← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · All Old Right
Thread ID: 13479 | Posts: 21 | Started: 2004-05-01
2004-05-01 13:48 | User Profile
Seems cheap for coming out twice a month. Opinions? Worth getting 24 issues over 16?
2004-05-01 14:02 | User Profile
Paleos shouldnt ditch Amconmag just because it isnt radical enough. It is a powerful voice of dissent within the conservative movement and should be kept alive. We might not like the idea of Buchanan's apparent philo-semitism but at least he has the courage to expose the projects of the Neo-Cons. Thats no small matter.
2004-05-01 14:24 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Peter Phillips]Paleos shouldnt ditch Amconmag just because it isnt radical enough. It is a powerful voice of dissent within the conservative movement and should be kept alive. We might not like the idea of Buchanan's apparent philo-semitism but at least he has the courage to expose the projects of the Neo-Cons. Thats no small matter.[/QUOTE]
I agree. Amcon is the only publication that is even remotely in the mainstream media to put forth Paleo arguments at all. As for Pat's "apparent philo-semitism," I think he has to throw the Judeo establishment a bone every now and then just to stay in the game. We are all better off with him and Taki in the public eye than not. For what it's worth, a couple of weeks ago Pat was on Shecky's lap dog, Sean Hannity's show. He had Sean foaming at the mouth with irrational dispensationalist indignation when he told the truth about the Zionist usurpers.
2004-05-01 15:51 | User Profile
[QUOTE=All Old Right]Seems cheap for coming out twice a month. Opinions? Worth getting 24 issues over 16?[/QUOTE]
Long-running OD threads Re: TAC here:
[url=http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=4293]TAC Sells Out to Neocons[/url]
and here:
[url=http://forums.originaldissent.com/showthread.php?t=5254&page=1]"The Marx of the Anti-Semites" in TAC[/url]
My litmus test for re-subscribing is when Scott McConnell lets Joe Sobran write for the mag....until that happens (which likely will be never) I'll support other media.
Besides, most of the "big" stories the mag publishes--those by Buchanan and Taki--are nearly always available online for free.
2004-05-01 16:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Centinel]Besides, most of the "big" stories the mag publishes--those by Buchanan and Taki--are nearly always available online for free.[/QUOTE]
I've found that to be the case, only I consider Taki fairly pedestrian. The best part of the magazine is each week's cover. Usually quite funny.
2004-05-01 21:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=All Old Right]Seems cheap for coming out twice a month. Opinions? Worth getting 24 issues over 16?[/QUOTE]
Its cheap and very well worth it. It deserves our support in principle, but more importantly, many good articles are not available on-line. Some of you who have never subscried may not realize what you've been missing. I got it for the first year it was out, but have been forced to let my subscription lapse....
Oh, and Taki rules!
2004-05-03 21:11 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]What are you referring to specifically in mentioning Buchanan's "philosemitism?" We all know that Buchanan is no White Nationalist and that he often waters down his message to remain "respectable," but I've yet to see any Buckley-style grovelling before the Talmudists on his part.
I no longer subscribe to TAC, mainly because I found most of the material there uninteresting. However, I'm glad that the magazine is around, and I've thought of re-subscribing just in order to keep at least one anti-neocon voice (however mild) in the mainstream. Keep in mind that most people won't touch anything that's considered officially "fringe" (i.e. labelled such by the powers that be) with a ten foot pole, so outfits like TAC are the only way to inform the majority of people about neocon perfidy. Try as they may, the neos never managed to marginalize PJB - he's too good at playing their game (granted, by making a lot of concessions that make us uneasy), but is still there to makes jabs at "neoconservative interlopers" and the "Amen Corner."
