Steve King’s crime, Steve King’s punishment, Steve King’s explanation
You may have already heard about the punishment meted out yesterday by Republicans to Representative Steve King of Iowa:
House GOP leaders moved Monday to remove Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) from all of his committee assignments following a firestorm over remarks considered racist.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) told reporters after a meeting of the Republican Steering Committee that King would not receive any committee assignments for the new Congress.
The move by GOP leaders severely hamstrings King’s ability to wield influence as a member of Congress.
And you may have also heard about the alleged crime, occurring in an interview King gave with the NY Times. Here’s the quote from Steve King that the paper reported (and note the punctuation, in particular the placement of the dash):
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?”
Your reaction to that quote depends, of course, on whether you think that’s a permissible question to ask. In this day and age, it apparently isn’t. Your reaction also depends on whether you think the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” are beyond the pale, so obviously racist and so obviously offensive that the question becomes an inherently offensive one.
Let’s just stipulate that “white nationalists” and “white supremacists” are in fact racists, and that asking the question—if that is what King was actually doing—implies that the questioner is insufficiently aware of the racist nature of such people.
However, is that actually what King was saying? Here is King’s explanation:
Mr. King remained defiant after losing his committee seats, releasing a long statement insisting that his comments in the Times article had been misunderstood. He said he had been referring only to “western civilization” when he asked “how did that language become offensive,” not “white nationalist” or “white supremacist.”
That’s a big difference, isn’t it? It all depends on the pause, and what the word “that” (in “how did that language…”) was meant to refer to.
And what of that “long statement” of King’s that the Times references? I can’t find anywhere they published the text, although perhaps I missed it. But here it is, and it’s not really all that long, either:
My Statement on Kevin McCarthy’s Unprecedented Assault on my Freedom of Speech. pic.twitter.com/0R0vP6MoWT
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) January 15, 2019
I have no way of knowing what King really meant by the controversial words. But I find his explanation quite plausible.
I’ll say one thing, though—if I were a Republican politician, I would make exceedingly sure I didn’t use any ambiguous words. No third-person pronouns if I could help it, for example; I’d repeat the name of the person I was talking about rather than say “he” or “she.” No words such as “that”—words that can mean any number of things. For example, if I were to utter King’s question, I’d be repeating the phrase “Western civilization,” as in “How and when did the term Western civilization become offensive?”
I’d make everything crystal clear, in other words (literally, in other words). Which is of course impossible, arduous, and not required of those on the left; only of those on the right. You can be sure that the Times is looking for slipups on the right, and hoping and trusting they will get them or can create them.
The Times chooses the punctuation, after all, in a spoken statement. What if the paper had quoted King as having said this, with the dash in a different place, and a bit more context (from King’s letter)?:
“White nationalist,” “white supremacist,”—“Western civilization,” how did that language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?…just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today.
The Times wouldn’t have done it that way, of course; what the paper did was no accident. But even if it had been published this alternate way, it probably still would have caused a brouhaha, too, since lately it seems that we’re not allowed to even suggest that Western civilization is a thing of which to be proud.
But at least it would have been better than sounding as though King was questioning what was offensive about white supremacy. Would this second version have ignited the same firestorm as the first? Perhaps, but perhaps not as intensely.
Understandably, the GOP wants to distance itself from even the hint of approving of white supremacy. Unfortunately, the left’s campaign to label the GOP as giving that approval has gotten very far in recent years, and I think the GOP is losing the battle and actions such as the ostracism of King won’t change things.
I can understand why the GOP is running from King, but I also believe the entire thing is a NY Times setup. King was foolish to have give an interview to the Times at all.
I’m not really familiar with King and his previous record, but a great many newspapers and pundits are alleging that this is really just the latest in a long line of racist comments he’s made. My guess is that the GOP has long considered him an embarrassing albatross who can’t keep his mouth shut.
Let’s take a look at some of King’s previous comments. But first we have this:
While defending his remarks in the past, the Iowa Republican has claimed he is regularly misquoted and that he doesn’t trust most media outlets.
That’s what I mean—then why, oh why, is he giving interviews to the NY Times?
Back to those previous remarks of King’s. I’m not going to go through them one by one, but on reading them I can see why, in this PC age, the GOP has been eager to wash its hands of him. A few of the listed remarks do seem to border on the racist, such as this tweet of his:
Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.
