IsThatLegal?

"Though he be a gentleman, remember, Eric Muller is also a lawyer."
-- Sparkey of "Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing"
"Relentlessly sensible and often important."
-- Michael Froomkin of "discourse.net"

Just another Hasidic reggae singer.


*yawn*


These guys are a zloty a dozen.

Which media figure says that calling 9/11 a justified attack on deserving "little Eichmanns" is analogous to defending the Japanese American internment of World War II?

The answer may surprise you.

But she's right, you know!

This is in a three-way tie for the 6th-best academic conference I've heard about this year.

(Extra credit to the first person correctly to identify the source of the title to this blog post.)

"There should be a name for those things that one feels one has always known without ever having learned. And a name for those things that are central to one's life without ever being thought about or felt."

So says author Jonathan Safran Foer in a profile in the NYT Magazine that I found very interesting.

Boy, do I know what he's talking about.

I'm headed out in a bit for my once-a-week medium-sized TCBY Shiver (vanilla frozen yogurt with either oreo or cookie dough blended in, and some chocolate sauce on top), which seemed like a simple enough proposition until I read this.

Ward Churchill says that the 9/11 attacks were "natural and inevitable." The result? He is ridiculed at length on The O'Reilly Factor.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., speaking of the 9/11 attacks, says that "the barbarism of recent American foreign policy was bound to lead to a terrorist catastrophe on American soil." The result? He gets a hero's welcome from Pat Buchanan on MSNBC and from Sean Hannity on FOX.

Go figure.

There were still a couple of bones left in Thomas E. Woods, Jr., after Max Boot's first filleting.

Boot removes them here.

Regular readers here may remember that sometime ago I banned a fellow calling himself "Bob" from my comments.

It's not an easy thing to do, because this "Bob" has some sort of device that allows him continually to change IP addresses. I have therefore been unable to figure out how to shut him out completely.

A couple of weeks ago, a "Tim" started posting here.

From content, tone, and style, I figued out that "Tim" was actually "Bob." I started deleting "Tim"'s comments.

"Bob" then reappeared, claiming that it was "lame" of me to think that he was "Tim."

Then, today, this comment from "Tim" appeared:

Hey, I'd like to continue the debate but Eric banned me and will just delete my comments. Therefore I must use hit and run tactics on his site from now on. Sorry! It's been fun, Elvez!
02.26.05 - 12:32 pm
IP: 207.67.146.219

A short time later, "Bob" posted comments -- from the same IP address.

Please do me the favor of ignoring anything that looks like it might be from Bob. I'll do my best to prune his rantings from the site, but surely can't catch everything immediately.

If it's Friday, then by gosh, you can be sure that over at Perpwalk, they're camel-blogging!

Thomas J. DiLorenzo steps up and defends Thomas E. Woods' League of the South.

It's hard to pick out a favorite from a menu as rich as this, but these, I guess, would be two of mine:




"The League does not believe that the role of government is to use its members' children as cannon fodder."












"The League of the South advocates peace and prosperity in the tradition of a George Washington or a Thomas Jefferson."

If you have 18 minutes or so, give a listen here to my appearance yesterday with a rather verbose Michelle Malkin on KPCC's "Talk of the City with Kitty Felde."

I think it's fair to say that Malkin now concedes that the program deployed against all people of Japanese ancestry was a drastic (actually "draconian," in her words) overreaction to whatever national security risk was even arguably evident to those who conceived of and planned the program. (She'll deny this now, of course, but you can listen for yourself.)

Now, what explains that draconian overreaction?

In the radio piece, I use an analogy. Suppose you come home from work one evening and you find that your spouse has boarded up the doors and windows to your house. You say, "Oh my God, honey, what happened?" Your spouse says, "I was in the basement and I saw some little things that looked like mouse droppings." You say, "yeah, and?" And your spouse says, "So I boarded up the house!" Let's give the spouse the full benefit of the doubt here: assume that what s/he saw were exactly what s/he thought they were--mouse droppings. There are mice in the house. But what explains your spouse's decision to board up the doors and windows? The evidence of mice? Or your spouse's irrational fear of mice?

I hope the analogy is clear. Let's say, just for the sake of argument, that Malkin's "evidence" does demonstrate that the internment's planners saw reliable evidence that Japan had recruited a small number of saboteurs among Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. What explains the actual multi-year program of evicting and detaining 120,000 men, women, and children that Malkin has undertaken to defend? The evidence of saboteurs? Or an irrational, war-heightened fear of people of Japanese ancestry?

