How is it possible that Rand Paul could have been so unprepared for Rachel Maddow's persistent questioning on the race issue? He claimed on her TV program that civil rights "hadn't been a real pressing issue on the campaign." Yet his National Public Radio interview on May 19 shows that he has been down this road before, similarly dodging questions and talking around the issue, while indicating confusion when the subject of race was brought up. According to Frank Rich, Paul had been known to express his views on race as far back as 2002.

Wasn't there time between that little NPR fiasco and the Maddow debacle for his advisers to sit him down and sort out the preferred approaches on all kinds of subjects? You know, "This is the way we're gonna handle this issue." He does have advisers, doesn't he?

How could it come as a surprise that race, of all subjects, would be front and center for any candidate, especially a declared Republican? Such lack of insight betrays a peculiar denseness. The subject of race is a "pressing issue" in every campaign and will remain so, as long as white men like Rand Paul can so easily be backed into a corner and put on the defensive. Maddow simply picked up on Paul's obvious discomfort during the previous NPR interview and ran with it.

In the closing days of the 2008 presidential campaign, I clicked an ambiguous link on an obscure website and stumbled into a parallel universe.

During the previous two years of that long election cycle, the media narrative surrounding Sen. John McCain had been one of unblemished heroism and selfless devotion to his fellow servicemen. Thousands of stories on television and in print had told of his brutal torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors, his steely refusal to crack, and his later political career aimed at serving the needs of fellow Vietnam veterans. This storyline had first reached the national stage during his 2000 campaign, then returned with even greater force as he successfully sought the 2008 Republican nomination. Seemingly accepted by all, this history became a centerpiece of his campaign. McCain’s supporters touted his heroism as proof that he possessed the character to be entrusted with America’s highest office, while his detractors merely sought to change the subject.

Once I clicked that link, I encountered a very different John McCain.

 

At one point in Western history, the "Robin Hood" of Anglo-Saxon legend became a socialist. When Hollywood got a hold him, he also became a charmer and prankster (as portrayed by Errol Flynn and animated by Disney), and later a mellow loner from Southern California in Kevin Costner's godawful 1991 production. But mostly, Robin was a socialist, and a man defined by the imperative of  "stealing from the rich to give to the poor." He became one of history's few universally beloved Leftists, his name emblazoned on various pieces of uplifting legislation. Ayn Rand declared him the epitome of evil. 

Something must be rotten in Sherwood forest. For in Russell Crow and Ridley Scott's Robin Hood (2010) only briefly does Robin actually don a hood and rob passers-by in the woods. (His victims in this case are leaders of the Roman church who had refused the starving population of Nottingham recourse to their grain.) Otherwise, the prince of theives is scandalously upright and law abiding. The New York Times's dissatisfaction with the film indicates that more than a century's worth of wealth-redistribution metaphors have been put at risk. (Or as Steve Sailer puts it, "American audiences ... have been puzzled (not without reason) over why Robin Hood doesn't have much to do with, well, Robin Hood.") 

Maybe I speak as a spoiled European, but the medieval-revival architecture at the University of Toronto is one of the few truly beautiful aspects of this Canadian city. The buildings are especially striking when you pass through Queen's Park -- the provincial parliament on your left and the equestrian statue of King Edward VII on your right -- walk underneath a bridge and finally reach the neo-Romanesque University College and the neo-Gothic lancet windows of the Hart House complex.

The arc beneath the bridge once showcased student murals. They depicted a series of Michelangelo's sibyls as well as a portrait of the artist -- a dark-haired, pale girl -- much like yours truly -- holding brushes and looking onto her creation. Though the paintings were not particularly well executed, the attempt was noteworthy. It certainly reminded me of my own days in art school.

Recently, the mural had been defaced with glued-on newsprint and a very different type of imagery. Where once sat the Delphic sibyl ... is that a dancing Middle-Eastern woman wearing a hijab or a leftist thug ... err ... "street activist" with a bandana covering the face?

Since the 1970s government has obsessively imposed "diversity" on a reluctant public. Unfortunately, the political equivalent of a "it's good for you" liver-and-cauliflower diet has not ushered in an Egalitarian Paradise, despite promises that a jumble of races, ethnic groups and sexes enriches everyone. As matters now stand, the unpopular mania rests entirely on admonitions -- eat it because it's good for you, backed up by government power ("if you don't eat it, Daddy will jam it down your throat!").