There are two thoughts there. The first is about culture and Western civilization, which King has defended in the past (and which he also defends in the remarks that got him into trouble yesterday). I agree that Western Civilization—which has indeed become a dirty word—is something well worth defending and preserving. It has flaws, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a remarkable achievement. The left disagrees, and has been teaching children quite the opposite for some time, to the point that most people probably consider this a verboten topic.
However, King doesn’t stop there in that tweet. He adds “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” This suggests that there is something genetic in culture, and that non-white and/or non-Western people who come to Western cultures cannot be assimilated into Western values. I submit that King is wrong. They can indeed be assimilated, and we used to realize that this was the most important activity of all in preserving Western culture: to defend it and teach it properly. We used to do that, for the most part.
That’s what we’ve failed to do in recent years. Au contraire—we not only fail to defend and teach it to newcomers of other races, but we regularly teach all of our children—white, black, whatever color or national origin, or the children of people who came here hundreds of years ago—to despise it and be ashamed of it and to distance themselves from it.
That is the problem. It’s been going on for much of my lifetime, which is a long time, and it’s reached new heights (or depths) in the last couple of decades.
[NOTE: It’s also the case, of course, that the more people who come here at once from cultures that are antithetical to Western culture, the more difficult is the task of assimilation. But if we were still committed to assimilation as a goal, and to the preservation and defense of Western culture and its very positive values such as liberty, assimilation could be accomplished. Education is the key, but education has been taken over by the anti-Western left.]
Education has indeed been taken over by the anti-Western left, anti-whiteness being the “height of wokeness.” When we allow large numbers of persons from very different cultures (often with elements clearly incompatible with ours), and they (and especially their children in school)) are encouraged to think of themselves as victims of the West in the past, now, and forever more (the very same messages which bombard them throughout the media), the task of full assimilation becomes well-nigh impossible.
Thanks for this post, Neo. King’s explanation makes some sense, although why on earth would anyone on the right would grant an interview to the NY Times?
If it’s Western civilization he’s defending, not “white supremacy,” I’m in agreement. The goal of Western civilization is not to restrict its benefits only to those of European ancestry, but to spread its principles around the world. The idea of the “Anglosphere” is based on this. Countries whose polities are based on the British tradition and system are more likely to be congruent with ours, without regard to their racial makeup. (The question this raises, of course, is whether Britain itself believes in its principles any more.)
The only group we’re going to have a hard time assimilating is Muslims, because Muslim cultures, observed strictly, deny self-government and equality of all regardless of belief.
I am sick and tired of being called a white supremacist because I’m not a leftist. Conservative politicians, as you point out, Neo, need to be vary careful about their expressions because of the malevolence and dishonesty of the left.
It became offensive with the progress of diversity or color judgments under the left’s Pro-Choice, selective and opportunistic, religious/moral doctrine. The Constitution and American center (i.e. “conservative”), do not indulge in diversity/discrimination by color, sex, gender, age, or even girth. The American right or libertarian does not indulge diversity as a principle or common cause.
I think the GOP is losing the battle and actions such as the ostracism of King won’t change things.
It makes it much worse as the GOPe seems to agree with the left.
I keep reminding people of the words of Antonio Gramsci, who seems to be the patron saint of the culture warriors these days.
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the “common sense” values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
Assimilation is no longer the goal of the ruling class.
I agree he was foolish to talk to the NY Times, which is promoting Gramsci and his rules.
Liz Cheney now calling for his resignation
The guy is a horror. Just a few months ago he even endorsed a white supremacist in the mayoralty race in Toronto, Canada.
Ann, I don’t know what to think when an article is on Vox. A lot of leftist sites like to throw around “far-right” and “racist” at people who aren’t racist, and “far-right” often means anyone Vox finds to its right. Conflating Ezra Levant with racists and Jew-haters makes the whole thing suspect.
I see nothing racist in the quote about “somebody else babies”. Assimilation is possible, of course, but it takes a long time and involves lots of problems. Again, genetics has little, if anything, to do with it. Family traditions and culture immigrants carry with them matters. And some cultures produce people who simply do not want and can not be assimilated and instead run parallel societies. Numbers matter too. Above some level, it is not anymore an immigration but invasion of the type that doomed Roman Empire, or, even better example, Native American civilization.