On another subject, while I only had about 5 1/2 minutes out of a 17 1/2-minute segment to talk, I was able to put one question to Ms. Malkin that she had avoided until now: would she at least have the decency to repudiate the call of US News and World Report columnist John Leo for a renewed debate about internment? After all, Ms. Malkin has maintained over and over again that she does not favor mass detentions of Arab and Muslim Americans, even while peddling a book called "In Defense of Internment." Leo read her book and, on the basis of the book's arguments, called for an "honest debate" about "present internments."

Surprise, surprise. She would not repudiate Leo's call for internment. Instead she equivocated, saying that she didn't know what sort of internment Leo was referring to. He might have been referring to the indefinite detention of enemy combatants, she said, or he might have been referring to the detention immediately after 9/11/2001 of hundreds of Arab aliens. And those, she said, were and are good policy.

Here's the thing, though. Leo wasn't talking about those, and Malkin knows it. Go read Leo. His entire piece was about the large-scale detention of an entire ethnic group. Only after reviewing and defending the wholesale internment of Japanese Americans, and noting that "the Twin Towers were not brought down by militant Swedish nuns," does Leo say this:

"It is always reasonable to look in the direction from which the gravest danger is coming. It’s also reasonable and important to open an honest discussion of internment, past and present."

Nothing about enemy combatant detention. Nothing about arrests of illegal aliens on criminal charges.

Come on, Michelle Malkin. You know full well what Leo was talking about. And your refusal to repudiate Leo's call for "honest debate" about "present internments" reveals your claim that you and your book don't advocate Muslim and Arab internment to be, quite simply, a lie. And an ugly one.

This just in--

What was to have been a commentary on a radio appearance by Michelle Malkin on KPCC in Los Angeles has now turned into a conversation between the host, Malkin, and me. I just learned of this change in format a couple of minutes ago. The show is called "Talk of the City with Kitty Felde."

The topic will, of course, be the Japanese American internment.

Tune in to KPCC in Los Angeles, Southern California Public Radio, this afternoon between 2 and 3 p.m. (Pacific Time) (that's between 5 and 6 Eastern), either on the radio if you live out there, or online via the KPCC homepage.

UPDATE: We're on at 2:39 Pacific.

UPDATE: Just finished the gig. Who says conservatives want to kill the filibuster?

Jonathan Dresner responds appropriately to Daniel Pipes' paean to piracy.

I'm not sure whether this was actually Pipes' idea, or the parrot's on his shoulder.

Tired of the vicissitudes of blogger, I'm looking at moving to a new blogging platform (and changing the look of the site). I've taken a few steps down the road toward Movable Type, but am finding even just the process of installation overwhelming. So I'm curious to know people's experiences with Wordpress and Typepad. Comments would be appreciated.

Also appreciated would be suggestions from regular readers for the layout of the new IsThatLegal. Obviously, the 1000-character limit on comments needs to go. Other suggestions?

(By the way, no matter what anyone says about layout, the dog is staying.)

As a Jew who has occasionally been spotted on a zafu--and should be spotted there more often, if he knew what was good for him--I found this item in my email inbox very funny.

THE PRINCIPLES OF JEWISH BUDDHISM

1. Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as the wooded
glen. And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with such round
shoulders.

2. There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you
never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

3. Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

4. To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the
following: get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

5. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that
not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

6. If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

7. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and
attaining enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

8. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao
does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao
is not Jewish.

9. Drink tea and nourish life. With the first sip, joy. With the second,
satisfaction. With the third, Danish.

10. The Buddha taught that one should practice loving kindness to all
sentient beings. Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who
happens to be Jewish?

11. Be patient and achieve all things. Be impatient and achieve all things
faster.

12. To Find the Buddha, look within. Deep inside you are ten thousand
flowers. Each flower blossoms ten thousand times. Each blossom has ten
thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

13. Be here now. Be someplace else later. Is that so complicated?

14. Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do
you have? Bupkes!

I was going to write something outraged about Michelle Malkin's latest internment obfuscations, but I see that a more astute observer than I beat me to it.