The "everybody benefits" argument is exceedingly difficult to prove. Testimonials, even from distinguished college presidents, typically lack hard evidence outside of tortured statistics, and the counter-arguments, notably, the inferior past performance of favored beneficiaries, certainly seem just as persuasive. After all, if it is so worthwhile, why must government jam it down our throats? Diversity defenders stress vague hopes to be delivered tomorrow while opponents cry shameless political pandering to secure votes from those otherwise unable find lucrative jobs or gain admission to top schools. It is no wonder, then, that acrimonious litigation continues to clog the legal system.

I want to start off by saying that the young man who spoke a little while ago was one of my students. And that made me so proud because I know that our people have strong leaders for years and years to come. ... We know that all of that is happening in the context of where we now stand is stolen, occupied Mayheeco. And the message that we bring is we want to bring a little bit more of a revolutionary context to this. Why is it that these people, these frail, racist, white people, want to keep us out of this country? It's not because simply of the color of our skin. It's not simply because they just want to exploit us. Let me tell you why. Because on this planet right now are six billion people, at the forefront of the revolutionary movement is the Raza!

~Ronald Gochez, Santee High School, 2007

Throughout history, when an occupying power has wanted to destabilize and destroy a nation, it has settled a foreign people in its midst. The seeds of the Balkan conflict were sown when the Turks planted Albanian Muslims in Kosovo to uproot the Christian Serbs who had long defended the borders of medieval Christendom and had more than once turned back the tide of an expanding Ottoman empire. The Soviet Union under Stalin methodically encouraged Russian emigration into the occupied Baltic states in a campaign of long-term Russification, to such an extent that nearly 30 percent of the populations of Latvia and Estonia were Russian.

Despite this, Americans did not worry about the massive migration of Mexicans and other third-world immigrants for many years due to their belief in equality and the idea of the American melting pot. Unfortunately, both concepts are complete myths, devoid of any support from logic, history or science. Despite the best efforts of the academic thought police and pop literary fantasists, such as Jared Diamond and Malcolm Gladwell, various scientific disciplines have quietly, but inexorably been demolishing the equalitarian hypothesis with regard to race, culture and sex.

I advocate what I call ‘citizenism’ as a functional, yet idealistic, alternative to the special-interest abuses of multiculturalism. Citizenism calls upon Americans to favor the well-being, even at some cost to ourselves, of our current fellow citizens over that of foreigners and internal factions. Among American citizens, it calls for individuals to be treated equally by the state, no matter what their race.

The citizenist sees little need for politically correct racial browbeating. Today’s omnipresent demand to lie about social realities in the name of ‘celebrating diversity’ becomes ethically irrelevant under citizenism, where the duty toward patriotic solidarity means that the old saying ‘he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch’ turns into a moral precept.

That is Steve Sailer in his recent book America’s Half-Blood Prince:  Barack Obama’s “Story of Race and Inheritance”. Probably most Takimag readers have heard of Steve (and his blog). Most, I’d guess, have read a couple of his pieces. Who is the guy? How did he come to write a book about Obama? Will citizenism catch on?

Pat Buchanan expresses the hope that "in the womb of white America" a "new people is gestating and fighting to be born." He is convinced that Middle America is already "beginning to assert its identity, unapologetically" as an ethno-nation alongside African-Americans, American Indians, native Hawaiians, and Hispanics. 

In fact, what we are witnessing are the death throes of homo Americanus. Mr Buchanan recalls that another "new people ... the Americans" was born two hundred years ago in the colonial struggle to achieve independence from Great Britain. Then, the American Adam declared himself free of the excess historical baggage accumulated during the Dark Ages of Anglo-Saxon Christendom. Middle America is reaping the whirlwind sown in the revolutionary Enlightenment.

The Tea Parties are not symptoms of restored vigour in the body politic. Instead, middle-class white people, drawn mainly from the "founding race" of their senile, degenerate nation-state, are searching for a magic political elixir to bring the decrepit Constitutional Republic back to life.