05/24/2024
01:04 The two pillars of wokeness. (One is doomed.)
09:17 To marry or to burn? (Biblical conundrums.)
20:09 Homes for scofflaws. (They give their regards from Broadway.)
26:40 Dutch courage. (Upcoming elections elsewhere.)
33:45 Rubio flips. (Brimelow quips.)
35:06 UVA DEI. (Top ten parasite salaries.)
37:13 ”U.S. out of NATO!” gets an airing. (From a neocon.)
39:38 The Minister for Silly Walks. (Competition for Tiffany Raspberry.)
43:27 Signoff. (For Fleet Week.)
01 — Intro. And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners old and new, from your mimetically genial host John Derbyshire, with some observations on current affairs slanted towards demographics, immigration, and related topics.
Before commencing, let me just assure you that this week’s podcast will include no attempts to imitate the diction of President John F. Kennedy, I promise.
For an opening topic to get us airborne, how about … sex?
02 — The two pillars of wokeness. You have heard me say — more than once, I am sure — that the two stoutest pillars of Progressive Orthodoxy are:
In fact — in actual, real, true fact — there is such a thing as race and there is such a thing as sex. Much of our cultural discourse, and a lot of our politics, consists of differences of opinion over how to deal with those realities.
It’s instructive here to take the long — the long long long — view of human history.
Sex and its differences and their consequences have been with us since the beginning of our species — since before that beginning, in fact. Race, not so much.
The deepest, most consequential differences between races arise from thousands of generations of nearly total separation, isolated populations breeding almost entirely among themselves, barely even aware that other races existed. It was only when humanity took to sailing the seas in a serious way that the big old races encountered each other in any quantity.
I shall state with good confidence that our paleolithic ancestors thought a great deal about sex but very little about race.
From a coldly biological point of view, "There is no such thing as race," and "There is no such thing as sex" are different kinds of propositions, posing very different problems and leading, if widely accepted, to very different outcomes.
Think about how we deal with them, or propose to deal with them. There are intelligent, worldly, rational people — our own Jared Taylor, for example — who believe that you can’t have a stable, harmonious society containing different races in abundance. Each race needs territory of its own — territorial separation.
I venture to suggest that no-one thinks like that about sex.
Well, perhaps not no-one. There is no idea so wacky that you can’t find someone, somewhere, arguing in its support. Separate self-governing nations for men and for women, however, is surely out there on the remote fringes.
Not that some separation hasn’t been commonplace in our history. The secondary school I attended in England, 1956-63, was males-only — both staff and students. My sister likewise attended a females-only school.
Those separations were, though, temporary and particular, not territorial. There was plenty of sex mixing outside school hours.
If indeed there is no such thing as sex, even occasional separations like that cannot be justified. My old school today, bowing to the cultural winds, admits girls to the senior classes.
Furthermore, returning to key differences between Proposition One and Proposition Two: total separation of the races and total separation of the sexes have dramatically different biological consequences.
With total separation of the races, our species would continue to chug along in paleolithic style, steadily reproducing itself. With total separation of the sexes, homo sapiens would quickly become extinct.
The consequences of carrying out Jared Taylor’s prescription of racial separation might be positive or they might be negative — discuss among yourselves — but they wouldn’t be apocalyptic. Total sexual separation would be.
Come on, Derb; isn’t this all a bit fantastical? No-one of any importance wants sexual separation.
That’s true; but technologically advanced societies might none the less have tendencies in that direction, tendencies that can’t be maintained.
These thoughts were inspired by an article I just read — rather late: it’s dated March 4th. The article is by British journalist and blogger Louise Perry, title: Wokeness Is Actually Two Things.
No prizes for guessing that the two things in that title are sex wokeness and race wokeness. Ms Perry’s argument is, that sex wokeness will decline and disappear while race wokeness will go from strength to strength. Quote:
The reason for this is demographics. Put simply, the people who are into woke ideas about gender and race are not the same as the people who are into woke ideas just about race, even if their political aims sometimes overlap. And these two groups have wildly different migration and fertility patterns. Gender wokeness is on the way out because the people who are attracted to gender wokeness are on the way out, given that their birth rates are so far below replacement. Meanwhile, race wokeness (of a kind) is on the rise because of the large and rapid demographic changes currently taking place in the West.
End quote.
Why am I banging on about this? Does it have any relevance to current events?
I think it does; although you have to allow me to stretch the term "current events" all the way back to May 11th, a week last Saturday. Yeah, yeah, I’m having trouble keeping up.
03 — To marry or to burn? So what happened on May 11th to get me ranting about sex?
What happened was that Benedictine College, a Roman Catholic foundation in Kansas, held its commencement ceremony.
There was of course an invited speaker, a person of distinction. This year’s speaker was 28-year-old Harrison Butker, the placekicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, a professional football team.
Mr Butker is, like Benedictine College, of a conservative Roman Catholic disposition. Much of his speech consisted of carefully-phrased criticism of the current government of his church. Sample quote:
Today, our shepherds are far more concerned with keeping the doors open to the chancery than they are with saying the difficult stuff out loud. It seems that the only time you hear from your bishops is when it’s time for the annual appeal, whereas we need our bishops to be vocal about the teachings of the Church, setting aside their own personal comfort and embracing their cross.
End quote.
What really got people’s attention, though, was his remarks about women and marriage. I'll give you Mr Butker himself. Here he is:
[Clip: For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives. I want to speak directly to you briefly because I think it is you, the women, who have had the most diabolical lies told to you. How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.I can tell you that my beautiful wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother. I’m on the stage today and able to be the man I am because I have a wife who leans into her vocation. I’m beyond blessed with the many talents God has given me, but it cannot be overstated that all of my success is made possible because a girl I met in band class back in middle school would convert to the faith, become my wife, and embrace one of the most important titles of all: homemaker.
(Applause lasting 18 seconds)
She is a primary educator to our children. She is the one who ensures I never let football or my business become a distraction from that of a husband and father. She is the person that knows me best at my core, and it is through our marriage that, Lord willing, we will both attain salvation.
I say all of this to you because I have seen it firsthand how much happier someone can be when they disregard the outside noise and move closer and closer to God’s will in their life. Isabelle’s dream of having a career might not have come true, but if you asked her today if she has any regrets on her decision, she would laugh out loud, without hesitation, and say, "Heck, No."]
That got the wokesters riled up. Here was one of them: sports reporter Michelle Beadle on the Wondery Sports podcast, May 22nd:
[Clip: As a woman, I think everything he said was garbage. I think when you hide hateful thoughts and feelings and bigotry behind the quote unquote cloak of religion, I tend to roll my eyes and stop listening.But I think the fact that there were women in that audience that were not OK … I mean, granted, there were some that clearly were, but there were also some that weren’t, that have come out since and said: "What the hell, dude? We just worked our asses off for years. And you're gonna come in here and tell us that’s all cute and stuff, but what you're really gonna wanna do is get married and have babies. Then you'll feel important. Like go f***k yourself."]
There’s much to be said here. I’m a Christian, but not a Roman Catholic. I think Roman Catholics get a lot of things wrong — priestly celibacy, for example.
If you want to get into the weeds on theology here, there is a longstanding and much-commented-on contradiction in the New Testament.
The biggest name in Christian theology, after of course Jesus Christ himself, was Saint Paul, author of all those epistles towards the end of the New Testament.
Paul wasn’t really a model for Christian marriage. He didn’t get married himself, and he didn’t think there was much point in Christians marrying, since the end of the world was at hand and spousal affection would just subtract from one’s religious devotion in these last days.
Paul’s most famous pronouncement on marriage was in First Corinthians Chapter 7, quote:
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
End quote.
In other words: The best thing is not to marry, but if you can’t control your sexual desires, marriage is excusable.
Paul was in fact quite woke in matters of both race and sex, most famously in the Epistle to the Galatians Chapter 3, quote:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
End quote.
Jews and Greeks aside, I don’t know that Paul had much opportunity to display what we would think of as racial equality, but where male and female were concerned, he walked the walk.
His Epistle to the Romans was actually entrusted to a woman named Phoebe for delivery, and he praised other women by name for their work on behalf of the Church: Junia and Priscilla. Some scholars of the early Church think that Priscilla may actually have written the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The contradiction comes in the three so-called Pastoral Epistles, those to Timothy and Titus. They are very pro-marriage, insisting that church leaders — bishops and deacons — should be happily married men. The contradiction is glaring enough that, along with some other evidence, it leads many scholars — I think most — to believe that the Pastoral Epistles were not in fact written by Paul.