We may not like the fact that TAC ran Derbyshire's smear piece on MacDonald or a couple of articles that condemn "racism," but the magazine still serves a purpose.[/QUOTE] AY,
I dont believe Buchanan is a "Philosemite" but the reason I used the words "apparent Philosemitism" is because of some of the articles that have appeared in the magazine. The Derbyshire criticism on MacDonald was one. This was another:
[QUOTE]
[size=+3]Zionism: A Defense [/size]
[size=+1]A prominent conservative argues that cultural and political kinship make Israel the Westââ¬â¢s natural ally. [/size]
By Peter Hitchens
Conservatives should support the State of Israel on principle, just as the globalist Left seeks to defeat Zionism on principle. The legions of political correctness would usually approve of a state founded as the result of a classic ââ¬Ånational liberationââ¬Â struggle against a classic ââ¬Åcolonial oppressorââ¬Â and ought to endorse a country so profoundly secular in so many of its institutions and so dominated by social-democratic political and cultural thinking. Especially, they should be enthusiastic about a nation whose whole reason for existence is profoundly anti-racist.
But they donââ¬â¢t and they arenââ¬â¢t. The Left will readily forgive Irish Republicans for terror and even for Catholicism. They remain sentimental about Fidel Castro despite the show trials and the dungeons. They will pardon South Africa almost everything, including an incorrect attitude towards AIDS. But all the categories flip over and upside down when it comes to Israel and Zionism. Why? Here are some suggestions, offered in the spirit of inquiry.
Despite its socialist appearanceââ¬âkibbutzes, female soldiers, and the restââ¬âZionism is a profoundly conservative idea, based on the re-creation of an ancient nation and culture. It is also globally conservative, requiring a definite and uncompromising form of national sovereignty and an implicit rejection of multiculturalism. Israel standsââ¬âalone in its regionââ¬âfor placing the rule of law above the rule of power. Its destruction would be a disaster for what remains of the civilized world. Yet it has never been so threatened.
The recent Iraq war has done substantial damage to Israelââ¬â¢s hopes of survival, damage that was implicit in the pro-war case from the start. Those Zionists who supported the war made a serious mistake. The marketers of political and diplomatic cliché have expressed surprise that George W. Bush fulfilled his earlier pledge to pursue the road map to peace. How wrong they were. Even as the doomed Abu Mazen is carted off the stage in a bruised heap, the absurd effort to find a Palestinian Authority chieftain who both has any power and believes in compromise continues. If they had been paying attention, they would have realized that the globalist faction in the Republican Party has for many years been ready to sacrifice Israel in return for a settlement with the Muslim world.
It is strange how few have put together the two most frightening events of the year 2001, even though they took place within days of each other. The first was the Durban conference of the United Nations, supposedly ââ¬Åagainst racism.ââ¬Â The Muslim world chose to turn this gathering into a scream of hatred against Israel and against its protector America, so much so that the U.S. and Israeli delegations walked out. Just a few days later came the attack of Sept. 11. It has always interested me that this event was swiftly followed by, of all things, the payment of Americaââ¬â¢s back dues to the UN and the first open White House declaration of support for a Palestinian state. The War on Terror was strangely irrelevant to what had actually happened, with its clumsy ill-directed blows against Afghanistan and Iraq and its embarrassed refusal to confront Saudi involvement in terror or notice Palestinian street celebrations of the Manhattan massacre.
The alteration in policy towards Israel and the amazing pressure that must have been put on Ariel Sharon to swap his mailed club for an olive branch are by contrast real, accurately directed, and vastly significant. The trouble is, they are acts of appeasement rather than of resolution. This is serious, and if Washington is wrong (as I believe it is) about the Palestinian causeââ¬â¢s real capacity for compromise, it will turn out to be a grave step towards the dissolution of the Israeli stateââ¬ânot by frontal military action but by demoralization, destabilization, and de-legitimization.
The Israeli state has many flaws that only a fool would deny. Terrorists, still not fully disowned and in some cases actually revered, were prominent in its establishment and then in its governing class. It has engaged in pre-emptive war and has driven people from their homes through fear and massacre. Some of its responses to terrorist attack have been clumsy, lazy, and incompetent. Its present Prime Minister is severely tainted by indefensibly ruthless and inhumane past actions. Its political system is designed to enthrone factions, some of them repellent. The most important fault of all is that Israel should never have been founded, and should never have needed to be founded. But this last fault is an involuntary one, and is the reason for many of the countryââ¬â¢s other troubles. It is no good blaming Israel for existing when its foundation was a desperate response to mechanized racial murder. Nor is it any good for supporters or opponents of modern Israel to pretend that the National Socialist massacre of Jews did not change the argument about Zionism for as far ahead as it is possible to look.