In a nutshell, Malkin says this:

"Muller also suggests that Richard Kotoshirodo, the Japanese-American man on the cover of my book, violated espionage statutes. (Wanting to give Kotoshirdo the benefit of the doubt, I had expressed doubts about whether Kotoshirodo's activities rose to the level of espionage, since the information he transmitted to Japan was not classified.)"

To which MalkinWatch responds, in appropriately incredulous capital letters:

YOU CALL JUXTAPOSING KOTOSHIRODO'S FACE WITH MOHAMMED ATTA'S ON THE COVER OF YOUR BOOK GIVING HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT?!? WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Maybe if Michelle Malkin had wanted to give Richard Kotoshirodo the benefit of the doubt, she might have considered driving the couple of miles from her home over to the National Archives to do a little research about Kotoshirodo before implying that he was a mass murderer on the cover of her book. Maybe that would have been a more honorable method of proceeding--rather than just relying on incomplete and misleading research done entirely by others. For more on this, click here.

Lance McCord's got the advertising concept for the fragrance that Regnery Publishing will be rushing to market alongside "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History."

Jeff Davis's birthday is just around the corner! Buy one today for that special rebel in your life, and make a stink about Southern Freedom!

This was going to be the cover of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History." With George Washington on it. (I found it with a simple google image search.)















This is the cover that replaced it at the last minute. With this J.E.B. Stuart-looking confederate soldier on it.










You know what? I think Dr. Woods is right. Linking his book with neo-Confederate secessionists really is despicable and unfair.

You've read the book.

Now try the fragrance.

Cathy Young, in today's Boston Globe, on Thomas E. Woods:

Where's the outrage? Is this the kind of ideology conservatives want to be associated with? Does anything labeled ''politically incorrect" get a pass?

Check out the whole piece.

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., explains his involvement with the League of the South.

Go read it if you're in the mood for a chuckle.

When you're through, mosey on over to the homepage of the Southern Patriot, the League's bi-monthly newsletter, and read a couple of the early issues--especially those from the very beginning, around the time when the League was forming. See if they bear out Dr. Woods' characterizations.

Did I ever tell you, by the way, that I was a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan? Well, I was. But only because of my passionate interest in bed linens and bonfires!

At the LewRockwell.com blog, Stephen Carson says that I'm "devoting a lot of negative attention to Tom Woods."

Well, not exactly. What I've actually done is just to quote Dr. Woods' own words and the words of an organization he co-founded. Verbatim. With links to the original contexts. Over and over again.

Funny how simply quoting Tom Woods creates a negative impression, isn't it, Mr. Carson? Why do you think that might be?

A caller's exchange with Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., on the radio program "Deadline Live" (Republic Broadcasting Network), December 17, 2004:

Caller: Mr. Woods, I'm in total agreement with you, and I would have to say, Lincoln didn't free anybody; he enslaved everybody.

Thomas Woods, Jr.: Yes, I couldn't agree more. I appreciate that. Thanks.

Two weeks ago I noted a curious item over at LewRockwell.com--an article by an economist contending that Nazi Germany would not have launched an assault on the continental United States because the Germans would have been too guilt-ridden to pull it off.

The author presses further today, arguing that the Germans orchestrated the murder of 6 million Jews as a response to Allied aggression. The author reminds us that "it was while the Allies were doing their best to terrify and kill Germans that the German people carried out these heinous crimes."

I am not making this up.

Wow. Neo-Nazi hatemail, blog-style.

The story on Dr. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., takes another step up the media food chain: a big piece by Max Boot at the Daily Standard.

Still nobody is asking how and why Woods gets such fawning attention from the Right Wing Media Machine.

Or whether the student adulation that Dr. Woods brags about at his home institution, Suffolk County Community College, also comes from its multicultural students.

. . . tomorrow, the nation:

Q. Is the voice of Thomas Woods whistling in the dark? How are you doing?

A. Well, it's a bit premature to be too optimistic or depressed, because the book is still so young, basically, but I can say that . . .

Q. But you've had an influence on students in the past . . .

A. The students? There's no question about it. Because they, I save them, the notes my students write to me, or they come by my office and say, "It's like the scales have fallen from my eyes," you know, "I understand things. I see what's going on. What can we do about it?"

And, you know, I don't propagandize them in the classroom, I just tell them what the truth is.