Okay, I’ve read the USA Today list of King’s statements considered questionable. Most of them aren’t really. But what was a guy from Iowa doing with a confederate flag on his desk? He seems to be indiscreet and undisciplined in his speech. The comment about what “white” people have contributed to civilization compared to others was way off base. The most powerful influence on Western civilization, Jesus Christ, was of semitic Mediterranean extraction. Romans and Greeks and their descendants were people who were not included in the “white” category in the US until fairly recently, as Jews were also not included.
Medieval studies, as in traditional medieval European studies are now taken by some to be an inherently racist project if not skeptically practiced according to deconstructive canons of interpretation. I guess a Gothic cathedral understood on the terms of its builders, is the last refuge of a properly hounded racist scoundrel; and the sooner he is deprived of this pseudo-legitimizing outlet for his covert exclusionary and supremacist impulses, the better off the community will be.
And we all well know how 19th century bourgeois romanticism fastened onto the late classical and middle ages, with revived stories of Robin Hood and Hereward the Wake, of Hermann and William Wallace, and led to not only the perpetuation of the myths of European nationalism, but worst of all, to tales of natural and ancient liberty, supposedly preserved in forests or wastes primeval, be they Teutoburg or Sherwood, Ely or the Highlands.
I have no respect for the Republican congressional leadership. One of their signatures is shivving their own people in response to the contrived sh!tstorms of the media wing of the Democratic Party. Watching Trump should have taught them to not do that, or it would have if they cared about their own constituency and their own people and were anything but asinine and unteachable.
Look at the people who’ve led the caucuses since 1984. Of the Senate leaders, only Wm. Frist (2003-07) had ever spent more than just a few years earning a living in some realm other than electoral politics or political staff work. (Mitch McConnell practiced law fitfully for about 7 years; Robert Dole was in elective office without interruption from 1953 to 1996 (although one of his positions did require a bar membership); and Trent Lott was on the payroll of the U.S. Congress w/o interruption from 1967 to 2006, after which he landed a job as a lobbyist). As for the House leaders, John Boenher did spend 14 years in small business; Dennis Hastert did spend 16 years as a schoolteacher; Newt Gingrich did have an abbreviated career as an academic. In re Messrs. Michel, Ryan, and McCarthy, their prepolitical career was minimal. Ryan has character defects which rendered him ineffectual, Hastert was a careerist / crook with skeletons in his closet, and Boehner’s a lush. People slam Newt Gingrich for all that’s wrong with him as a person, but he and his deputy Dr. Armey count as the cream in this crew.
The guy is a horror.
Says the troll.
Imagine those deplorable Iowans electing him 9 times !
Ann, Ezra Levant is in no way “White Suprematist”, and his counter-jihad movement has nothing to do with racism. To quote the article from Vox: “Under Levant, The Rebel has become a global platform for an extreme anti-Muslim ideology known as counter-jihad. It’s a far-right fringe theory founded on the belief that Muslims are deliberately invading the West, biding their time, then overtaking communities and imposing Shariah Law.” It is neither fringe nor far-right, and in no way extreme; and it is not a belief but a fact. You should educate yourself about Muslim doctrines and practices. Islam is a cancer, and some day all civilized people would need to surgically remove it from their lands and possibly from the Earth – or became slaves of the new barbarians. Read Wretchard’s “Three Conjectures”.
Romans and Greeks and their descendants were people who were not included in the “white” category in the US until fairly recently, as Jews were also not included.
I have no clue why anyone transmits these nonsense memes. There was no distinction drawn between these segments and the rest of the caucasian population in this country in law or in the collection of statistics. The closest you might come to that would be the immigration quotas enacted in 1920 and 1924 (which did not affect German, French, or British Jews in any severe way).
But what was a guy from Iowa doing with a confederate flag on his desk?
Were he to replace it with a replica of the General Lee, would you leave him alone?
Here is the crucial paragraph in Rep. King’s tweet to which Neo links above. I’ve copied it (and carefully proofread it) because the first part of the paragraph sets the context of the NYT’s quote. The single quotes are in the tweet, placed as shown.
I’m putting the whole thing in boldfaced type instead of the usual indented blockquote format, because I find italics hard to read in a sans-serif font and because the placement of the quotes is important to notice — albeit that they make little sense to me placed as they are.
…[W]e discussed the changing use of language in political discourse. We discussed the worn out label “racist” and my observation that other slanderous labels have been increasingly assigned to Conservatives by the Left, who injected into our current political dialog such terms as Nazi, Fascist, ‘White Nationalist, White Supremacist, — Western Civilization, how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?’…just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today. Clearly, I was only referencing Western Civilization classes. No one ever sat in a class listen to the merits of white nationalism and white supremacy.