If the world were as liberal idealists imagine, Zionism ought to have been forgotten long ago as a foolish idea, a cranky and hopeless project as unrealistic as Esperanto. And if mankind were ruled by reason, then Zionism would indeed have gone the way of Esperanto. You might have thought that secularism, by making Judaism a matter of involuntary race rather than one of voluntary religion, would have resulted in near-total integration and assimilation. This did not happen. The opposite did. It is therefore important to remember that most right-thinking people believed with utter certainty that assimilation would happen and Zionism would fail. They believed this, during the years before 1914, in a period of history similar to our own because of its illusory stability and its materialist optimism. They continued to believe it in an era similar to the one we are just entering, the years of nervous anticipation and fear of war between 1918 and 1939.
The projected ââ¬ÅNational Home for the Jewsââ¬Â endorsed by Britain in 1917 was never intended to become a nation. It was to be part of the British Empire, not ruling itself but governed benignly from London, a permanent way station on the proposed land-route to India and a glacis protecting the Suez Canal from any power that threatened it from the north. The British Empire accepted the Zionist scheme because it provided Britain with an excuse to straddle one of the most important pieces of strategic property in the world.
This arrangement would have safeguarded the Arab peoples already living in the neglected Ottoman sanjaks that were arbitrarily glued together to form the Palestine Mandate, an entity even more artificial than Iraq. Under British government, Arabs were not given the right to rule Jews, and Jews were not given the right to rule Arabs.
When the idea was first put forward, there was plenty of room for both peoples within wide frontiers. For at that stage nobody had planned to set up the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which first came to birth as the Emirate of Transjordan, hacked in a hurry out of the original Mandate. This was another accident along the way, following the diplomatic game of pass-the-parcel, which began when the French ejected the British client ââ¬ÅKingââ¬Â Faisal from Syria in July 1920. They had won the territory at the peace conference and did not share T.E. Lawrenceââ¬â¢s enthusiasm for Hashemite chieftains.
To console Faisal, London gave him the throne of Iraq instead, inaugurating another permanent crisis. This displaced his brother Abdullah, who had originally been promised the Baghdad throne. Abdullah, a monarch with no realm, urgently needed another kingdom to reign over. He complained noisily and was given Transjordan to soothe his wounded feelings. Thus three-quarters of the original Palestine Mandate, the entire area east of the river Jordan, was snatched away from the projected ââ¬ÅNational Homeââ¬Â before it had even begun. The famous West Bank was seized illegally by Transjordan in 1948, allowing that country to change its name to Jordan. So when Israel occupied it in 1967, it merely passed from one illegal occupier to another. Though it is not widely known, this very area was originally designated for ââ¬Åclose Jewish settlementââ¬Â at the San Remo Accords, which defined the original Mandate and which remain the only agreed international document defining sovereignty over this territory. Even the Golan Heights, now claimed righteously by Syria, were originally within the Mandate and became part of Syria in later Anglo-French horse-trading.
There is a general assumption that Israel at some point stole its territory from a legitimate Arab state. Many of Israelââ¬â¢s critics seem to believe that there was at one stage a sovereign country called ââ¬ÅPalestineââ¬Â out of which the Jewish nation was unfairly carved. But no such country ever existed; Palestine was never the name of anything but a Roman province. The only previous titleââ¬âfor so many centuries that it had no real rival claimantââ¬âhad belonged to the Ottoman Empire. From the Ottomans it passed directly to the British. When Britain, bankrupt and demoralized, scuttled from the region in 1948, Israel grabbed as much as it could of this dubious legacy. Arab armies in turn seized as much as they could.