And I get emails all the time from articles I write online, so . . . I don't know how much influence I can have as one person. But what I hope to do, I mean, one of the many people who are going to read the book, a bunch of them will say, "Hey, my goodness, now I want to devote myself to promoting these ideas." It's the kind of thing that can inspire people to work harder.

How did, I mean, I can't point out who it was, but there was someone who was a minor Cabinet official under President Reagan who read the book, and told me, "This book is more important than you realize, because it shows how we lost the country."

Well, if we want to get it back, first step is knowledge. Knowledge really is power in this case; it's not a cliché.

Thomas Woods, on the radio interview program "Point of View":

Q. What about your students there in the State University system of New York? What do your students say about this book?

A. . . . . This coming semester they're going to be reading it. I mean, what's the point of having tenure if you don't assign your own controversial book to them?

Q. It's an automatic sale!

A. That's right, that's right.

I know undergraduates, and I know they don't frankly read much. So I am going to be using a regular textbook, unfortunately. But I am going to be using my book as a supplement. But given that my book is so much shorter than the textbook, the likelihood is that if they're going to read one of them, it's going to be mine, and I can live with that.

OK, Ward-Churchill-inspired academic tenure bashers: Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

(And this is no misstatement; he says precisely the same thing in the interview on True North radio that you can listen to by clicking here and scrolling down:

"What I've been doing is, I do use a standard textbook just so that they can get the basic names and dates right. But this coming semester, and as far as I can see, on into the future, I'm going to use also in my classroom . . . I'm using my book as a second book, as a way just to let them know that there is more than one way of looking at American history. . . . And given my experience . . . , my experience with undergraduates is that they don't read much, so if I give them two books—a long textbook and my book—probably they're only going to be reading my book anyway. And I can live with that, if it came down to it.")

Who do you think said this?

The fact is, although most Americans probably consider themselves independent thinkers, the vast bulk of them simply accept what the government and what we laughingly refer to as our “free press” tell them. (Really, Fox News is only a yuppie version of the old Pravda.)

You guessed it: that Fox News darling, Thomas E. Woods.

His comments are archived here; the original site where they appeared seems no longer to exist.

Well I'll be damned!

Look who contributed a paper to the Secessionist Papers, a series of publications of the American Secession Project!

The paper--lest its argument be too cleverly concealed for some readers--is entitled "Secede!"

Who would have imagined?

Funny, I don't remember Sean Hannity asking Woods about any of this. Must have been an oversight.

"The Politically Correct Guide to American History": #16 on today's NYT bestseller list.

Meanwhile, the scoop on its author makes its first small appearance in the "mainstream media"--a great column by Ed Cone in today's Greensboro News-Record.

Stay tuned to see where this story ends up...

And in the meantime, drop by this entertaining account of the "Southern Historical Conference 2003"--dateline of "Federation of States (!!!) - Schertz, Texas (suburb of San Antonio) September 30, 2003"--for the description of Dr. Woods' conference speech, entitled "Get a Grip on It - The Parties in this Conflict Were Not Merely Abolitionists and Slave-holders," in which he "spoke of cultural heritage, State's Rights and the ugly truth about Abraham Lincoln."

I just finished listening to an interview with Thomas E. Woods, Jr., author of The Politically Correct Guide to American History, on Vermont's True North Radio. (You can listen yourself by going here, scrolling down a few entries, and clicking on the link to the show with Woods on 1/10/05.)

My favorite moment:

Near the end of the show, a caller asks Woods this: "It seems to be from what we've learned in history that the Ku Klux Klan was a violent terrorist organization that was predominately Southern, and didn't have widespread support in the United States. What is your feeling on this?"

Professor Woods, in response:

"There has been more than one instantiation of the Klan in its history. There was the Klan that developed in the South during Reconstruction immediately after the war because it was thought that Northern troops were abusing Southerners, they were not really answerable to any law, there was martial law in effect in the South, and so the Klan was sort of a very ham-handed approach to deal with that situation."

Ah yes, the original Klan--bumbling freedom fighters.

This is nauseating. The Klan of the 19th century was a violent white supremacist organization that repressed Southern blacks with terror and lynchings and destroyed the black franchise.

Yet to Dr. Woods, they were "ham-handed" defenders of Southern liberty.

It seems to me that Ward Churchill and his "little Eichmanns" have not got much on Dr. Woods.

The 29-part series Greg Robinson and I did on Michelle Malkin's "In Defense of Internment" made the list of semifinalists for a Koufax Award.

