A Bertie Wooster Musical Interlude

Bertie Wooster (Hugh Laurie) — Minnie the Moocher

Bertie Wooster (Hugh Laurie) — Sunny Disposish

Bertie Wooster (Hugh Laurie) — Nagasaki

“A Parcel of Rogues” Musical Interlude

From We Can Do Better:

Orderly immigration or Organised invasion?

Would someone please fill us in about this claim that Australians have agreed to what seems to many to be an organised invasion of legal immigrants for the profit of the housing, finance and infrastructure moguls?

Sheridan writes,

“Paul Kelly argues in his The March of Patriots that there is a bargain between the Australian people and their governments. The Australian people accept a big, diverse and in many respects generous immigration program, so long as it is orderly and well controlled by the government.” (Population growth lobbyist, Greg Sheridan, The Australian about his ‘esteemed colleague’ and fellow population-growth barracker, Paul Kelly of the Australian.)

I don’t know anyone who was actually asked and the subject wasn’t on the menu during the elections (which were mostly conducted by the mainstream press as usual).

The Corries — Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation

The Corries sing a poem of Robert Burns written in 1791 to protest the Acts of Union 1707. Some Scots, such as Robert Burns, saw it as an act of betrayal by a traitorous Political Elite handing over Scotland to alien masters.

Some Readers may see parallels to the Australia of today with it’s Political Elites’ handing Australia over to the whims of foreigners through the bipartisan policies of high Immigration and Multiculturalism at the expense of traditional Australia.

Such a Parcel Of Rogues in the Nation
by Robert Burns

Fareweel to a’ our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory!
Fareweel ev’n to the Scottish name.
Sae famed in martial story!
Now Sark rins over Salway sands,
An’ Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England’s province stands —
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue
Thro’ many warlike ages
Is wrought now by a coward few
For hireling traitor’s wages.
The English steel we could disdain,
Secure in valour’s station;
But English gold has been our bane —
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O, would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay
Wi’ Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour
I’ll mak this declaration :-
‘We’re bought and sold for English gold’—
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

Advertisment for Marital Harmony

(via Vintage Ads)

She knew that Drano would stop his accusing eyes.

William Lind on Political Correctness: Or why the Fifties were better

From William Lind’s What is Political Correctness:

Most Americans look back on the 1950s as a good time. Our homes were safe, to the point where many people did not bother to lock their doors. Public schools were generally excellent, and their problems were things like talking in class and running in the halls. Most men treated women like ladies, and most ladies devoted their time and effort to making good homes, rearing their children well and helping their communities through volunteer work. Children grew up in two–parent households, and the mother was there to meet the child when he came home from school. Entertainment was something the whole family could enjoy.

What happened?

If a man from America of the 1950s were suddenly introduced into America in the 2000s, he would hardly recognize it as the same country. He would be in immediate danger of getting mugged, carjacked or worse, because he would not have learned to live in constant fear. He would not know that he shouldn’t go into certain parts of the city, that his car must not only be locked but equipped with an alarm, that he dare not go to sleep at night without locking the windows and bolting the doors – and setting the electronic security system.

If he brought his family with him, he and his wife would probably cheerfully pack their children off to the nearest public school. When the children came home in the afternoon and told them they had to go through a metal detector to get in the building, had been given some funny white powder by another kid and learned that homosexuality is normal and good, the parents would be uncomprehending.

In the office, the man might light up a cigarette, drop a reference to the “little lady,” and say he was happy to see the firm employing some Negroes in important positions. Any of those acts would earn a swift reprimand, and together they might get him fired.

When she went into the city to shop, the wife would put on a nice suit, hat, and possibly gloves. She would not understand why people stared, and mocked.

And when the whole family sat down after dinner and turned on the television, they would not understand how pornography from some sleazy, blank-fronted “Adults Only” kiosk had gotten on their set.

Were they able, our 1950s family would head back to the 1950s as fast as they could, with a gripping horror story to tell. Their story would be of a nation that had decayed and degenerated at a fantastic pace, moving in less than a half a century from the greatest country on earth to a Third World nation, overrun by crime, noise, drugs and dirt. The fall of Rome was graceful by comparison.