Israelis unquestionably perpetrated unforgivable massacres and drove people from their homes. Had things gone the other way, there would have been other massacres, other refugees. Wilsonian ideals of national self-determination can take on a blood-stained tinge, just as much as imperialism, if not more so. When a colonial power vacates a disputed territory, such horrors are likely. But this was in 1948, a year after the partition of India and Pakistan, another shameful scuttle by Britain. All the refugees from that vast upheaval have found new homes. It also came shortly after the expulsion of millions of Germans from East Prussia, the Czech lands, and from Western Poland. Those dispossessed in these savage deportations have long since resettled, and no serious movement demands their return home. Why, uniquely, are the Arab refugees of 1948 still the focus of international demands for the restoration of lost lands?
There is one key difference that keeps this issue alive, especially on the Left, which mostly has not even heard of the German expulsions and would probably defend them if it had. Israel is not like other countries because it is a Western nation carved out of Middle Eastern territory. This leads us to the uncomfortable truthââ¬âunwelcome to modern Zionists who shudder visibly at any mention of the wordââ¬âthat Israel is the last major European imperial colony on the face of the earth. In its struggle for survival in a world that already has enough reasons for disapproving of it, modern Israel has sought to stifle such thoughts.
But a European colony it is. What distinguishes Israel from its Arab neighbors is no longer its general prosperity and physical modernity. Oil has evened up these differences in the past decade, and, while serious squalor persists in many Arab countries, so do middle-class comfort and good, functioning services. The difference runs much deeper. Israelââ¬â¢s people are European by culture and law, imposing that culture and law on a region where cousin marriage and tribal loyalty are normal, while pluralism, tolerance, party politics, and the rule of law are abnormal. In this, the new state is the direct heir of the British officers who governed the area as undisguised colonists between the two global warsââ¬âand from whom it has inherited much of its legal system, not to mention a chain of imperial fortresses still used by the Israeli army.
This makes Israel the permanent ally, in the Middle East, of the worldââ¬â¢s lawful and free countries. This alliance is based on cultural and political kinship, factors that cannot be altered by a tyrantââ¬â¢s death or a coup dââ¬â¢Ã©tat. Washington may be able to buy the friendship of one Arab or Muslim regime or another with arms and cash. But as soon as that regime falls, the investment of years is wasted if the new rulers are hostile.
I suspect this difference, far more than the ethnic and religious ones, arouses the hostility of Arab regimes. We do not really know what the Arab and Muslim peoples think, since such states do not have free public opinion as we know it. We do know that an ugly anti-Semitism previously largely unknown in the Middle East, has been deliberately and crudely encouraged by Arab regimes trying to find an outlet for the justified discontents of their own poor. We also know that there has been no desire for permanent compromise and genuine peace between even the supposedly moderate Arab regimes and Israel. The state of relations between Israel and Egypt, for instance, is frigid, nervous, and held in place mainly by American subsidies, and this despite Israelââ¬â¢s handover of territory of enormous strategic value. In fact, the Israeli-Egypt ââ¬Åpeace,ââ¬Â artificial and without friendship between governments or peoples, is a standing warning to those who fantasize about a ââ¬Ånew Middle Eastââ¬Â or a harmonious two-state solution.
The hostility is bitter, kept alive by semi-official and official media and, in a nasty new development, it is now often crudely racialist, though nobody is supposed to mention this. The Western Left would drive a Holocaust-denier from any campus that employed him, but the thought police who search the minds of their domestic opponents are unmoved by the blatant anti-Semitism of the Arab terror organizations. Many who denounce Islam for its intolerance draw back from this condemnation when that intolerance is directed against Zionists. By a peculiar process of mental dishonesty so outrageous that it works, Zionism is often equated directly with German National Socialism by critics of Israel. The only reason for this absurd, disproportionate, and cynical claim is that it neutralizes the fundamental case for Zionism, namely that Germanyââ¬â¢s policy of systematic massacre was unique, and that the Jewish case for a Jewish sovereign state is therefore unique.