This is done by voting, folks. To vote, go here and scroll down to the bottom. Leave a comment there in which you cast your vote. There are lots of great choices this year, but I'd sure appreciate the support!

Co-founder of the neo-Confederate and secessionist League of the South Thomas E. Woods (pictured at left) on the acclaim his book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, is garnering from the right:

"The praise for the book in conservative and libertarian circles, though, has been so gratifying that I’m frankly unconcerned about the left’s reply. On the year-end McLaughlin Group, I was beyond thrilled to see Pat Buchanan name me the most original thinker of 2004. It’s also appealed to a wider range of conservatives than I expected: Gary Bauer, for instance, included it in his top five books of 2004."

In the midst of all the screaming about the extremists of the left, when will someone begin to ask the right about who they're climbing into bed with?

When will someone ask Dr. Woods whether he's still a member of the League of the South, and of its membership committee? Whether he repudiates or continues to endorse the various official positions of the League of the South that I've cited? Whether he repudiates or stands by his own earlier statements that I've cited? Whether the "anti-statism" he says his book is endorsing differs in any material way from the viewpoint of the organization that he co-founded? Whether his views on race relations differ materially from those of the organization he co-founded? Whether he actually agrees--as it so clearly appears that he does--with people like Ward Churchill that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inevitable response to American foreign policy?

The pop music focus continued in German class today. Towards the end of the hour the professor asked us to say what came to mind when we thought about German pop music.

I suppressed the urge to suggest the Horst Wessel Lied.

Students around me, however, shouted out "Prinzen!" "Fantastischen 4!" "Rammstein!" "Toten Hosen!"

Huh?

What ever happened to Kraftwerk and Falco?

Oops. That's what happened to Falco.

Reader Jim E. left the following comment:

I don't have a strong opinion whether Woods' book needs to be taken apart bit by bit, and Eric Muller is certainly under zero obligation to do so. His research into Woods backgroud was more than fascinating.

With that said, I can't help but wonder about Malkin's book. It seems her book hardly deserved "care" or "validation" either, yet Muller went to work on it like a surgeon with a scalpal. That's fine, but how was her polemical book so different from Woods' that it earned your attention (aside from your obvious expertise in the area)?

It was suggested to me that I post my reply to him, and it seemed a good suggestion.

Here it is:

Jim E., this is a great question--one I've been thinking about a good bit myself.

The main answer is the one you identify: my expertise in the area Malkin wandered into. It required no huge deviation from my "day job" for me to take on Malkin's book in its entirety. I had much of the knowledge in my own head, and most of the books I needed to consult were on the shelves on my office walls.

This is only true for portions of the Woods book.

It's also important to recognize that the Woods and Malkin books are different in one important respect: Malkin's book purports to present a single (alternative) explanatory narrative for a single event (the internment) and its aftermath. There's a bounded universe of sources and materials for countering that narrative.

Woods' book is instead a stringing together of selected details about particular historical figures, events, and trends. The task of refuting it is therefore in a basic way quite impossible, unless one were to supply all of the missing and unmentioned context, facts, events, and trends--for 400 years' worth of history.

A simple example: there were various forms of cooperation between Puritan settlers and American natives, as Dr. Woods notes.

Yet in the same time period, another colony--Virginia--"urged Indian parents to assign their children to English families; the Assembly in turn promised that 'wee will not use them as slaves, but do our best to bring them up in Christianity, civillity and the knowledge of necessary trades.' A subsequent law the same year specified that the children in question would be servants for terms, mutually reached by the parents and master; two years later (1650), the Assembly decreed that the children were to be free at age twenty-five, which suggests that many were being held to longer terms than were European-American servants. In 1663, faced with the likelihood of war against the tribes on its northern border, the Assembly ordered the kings of those Indian nations to deliver several children as hostages or be declared enemies; the hostages were to be "civilly used and treated by the English to whose charge they shalbe delivered, and ... brought up in the English litterature soe farre as they are capable."

That's from Alden Vaughan, "Puritan Statutory Law and the Indians: A Comparative Analysis."

In addition, as Woods notes, the Puritan colonies required that Indian land be purchased. Great. Yet the Vaughan excerpt above makes clear that these laws were routinely violated.