So the negativity towards marriage that you see in Paul’s epistles and in monasticism and priestly celibacy is only one thread in early Christianity; but it is one that you might reasonably associate with Roman Catholic doctrine.
If you want to go even further down this rabbit hole, remember that all these early Christians — well, the ones who were literate and educated — were, in their thinking, half Greek. The Holy Land had spent two and a half centuries under Greek rule before General Pompey showed up to romanize it.
Alexander, who had started off that Hellenization, was no great model as a husband, and may in fact have preferred boys to girls.
And these first-century Jews who got Christianity going must all have been acquainted with Greek philosophy. Presumably they knew that Plato, in The Republic, argued for the total abolition of family life. Come to think of it, the marriage of Socrates with Xanthippe isn’t particularly encouraging.
Whoa … I think I've gone too far down this particular rabbit hole. Sorry; I read too much, I know.
Back to Harrison Butker and his commencement address. As I said, I’m not a Roman Catholic. I like what Butker had to say about marriage, though, and I thank him for saying it. Thank you, Sir!
Mr Butker, age 28, has two children. Michelle Beadle, twenty years older, is unmarried and childless. That circles us back neatly to Louise Perry in my opening segment …
04 — Homes for scofflaws. [Clip: Judy Garland, "Give my regards to Broadway …"]
Ah yes, Broadway; the Great White Way, the Street of Dreams. Does any other thoroughfare in the United States have such a romantic, evocative name?
And on West 50th Street, halfway between Broadway and 8th Avenue, stands the Square Hotel. It is officially named the Square Hotel at Times Square, but that’s a stretch: Times Square is actually five blocks south; but I'll just put that down to promotional license.
This is the very heart of New York City. Living there must be real expensive, right? Right: figure six thousand a month for a one-bedroom apartment.
The Square Hotel is appropriately well-appointed. There’s a Japanese restaurant and bar in the lobby and the rooms are Art Nouveau style with sophisticated furniture, plush beds with down comforters and deluxe linens, flat-screen TVs with cable. and toiletries from C.O. Bigelow downtown, "the oldest apothecary in America."
Great! Let’s book a room!
However, if you go to the hotel website at squarehotelnyc.com, all you get is a plain notice saying "THE SQUARE HOTEL HAS TEMPORARILY CLOSED. Please pardon our appearance as we slip into something new."
Strange! Can a nice establishment like that, so centrally located, have gone out of business?
No: the Square Hotel is very much in business, just not with American citizens or legal residents. It’s in business with the City of New York. The Mayor of that city, Eric Adams, has filled up its 141 rooms with illegal aliens.
For the hotel and the city, it’s win-win. The hotel is getting easy money from the city and guaranteed full occupancy without having to provide traditional hotel services. Mayor Adams gets to pretend he has the influx of illegals into his sanctuary city under control.
And upper-middle-class New York theater-goers get to feel good about themselves. One such told the New York Post reporter that, quote:
I’m more concerned about the migrants than the theater goers. If they have a place to stay it makes the city safer.
End quote.
There are of course also some losers. There are potential tourists with one less place to stay in midtown Manhattan. There are local merchants with correspondingly fewer customers. There are hotel employees whose services are not required under the minimal new regime. And there are the occasional victims of a mugging or a knifing by Venezuelan hoodlums resident at the hotel.
Finding suitable high-class accommodation for foreign scofflaws is now big business all over. Associated Press, April 10th, told us about the city of Denver, which is rolling out a new, ambitious migrant support program, which includes six-month apartment stays and intensive job preparation for those who can’t yet legally work.
As well as six months' rent there also comes free food and utility assistance, a free computer, a prepaid cell phone and metro bus passes, training courses on English language, computers, financial literacy, and workers rights, and help with the paperwork for the scofflaws' bogus asylum applications.
Meanwhile, up there in the State of Maine, the town of Westbrook wants to use private homes and churches as shelters for illegal aliens …
Wait a minute: Is Westbrook, population 20,400, a sanctuary, er, town? Is Maine a sanctuary state? If neither, why don’t the town fathers just call in ICE to arrest and deport the scofflaws?