It seems to me that the closing quote mark should go just before the dash:
… such terms as Nazi, Fascist, White Nationalist, White Supremacist, — ‘Western Civilization,’ how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?’…just to watch Western Civilization become a derogatory term in political discourse today.
In sum, it seems to me that he might well have been trying to say,
… such terms as Nazi, Fascist, White Nationalist, White Supremacist, — and now ‘Western Civilization,’ how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?’…just to watch ‘Western Civilization’ become a derogatory term in political discourse today.
If so, this would be the whole paragraph:
…[W]e discussed the changing use of language in political discourse. We discussed the worn out label “racist” and my observation that other slanderous labels have been increasingly assigned to Conservatives by the Left, who injected into our current political dialog such terms as Nazi, Fascist, White Nationalist, White Supremacist, — and now ‘Western Civilization,’ how did THAT language become offensive? Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?’…just to watch ‘Western Civilization’ become a derogatory term in political discourse today. Clearly, I was only referencing Western Civilization classes. No one ever sat in a class listen to the merits of white nationalism and white supremacy.
I don’t know much about Rep. King either, but I hope that that’s close to the mark.
It’s also possible that he’s ham-handed, so to speak, when he opens his mouth.
I do know that he has come under fire before for alleged “racist” remarks, not that I recall what they were; and I’m not going to turn off my ad-blocker to accommodate USA Today. But as to the Wilders observation, it doesn’t strike me as being “racist” so much as, again, ham-handed; still, by now we Americans have been so inundated with “Wilders awful dreadful farrightwingfascistracist” that as soon as you mention his name, you’ve besmirched your own.
I don’t see “somebody else’s babies” as particularly racist. “Somebody else’s” doesn’t have to indicate anything biologically genetic; but a sufficiently different culture can produce at least some people who hate and fear the other culture enough to kill it if they can. And the assimilation of people even from “Western” countries can be a long and somewhat bloody business. We have evidence of that in our own history.
[More thoughts on this, but it’s getting way too long.]
As for the GOP, I think Neo’s comments are very good.
Liz Cheney now calling for his resignation
The people of Wyoming should tell Liz Cheney that they’ll be represented in Congress in the future by someone who has actually lived in Wyoming.
The guy is a horror.
Only to people with disordered sensibilities. And such people are properly ignored.
Western civilization was not exclusively “white” in its origins. Most of the early Christians before Islamic conquest were Semitic, they were Syrians, Copts, Berbers, and lived in the Northern Africa, Lebanon and today Turkey. Most were rather brown-skinned. Even the most famous Christian theologian, St. Augustine, was a Berber. All these ancient centers of Christianity were flooded and destroyed by Arabs and other Muslim invaders, and only in Western Europe this conquest was eventually repelled. That is why this Christian civilization is now associated with people of European descent. They were just too tough for Arabs and Turks to defeat.
Samaritans:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans#/media/File:Samaritans_marking_Sukkot_on_Mount_Gerizim,_West_Bank_-_20051017.jpg
Copts:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1&biw=1269&bih=743&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=zFE-XK70Fca9ggfr6byADg&q=copts&oq=copts&gs_l=img.3..0l5j0i5i30l5.74908.78198..78771…0.0..0.81.788.12……0….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i67j0i7i30.lfvgS9pjxn4#imgrc=cEzkgkR5KTj4jM:
Berbers
https://www.google.com/search?q=berbers&client=firefox-b-1&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZ-pGp3_DfAhVyUd8KHdisBBoQ_AUIDigB&biw=1269&bih=743&dpr=0.9#imgrc=gsOqHK4x229cgM:
It’s excluded my links to pictures of Parsis and Armenians. These are ancient populations. I’m seeing looking at them a swarthy but unmistakably caucasoid population. They’re not ‘brown-skinned’ compared to East Indians, much less Tropical Africans.
Western civilization is the synthesis of the Classical culture, the culture of the apostolic Church, and the culture of German tribesmen. That synthesis took place in Europe, not in the Near East.
There may not have been legal restrictions on people from central and southern Europe or on Greeks, but there certainly were social exclusions and discrimination (places where they weren’t welcome to live).
Will the Dems follow suit on their own anti-Semitic House members? Don’t hold your breath.