So what is one to do with all this? Woods' book wants to slay the "white settlers mistreated Indians" dragon -- and he's right to note those ways in which white settlers treated Indians fairly -- but he drains the actual history of all of its complexity by omitting the narrative of mistreatment in other colonies and even in the Puritan colonies themselves.

(And this says absolutely nothing about the centuries of colonial and then federal, state, and territorial oppression that followed these early experiences. Woods says not a word about this in his book, except to say in passing that "American Indians have been the victims of injustice and maltreatment over the course of American history.")

How can one possibly respond to Woods' account without reviewing and summarizing volumes of literature about what he does address and even more volumes of literature about what he doesn't?

My final answer, though, to Jim E.'s question is that I find myself wondering whether I may not actually have made a mistake by responding in such detail to Malkin's book. It was easy because I had the expertise. But it may not have been the best strategy. I'm really not sure.

Thanks for asking such a good question.

In German class today we were still talking about pop music. The topic at hand was the German band die Moulinettes.







Here they are.








The professor showed us this image and asked us whether we'd be inclined to give them a listen.

"No way," the class said just about in unison (except for me, it seemed).

"Why not?" the professor asked.

"They look too '80s'," a young woman replied.

Here's what the publisher of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History" is saying about the book:

"Ideal for anyone who wants to know the REAL story about America. . . . The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History is a handy one-volume guide to our nation’s glorious past that has one key advantage over today’s dozens of dreary PC history books: this one tells you what really happened — not what liberals wish had happened.

From the Puritans through the drafting of the Constitution, the Civil War, the World Wars, the rise of the “Great Society” all the way up through the fiasco of the Clinton Administration, this brightly written book gives you the whole truth and nothing but the truth about our great nation."

Here's what Dr. Thomas E. Woods, the book's author and a founder of the secessionist, neo-Confederate League of the South is saying about the book:

"In fact, my book leaves out a lot. I freely admit that. The book had to be 80,000 words; how could it not leave out a lot? . . . The point of my book is to focus on areas that are either neglected or hopelessly mangled by the typical text."

Got that? The book tells us "what really happened" and gives us "the whole truth." Oh, and it leaves out a lot.

Today's topic in German class: music (or "Musik," as the Germans say).

We were broken into pairs and told to interview each other about our musical preferences and favorite band. Then we had to tell the class about our partner.

I had to explain to the class that my partner was a huge fan of, uh, "Modern Mouse."







Me? Well, Squeeze, of course.








Blank stare from my Modern-Mouse-loving partner.

Later, the word "Schallplatte" came up in something we were reading. "Who knows what a "Schallplatte" is?" asked the teacher in German. (It's a "record.") Long silence. Finally a student asked, "is it one of those big round plastic things?" holding her arms out in front of her in a circle the size of the mouth of an industrial trashcan.

Geddy Lee, insufferable bassist and singer in the insufferable band Rush, is the son of Holocuast survivors.

From the linked article:

It was well after [Geddy Lee's father] Morris Weinrib died that an aunt told Lee his father had played the balalaika at bar mitzvahs and weddings, but he had purposely kept that fact from his children. “He didn’t want us going into music as a career,” Lee says, adding, “It was a great feeling to know he was musical.”

Well I'll be.

In one generation, from a bar mitzvah balalaika player to this:

A modern-day warrior
Mean mean stride,
Today’s tom sawyer
Mean mean pride.

Like, wow.

Perhaps Lew Rockwell can explain something to me: how does one "smear" an author by quoting his own words and the official statements of an organization he founded, with links to the original sources?

I'm still waiting to learn which of Dr. Woods' statements he's disavowing, and whether he's still involved with the League of the South, and if so, how.

UPDATE: Another thought: If, as Lew Rockwell says, Dr. Woods is to be "love[d] most for the enemies he has made," doesn't it follow that he can be known by the friends he keeps?

So moved am I by this story that I hereby confess:

1. On a Spanish test in 8th grade at Beck Middle School in Cherry Hill, NJ, I remember leaving my vocabulary notebook open and putting it under my chair at an angle that would allow me to see it if I looked down the right way. And I looked a couple of times.

2. I once filled in an oval on a high school standardized test--I don't recall which one--after the proctor said "stop work now."

