THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

THE WRONG FEET ARE THE SAME TODAY AS THEY WERE IN THE SIXTIES | 2003-01-11

Actually all those campus protests in the 1960s had nothing to do with political leftism. The day that the military draft disappeared was the day that students totally lost interest in anti-war protesting.

What happened to the fashionable war protests in the 1960s was exactly what happened to the fashionable campaign against profiling after September 11, 2001.

Until the Vietnam War got serious, nobody minded the draft much. Working people got drafted but anyone who mattered could get an exemption by going to college or something.

During the Vietnam War very few upper income people were drafted and even fewer were forced into combat. But in the 1960s the slightest threat to the comfort of the class of people who fly commercial airliners today caused a major political explosion.

Even a hint of a serious military draft could cause a political revolution, and a serious draft has been politically impossible for decades.

Now if there is any kind of draft, Congressman Rangel has put liberal fingerprints all over it. He is stupid enough to be a respectable conservative.

WORDISM | 1999-05-15

Michael C. Tuggle's Edgefield Journal article, "True Believers and the South," reminded me about Eric Hoffer. Hoffer was a philosopher many of our so-called "intellectuals" are trying desperately to forget. He had several characteristics the modern academic cannot stand.

To start with, the ideal of the modern academic is Karl Marx.

Karl Marx, the left's Champion of the Working Class, never did a day's labor in his entire life. Academics all insist they are "friends of the working class," but they don't want to hear from anybody who actually does any work.

From the point of view of our so-called "intellectuals," Hoffer's first crime was that he was an actual working man.

Hoffer was a longshoreman who read a lot. He never had any formal education, but he wrote a number of brilliantly intellectual books, starting with "The True Believer." He repeatedly pointed out that intellectuals who claimed to be "friends of the working class" had nothing but contempt for real working people.

This real working man had contempt for other leftist pretensions. President Johnson appointed him to the Civil Rights Commission, and within a few weeks he declared the whole thing a fraud. Later he was given a professorship at Berkeley. Within a few weeks he pointed out that these high-powered university students were great at repeating cliches, but "They simply cannot THINK!"

Hoffer wrote in the 1950s and 1960s, back when almost all professional academics declared that working people needed a socialist economy. Hoffer's statement on how socialism treated real working people was as blunt as the rest of his comments. "Under capitalism," he said, "We are expected to work for money. Under socialism, we are expected to work for words."

For a sane person, reading the Soviet Constitution after their so-called "Worker's Revolution" is hilarious. In 1917, once he became the Soviet dictator, Lenin -- who also had never done a day's work in his life -- declared that Russia was now "a nation of workers, peasants, soldiers, and INTELLECTUALS."

Now let me ask you something, gang. Which one of these groups -- workers, peasants, soldiers and INTELLECTUALS, is going to sit on its backsides and give orders to the rest?

Lawyers, bureaucrats, and academics, these are the people who rule us. All of these people produce only one thing: Words. For those words they expect lots of money and ALL the power. These people constitute a vast and almost unimaginably powerful lobby dedicated to the importance of words over everything else. The only purpose of government, from their point of view, is to give them money and power.

Lawyers, bureaucrats, and academics insist that the only purpose people are united under one government is for purposes THEY lay down.

Lawyers, bureaucrats, and academics believe that a common race or a common culture means nothing. It is DOCUMENTS that unite men. To them, an American is neither more nor less than a person who has filled out the proper papers. All that matters to our rulers today are the words and documents they produce and control.

Those who want lawyers, bureaucrats and academics to rule are the opposite of nationalists. Nationalists believe that men are united by a common heritage and by blood ties, not by words and documents. Lawyers, bureaucrats and academics believe that the only thing that makes one a citizen of a country is words. A person who believes that men should be united according to their nation -- their common race and culture -- is a nationalist. One who believes that men are only united by words should therefore be called a "wordist."

Every wordist says that his philosophy will unite all mankind into one huge, loving community. But in the real world, different kinds of wordists are every bit as divided as nationalists are, and infinitely more vicious. Communism is a form of wordism. Communism is supposed to unite all mankind into a single, loving unit. The Communist form of wordism has killed over a hundred million people this century.

All wordists claim they love everybody and that their words unite everybody.

Then they proceed to kill real people by the millions, all in the name of their words.

Every wordist claims that his particular words will unite all mankind. The religious wars that slaughtered millions of Europeans in the sixteenth century were fought between fanatics who believed the words of Protestantism united all men and the fanatics who insisted the words of Catholicism united all men.