Kate, there use to be signs in Portsmouth, VA saying “Dogs and Sailors not welcome”. Times have changed. Now probably on Sailors not welcome.
Actually, it is called “Byzantine Synthesis” of Classical culture (Greek philosophy and art and Roman Civil Law) and Hebrew tradition, and much of it happened in monasteries in the Near East. German tribesmen became important to it much later, since about 9 century, and especially so after fall of Constantinople.
There may not have been legal restrictions on people from central and southern Europe or on Greeks, but there certainly were social exclusions and discrimination (places where they weren’t welcome to live).
That’s called freedom of association. Exercising it doesn’t mean Mrs. Ward got the idea in her head that Mrs. Tomaselli or Mrs. Shapiro were black, or ever treated them that way. There really is nothing comparable to Jim Crow in it’s northern and Southern manifestations.
Places where so-and-so was not welcome applied primarily to Jews, whose economic fortunes and purchasing power advanced more rapidly than did other peoples familiarity with them. Don’t think it applied nearly as much to Italians or Greeks. You see clubs and associations today which were founded by Jews as parallel institutions to those which blackballed them. I don’t think there’s a set of parallel institutions founded by Italians or Greeks, and I’d wager the reason for that is that the professional-managerial element among them was quite small in the pre-war period but by the post-war period the military experience of the blueblood population had succeeded in moving ‘ethnics’ from the ‘them’ to the ‘us’ category. The Italian lawyers and business executives were thus welcome at the Jewish clubs and the Blueblood-Lace-Curtain clubs.
“Building a border wall, ending birthright citizenship and disparaging undocumented immigrants. Representative Steve King championed anti-immigration views years before President Trump made them a focal point of his administration.”
If this is what the NYT means by “anti-immigration views”, then there is no reason we should trust them at all about what King really said.
Actually, it is called “Byzantine Synthesis” of Classical culture (Greek philosophy and art and Roman Civil Law) and Hebrew tradition, and much of it happened in monasteries in the Near East. German tribesmen became important to it much later, since about 9 century, and especially so after fall of Constantinople.
Where? By the 3d quarter of the 5th century, the political authority in Europe and the Maghreb was in the hands of German Kings. The Constantinian settlement occurred about 150 years earlier.
If this is what the NYT means by “anti-immigration views”, then there is no reason we should trust them at all about what King really said.
That’s the point. The Slimes and the Democratic office-holders are attempting to rule out of public discussion reasonable policies. If the Republican caucus wasn’t led by such a claque of losers, they’d understand that and act accordingly. Instead, they play along with The Slimes.
The left is uniformly identifiable by their use of “undocumented” or by the omission of “illegal” in mentioning immigrants.
If you read some genetics, the easiest is “The 10,000 Year Explosion “ you will find information on the evolution of white skin. It is related to Vitamin D and clothing and is found both in Europe and Asia. The farther north the origin of the Asian population, the whiter the skin.
Blue eyes, however, is a mutation found only in Europe.
The two major cultures that advanced human conditions are the European and the Chinese. The Chinese progress ended about 1400, possible as a result of dynastic changes. Every other culture left misery as a human condition once the basics of agriculture were mastered.
That is not to say that Egyptian kings and Assyrian kings did not live well.
Activists/progressives have been equating western civilization with white skin, declaring most traits and traditions related to western civilization = white supremacy. All part of the intersectional hot take on everything nowadays. For example, students at the Claremont McKenna Colleges argued that objective truth is a social construct devised by “white supremacists” to “attempt to silence oppressed peoples.”
King didn’t make the association, woke activists like NYT Editorial page editor Sarah Jeong did (reminder of Jeong’s toxic racism https://preview.tinyurl.com/ycftd5u3). King appears to be questioning it – why is support of western civilization now labeled “white nationalism” and “white supremacy?”
“Pelosi, Democrats should discipline Tlaib’s anti-Semitism”
Democrats have been deliberately closing their eyes to the anti-Jewish and anti-white opinions of some of their House and Senate members for many years, on the theory that it’s not “racist” unless it’s done by white people.
Art Deco at 3:14 pm —
Once again, you speak about things of which you know nothing.
