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"

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.