being an ‘amateur Dictator’ and the leader of a fictional fascist group in London called The Black Shorts. In the 1990s television series, Jeeves [Stephen Fry]and Wooster [Hugh Laurie], he is portrayed by John Turner and depicted as having a rather Hitleresque appearance.

“Spode is modelled after Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists, who were nicknamed the blackshirts. . . . Spode was at first an ‘amateur dictator’ who led a farcical group of fascists called the Saviours of England, better known as the Black Shorts. Spode adopted black shorts as a uniform because, according to Gussie Fink-Nottle in The Code of the Woosters, “By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left.” (alluding to various fascist groups — the black shirts of Mussolini, the brown shirts of Hitler, the blue shirts of Ireland, the Grey Shirts of South Africa, the Gold Shirts of Mexico, the green shirts of the National Corporate Party and Social Credit and the silver shirts of the United States). Bertie Wooster believes that wearing black shorts is an extreme social and sartorial faux pas (shorts being inappropriate for a grown man outside a sporting context) and uses it to make fun of Spode:

“‘The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you’re someone. You hear them shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’ and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make your bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: ‘Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?’”

— P. G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster speaking to Spode), in The Code of the Woosters (1938)

Jun 8, 2009 - 12:03 pm 40. whiskey:

I’m not convinced that the Left is out of the mainstream. Certainly it’s policies of mass immigration, destruction of the middle class, heavy government spending, find a lot of supporters.

At least in the short term, certain groups win. A lot. From the Left. Chief among them, women. Who benefit from social spending, which both props up single motherhood (no messy personal choices) AND female employment (most government social workers and education workers and health workers are women). Indeed the desire for preferences makes female workers advantaged and outside competition with White Male peers.

In the short run, this is quite advantageous. It explains why Barack Obama carried single women (who are most women in the US now) 70-29.

The long run DOES happen, however, and it seems that the long-run costs have come due: personal safety a crisis point even for women in fashionable areas, lack of ability to pay for increased female-centric government employment, Muslim political figures threatening the spoils politics by taking more than their “fair share” of the goodies.

I believe Leftism in the West was built on nothing more complicated than gender based spoils politics, in explicit alliances against the out of the native White male (who lacked family connections). Leftism going out of favor is nothing more complicated than previously junior partners (mostly the Muslims) taking most of the pie away from White Women.

White women retain their innate hostility towards native White men, AND the system (free market capitalism) that rewards high risk preferences (among White men). No one in Europe who is White and Female is likely to have a strong appetite for free market risk, since the winners will be mostly White Men, not White Women.

The BNP and parties LIKE IT that combine socialist risk-leveling, AND Nationalism (benefiting White Women) seem poised to pick up the most votes in long-term trends.

IF Leftist internationalism is failing, it’s failing because it’s core, White Women, are getting shafted in the spoils divisions.

Jun 8, 2009 - 1:37 pm 41. Subotai Bahadur:

Do not rule out the possibility that Labour will remain in power for a very long time. A VERY long time. Right now they are making noises in the papers [led by an article by Baroness Blackstone] that if Gordon Brown resigns, yet another Labour Prime Minister could be inserted again with no requirement for an election.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23704796-details/New+leader+would+not+mean+election/article.do

Combine that with the Parliamentary “reforms” that Labour claims to want to push, which includes fixed terms for Parliament. If they push through such a “reform” and create say a 5 year term for Parliament, starting the clock at the point when the reform becomes law; Labour will be in for at least that long. By that time, they will have been able, one way or another, to finish yielding British sovereignty to Brussels. At that point they will be running the British Satrapy, nee .

Subotai Bahadur

Jun 8, 2009 - 2:42 pm 42. Subotai Bahadur:

Re: #40 above
Hmm. missed the end of my last sentence. It should read “nee- the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Subotai Bahadur

Jun 8, 2009 - 2:46 pm 43. TonyB:

30. Charles, not sure what Kahane has to do with what I was saying. Really, five minutes on Google will demonstrate to you the BNP’s Hitlerite bona fides.

31. FC, yes I’m sure that muslims would be for it under the BNP as well but they really are anti-semitic as well, and the anti-semitism is more important to them when there are no cameras around.

35. JL – any attempt to extend the term of this Parliament would force the Queen to intervene. Don’t forget to whom the armed forces wear allegiance if it comes to it.

38. Mark – Spode is one reason why I never bought the accusations of collaboraton against Wodehouse. More of a Blandings man myself though.

Jun 8, 2009 - 3:47 pm 44. drjohn:

Brown missed the good fortune to be born in Connecticut, where the populace is so insufferably stupid that they’re likely to re-elect Dodd.

Jun 8, 2009 - 4:32 pm 45. NahnCee:

I see your Cnnnecticut and raise you a Massachusetts – not only called “Taxichusetts”, but also have Ted Kennedy AND John Kerry as their Senators.

Jun 8, 2009 - 9:50 pm 46. Al_Batross:

“Socialist welfare states can only exist in homogenous, mono-ethnic societies where everyone is distantly related and has self-interest not to exploit the system” whiskey @ 6.

An extremely important point, and I largely agree with Bawer’s piece (thanks for making me aware of it), in which he also says “the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive, and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on”.
I am not sure that everyone needs to be genetically related, though that certainly helps, but they do need to be related in attitude, with broadly similar ideas about the conduct of daily life.
Sometimes those ideas may be hard to quantify, having been unwittingly absorbed at the maternal knee, but the integration of immigrants greatly depends on the willingness of immigrants to study the behaviour of their new neighbours, and detect patterns and standards of acceptable conduct.

Jun 9, 2009 - 1:12 pm 47. mariner:

I’ll see your Connecticut and Massachussetts and raise you Chicago.

Jun 9, 2009 - 4:56 pm 48. myth buster:

Socialist welfare only works in places that export natural resources- like Venezuela and Alaska (and it’s somewhat of a stretch to call Alaska socialist since they don’t tax anybody).

Jun 9, 2009 - 6:33 pm 49. Bohemond:

“Perhaps the people of Europe have figured out that they are going to have to look after their own interests and not defer that task to the Great White Father across the sea.”

Erm- wouldn’t that be “the Great Half-White Father?”

—————–

Is the BNP Fascist or Neo-Nazi? Yes. “Right-wing?” Hardly. Their (published) economic manifesto is full-bore hard Socialist- starting with the nationalisation of all businesses larger than a handful of employees.

But of course the fascist governments of Mussolini, Hitler and Peron were all fully socialist as well.

Jun 10, 2009 - 8:16 am

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