Each form of socialism is a form of wordism. Each form of socialism claims it makes all mankind one.

There are many different kinds of socialism, and each form of socialism claims to unite all mankind. Actually, each type of socialism unites only the people who are dedicated to the same form of socialism. Willy Brandt, the anti-Communist mayor of West Berlin during the 1950s, was a Democratic Socialist. He was the opponent of his fellow socialists, those of Soviet Communist variety, in East Berlin.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communists, who claimed their form of socialism united all mankind into a single loving unit, were enemies of Brandt AND East Germany. And, as usual with loving wordists, the Chinese Communists were busy murdering tens of millions of people in the name of their particular form of Love and Brotherhood.

A lot of noise is made about how brutal and vicious war between different nations or different races can be. But the worst wars in history were wordist wars. Those who devote themselves to Catholicism and Protestantism in the sixteenth century were wordists. Like all wordists, they said their philosophy, their books, their doctrines would unite all mankind. But, as usual, the only people they united were the people who agreed with their books and their dogma. But people who subscribed to the OTHER wordist dogma were their deadly enemies.

When the Protestant wordists and the Catholic wordists went to war with each other in the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the slaughter was incredible. In our century, we talk endlessly about Hitler's killings, but he was an amateur compared to Stalin. Hitler was a piker compared to the wordist Communist Mao Tse-Tung.

Today, the media talks about the ethnic cleansing of Milosevic. But compared to the Cambodian Communist Pol Pot, Milosevic is nothing. Pol Pot killed a QUARTER of the entire population of his country, whose population was about equal to that under Milosevic. By comparison, Milosevic is small change.

But Pol Pot is excusable, because he did what he did in the name of wordism.

Milosevic is a fanatical nationalist, so he is like HITLER. Wordism is dear to the hearts of a society ruled by lawyers, bureaucrats, and academics. For the wordists who rule us, it is nationalism, not killing, that is the only crime that matters.

ROE VS. WADE | 1999-01-23

January 22, 1999, is the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which overturned all state abortion laws in 1973. As always, the professional conservatives who are fighting abortion have the entire situation entirely backward.

Backward, that is, from the point of view of serious opponents of abortion. The professional opponents of abortion are doing very, very well for themselves.

I have been working with antiabortion leaders for a quarter of a century, on and off. I did it professionally for many years. Like the rest of the conservative movement, the antiabortion crusade is dead in the water. The reason for this is the same.

Like all professional antiliberals today, recognized antiabortion leaders do two things: 1) they make statements which give professional liberals something to complain about and, 2) they do not attack anything that would offend or threaten liberalism seriously.

As a result, recognized antiabortion leaders take up a nice, cozy place in our political hierarchy.

Now, according to the approved version, Roe Vs. Wade came as a complete shock to these antiabortion "leaders." The Supreme Court, these official spokesmen tell us, gave them no warning it was going to do something so extreme.

Before 1973, they tell us, the Court had kept to the Constitution. Only once before 1973 had the Court stepped out of line, you see. Antiabortion leaders moan and groan about what they seem to feel was the only bad decision the Supreme Court ever made before 1973: the Dred Scott Decision of 1857.

The wonderful thing about the Dred Scott decision of 1857 is that liberals agree with antiabortion leaders about it. It was a proslavery decision, and all the justices who decided it are safely dead.

This is supposed to show liberals how liberal antiabortion leaders are, at heart.

The liberals just laugh at them, of course.

Antiabortion leaders say they couldn't understand why liberals would laugh at them. So they tried to counter another reason that liberals don't take them seriously: their ideas are based on Christian teachings.

So the antiabortion leaders got some orthodox Jews and Jewish opponents of capital punishment on their side. Surely THIS would make liberals take them seriously.

The liberals are now lying on their backs, wheezing. They can't breathe they're laughing so hard.

Prolife leaders try so hard to get liberals to respect them, and all they get is more guffaws.

The Roe v. Wade decision struck down all state abortion laws. I have repeatedly explained here that it is utterly ridiculous to challenge the court's right to make this decision after accepting the 1968 Supreme Court decision which struck down all state antimiscegenation laws. In striking down all state antimiscegenation laws, the federal courts openly declared that they could do absolutely anything they wanted to.*

It appears that prolife leaders would far rather see millions of abortions than criticize the one thing that is most holy to both liberals and respectable conservatives: interracial marriage.