3. One day a friend and I snapped our junior high school band director's conducting baton in two and then left it under a book in such a way that it looked like it was still whole. This way, when he went to pick it up, only the bottom half would come out. When the conductor asked the band who had done it, neither I nor my co-conspirator (who was, incidentally, in the baritone horn section--beyond that I'm saying nothing, except in connection with plea negotations) said a word. We were never caught.

4. I bludgeoned my high school gym teacher to death and kept his body in our basement freezer.

There, that feels better.

If support for a book I wrote were coming from places like this, I think I'd be looking for a different line of work.

It's painful, but do read the entries on the pages I've linked to.

(For those who lack the time or energy, allow me to share with you one charming but not atypical excerpt:

Tikkun Olam. It’s the Jewish term for “healing the world", or turning this once Christian land into a Jewish pig sty. It’s the reason the Jew can’t look at something beautiful without the overpowering urge to drop his pants and take a dump all over it. And their favorite targets are our little girls, which they do their best to turn into racemixing dykes and sluts.

The site is called "Little Geneva," but their geography is slightly off.

My friend Greg Robinson has posted his account of his impromptu debate with Michelle Malkin of the other night.

Video of the event is reportedly going to be available here, but has not yet appeared.

Until just now, I had missed Thomas Woods' response to my elaboration of his agenda:

Many thanks to the great Justin Raimondo for replying to a particularly ill-mannered critic of mine. It's almost funny: won't any of them try to answer my arguments? First we have Mr. Cohen of the New York Times, who just lists what I say as if it's self-refuting (he wishes), and now this fellow, who simply changes the subject over and over or dredges up out-of-context quotations, some of them from nine years ago. Where exactly is my book wrong, sir?

Let's take this slowly, shall we?

(1) "The great Justin Raimondo." Is this what Dr. Woods is referring to? Or this? Or perhaps this? Oh no, this must be the great Justin Raimondo--the one who predicted that a red heifer born in 2002 would trigger World War III. Great!

(2) Raimondo was replying to Glenn Reynolds. This would lead you to think that Glenn was the "particularly ill-mannered critic." But a sentence later, Dr. Woods speaks of "this fellow" in a way that suggests he's talking about me. Dr. Woods should get his critics straight (although I recognize that is an ever-mounting task).

(3) "Out of context quotations." I knew this was coming. This is why I included the link to every piece from which I took a quotation--so that readers could see the context for themselves. But fair enough. I await an indication of the context that changes the meaning of Woods' assertions that slave-owners were "friends of order and regulated freedom" and that liberalism is "fundamentally totalitarian?" What is the context that changes the meaning of the League of the South's press release claiming that Martin Luther King was "nothing but a philandering, plagiarizing, left-wing agitator?" Or could Dr. Woods supply the context that would establish his book as a rigorous and objective work of history rather than a polemic designed to draw the "right-wing-radio-listening-masses . . . back to anti-statism?"

(4) "Nine years ago." Ah, I see. But it would help if Dr. Woods were more precise. Which of the views of his that I quoted is he now repudiating? For that matter, does Dr. Woods retain his membership in the League of the South? If so, what is his role? Does he hold any official position or title? And if he relinquished his membership, when did he do so, and why?

I see that I have visitors coming to the site from StephanKinsella.com I have no idea who Mr. Kinsella is, but I read what follows, and I'm comfortable leaving it that way:

You claim Eric's evidence is convincing. It is nothing but a libelous smear attack on a fine individual and scholar, Tom Woods, whose book, yes, does support the cause of liberty by debunking liberal and government-spread propaganda and lies.

For example, this Eric character writes of Woods, "(He has also spoken at similar meetings of other organizations, like the Southern Historical Conference and Bonnie Blue Ball, where he shared the lectern with speakers on the "Myths and Realities of American Slavery" and "Why Slaves Fought for Their South.") ... And while Christianity is a necessary condition for Dr. Woods' organization's concern, it is not sufficient. You also need to be "Anglo-Celtic""

Now, I personally have not joined the League of the South because I don't like all that stupid rah-rah Confederacy or Southern crap. But that's just me. I'm from Lousiana but too much of a Randian type individualist to want to base my worht or identity on membership in a given little group, that I didn't even choose or earn. BUt tha'ts just me; most people are more group-related than that. Blacks do Kwanzaa and name their kids African names; Scots eat haggis; Jews do their holidays and sometimes kvetch about their kids marrying gentiles; whatever. Who gives a crap.