Conservatism is realistic, honest, consistent, and opposed to cant. It takes the side of the particular and the ancient. It sees virtues in Western civilization against its rivals. It penetrates the disguises in which history advances itself and is not fooled by passing appearances. It does not seek perfection, but it does try to be principled. On all these grounds, and because that country is threatened as never before by shallow and ill-considered idealism, conservatism should consider Israel an ally.
[/QUOTE]
2004-05-03 21:16 | User Profile
It's an ok magazine. Buchanan writes well, of course - [I]but[/I].
There's nothing in TAC that you can't find on, say, Lew Rockwell's site - or half-a-dozen other internet venues.
In terms of what TAC hoped to be, however, it is a failure. The guarded rhetoric and half-measures of the magazine seem to've been adopted in a concerted effort to offer the public a palatable alternative to the Jewish warmongerzines choking the newsstands. Pat will rail on about "imperialism" and "neo-Jacobins", and allude darkly to "foreign powers" claiming pride of place in the affections of neocons - yet will always find time (in seemingly every issue) to lavish praise upon Jews and the "Judeo-Christian" tradition - because he wants TAC to appeal to (and hopefully subvert) the easily-frightened three-piece-suit types who read magazines like NR or THE STANDARD (or even THE NATION) on their daily commute. He's trying not to frighten the women and livestock, in other words, yet still get at least an adulterated version of his message out there. Thus, the faux-Thomas Nast covers (as opposed to Sharon drinking blood from a longneck, or Hitler on the cross) and soft-shoulders tone of the text pieces.
But TAC is a failure because it has achieved virtually zero visibility and market-share thus far. (Dunno about subscriptions, though.) TAC's strategy of "speak truth to power - but take a sweater cos it gets a little chilly at night" didn't exactly backfire....it just sort of stalled there, stillborn, on the launch pad.
This is a pretty common failing among those out of power: they don't want to draw censure and boycotts - even though outrage and controversy always builds circulation if only because it gets people talking about your publication. I get the impression that Pat and Taki wanted above all for TAC to be the publication of record representing The Respectable, Responsible Opposition. I get the further impression, thumbing through TAC, that Buchanan has half-conceded that the Jews have won and will still be in charge after he's gone, and he doesn't want to leave a paper trail that will justify the future Zionist power-structure marginalizing him out of the history books, or blacking his name into an unsavory footnote best ignored by generations to come. He's at that age where he's begun to weigh how his words will either tarnish or embellish his reputation. And TAC reads that way, unfortunately: a half-hearted broadsheet published by wealthy old men who - if they can't win outright - would prefer not to be thought of as sieg-heiling, knuckle-dragging 'anti-Semites'.
Silly, isn't it? Buchanan is already perceived as a neo-Nazi by an overwhelming majority of the population, and he's forgotten the first rule governing those out of power: you have nothing to lose except what little base you have left and you may lose even that if you insist on pulling your punches. If Pat saw himself as most of the world sees him - if he understood [I]he has no reputation to salvage so long as Jews rule the West [/I] - he might understand that firing full-battery salvos at this point cannot damage him further, but instead might just revitalize and renew the moribund Far Right, and restore some of that personal luster he thinks he still has.
2004-05-03 21:43 | User Profile
I think going the whole hog with the Magazine would be a mistake. Just think about it for a minute. Whats the point of writing stuff for an audience that is already aware of the arguments? The people who already know the arguments are ones who regularly use forums such as this or others on the fringe right. If you go the whole hog straight away, you simply turn off people who might be able to convert at a future date.
I dont think Buchanan is doing this simply to save his reputation in old age. I think that gives zero credit to his intelligence. He knows as we all know that unless you tow the full line with Jews, they will hate you and youll get nowhere. You have to go the whole hog and be willing to give up the entire world for Israel or theyll hate you. Buchanan knows all this - hes dealt with them for three decades now and seen all their stripes.
