From Reason magazine (which really ought to look into changing its name to something more appropriate, such as Smugness):

Baby Bust!
The world is panicking over birthrates. