Coates contra Paul, I:

"The fervency for Ron Paul is rooted in the longing for a reedemer, for one who will rise up and cut through the dishonest pablum of horse-races and sloganeering and speak directly to Americans. It is a species of saviorism which hopes to deliver a prophet onto the people, who will be better than the people themselves. 

But every man is a prophet, until he faces a Congress."

"If we are to take the version of events proffered by Ron Paul's defenders, the Congressmen voted for a holiday which his Chief of Staff publicly denounced as "Hate Whitey Day." In Ron Paul's own name, no less. This version of events should inspire skepticism even in a Paul admirer. I am happy to report that in some, it did.  

I want to reiterate--again--that I make no claims on the heart of Ron Paul. How he truly feels about black people is best left to Paul and his conscience. His actual record, however, is wholly subject to the wiles of google."

"Hate Whitey Day is actually one of my favorite holidays. It doesn’t have all the pressure to be perfect, like Christmas, or everybody getting along, like Thanksgiving. Just white people cowering in their houses/retreating to their heavily armed compounds in rural Oklahoma while America’s non-white population runs riot, more or less totally burning shit down. And the clean-up and re-building costs always add a bump to the January jobs report, as Matthew Yglesias has noted."

Actually, I suspect that Ferguson knows _all too well_ what "western civilization" has historically meant...

"he examined census and fertility data to arrive at estimates of how many white Americans had African blood lines and how many fair-skinned blacks had crossed over the line to live as white. Stuckert's tables show that during the 1940s alone, roughly 15,550 fair-skinned blacks per year slipped across the color line--about 155,500 for the decade. Stuckert estimates that by 1950 about 21 percent of the whites--or about 28 million of the 135 million persons classified as "white" in the census--had black ancestry within the last four generations".

"IWilliams is not actually examining the accepted scholarship which Carol Sheriff is referencing. Williams is not debating with James McPherson's ... Battle Cry of Freedom. He does not confront historian Bruce Levine's Confederate Emancipation... Instead Williams offers up--unchallenged, uncorroborated and wholly accepted--primary testimony from 150 years ago, along with two works of history both more than seventy-five years old.
"... Williams is practicing history in the manner of a phrenologist practicing brain surgery... In raising primary sources to the level of indisputable fact, Williams employs a methodology which does not merely argue for the existence of black Confederate legions, but for UFOs, orcs, the Dover Demon, elves and magic. The sable Confederate arm is too modest. Surely, Nessie awaits. I would not demand that history remain solely the property of professionals. But I would simply see a basic commitment to honesty from academics plying a borrowed trade...."

"Since Marty Peretz is Jewish, and I’m Jewish, if I failed to denounce Peretz for the crazy sh*t he says then Peretz would want to take away my First Amendment privileges.

So I hereby denounce him.

- May Marty Peretz be accursed.
- May Marty Peretz be accursed at his lying down, and at his rising up.
- May Marty Peretz be accursed in this world, and in the world to come.
- May the soul of Marty Peretz be cut off from all Israel.
- In these Days of Awe, may Marty Peretz not be written in the Book of Life.
- Let the name of Marty Peretz be anathema.
- F*ck Marty Peretz, and the horse he rode in on.

I hope that’s sufficient, but if not I’m prepared to make the denunciation longer, or more specific, or more obscene, as required. I set rather a lot of store by my First Amendment privileges, and would hate to lose them."

"respectfully administering the occasional reminder as to the precise nature of the motherfuckers you are dealing with"

An excerpt from the letters column of _Analog_, 1979.

A marvelously-written little post. The final sentence is worthy of Mencken: "This is who they are--the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn't "have had all these problems," this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a "Real American" with no demonstrable interest in "Real America" then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you."

In which Denny Borsboom and friends take their turn bashing their heads against the wall.

In which young Mr. Yglesias describes the process of reactive identity formation from within: "I have to say that I am really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor. The idea that any time a person with a Spanish last name is tapped for a job, his or her entire lifetime of accomplishments is going to be wiped out in a riptide of bitching and moaning about “identity politics” is not a fun concept for me to contemplate. Qualifications like time at Princeton, Yale Law, and on the Circuit Court that work well for guys with Italian names suddenly don’t work if you have a Spanish name. Heaven forbid someone were to decide that there ought to be at least one Hispanic columnist at a major American newspaper. Somehow, when George W. Bush affects a Texas accent, that’s not identity politics. When John Edwards gets a VP nomination, that’s not identity politics. But Sonia Sotomayor! Oh my heavens!"

Towards a genealogy of the supervillain.

"It has actually been long established that the earliest evidence of artistically conscious humans has been found in, as we might expect, Africa, given that it’s where our species emerged. Specifically, South Africa, in Blombos Cave. There were beads made from shells, and geometric engravings on ochre – i.e. slam-dunk “modern” tokens, unimaginable of even the smartest dog, parrot, chimp, or even Australopithecine “Lucy.” And this stuff dates back to 75,000 to 80,000 years ago. No bosomy figurines, sure – but if what got dug up in Germany was jewelry and etchings instead, we can sure there would be the same claims that here was the birth of advanced thought."

Yes.

But it's true, we're not human. We are simply biding our time until you go extinct, when we will fight it out with the cockroaches.

Charles Murray shows that Philip Agre is right, and the keys to understanding the conservative movement are ressentiment, the embrace of victimhood, self-pity, and above all projection.

"A leading Civil War historian debunks many of the myths of the old South being circulated by neo-Confederate ideologues"

Yet more on the Watson affair

Philip Ball on James Watson