Does any government in our country — federal, state, municipal, or local — give a flying fandangle about American citizens? Or about fair but rigorous enforcement of the nation’s laws, duly passed by our elected representatives?
To ask the questions is to answer them.
05 — Dutch courage. Elections are coming up all over. Two weekends from now, June 6th to 9th, come elections to the European Parliament. Prospects look good for immigration-restrictionist parties.
The big star here is Geert Wilders of Holland. The Dutch had a general election of their own back in November last year; Mr Wilders' Party for Freedom, the PVV, won big, becoming the largest party in the Dutch parliament.
That’s not as all-conquering as it sounds. Holland has one of those proportional-representation electoral systems that favor small parties. In November’s election fifteen parties won seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives. The PVV got 37 of them, the biggest number; the other 113 were divided up among the other fourteen parties, eleven of which got less than ten seats.
A system like that works by coalition. Parties with a respectable number of seats join together with other parties with a respectable number of seats, parties that are acceptable to them policy-wise.
In Holland the horse-trading went on from the November result until May 16th. Then it was announced that Mr Wilders' PVV would join its 37 seats in a coalition with those of three other parties for a total 88 seats — a majority of the 150 in the parliament.
Holding the biggest number of seats in the coalition, Wilders is the de facto political leader of his country. This is bound to help him in the Euro elections the weekend after next. Currently none of Holland’s 29 Euro seats are held by PVV; the punters are betting it will be ten after the election.
As well as a success for Wilders, the PVV election victory has given a boost to parties in other European countries with policies in opposition to the Great Replacement. The National Rally Party in France is looking to increase its representation, likewise Italy’s Lega Party.
Germany’s AfD Party, the Alternative for Germany, might have joined in the optimism, except that yesterday, Thursday, the conservative multi-country grouping in the European Parliament expelled them.
What had happened was that last week Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s lead candidate in these upcoming Euro elections, had stepped on the third rail of German political commentary — the one spelt N-A-Z-I.
In a joint interview with Britain’s Financial Times and Italy’s La Repubblica that had apparently wandered off into some remark about the SS being a criminal organization, Mr. Krah said, quote: "Can you really say that because someone was an officer in the Waffen-SS they were a criminal? You have to establish individual guilt." End quote.
In pure logic Herr Krah had a point; but of course, Nazi Nazi Nazi Hitler Hitler Hitler … the other Euro conservatives had to boot him out. We'll see on June 10th how much harm that’s done to the anti-Great Replacement cause.
Still, the rightward drift in Europe’s politics is infuriating the globalist anti-white bureaucrats who run the EU. The very strict policy on immigration that Geert Wilders proposed as the first act of his coalition leadership, with swift deportation of bogus "asylum seekers," has particularly upset them. The European Commission has warned Wilders that Holland "cannot opt out of EU legislation."
We shall see; and yes, the word "Nexit" has started to appear, the "N" standing of course for "Holland."
And then, the Brits. Wednesday this week Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a general election for Thursday, July 4th.
Sunak’s party, the Conservative Party is unpopular and will likely lose by a landslide. The opposition party, however, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, inspires little enthusiasm.
The general mood over there is one of deep pessimism. Polling shows a widespread belief that the election result will make no difference. Quote from a pollster:
A not insubstantial number of people going Labour aren’t all that keen on the party. Rather, they're just not as repelled as they are by the Conservatives.
End quote.
Poor old Britain! I can remember when it was a country. It breaks my heart just to report these things.
06 — Miscellany. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, interviewed on Meet the Press last Sunday, totally reversed himself on the subject of deporting illegal aliens.
Concerning Donald Trump’s plan to use the military to deport illegal immigrants, Rubio responded that, quote, "We cannot absorb 25, 30 million people who entered this country illegally. They're here illegally, what country on earth could tolerate that?" End quote.
Senator Rubio was of course, to quote one of our own writers from nine years ago, quote, "a top quisling in the Gang of Eight amnesty scheme." End quote.
When I mentioned this latest news item to Peter Brimelow, Peter responded, quote: "Well, hey, rats don’t swim towards sinking ships." End quote.