Every state which ratified the Constitution had and enforced and KEPT antimiscegenation laws. Every state but one which ratified the fourteenth amendment had and enforced and KEPT antimiscegenation laws. The court decided that the original Constitution and the fourteenth amendment made all state antimiscegenation laws unconstitutional.

Few, if any, states had antiabortion laws when the Constitution was ratified. If you accept the Supreme Court's 1968 decision, the 1973 Roe Vs. Wade is absolutely and, more important, UNQUESTIONABLY valid.

But the Catholic bishops all cheered on the 1968 decision on antimiscegenation laws. Liberals all cheered it on. No respectable conservative, then or now, has even dared to question it.

So, to remain acceptable to the media bureaucracy and other liberals, antiabortion leaders bravely attack the Dred Scott Decision.

Let me tell you a little story about these self-proclaimed Mouths of God who lead the antiabortion movement. They fancy themselves to be Great Theologians.

The Great Theologian of National Review and conservatism in the 1970s wrote a book that showed how the traditional Catholic ethnic groups in the North were morally superior to the Yankees - a proposition I can certainly live with.

But he did not call the Yankees by their real name. He called them "WASPs," which means "White Anglo-Saxon Protestants." To avoid calling Yankees by their real name, he insulted the entire white Protestant population of the South, too. The fact is that Southern white Protestants had exactly the same cultural and moral outlook he was praising in Northern ethnics -- the opposite of the Yankees. When we had lunch together, I pointed this out to this Official Conservative Voice of the Lord Jehovah. He freely admitted what he had said was a lie, and he would stand by it.

I pointed out to him that Southerners were largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, but they had the values he was declaring superior, the opposite of Yankee values.

I said to him that it seemed he had not used the accurate word "Yankee" because the media would attack him for it. He would lose his respectability.**

He looked me straight it the eye and said "Yes."

It never occurred to him to change this just because it wasn't true. He was insulting Southerners to get liberal approval, and he knew it. I mentioned this to dozens of other big-time conservatives. Not one of them doubted what I said, and not one was the slightest bit impressed by the fact that someone claiming to speak for God Almighty would stand by such a cheap lie.

That's what Mouth of God conservatives do routinely, you see.

The fact that this guy spoke for God and Conservatism did not obligate him to tell the truth.

I get very, very tired of conservatives acting like Clinton's lies are something special. For liberal approval, conservative respectables lie all the time.

So we have a prolife movement led by people whose first priority is not to offend anybody important.

Just as with the general conservative movement, until the rank and file tosses out the present leadership, which is acceptable to liberals as a barrel of laughs if nothing else -- it is strictly a noisemaking enterprise substituting for a real opposition.

We all know that, as presently constituted, the prolife movement is going nowhere.

In our society, whether abortion is formally legal or not is going to make very little difference. The war against abortion and the war against drugs are different in that abortion is legal and drugs are not. They are alike in a far more important way: both wars are being lost.

PATRIOT MCCAIN SAYS STOP DEMANDING LOYALTY FROM MINORITY GROUPS! | 2002-06-15

Al Sharpton has stated flatly that blacks owe no loyalty to the United States. He says that the only obligation here is that the United States owes reparations to blacks.

Senator John McCain stated flatly on The O'Reilly Factor that Mexicans born in the United States owe their first loyalty to "their Hispanic culture" (July 14, 2001 - THE FOUNDING FATHERS' PATRIOTISM IS MCAIN'S TREASON). This was what he told O'Reilly when O'Reilly said that American immigration policy should be in the interests of Americans. McCain began this statement with the flat word, "No."

In California, everyone agrees that what destroyed the Republican Party's future chances was its campaign to deny American taxpayer-financed benefits to illegal aliens. Again, the Hispanic voter's first loyalty, regardless of his accidental birthplace, is to Mexicans.

In "Roots," the faith of the colored man in his battle against whites was Islam. A starving Kunte Kinte refused the pork he was offered and addressed his fellow rebellious slave in Arabic with the traditional Moslem greeting, "Salaam."

You will never read this anywhere but in Whitaker Online. Anything that is inconvenient for liberals is instantly forgotten by conservatives. But just as Hollywood praised terror bombing in Godfather II (May 4, 2002 - WHEN TERROR BOMBING WAS COOL), it has urged the McCain idea that all minorities are common enemies of whites and that Islam is a legitimate vehicle for that hate.