The key is however being able to criticize America's overseas adventures (which are at the heart of the Zionist lobby's concerns) in reasonable language and build a groundswell of opinion against it. I think Buchanan has a fantastic chance of doing this now more than ever before. People are turning sour on the war and they want out. Also, healthy majorities believe that the War was unjustified in hindsight. Buchanan had the courage to stick his neck out at the height of war fever and argue that this was a bad idea and would lead to terrible consequences. He simply needs to cash in on this.
Going the whole hog would blot out the message in the minds of people who are not part of the "movement" but whose support is necessary to break the cast iron grip the Zionists have over the power structure. There is no better way of doing that than by turning people away from the Israel-first crowd.
That said, I do believe that articles like the one I reproduced below were completely unnecessary. Bad tactics. But if he doesnt repeat them he should still be able to cash in.
2004-05-03 22:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie][COLOR=DimGray]The most important task ahead of us is not one of providing entertainment and a resounding chorus of "amens" for the already converted, but rather in winning new converts[/COLOR]. [/QUOTE]This should be remembered by all who post here.[QUOTE]Whether TAC (most likely inadvertantly given the fact that neither Buchanan nor Taki seem to be even crypto-WN's) fulfills that function is debatable,[/QUOTE] I had one telephone conversation with Taki and suspect he would be far more amenable to our cause than the others. The editor, McConnell, has very, very little testosterone.
When it really would count, Pat Buchanon cannot be relied on.
2004-05-03 23:01 | User Profile
[QUOTE]I think going the whole hog with the Magazine would be a mistake. Just think about it for a minute. Whats the point of writing stuff for an audience that is already aware of the arguments? The key is however being able to criticize America's overseas adventures (which are at the heart of the Zionist lobby's concerns) in reasonable language and build a groundswell of opinion against it. [/QUOTE]
Peter I don't doubt that you're right and I don't demand that Pat revive DER STURMER. On the other hand, if substituting the word "Jews" for, say, "neo-Jacobins" is verboten - when you meant to say "Jews" in the first place - then we're never going to get [I]any[/I]where. If you let Jews frame every argument and dictate where every foul-line is to be located, then why play? You've lost already. I mean, slow and steady don't win the race when you're hitting the backstretch. There [I]is [/I] a sense of urgency here, given that we're now balls-deep in the kind of conflict it's going to take decades to extract ourselves from and - oh, yeah - the economy's tanking and the joint's suddenly full of Mexicans besides.
Look at it another way - TAC has been run in a soft-shoulders, big-tent fashion since its inception and it hasn't made a dent nor won very many converts thus far. To win new people over, they have to be aware that the magazine exists...the thing has to have a little juice, a little momentum behind it. Like it or not, most folks - when they gravitate towards something new - are following the buzz (or are titillated into curiosity by the loud shouting). TAC isn't really generating much of either.
Like I said, it's a pretty good read. But hardly a [I]galvanizing [/I] one.
[QUOTE]I dont think Buchanan is doing this simply to save his reputation in old age. I think that gives zero credit to his intelligence. [/QUOTE]
When one is nearing 70 and has lived their life in the public eye as Pat has, I would find it harder to believe that he [I]isn't [/I] concerned with his legacy at this point. He has been a political animal all his life, and a would-be leader of the Free World a few times. People like that tend to be obsessed with things that might never occur to the rest of us - like history's judgment of him.
2004-05-04 00:22 | User Profile
[QUOTE=AntiYuppie]McConnell is basically a former neocon who has strayed away from his former allies on a few issues, but is nevertheless fond of the neocons personally and evidently enjoys moving in their circles. He regards the Kristols and Poddys of the world not as enemies but as opponents in a polite debate (even though Poddy doesn't bother being polite with him), so as such McConnell is more or less useless to us.
However, McConnell probably has more day-to-day say over TAC's editorial content than anyone, and has been cited on The Last Ditch by Henry Gallagher Fields as being the one who won't let Sobran write for the mag. And Taki, as the bankroller of the whole thing, certainly has more say about what gets on the pages than Buchanan. Personally, I don't have much problem with anything Pat himself has written for TAC, though he certainly bares more fang in his syndicated columns. My main complaints with the mag are 1) refusal to let Sobran write and relegating Francis to obscure book reviews 2) running pro-neocon/anti-Paleo tripe like the articles referenced on this thread to genuflect before the Israel-Firsters and 3) running ads for overtly neocon organizations like WorldNetDaily and the Heritage Foundation's TownHall.com--which puts the pub in the precarious position of letting such advertisers call the shots on content.
