Michael Anton lol: Leftists argue that the otherwise implacably racist US statesmen of the 19th century left us one instance of openhearted liberalism in the 14th Amendment called birthright citizenship

 The idea that the framers intended to extend citizenship to anyone whose parents snuck across our border is absurd and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the nineteenth century American mind.

I note, however, how convenient it is for leftists who constantly attack all past American statesmen for being implacably “racist” to suddenly discover this one instance of their openhearted liberalism. Really? The same bewhiskered, frockcoated “racists” up to their eyeballs in white supremacy nonetheless decided to open America’s borders to the entire world? It’s an obvious lie of convenience and should be dismissed with contempt.

More.

LOL, Michael Anton has moved on from the Flight 93 Election to the RMS Olympic/HMS Hawke Election

 . . . in full daylight on a calm sea within sight of land . . . two normally operated vessels steamed blithely to a point of impact as though mesmerized.

The waste of running a lame duck AGAIN just never occurs to the man.

Here.

Michael Anton may be right that National Review's Reductio ad Hitlerum is relatively recent, but NR has been ostracizing right-wingers since it was founded

 I stopped reading in 2008, after subscribing since about 1980, so I really don't know about the Nazi smears. I had a long paid-up subscription which I was relieved to have finally run-out, coincidentally when Buckley did.

At any rate, National Review is indeed the enemy in the Socratic sense.

Don't help them.

National Review's Ignorant Nazi Smear

Michael Anton, American Mind

Michael Anton doesn't have a clue about the immense value of the periphery

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Taiwan is "peripheral" to our interests, Michael Anton says over and over again, here.

Well then, so is Hawaii.

Keep thinking like that and eventually Catalina Island becomes peripheral, too.

If you want to legitimize China's nine-dash line, something he never mentions, giving up Taiwan is the fastest way to do it. 

There is MUCH more at stake than Taiwan's relative freedom and independence. All of southeast Asia is at risk if China retakes Taiwan.

The answer isn't to accept the fact, as Anton does, that our Navy is rotten to the core and unable to defend Taiwan. The answer is to reform the Navy before it's too late.

If the Chicoms kill all our woke Navy in a battle over Taiwan, that wouldn't be the start we want, but it would be a start to the reform we most need.

To California oil is like slavery and must be banned everywhere

But Californians see Texas as a mortal threat not merely to their state’s business model and way of life but to humanity itself. Drilling is killing. Texas cannot be allowed to be Texas because if Texans get their way, the planet will superheat, destroying us all. You may think that’s ridiculous hyperbole, and maybe it is, but Californians believe it and will not be talked out of it. Hence peaceful coexistence is, for them, possible only on their terms.

The Golden State is no longer down with living and letting live but must impose its will, against the express wishes of others, in fundamentally transformative ways. There’s a word for that.

But Michael Anton can't see how this is just like Lincoln in the North imposing his will on the South in 1861. A Lincoln worshiper in denial.

California is nothing if not Lincolnesque.

Claremont Review of Books,  here.

Michael Anton, Publius Decius Mus, is back, and it's still Flight 93

After “Is 2020 another ‘Flight 93 election?’” the question I most often hear is “What happens if Trump loses?”

  

The answer to the first question, unfortunately, is yes, but more so. 

 

The rest.

Michael Anton rightly rejects birthright citizenship

Here.

The author of Bronze Age Mindset and its review by Michael Anton both seem to miss its thesis actually unfolding in our time

Are the kids (alt)right?:

To paraphrase Woody Allen (whom, I hasten to add, BAP does not quote), life wants what it wants. What does it want? At the upper reaches, among the higher animals (BAP is relentlessly hierarchical), what it wants is mastery of “owned space.” “Owned space” is the most important concept introduced in Part One and the key to understanding the rest of the “exhortation,” if not necessarily the rest of the book. BAP argues that life, fundamentally, is a “struggle for space.” All life seeks to develop its powers and master the surrounding matter and space to the maximum extent possible. For the lower species, this simply means mass reproduction and enlarging habitat. For the higher animals, it means controlling terrain, dominating other species, dominating the weaker specimens within your own species, getting first dibs on prey and choice of mates, and so on. BAP sees no fundamental distinction between living in harmony with nature and mastering nature. All animals seek to master their environments to the extent that they can, and the nature of man, or of man at his best—the highest man—is to seek to master nature itself. Not in the Aristotelian sense of understanding the whole, nor in the Baconian sense of “the relief of man’s estate” via technology and plenty; more to assert and exert his own power. Indeed, BAP posits an inner kinship between the genuine scientist and the warrior; he calls the former “monsters of will.” ...

Early modernity actually offered the higher types vast opportunities to explore and conquer new space. Thus bugdom is not caused or defined by science and technology. To the contrary: science and tech at their best can form a kind of frontier that allows for man’s higher motives to find vent when and where space is constrained. For BAP, science in modern times is, or should be, a manifestation of the will to conquer space.

Sheesh, ever heard of SpaceX, Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic? The highest men are already there, diligently working to master heaven itself.

Stop the preening and get with the program.

Publius Decius Mus exits the Trump Administration

Michael Anton.

Story here.

Noted in passing: Publius Decius Mus is Michael Anton, appointed by Trump to the NSC

Reported here. Anton, no surprise, cops to being a devoted Straussian.

The best part about the interview is that he thought Bill Kristol was his friend, until Kristol insinuated that Anton was a Nazi.

Kristolnicht. The guy can't be all bad, then.