The modern right
9/11 made me
finally break with the left-liberal worldview
and start agreeing with conservatives
on foreign policy
(I had already long ago agreed with the right on economics).
I finally converted from liberal-left
to libertarian-right once I read the latter's arguments
in 2001-02.
What does "right" mean in the modern world?
Let me suggest a definition:
By "right" on this page I mean people that generally support the west
against its enemies.
Not all of the links on this page could be called "right-wing".
(I'm not even necessarily "right-wing" myself.)
But none of these are anti-west.
According to this definition, there are many right-wing groups and individuals
I disagree with and oppose, such as religious conservatives.
There are even self-described "right-wingers" who do not
support the west against its enemies,
such as isolationists and Israel-haters.
For a full discussion see:
Authors
- Victor Davis Hanson
- Mark Steyn
(or via here)
- Michelle Malkin
- P.J. O'Rourke
(and search)
- TIA Daily
(The Intellectual Activist,
by Robert Tracinski)
- Amir Taheri
(and here)
(Iranian Muslim exile)
- Brink Lindsey
- David Harsanyi
- Michael Ledeen
- Michael J. Totten
(formerly here)
- Paul Bogdanor
- Dinesh D'Souza
(see website)
- I like a lot of what D'Souza writes on America and communism and
the Cold War, but he doesn't seem to be so good on Islamism:
-
The D'Souza Follies by Robert Spencer, January 30, 2007
- D'Souza talks rubbish about "traditional values".
He says the right should form an alliance with traditional Muslims,
both sharing conservative "traditional values"
in contrast to
the modern liberal, sexually permissive, atheist West
(which I love).
- D'Souza says the right
should stop criticising Islam and the Prophet:
"First, stop attacking Islam. Conservatives have to cease blaming Islam
for the behavior of the radical Muslims. Recently the right has produced a spate
of Islamophobic tracts with titles like
Islam Unveiled,
Sword of the Prophet, and
The Myth of Islamic Tolerance.
There is probably no better way to repel traditional Muslims,
and push them into the radical camp, than to attack their religion and their prophet."
- In other words, D'Souza is saying that an Islamic Reformation,
or an Islamic Enlightenment, should not be allowed to take place,
and Islam and the Prophet must remain forever beyond criticism,
as Christianity and the Church were in the Middle Ages.
- D'Souza also says about Islamic countries:
"if they want Sharia, let them have it."
Radio, TV, video
Main blogs I read
- Politics news feeds
- The blogging collective
Pajamas Media /
Open Source Media
- Belmont Club
(see here
and here,
formerly here)
by Richard Fernandez
(alias "Wretchard")
- Steven Den Beste
- Bill Whittle
- Right Wing News
-
Insults Unpunished by
Robert Prather
- Augean Stables by Richard Landes
- Summary of the war, Jan 2007
- "First of all, as a historian of civil society,
of the millennium-long struggle in the West to achieve this extraordinary marvel of the modern world,
this experiment in human freedom, I want to say:
European democratic civilization can fall before the Islamic challenge.
Something similar happened before, in the 5th century, when a culturally superior Roman civilization
fell to a primitive tribal Germanic culture."
- "Second, this is going to get worse before it gets better.
...
Once these movements, which in the past have killed 10s of millions, "take," they are like forest fires.
They cannot be stopped, at best they can be channeled.
We are in for a long and unpleasant conflict"
- "Third, modern media play a critical role in Global Jihad's success.
...
Let me cut to the chase. If this wondrous experiment in human freedom that was launched on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 18th century survives to the middle of the 21st century, historians will look back on the performance of the MSM in the first decade of that century
...
and give the journalists' "first draft of history" an F.
...
when historians look back, I think they will identify the MSM's appalling performance as one of the main sources
of the West's vulnerability to Global Jihad at the beginning of this century"
Dormant blogs
I like LGF and Charles Johnson,
though I don't like some of his commenters.
Because LGF is so controversial, I thought I'd write a few words
in defence of Charles Johnson
(if not his commenters).