2004-05-04 00:55 | User Profile
[QUOTE=edward gibbon]This should be remembered by all who post here. I had one telephone conversation with Taki and suspect he would be far more amenable to our cause than the others. The editor, McConnell, has very, very little testosterone.
When it really would count, Pat Buchanon cannot be relied on.[/QUOTE]
I agree about Taki; he's definitely one of us, albeit undercover. I don't know much about McConnell, other than that he's written some decent stuff. When push comes to shove, it will be very difficult for Buchanan to break his essentially superstitious regard for the government of "the United States of America," which is about as valid and vital an entity as the Holy Roman Empire. I have no doubt his sympathies are with his race, however, and he'll quite likely be buried out in the Mojave along with several of us....
With that said, I think that with the potential (irrespective of whether it gets successfully realized) that TAC may have within the anti-war backlash perspective, its frankly idiotic not to subscribe to TAC, even if you don't enjoy reading it. However flawed its approach may be, its on our side and may well prove very useful for us in the future. Or would we be better off if we had one LESS social institution working on our side?
2004-05-04 21:44 | User Profile
Be of glad heart, Kevin. I have already ordered 24 issues. I agree with you about not insisting that a publication or person be perfect before supporting it. In fact, I think that is often an excuse for not doing anything. When you watch people who always whine about never having any choices, they shut out any possibility before there's a chance of any growth.
2004-05-05 19:17 | User Profile
Taki kisses Conrad Black's (and Barbara Amiel's) butt in 15 March issue of TAC:
[url=http://www.amconmag.com/2004_03_15/taki.html]A Publisher and a Gentleman[/url]
This is supposed to be a paleo mag??
Ditto when a so-called anti-Semitic article about Hollywood made it into the elegant Spectator pages. Black was threatened with a boycott of his then 200 newspapers by the likes of Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, and others of their ilk. Again, he stood firm, not even sending a note to his editor.
And how about Black's refusal to testify on behalf of his employee, Doug Collins, before the Canadian "Human Rights" tribunal for penning "anti-Semitic" columns in one of Black's papers? (since sold to Izzy Asper -- I believe it was either the Vancouver Sun or the North Shore News)
2004-05-05 20:36 | User Profile
North Shore News.
2004-05-05 21:13 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]When one is nearing 70 and has lived their life in the public eye as Pat has, I would find it harder to believe that he isn't concerned with his legacy at this point. He has been a political animal all his life, and a would-be leader of the Free World a few times. People like that tend to be obsessed with things that might never occur to the rest of us - like history's judgment of him.[/QUOTE] When hes gone, he will be forgotten no matter how much he softens up. People who write history dont like the likes of PJB and dont treat them charitably. If Buchanan doesnt know that, then hes a fool.
Forget Buchanan. A mild mannered, good natured man like Reagan is constantly reviled in Academia and the Media (which is where History is written or produced). How is Buchanan going to get favourable treatment?
2004-05-05 22:36 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Centinel]Taki kisses Conrad Black's (and Barbara Amiel's) butt in 15 March issue of TAC:
[url=http://www.amconmag.com/2004_03_15/taki.html]A Publisher and a Gentleman[/url]
This is supposed to be a paleo mag??
Ditto when a so-called anti-Semitic article about Hollywood made it into the elegant Spectator pages. Black was threatened with a boycott of his then 200 newspapers by the likes of Barbra Streisand, Steven Spielberg, and others of their ilk. Again, he stood firm, not even sending a note to his editor.
