Paul E. Gottfried

Having just read the Hate Watch bulletin of the SPLC about the cancellation of the American Renaissance conference, scheduled for February 15, I came away with heightened contempt for the "conservative movement." I don't blame the two DC hotels that refused to host the conference for the recent fiasco, or even the Four Point Sheraton at Manassas, which backed out at the last moment. These establishments were properly concerned that those whom Hate Watch describes as "antiracist activists" would vandalize their property and rough up the guests. In today's Western world, and particularly in such decayed former nations as Germany and Spain, the antifascist Left is free to do what it wants, and this often includes going on the rampage against uncooperative reactionaries or stubbornly bourgeois Christians. What is now happening to us is a belated replication of the European "liberal democratic" scene.

Of course, I don't expect the Left to be standing up for someone's right to detail the violent crimes of ethnic minorities. Not that the Left is really against racism. Indeed, it never complains about professors at elite universities who make careers out of trashing whites and in particular white males.

After the appearance of Sarah Palin’s ghost-written Going Rogue in November 2009, the former Alaska governor saw her celebrity soar. Her book sold over 600,000 copies within 36 hours of the time it went on sale. And even that paradigmatic liberal Oprah Winfrey worked hard to have Sarah on her TV programs. FOX News went agog over her 320-page work, and for about a week, her face was more visible on FOX than that of any of the channel’s other favorites.

The only influential people on the establishment right who expressed reservations about her, up until her recent overexposure on TV, were David Frum and Charles Krauthammer. But within the neoconservative camp, other opinions also surfaced. Bill Kristol and his fortnightly Weekly Standard have been high on Sarah, a fact that may be attributed to her Christian Zionism and her outspoken defense of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. And Krauthammer has moderated his critical attitude by observing on FOX that Sarah “will be a significant force in Republican politics, even if she never becomes president.”