The point is that if some libertarian were to join a group whose goal is preserving a religion or culture or race even--Christianity or Anglo-Celtic--what in the world is wrong with this? WHy single out white Christian males as the only goddamned group that is prohibited from this kind of interest in and activism about their race or heritage? It's getting a little silly. Israel is explicitly religious and racist in its immigration and other policies; ACLU and hare-trigger PC libertarian types who go apeshit about a judge having a Ten Commandments statue don't bat an eye at this. Hypocrites. Double stnadards. All this is just really stemming from sneering, arrogant, yankee superiority and disgust at what they view as "beneath them" Southerners. It's getting old. It's why Kerry lost, in my view. People are getting sick of being spat at and tread upon. Your average Joe Sixpack wonders why he's racist to want his daughter to marry a white guy or even to go to school in a school that's not in the ghetto... while in the meantime he sees public service announcements about Black History Month etc.

Note also the implicit collectivism in the comment that Woods "shared the lectern" with certain others, as if he is responsible for their views. This is just STUPID. Where do you draw the line? After all, I admire Woods, yet am blogging here on your site, so I guess you are 4 handshakes away from evil; oh no, you are sanctioning the sanctioner of the sanctioner of the sanctioner. This stupid Randianism is getting old. Attribute to Woods what he writes,not what others do; but to do that he'd need to read it, and would not need to waste time trying to come up with ad hominem critiques.

Further, his crime is sharin the lectern with speakers on the "Myths and Realities of American Slavery" and "Why Slaves Fought for Their South." What is obviously racist about these topics? This is polictal correctnes run amok.

Bigwig's got the scoop: Ward Churchill out; Thomas Woods in (to head up their new Anglo-Celtic curriculum!).

Today's German class discussion topic: piercing and tattoos.

Oy.

Economist Bob Murphy has an article over at LewRockwell.com in which he argues that the Germans could never have launched a successful invasion of the United States in World War II. I don't doubt that, but was perplexed by his list of reasons why the Germans wouldn't have been able to pull it off. It was his fifth reason that really had me scratching my head:

Finally, the fifth difference is that the Germans felt guilty. I know that’s not something realpolitik war hawks think important, but when it comes to defending your homeland from foreign invaders, it sure does make a difference whether you’ve been minding your own business on the one hand, or if you’ve been conquering neighbors and gassing minorities on the other.

Oh yes. Absolutely. Hitler, Himmler, Goering, Goebbels, Doenitz, Korten, Rommels. Just racked with guilt, all of them.

Weird.

... on Michelle Malkin.

She complains of the "gutless underhandedness" of an "evasive" adversary who "darted in and out" of her forum.

Come on, Michelle. You should know better. What did you expect from the "ethnic Japanese?"

"The Duke [University] student [whom] Durham police cited in connection with a raucous party near East Campus that drew 200 people and featured a bevy of bikini-clad women who wrestled in baby oil is the son of two high-level Duke administrators."

The name of the university was misspelled in this article, however.

It's "Dook."

Former Nirvana Bassist Calls for Election Reform.

Former Nirvana drummer not consulted; is pissed.

In German class yesterday, as a conversation-starter, we were asked to mingle with each other in order to find, among others, someone who used to play with a stuffed Barney doll.

But that's not the funny thing. The funny thing is that I was the only one who would admit to it--because I used to play with said purple dinosaur with my daughters.

If there has been one negative theme in the comments to my piece about the worldview of Dr. Thomas E. Woods, it is that I do not undertake a point-by-point consideration of the claims he makes in his bestselling book "A Politically Incorrect Guide to American History."

Perhaps when I said

But I'd like to take a step back and ask: Where is this all heading? Where, with his states'-rights, absolutist-free-market, isolationist, white-defending retelling of American history is Dr. Woods taking us?

and then went on to quote Dr. Woods and statements of the organization he co-founded at great length, it was not clear to some that I was talking about the book's agenda, rather than responding carefully to the book's claims.

So let me make it clear, then. I was talking about the book's agenda, not the book itself. The agenda is sufficiently disturbing, and the book sufficiently polemical, that I think it utterly counterproductive to dissect the book itself.

"One of the great challenges of the historian is to remember, and recapture, the lack of inevitability of events." -- Jonathan Dresner, in a very interesting post at Cliopatria on similarities between the Iraq of 2005 and the Japan of 1868.