There was anti-Catholic (Italians and Irish, mainly) bias in this country until well into the 1960’s. John F. Kennedy was severely attacked for being Catholic. (Of course, the depth to which Lefties will go is illustrated by the fact that Kamala Harris and Maisi Hirono are reanimating anti-Catholicism.) The Mafia was the main subject of TV crime shows and news articles, and Italians were depicted as all members, so much so that they formed the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League. Jews were excluded from clubs, neighborhoods, social organizations, and hotels, in some places until the 1970s. When my parents bought their house in Ardmore, PA, in 1950, the old anti-Jewish restrictions were still on the title, although they had been declared unlawful a few years back and were no longer in force. When my wife and I visited Palm Beach in the early ’70s, blacks had to be “over the bridge” (to West Palm) before midnight, and Jews were barred from most clubs and hotels, including the famous Breakers. (Incidently, it was Donald Trump who broke those restrictions when he built the Mara-Lago Resort.)
Try reading a little history before pontificating, will you?
All I know is Ted Cruz, who I donated money to in 2016, is dead to me. ‘Eff that guy.
Once again, you speak about things of which you know nothing.
Paging Dunning-Kruger, clean up on aisle 4.
There was anti-Catholic (Italians and Irish, mainly) bias in this country until well into the 1960’s.
So what? The subject of the discussion wasn’t some nebulous ‘bias’ and it wasn’t Catholic communicants either. It was (1) whether Jews and southern Europeans were defined as ‘black’ and (2) whether property deeds, membership policies, and proprietors’ custom had much of a practical impact on southern European ethnics.
John F. Kennedy was severely attacked for being Catholic.
Actually, Kennedy’s crew smeared Hubert Humphrey as a draft dodger; that was the severe attack.
It’s a big country, so you can likely find an example of some crank crew writing vitriolic things. That some people raised questions about his affiliation is just what happens in a country with cultural crevasses. We just saw a judicial nominee jabbed with a stiletto because he’s a member of the Knights of Columbus. He’ll get over it. The Kennedys never lost an election prior to 1980, bar some primary contests contra Eugene McCarthy (who was, er, a Catholic).
The Mafia was the main subject of TV crime shows and news articles,
It wasn’t.
and Italians were depicted as all members, so
They weren’t.
much so that they formed the Italian-American Anti-Defamation League.
How many ethnic Italians have ever heard of this organization?
Jews were excluded from clubs, neighborhoods, social organizations, and hotels, in some places until the 1970s. When my parents bought their house in Ardmore, PA, in 1950, the old anti-Jewish restrictions were still on the title,
I’ve discussed this phenomenon above. Reading comprehension, it’s great stuff.
Try reading a little history before pontificating, will you?
Try looking in the mirror.
Pot and kettle time. Does Art Deco know and understand Dunning-Kreuger? It doesn’t seem so.
Regarding the changing definition of whiteness in American history, Kate’s point is correct. For example, Benjamin Franklin didn’t even consider most GERMANS to be white.
“the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth.”
King is not my DC rep, but he is well known in Iowa for opening his brain before engaging his brain. The GOPe is mistaken if they think they can make him go away. He owns his district for as long as he wants it.
Remember:
Jewish nationalism = good
white nationalism = bad
The fact of the matter is the modern leftist state is reducing everyone to their ethnic identity, and it’s all races for themselves. 90% of blacks vote as a group, something like 70% of Jews. And once in power they advance the interests of their own race (like open borders to dillite whites even more). The sooner whites realize this the better they can advance their own interests.
Soon there will be no white male democrats elected to any national office or any district not majority white.
Reality is what exists even if you don’t believe it.
Regarding the changing definition of whiteness in American history, Kate’s point is correct.
No, it is not. Franklin is remarking on granular features, not race. None of the distinctions he draws in that comment were reflected in law.
Pot and kettle time. Does Art Deco know and understand Dunning-Kreuger? It doesn’t seem so.
He does, and is sticking it to R. Saunders, whose remarks are bollocks.
I’ve met Steve King, and he’s a good man. NOT a racist, for cryin’ out loud (Puleeze consider who’s accusing him), and his chief “sin” is saying out loud that various emperors are parading around stark naked.
He’s opposed to ILLEGAL immigration, open (i.e., nonexistent) borders, and the destruction of America and the West.
For this he must be defenestrated. And so he is. By the Swamp.
Never, never fail to have your own recording of any interview by any media or government employees. Any, ever. Ever.
“We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.”
This is demonstrably false when applied to …
homosexuals.
Who do create, primarily thru seduction of adolescents, more homosexuals from confused kids of non-homosexuals. (How the trans movement affects this will be interesting; some lesbians are already protesting…)
Similarly, anti-Christian education/indoctrination in Universities has hugely increased “secular civilization” with the kids of Christians, often the smartest ones.
