Richard Spencer is right when he says that he couldn't think of any significant issue that the Alternative Right and the established conservative movement would hold in common. What he might have added is that he couldn't think of any significant issue over which the conservative movement and the GOP would disagree; or any major issue on which the Alternative Right and the GOP would agree. There is equal truth in all of these statements.

The conservative movement and the GOP have virtually merged, a situation that is underscored by the likelihood that the designated successor to Edwin Feulner as head of the Heritage Foundation will be the wife of Republican Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. Beltway conservative foundations work for Republican administrations almost exclusively, and they do so when the GOP is in power or else when it is trying to take over the presidency and/or Congress.

"AnteBragd" was upset by my article on the illustrious M. Van Rompuy. His/her arguments are incorrect, illogical or just plain silly. They are worthy of a response, however, because millions of Europeans are being force-fed such platitudes every day - as relentlessly, in fact, as we are being force-fed les victimes du jour by The Morning Edition...

• "Just because a lot of the paleos repeatedly claims that the EU is some kind "prison of nations" and rally or mock it by calling it EUSSR does not make it so. It is not so, by the simple reason, that all member states has [sic!] chosen to become members."

"Chosen"? Just ask the Danes or the Irish. When the people of a state say "no" to membership, or to an ever-tighter Union once their country is inside the Lager, they will be subjected to relentless pressure by the ruling elite to change their mind and say "yes"; but if and when they do succumb - as the Irish did to Lisbon last year, having been subjected to a massive barrage of Brussels-endowed Agitprop - now, that decision is treated as irreversible. The Euro-elite treats "democracy" as the process of manufacturing ideologically desirable outcomes determined in advance of the ostensible decision. The failure to produce one equals the failure of democracy; ergo the process will be fine-tuned and reactivated until it performs as expected.

It's certainly no fun to work so hard building a beautiful website and assembling a top-shelf group of contributors and then be ignored. So I'm glad that AltRight has ruffled enough feathers for the neocons and anti-racist Left (two groups that curiously seem to agree on quite a bit!) to take note. Peter Brimelow and I, and a couple of others, have already given interviews to a representative of FrumForum.com, and I doubt this was merely a fact-finding mission. Expect an article on us in David Frum's website in the near future. Yes, it's likely that this will be a hit piece, and the interviewer often tried to talk me into an Aren't-You-All-Just-A-Bunch-Of-Evil-Racists? corner. But I generally liked the guy, so I'll remain optimistic that the portrayal of us is fair.

Peter Brimelow discusses this issue on the VDARE blog:

I gave two phone interviews today, one to American Prospect’s Jessica Weisberg, who seems to be working on another version of the John-Tanton-is-the root-of all-evil meme, and FrumForum’s Tim Mak about Richard Spencer’s Alternative Right. (AltRight seems to be upsetting the political hegemonists. Here’s another attack, ludicrously blaming AltRight on me.)

Long experience has taught me to have no particular hope of accuracy or even elementary fairness in articles resulting from this sort of interview. But it struck me that they both ended on the same note. Ms. Weisberg asked me what were Tanton’s “real”motives. (Answer: he’s really interested in TREES, dammit! MORE PEOPLE MEAN FEWER TREES! How much clearer can he make it?) Mak asked me, rather nervously, didn’t I think that covering human biodiversity would lead to accusations of racism. (Answer:everything leads to accusations of racism–deal with it.)

Nigel Farage, a British member of the European Parliament, was fined an equivalent of $4,000 on Tuesday for "insulting" the new European Union President Herman van Rompuy (r.) and refusing to apologize. In a memorable performance in Strasbourg ten days eaerlier, the Euroskeptic MEP told the former Beligian prime minister that he had "all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk":

"We were told that when we had a president, we'd see a giant global political figure, a man who would be the political leader for 500 million people, the man that would represent all of us all of us on the world stage, the man whose job was so important that of course you're paid more than President Obama. Well, I'm afraid what we got was you... The question I want to ask is: 'Who are you?' I'd never heard of you, nobody in Europe had ever heard of you."