- Little Green Footballs
by Charles Johnson
|
In defence of LGF:
Some people
criticise LGF
because of comments that have been posted there over the years.
The first thing to note is that LGF is a victim of its success.
LGF has over 3.5 million comments so far,
and they are running at about 3,000 new comments per day.
If you spent an average of just 10 seconds reading each comment
(some are many lines long, and contain links), and never took a break for food or rest,
it would take you 8 hours a day every day, 365 days a year,
just to read the new comments.
And that's not including reading email, following links, and adding new material to the site.
It is clear that Charles Johnson does not and cannot possibly
read all the comments on his site.
So he depends on other people to notify him about objectionable comments.
While I agree that some commenters are racists and ethnic cleansers,
and I would ban a lot more than Charles Johnson
does, I would still defend LGF for several reasons:
- I am happy with Charles Johnson
himself. His views seem pretty normal to me.
If you disagree, tell me
here
what Charles Johnson
has said that you find objectionable.
- The collective tone of the comments is never in favour of the
ethnic cleansers. They are always attacked.
- LGF is simply so damn good at picking up the must-read items of news on the
global war on Islamism, including attacks in the third world, the latest horrors of the left,
soft bias of the media,
hate sermons in mosques,
other unpleasant and uncomfortable little details about the Islamists,
criticism of Islam itself,
and many other topics that other sources spend little time on.
It is simply the best ongoing blog of the war.
|
- Charles Johnson rarely writes much,
but when he does it's usually good.
Here he
magnificently fisks a useless
Agence France Presse propaganda piece
about the poor impoverished Palestinians:
"People who genuinely want to build a functioning society will start building it.
You can't stop them.
But the Palestinians have proven time and again that destroying the Jewish state takes precedence over creating a hopeful future for their children.
My tears are all dried up when it comes to the plight of the Palestinian people. I'll save my sympathy and support for those who deserve it."
- The LGF Robert Fisk Award for
Idiotarian of the Year:
- 2002
- 2003
- 2004
- 2005
- 2006
- 2007
- Anti-Idiotarian of the Year:
Blogs arguing with LGF
There was a big argument on the right in 2007 between LGF and some other anti-jihad blogs:
The argument was
over the nature of Vlaams Belang
and
the Sweden Democrats.
LGF was pointing out their anti-semitic
and neo-Nazi past (and perhaps present).
The above blogs were defending them as now reformed allies against the jihad.
This, though, rather reminds me of
the claim that the BNP has "reformed".
I find the LGF side
the most convincing.
My problems with
the Sweden Democrats can be found here.
As for Vlaams Belang,
someone I really admire,
Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
called it
"a racist, anti-Semitic, extremist party that .. should be outlawed".
Get her to change her mind and I'll listen to you.
Summary of the case against Vlaams Belang
makes a good point:
"my conclusion is that allying with Vlaams Belang would be strategically inept while providing little value, and would ... sap support for our anti-Islamofascist efforts.
This is the case whether VB is taking a course to reform or not. There is too much evidence from their own sites, manifestos, statements, party publications, and affiliated groups that their leadership is not distant enough from the stance on collaborators, identity politics, and immature political theater to make any alliance with them sane. Even if they are making whole-hearted honest efforts to reform, the track record is just not long enough. (Some in their leadership are I think, some others aren't.)
...
Associating with Vlaams Belang when they bring so little to the cause while carrying so much bad baggage is not only poorly thought out, it's also politically naive."
In short, it is a waste of energy for anyone on the anti-jihad side to attempt to defend
Vlaams Belang. They should just shrug and say: "I can understand why you don't like them.
I think they're reformed, but I understand if you think differently."
Robert Spencer
on VB having new links to the BNP:
"In the recent bitter controversy between Charles Johnson and a group of counterjihadists over the nature of the VB, it does appear quite clearly from this new alliance, if it wasn't already, that Charles was right."
Get Spencer to change his mind and I'll listen to you.
So I find the LGF side
the most convincing.