There needs to be more honest discussion about what is taught in colleges — and the anti-Western Civilization bias should be more talked about and complained about.
The “open secret” discrimination by most Universities against hiring Republican professors, being done for decades, also needs to be talked about. Acceptance of this discrimination, which is now becoming demonization, is one of the causes of current polarization which is most clear and most easy to reverse.
Start stripping Universities of their special, unfair, tax-exempt status for their de facto discrimination against Rep professors.
Lawfare is needed, but the GOPe prefers to avoid it.
I’d guess King will face a primary opponent, but win again easily both the nomination and the election. In the meantime — those calling for his resignation are likely to improve his own talking points in defense.
Or, maybe there are more, worse skeletons in his closet that we’ll hear about in the near future.
It seems to me that his only sin was to give an interview to the NY Times and expecting them to report the interview accurately.
Don’t talk to the Police without your lawyer present.
Don’t talk to the Fed’s at all.
And never, ever, give interviews to the press.
King now has a primary challenger:
“I’d make everything crystal clear, in other words (literally, in other words). Which is of course impossible, arduous, and not required of those on the left; only of those on the right. You can be sure that the Times is looking for slipups on the right, and hoping and trusting they will get them or can create them.” – Neo
David Smith on January 16, 2019 at 8:06 am at 8:06 am said:
Never, never fail to have your own recording of any interview by any media or government employees. Any, ever. Ever.
Roy on January 16, 2019 at 10:09 am at 10:09 am said:
It seems to me that his only sin was to give an interview to the NY Times and expecting them to report the interview accurately.
Don’t talk to the Police without your lawyer present.
Don’t talk to the Fed’s at all.
And never, ever, give interviews to the press.
* * *
No Republican who breaks these rules should be considered a serious contender for election.
Unless his name is Donald Trump.
in part because his candidacy wasn’t dreamed up by a group of Republicans from outside the district who recruited him to the race.
LMAO
Ann on January 15, 2019 at 6:33 pm at 6:33 pm said:
“Pelosi, Democrats should discipline Tlaib’s anti-Semitism”
* * *
Agreed, she definitely should.
Also from your link:
“Yet if Republican leaders are aware of the danger of letting loose cannons like King tatter their reputation with talk about white nationalism, why aren’t Democrats prepared to police their side of the aisle with respect to anti-Semitism?
Unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is ready to discipline Michigan’s newly elected Rep. Rashida Tlaib, any talk from Democrats about their opponents tolerating hate from King or President Trump is blatant hypocrisy.
…
It’s doubly urgent for the GOP to distance itself from King now, when Republicans should be making clear that support for the rule of law and border security isn’t about race or racism. Good on McCarthy and other party leaders for making it so.
That disavowal puts the onus on Pelosi to demonstrate that Democrats aren’t prepared to tolerate expressions of anti-Semitism — ”
So, HAS Pelosi acted to punish Tlaib?
No, but she recognizes the reciprocity that could force her to.
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/425716-dems-grapple-with-next-steps-against-steve-king
“House Democratic leaders averted a potentially divisive vote to censure embattled Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) despite a push from some rank-and-file members to take further punitive action.
…
One factor that Democrats are likely considering is that Republicans could seek to bring censure resolutions against Democrats.
Republicans have pointed to comments from freshman Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) earlier this month calling to “impeach the motherf—er” in reference to President Trump.
“If you’re going to do that, then let’s talk about it in terms of standards for all members of Congress, which is, we ought to conduct ourselves in a manner that reflects well upon our nation and our constituencies. And I don’t believe that either of them have. And that’s embarrassing,” Rep. Paul Mitchell (R-Mich.) told The Hill last week.
Mitchell said he’d “probably vote in favor” of censuring King if there was also an opportunity to censure Tlaib.”
Meanwhile, back at the bolded part, this looks to be why the GOP took this particular incident as a tipping point.
“It’s doubly urgent for the GOP to distance itself from King now, when Republicans should be making clear that support for the rule of law and border security isn’t about race or racism. Good on McCarthy and other party leaders for making it so.”
PS – the USA list does, in fact, make a lot of King’s statements controversial simply because they disagree with the leftist agenda. There is also the question of (1) cherry-picking and (2) what-about-ism to consider.