(Inspired by Heritage American’s “Was Life better before the Revolution”)

Another Refreshing (& Nourishing) Beverage Advertisement

Hmm B-V – just like Liquid Meat. How delightful.

(HT Vintage Ads)

A Refreshing Beverage Advertisment

(from Vintage Ads)

Legacy of the Left

Phillip Blond in the New Statesman article, Labour’s betrayal of society (HT to Burke’s Corner):

But the dominant legacy of the left is not this commonwealth of shared interests and hierarchical association: it is what is most destructive of society, state authoritarianism and private libertarianism. It is a condition and a philosophy most elegantly and perfectly attained by New Labour and all its acolytes and advocates.

How can this be? Why and how is the political philosophy that is most evidently social, and claims all righteousness and power as a result in fact so asocial and unilateral? The answer is that, for the most part, socialism is founded on liberalism and liberalism is founded on a hatred of society. Modern liberalism begins with Rousseau and Rousseau begins with the idea that our emergence into society constitutes our original imprisonment: “Man is born free but he is everywhere in chains.” Society so conceived is fundamentally sinister because it compels man to inauthenticity. As such, the task of an individual in a society is to construe a settlement that protects individual will and insulates its subjective desires from the corrupting influence of others. Society for a liberal is valid only if it is composed of others exactly like himself. Rousseau invents the “general will” through which the individual, in obeying others, is obeying only himself because all have become the same.

But this autonomy can be protected only if others do not violate its bounds; and this is a role that can be played by the state only. The state then becomes the great policer and equaliser of humanity, and through the general will it must reconcile each individual with every other. As such, the state must strip society and people of all differential ties, beliefs and values in order to ensure equality and fairness; naked and denuded we now stand equal and alone before the state as the ultimate guarantor of our freedom.

Thus does modern liberalism underwrite all the great totalitarianisms of our age, from the terror of revolutionary France to the Cultural Revolution of Mao in China.

A rampant individualism demands a community exactly like itself. This repressive lineage passes directly into the left through Marx, and after Marx the left became both statist and individualist – a disastrous dialectic that has progressively and aggressively erased culture, custom, difference and ultimately society itself. “Socialism” so conceived is indeed the enemy of society; it despises the world as it is and seeks instead to eradicate differential values and tradition, in the mistaken belief that we must all be the same if we are to be free.

My Sort of Social Networking

(via It Came from Allen’s Brain)

A Calm and Reasoned Reaction

The Neo-conservatives have responded to the White House’s decision, not to base missile defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland, in their usual Calm and Reasonable Manner.

“The president has sent a chilling message about American resolve in the face of Russian saber-rattling. Georgia, Ukraine, and the rest of the world have learned a disturbing lesson.”

~~Editors of The National Review

and elsewhere

(via Mudwerks)

George Formby Musical Interlude

George Formby — Chinese Laundry Blues (Live and abbreviated version)

George Formby — Chinese Laundry Blues (Full album version – no video clip)

Lyrics from The George Formby Society:

Now Mr. Wu was a laundry man in a shop with an old green door.
He’ll iron all day your linen away, he really makes me sore.
He’s lost his heart to a Chinese girl and his laundry’s all gone wrong.
All day he’ll flirt, scorch your shirt, that’s why I’m singing this song.
Oh Mr. Wu, what shall I do, I’m feeling kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.

This funny feeling keeps round me stealing
Oh won’t you throw your sweetheart over do.
My vest’s so short that it won’t fit my little brother.
And my new Sunday shirt has got a perforated rudder.
Mr. Wu, what shall I do
I’m feeling kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.

Now Mr. Nu, he’s got a naughty eye that flickers.
You ought to see it wobble when he’s ironing ladies blouses.
Mr. Wu, what shall I do,
I’m feeling kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.