It doesn't mean these other blogs are racist
- just that they've made a bad call on allies.
I know Gates of Vienna isn't racist.
I'm not so sure about Brussels Journal any more, since I discovered they carry an ad for a BNP site.
Because of this, I'm removing all my links to them.
Miscellaneous blogs
- Andrew Sullivan
- archive
-
Andrew Sullivan
I used to read all the time.
He used to be on my list of
Writers on politics that I like,
before Bush's anti-gay marriage policy drove him mad.
-
I have some sympathy for Sullivan.
I have problems with Bush too.
But Gay Marriage is simply not as important
an issue as the War on Islamist Terror.
Sullivan just can't swallow his pride and accept this.
-
He has abandoned Bush because of this issue,
and is trying to justify it.
Now (2004) he talks as if the Abu Ghraib scandal is important,
as if the WMD intelligence scandal is important,
and so on.
He talks as if the
Swift Boat Veterans For Truth
is Republican dirty tricks, rather than what it is
- 200 people who have hated Kerry for 30 years
and now is their moment.
He has switched sides and is now trying desperately to pretend that Kerry
is strong on defence.
The old Andrew Sullivan
- the one who realised we are in a war to the death
with people who want to exterminate homosexuals
and lots of other groups
- is gone, sadly.
-
Andrew Sullivan v. Christopher Hitchens, Apr 2008:
- Sullivan is demolished by Hitchens,
as he (Sullivan) struggles to defend the dodgy, evasive Obama and
his mentor Rev. Wright.
-
I haven't read Sullivan in years, but I am still shocked.
How far he has fallen.
He has become Simon Jenkins
or Geoffrey Wheatcroft, a hopeless confused muddle,
all because he is driven by another agenda.
-
Survey of Andrew Sullivan's readers, Feb 2008.
Despite him claiming to be a "conservative", only affluent left wingers read him now.
"2.5 percent of you describe yourselves as very conservative; 9.6 percent as conservative; 33.3 percent as moderate; 38.1 percent as liberal; and 16.5 percent as very liberal."
"Only 22 percent of you earn $50K or less. Another fifth earn between $50K and $75K. Well over half have household income of over $100K a year."
- Gays for Bush:
-
In the Middle East, a New World
by Karl Zinsmeister, April/May 2005 issue.
On loyalty, and staying the course:
-
"From the very beginning, of course, the Bush administration's left-wing enemies in the U.S. and Europe
were hysterically opposed to the push for Middle Eastern democracy.
A significant number of right-wing pundits
also proved themselves to be sunshine patriots ...
bailing out of the hard, dirty work of war and cultural transformation as soon as the predictable resistance arose.
But that's politics.
In Washington, if you're looking for a brave and steadfast ally, you need to buy a dog.
Fortunately our warriors battling away in Najaf and Samarra and Anbar province didn't surrender to the Beltway gloom
that defeated most of our media and political elites."
- Israel
- Iraq
- Egypt
- The Big Pharaoh
(Egyptian, Muslim, anti-Islamist, lives in Egypt)
- He attacks the western media
for supporting Islamists and not anti-Islamist Muslims.
"I should be weeping because the Western mainstream media is telling the world that the only true faithful Muslims
are those who wear the stupid cloth on their head (that was nonexistent 30 years ago)
and separate boys and girls in schools. I should be weeping because Time magazine is showing us that only girls
clad in black with no makeup on are the true Muslims who are struggling between
their Islamic and their American identities. Meanwhile, those Muslims who disagree with the head veil,
who think that Islam needs reform a la all major faiths, and who believe that we cannot live like our Muslim brethren
did 1400 years ago are the "lesser Muslims" or the Muslims that are "out of the mainstream"."
- Malta
- Sweden
- Norway
- France
- Germany
- Spain
- Australia
Other good blogs
Dormant or extinct
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By "right" on this page I mean people that generally support the west
against its enemies,
for lack of a better term.
Not all of the links on this page could be called "right-wing".
(I'm not even necessarily "right-wing" myself.)
But none of these are anti-west.
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