Item: I’m just as cheered as any other hate-filled reactionary by the recurring news stories about universities shutting down their DEI offices — most recently, just this week, the University of North Carolina.
Yes, it’s good news. There’s a way to go yet, though.
I just spotted on Twitter a chart showing the highest paid DEI staff at the University of Virginia.
These are just the highest paid, mind. Just to read off the top three names to you, with their job titles and total remuneration (salary plus benefits):
And so on down the list for a total ten names, total remuneration $3,265,171.
Do I need to issue the call again? OK, I shall: DEFUND THE COLLEGES!
Item: If you've listened much to Radio Derb you'll know that one of my pet peeves concerns NATO.
No, I’m not opposed to the Euros having a defense alliance, although I think their priority should be to defend themselves against the hordes moving north from Islamia and Africa. A European defense alliance is a good sensible idea.
I just don’t see why we should be in it. We should have left NATO thirty-three years ago when the Warsaw Pact folded up its tents. NATO should be reorganized as EuTO, the European Treaty Organization.
Well, here was foreign affairs analyst Harley Lippman talking to MailOnline, May 16th. Quote from him:
I’m not saying for certain that Trump will pull us out of NATO, but it’s just too high a risk for Europe not to be prepared, because right now they're relying on America.
End quote.
I had never heard of this bloke Lippman. On a quick look-up, he seems to be a die-hard neocon. He knows what’s what, though, and is busy with meetings and conferences, most recently in the London House of Commons to, quote from the Mail, "discuss the dangers of American isolationism," end quote.
Dangers, phooey. What’s more dangerous than getting involved in other nations' quarrels when they don’t directly concern us?
Still, I’m always glad to see the prospect of our withdrawing from NATO get an airing, even from a neocon. Whether President Trump will be able to focus on the issue for long enough to actually get it done is of course an open question, but we live in hope.
Item: I know, I know: It’s childish to make fun of people’s names. We can’t help our names … except that sometimes we can help our names.
Reading a news story about British politics, I learned the name of the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
I should explain that the British government executive branch has cabinet officers just like we do, with titles like Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State for Transport, Secretary of State for Defence, and so on. In the national legislature, though — which is to say, in Parliament — the main opposition party has shadow versions of those titles, held by legislators to speak as specialists on Foreign Affairs, Transport, Defence, et cetera. If you are the Shadow Secretary of State for Silly Walks and there’s an election and your party comes to power, you will quite likely (although it’s not certain) find yourself in the national executive running the Ministry of Silly Walks.
So: scanning the British news this week, I encountered the Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. Her name is Thangam Debbonaire. Fifty-seven years old, Ms. Debbonaire is the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Bristol West.
Seeing her name there, I had a fit of the giggles. "Debbonaire"! — spelt with double "b," by the way. Was it her natal name, or her married name? Looking her up, I found it was neither. This is a case of someone who can help her name, at any rate her last name.
Ms Debbonaire was originally Thangam Singh, I suppose of a Sikh family. He husband’s name is Kevin Walton. She legally changed her name back in her twenties — to Debbonaire, double-"b."
All right, I've stopped giggling. And, the national scope of Ms Debbonaire’s responsibilities notwithstanding, I must report that New York City’s Director of Intergovernmental and External Affairs Tiffany Raspberry still holds first place on my list of most giggleworthy names of public officials.
I am, however, struggling to figure which of these two ladies' job titles better characterizes Anglo-Saxon government in a terminal state of bossy, overstaffed decadence: "Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport" or "Director of Intergovernmental and External Affairs."
07 — Signoff. There you have it, ladies and gents. Thank you as always for your time, your attention, and your support.
This is of course Memorial Day weekend, when we honor members of the armed forces who died in service to our nation. I’m sure I don’t need to urge Radio Derb listeners, whether or not you get the day off work, to observe Memorial Day in a properly respectful spirit.
In New York City this has also been Fleet Week, described on its website as, quote, "a seven-day celebration honoring the U.S. Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps." The ships are in and the streets of the city are thronged with smartly-turned-out matelots looking for relief from the rigors of shipboard life. A hearty greeting to them all from this former Sea Cadet.
To sing us out appropriately, here is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
There will be more from Radio Derb next week.
[Music clip: Mormon Tabernacle Choir, "Anchors Away!"
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