Wit, Wisdom and Morality from Ol’ Rocky Top
Instayokel, the Knob from Knoxville, attempts snark and fails:
DUNCAN BLACK: “I’m not the ‘Instapundit of the Left.'”
True!
On the other hand, this claim — “I generally read through and fact check stuff I link to” — seems a bit of a stretch.
Such is the bitter, simmering tone of the post that one easily imagines him biting through the stem of his corncob pipe as he wrote it.
More importantly, it’s infused with bullshit.
Put another way, of course Duncan Black is not the Instapundit of the Left: he takes responsibility for what he links to, and doesn’t misrepresent what he is. Glenn Reynolds, on the other hand, has spent his blogging career insisting that he’s not really rightwing, that he’s actually a “libertarian” or a “Whig” rather than a Republican hack. Reynolds also tacitly hides behind the posts of others he pastes to his audience — his method of staying on message, of endorsing wingnuttery, while still retaining a veneer of “plausible deniability.”
And his “gotcha” link is precious. Read it through. It’s from when Atrios actually showed Instayokel the generosity of deeming him ignorant rather than racist. Proving that no deed goes unpunished, Instayokel now cites this as “proof” that Atrios doesn’t, actually, research what he links to.
At the end of the “gotcha” post, Reynolds also addresses, in his half-assed and “What, Little Old Me?” sort of way, Atrios’s aside that Reynolds “blam[es] the victims of genocide.” What, Reynolds asks, you mean this post?
No, he didn’t (but nice try, asshole). He meant this one, the most egregious in Instayokel’s archive, in which Reynolds effectively spits on the grave every Native American killed in the 400-plus years of conquest, basically saying that they had it coming. It’s difficult to come up with typical light-hearted snark in response to such depravity. One’s mind instead drifts into reveries of teleporters or time machines through which Glenn Reynolds could be transported to a more appropriate place and time to test his moral thesis — let’s say, Little Big Horn on June 26, 1876.
As if unconsciously emphasizing his amenable attitude to racial genocide, a few minutes after the witless anti-Atrios post, Reynolds approvingly links to a silly blurb to a book on Theodore Roosevelt, the most dedicatedly racist and war-loving President we’ve ever had, the President who finessed our racist genocide in the Philippines by an approving analogy to what we did to the Indians:
Every argument that can be made for the Filipinos could be made for the Apaches. And every word that can be said for Aguinaldo could be said for Sitting Bull. As peace, order and prosperity followed our expansion over the land of the Indians, so they will follow us in the Phillipines.
And every word that can be said for the Indians and Filipinos was said for the Vietnamese a generation ago, and is said for the Iraqis now. Small wonder, then, that Theodore Roosevelt has always been a favorite among wingnuts and should be particularly admirable to Glenn Reynolds, through whom Roosevelt’s rationalizations for genocide echo.
Update: Just noticed that Atrios again alludes to Reynolds’s Genocide: Fuck Yeah! schtick.
Glenn’s idea of convincing you of something is providing so many links that you reach the invariable “whatever, OK” event horizon.
I don’t mind links, what bothers me is the ratio between his stuff and somebody else’s stuff. Take the genocide bullshit post: 611 in all, 379 of which are quotes. I admit I don’t read his stuff that much (hell, if I wanted to puke, a bottle of vodka would do just as nicely), but it seems like this is the rule, rather than an exception.
Glennocidal Tendencies, Part II
Following up on Retardo’s post below, I think it’s worth re-examining Glenn Reynolds’ characteristically passive-aggressive justification of genocide. Here it is, my emphasis: Civilized societies have found it harder, though, to beat the barbarians wit…
People still read Reynolds?
In defence of Teddy R: Although he started out an imperialist, he was himself appalled at the carnage in the Phillipines. It changed him.
Unfortunately today’s GOP only quotes the pre-Phillipines TR.
Those who do not learn from history etc etc.
In terms of sheer unequivocal disdain for brown people I think Woodrow Wilson wins the champion’s cup for most racist President of the United States.
That was a nice, measured defense from Atrios to the charges of his many critics. So much classier than Americablog’s hissy fit the other day.
It’s still waaaay fun to take the piss out of Duncan, though.
I can’t even comment on Instahehindeed yet. I’m on the West Coast, just woke up, it’s an hour earlier than it should be … damn you Daylight Savings Time and end of Daylight Savings Time!
Woodrow Wilson was a racist fucktard, it’s true. The worst in policy and the worst, probably, personally. But this is with regard to race matters within the United States.
I don’t know if Woodrow Wilson, though, ever said a country had to be “conquered in the interest of the White Race,” but Theodore Roosevelt sure did. I’ll try to find the quote later.
Andy Jackson was no piker when it came to hating on the darkies.