Now Mr. Wu, he’s got a laundry kind of tricky,
He’ll starch my shirts and collars but he’ll never touch my waistcoat..
Mr. Wu, what shall I do,
I’m feeling kind of Limehouse Chinese Laundry Blues.

Political Correctness is Cultural Marxism (Part III) : speech by William Lind

William Lind. The Origins of Political Correctness : An Accuracy in Academia Address. (Has been given in various versions)

If we look at it analytically, if we look at it historically, we quickly find out exactly what it is. Political Correctness is cultural Marxism. It is Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. It is an effort that goes back not to the 1960s and the hippies and the peace movement, but back to World War I. If we compare the basic tenets of Political Correctness with classical Marxism the parallels are very obvious.

First of all, both are totalitarian ideologies. The totalitarian nature of Political Correctness is revealed nowhere more clearly than on college campuses, many of which at this point are small ivy covered North Koreas, where the student or faculty member who dares to cross any of the lines set up by the gender feminist or the homosexual-rights activists, or the local black or Hispanic group, or any of the other sainted “victims” groups that PC revolves around, quickly find themselves in judicial trouble. Within the small legal system of the college, they face formal charges – some star-chamber proceeding – and punishment. That is a little look into the future that Political Correctness intends for the nation as a whole.

Indeed, all ideologies are totalitarian because the essence of an ideology (I would note that conservatism correctly understood is not an ideology) is to take some philosophy and say on the basis of this philosophy certain things must be true – such as the whole of the history of our culture is the history of the oppression of women. Since reality contradicts that, reality must be forbidden. It must become forbidden to acknowledge the reality of our history. People must be forced to live a lie, and since people are naturally reluctant to live a lie, they naturally use their ears and eyes to look out and say, “Wait a minute. This isn’t true. I can see it isn’t true,” the power of the state must be put behind the demand to live a lie. That is why ideology invariably creates a totalitarian state.

Second, the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness, like economic Marxism, has a single factor explanation of history. Economic Marxism says that all of history is determined by ownership of means of production. Cultural Marxism, or Political Correctness, says that all history is determined by power, by which groups defined in terms of race, sex, etc., have power over which other groups. Nothing else matters. All literature, indeed, is about that. Everything in the past is about that one thing.

Third, just as in classical economic Marxism certain groups, i.e. workers and peasants, are a priori good, and other groups, i.e., the bourgeoisie and capital owners, are evil. In the cultural Marxism of Political Correctness certain groups are good – feminist women, (only feminist women, non-feminist women are deemed not to exist) blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals. These groups are determined to be “victims,” and therefore automatically good regardless of what any of them do. Similarly, white males are determined automatically to be evil, thereby becoming the equivalent of the bourgeoisie in economic Marxism.

Fourth, both economic and cultural Marxism rely on expropriation. When the classical Marxists, the communists, took over a country like Russia, they expropriated the bourgeoisie, they took away their property. Similarly, when the cultural Marxists take over a university campus, they expropriate through things like quotas for admissions. When a white student with superior qualifications is denied admittance to a college in favor of a black or Hispanic who isn’t as well qualified, the white student is expropriated. And indeed, affirmative action, in our whole society today, is a system of expropriation. White owned companies don’t get a contract because the contract is reserved for a company owned by, say, Hispanics or women. So expropriation is a principle tool for both forms of Marxism.

And finally, both have a method of analysis that automatically gives the answers they want. For the classical Marxist, it’s Marxist economics. For the cultural Marxist, it’s deconstruction. Deconstruction essentially takes any text, removes all meaning from it and re-inserts any meaning desired. So we find, for example, that all of Shakespeare is about the suppression of women, or the Bible is really about race and gender. All of these texts simply become grist for the mill, which proves that “all history is about which groups have power over which other groups.” So the parallels are very evident between the classical Marxism that we’re familiar with in the old Soviet Union and the cultural Marxism that we see today as Political Correctness.

Disturbing New Report from Guantanamo Bay

(Cross posted at A Wandering Monster, I)

Namby-pamby liberals attempting to hinder the West’s ability to Fight the War on Terror.

(via Trollish Delver)