In re (1), everyone has said and done things that aren’t conformable to good character, without being dispositive of bad character — disallowing anything that is “bad” simply because the forces of PC/SJW declare them to be so. You could make a similar list for almost any politician (differing in details of the substance), and conservatives entertain themselves regularly doing the same for Democrats.
Which leads to (2).
Today’s counterpoint is Tlaib.
There are plenty of others (Farrakhan et al).
And there is always Robert Byrd, who was not, AFAIK, ever censured, disavowed, or shunned by the the Democrats, much less thrown out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan_members_in_United_States_politics
”
Senator Robert Byrd was a Kleagle, a Klan recruiter, in his 20s and 30s.
Robert C. Byrd, was a recruiter for the Klan while in his 20s and 30s, rising to the title of Kleagle and Exalted Cyclops of his local chapter. After leaving the group, Byrd spoke in favor of the Klan during his early political career. Though he claimed to have left the organization in 1943, Byrd, wrote a letter in 1946 to the group’s Imperial Wizard stating “The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia.” Byrd attempted to explain or defend his former membership in the Klan in his 1958 U.S. Senate campaign when he was 41 years old.[1] Byrd, a Democrat, eventually became his party leader in the Senate. Byrd later said joining the Klan was his “greatest mistake.”[2] However, in a 2001 incident Byrd repeatedly used the phrase “white niggers” on a national television broadcast.[3]”
Just in case anyone is wondering, I do not support or condone any genuinely racist or bigoted beliefs or behaviour; however, we are once again being much too quick to judge people on the “facts” presented by the left, by the “standards” asserted (but seldom followed) by the left, to the detriment of the Republican party’s membership.
Just as the attack on Roy Moore was an out-of-town try-out for the attack on Brett Kavanaugh, the attack on Steve King is probably a dry-run for an attack on ANY conservative candidate or nominee who has made ANY kind of remark that can be twisted into the semblance of something that the left considers racist, or sexist, homophobic, anti-Muslim, etc (“binders of women” ring any bells?).
They start with a person they can kinda-credibly accuse of something plausibly improper (even if out of context, never proven, or from so far in the past it has no relevance); if the GOP reacts in the desired fashion (as it usually does), they move on to accusations that are not remotely credible, but have to be treated as such because the GOP has already set a precedent of caving in.
It still astounds me that the Republicans held firm on Justice Kavanaugh; however, without Avenatti’s over-the-top totally implausible accusation, I’m not completely sure they wouldn’t have thrown him under the bus.
The GOP, sadly, can’t bring itself to follow the lead of the Democrats and simply ignore any disgraceful activities of their party members that don’t rise to criminal or objectively immoral behavior.
One, because Republicans really do have ethical principles that are lacking on the left; and two, because they don’t get any cover from the media for ignoring attacks on behavior that really isn’t morally culpable.
/rant off
PS The Republican leaders were very quick to fall in line in King’s case.
Once again referring to the bolded portion of the quote above, we all know that the GOP leadership is not in favor of Mr. Trump’s position on border security, despite all the flag-waving they indulge in, or we would already have the wall in place.
I’m on the mailing list for Mark Alexander’s Patriot Post.
He wrote a long piece excoriating Rep. King for his awfulracistwhitesupremacist remark.
Anybody can misjudge, or fail to withhold judgment while considering a whole statement (or) act — or the accuracy of reportage of an incident — before decking the alleged miscreant.
But I am sorely disappointed in Mr. Alexander just the same. I hunted for an e-mail address to which I could send alternative explanations (to be sure, with no hint of that disappointment, o shirley knott), but I couldn’t find one.
I’m bothered so much by this mostly because it speaks to jumping onto the proggie-judgmental bandwagon, and the see-we-can-denounce-our-own-when-they-are-Bad and-no-excuses bandwagon, which has the most unpleasant echoes of the Kavanaugh shafting process. Now I don’t know for sure whether Mr. Alexander swallowed the popular story instead of hearing some recording of Rep. King as he actually made the remarks, but I’m assuming he relied on reports. If we’re not going to parse reports carefully, as Neo did in her posting, then why to we bother to exist.
I wrote the above before reading AesopFan’s comments, which I am happy to say covered more points and more thoroughly than my own.
Aesop, I absolutely agree with you. An excellent job. Thank you!
.
And thanks to Neo for bringing up this example of pillorying, and of considering other interpretations than the Popular one.
Late Update.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2019/03/you-can-hate-this.php