This is an *old* conservative shtik. Victor Davis von Bernhardi Hanson is always going “Genocide! Fuck yeah!” and the rest of the manly men over at NRO and the sundry conservative scholars outfits have been doing the same thing for *decades*, long before they finally got their New Crusade which they’ve been calling for since, in my personal memory, the late 1970s.
I can only think that they must have been rooting for the aliens to win in “Independence Day” and “Starship Troopers” and every version of “War of the Worlds” ever made, because otherwise I would be forced to conclude that they had no principles at all, other than an “Us vs Them” narrow and ad hoc tribalism…
I don’t know if Woodrow Wilson, though, ever said a country had to be “conquered in the interest of the White Race,” but Theodore Roosevelt sure did. I’ll try to find the quote later.
I don’t know about TR, but Lincoln sure said something along those lines:
“in favor of our new territories (the West) being in such a condition that white men may find a home … as an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.�
I’m also going to have to go with Wilson as the more racist of the two – just because he was a racist on a personal level, as well as on a political level.
Both of them winning the Nobel Peace Prize sort of made it a dead heat, due to the added level of offensiveness caused by them actually being awarded despite their genocidal attitudes…but Wilson showing Birth of a Nation *in* the White House edges him over the top.
The American colonists were considered barbarians in 1776. Would Britian had been justified in wiping all of them out if they didn’t win and had kept on fighting?
Fuck Yeah?
Lincoln, like TR, learned and grew. Lincoln earlier in his career was all for repatriation of the slaves (and Jefferson AFAIK held that attitude all his life).
It’s a cheap shot to pick on these people’s early writings and not acknowledge that they themselves recognized some of the errors of their ways. We should only honor them all the more for having that strength of character.
Unfortunately I don’t see anything like that in politics today. Clinton’s “apologies” only smacked of cheap opportunism. But our current preznit of course takes this lack of learning from mistakes to unexplored depths.
You might enjoy Chris Suellentrop’s review of Reynolds’ book in The New York Observer. It takes Suellentrop a couple of paragraphs to warm up to the task of letting his readers know what a hack and bullshit artist Reynolds is, but once he gets going, it’s fun.
I agree with you, Taylor … just would note that extramarital sex is not quite the error that racist imperialism or mass deportation of black people is. Clinton perhaps owed an apology to Hillary (depending on the understanding between them, which we don’t know) but why did he owe one to anyone else?
At least TR wasn’t a slave to corporate interests that created the media bubble that blinded people into supporting invading Iraq and “elect” Dubya’s incompetent ass in the first place.
My favorite bit in that Suellentrop review:
To the limited extent that this scattershot approach succeeds, it’s because the book resembles Mr. Reynolds’ blog: cheery, brief, optimistic, opinionated, idiosyncratic. Unfortunately, it more often resembles Mr. Reynolds’ blog: condescending, slight, triumphalist, data-free, idiosyncratic.
Heh. Indeed.
just would note that extramarital sex is not quite the error that racist imperialism or mass deportation of black people is.
I took this as a reference to Rwanda.
Ah … okay, well that’s different of course. Sorry ’bout that!
Lincoln, like TR, learned and grew. Lincoln earlier in his career was all for repatriation of the slaves (and Jefferson AFAIK held that attitude all his life).
I dont know if you can call 1863 (according to John Hay) “early in his career”, but whatever.
Your point on Clinton is well-taken, though.
“It’s a cheap shot to pick on these people’s early writings and not acknowledge that they themselves recognized some of the errors of their ways.”
Until his dying breath TR was a war-lover like no other. I have no quarrel if you want to say he was a semi-repentant imperialist, but to imply that he abondoned his batshit-insane jingoism is wrong. At best, it can be said that TR switched his emphasis from racial conquest to a “Clash of Empires” (wwI). But then by that time most of the territory avaliable for conquest had been already taken.
Instnapuddy says he’s a Whig? Then I’m a Tory. Which will Queen Victoria pick?
James K. Polk liked his wars, but I’m not sure how racist he was.
Just saying that there’s a competition, and that Teddy doesn’t automagically win.
A Whig? Then why does his hair look like he used a Flowbee *and* a bowl? Nobody sells Whigs that bad.*
* Neener.
Andrew Jackson implemented the genocidal policy of “Indian Removal,” and Martin van Buren followed it up by forcing the Cherokee onto the Trail of Tears.
Man, that Genocide thing was when I realised that Instapundit isn’t just wrong, he’s a disgusting pile of human scum.
That a person in this day and age could still hold such sentiment is baffling.
each racist must be measured against the prevailing sentiment at the time. therefore, if you assign a racist factor of 87% to 1919, that makes Wilson’s 100% racism contextualized against, say, Nixon’s anti-semitism (98%, minus 2% for Kissinger, sort of) against the prevailing 62%.
so nixon is the worst in history, by SO FUCKING FAR IT ISN’T close. /rant
but, i did make all those numbers up. just now.