And how about Black's refusal to testify on behalf of his employee, Doug Collins, before the Canadian "Human Rights" tribunal for penning "anti-Semitic" columns in one of Black's papers? (since sold to Izzy Asper -- I believe it was either the Vancouver Sun or the North Shore News)[/QUOTE]
" I did not agree with his continued embrace of Israel and the neocons, starting with Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams." I'm not so sure what you are outraged about. I suppose if one looks ahrd enough, there're negatives everywhere...if one is in search of pain and heartache..
2005-01-03 19:06 | User Profile
[QUOTE=il ragno]It's an ok magazine. Buchanan writes well, of course - [I]but[/I].
There's nothing in TAC that you can't find on, say, Lew Rockwell's site - or half-a-dozen other internet venues.
In terms of what TAC hoped to be, however, it is a failure. The guarded rhetoric and half-measures of the magazine seem to've been adopted in a concerted effort to offer the public a palatable alternative to the Jewish warmongerzines choking the newsstands.
I just went in the local Borders yesterday and browsed the magazine rack to see if they carried TAC, which they did. But what struck me was the sheer number of publications clogging the rack beloning to everyone else to the left...the neocons, the center-left and a few far left rags.....everything from The Weekly Standard to Mother Jones to the Nation to stuff I'd never heard of like "American Enterprise" something or other which I presume is produced by the American Enterprise Institute.
Point being that on the mainstream newsstands TAC is the only voice our side even remotely has. Yes, it's got some serious faults--IMO the choice of executive editor was not a wise one, and there's the occaisonal judeophilic hit piece on some paleo to give it McConnell's desired sheen of "anti anti-semitism." But where else is joe urban businessman gonna read about neocons, AIPAC, trade or immigration to at least get him thinking? I've never seen a copy of Chronicles, The Occidental Quarterly, The New American, Middle American News or even American Free Press (formerly Spotlight) on any stand anywhere.
I let my original subscription lapse after the Derbyshire hit piece on MacDonald and Sobran in disgust. Then Pat wrote "Whose War?" which almost redeemed the magazine. I renewed last year just to keep tabs on what's being written. Now in the latest issue Taki fires a broadside with [url=http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16112]"Fifth Columnists"[/url]. Where else is somebody not already in the know gonna read that?
2005-01-03 21:16 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Centinel]Point being that on the mainstream newsstands TAC is the only voice our side even remotely has. Yes, it's got some serious faults--IMO the choice of executive editor was not a wise one, and there's the occaisonal judeophilic hit piece on some paleo to give it McConnell's desired sheen of "anti anti-semitism." But where else is joe urban businessman gonna read about neocons, AIPAC, trade or immigration to at least get him thinking? I've never seen a copy of Chronicles, The Occidental Quarterly, The New American, Middle American News or even American Free Press (formerly Spotlight) on any stand anywhere.
My local Barnes & Noble carries Chronicles, as well as TAC, and the Tower Books up in Mountain View used to carry it as well, but they stopped. They used to keep it in the unofficial special interest section, so Chronicles had to sit next to magazines about people who like to take black-and-white, close-up photos of their pierced nipples (not only am I not exaggerating, I'm actually soft-pedaling it), amusingly enough. My local Barnes & Noble also carries The New American, come to think of it. I once saw copies of The American Free Press at another Barnes & Noble. While it may sound as if I'm contradicting you, however, I'm not. Its still much, MUCH easier to get a copy of TAC than all those others put together. Nearly every bookstore carries TAC and eschews all those others. We need a voice, and this is it. Thus, we need to support it. I let my charter subscription lapse, due to being unemployed, but now that I'm working again, I'm taking TAC again. Y'all should too, frankly.
2005-01-04 20:14 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Peter Phillips]Paleos shouldnt ditch Amconmag just because it isnt radical enough. It is a powerful voice of dissent within the conservative movement and should be kept alive. We might not like the idea of Buchanan's apparent philo-semitism but at least he has the courage to expose the projects of the Neo-Cons. Thats no small matter.[/QUOTE]
Ditto.
I do lose patience with PJB's pussyfooting on the Jewish question at times, but on the other hand I think he gets away with about as much as he can without winding up dead or worse.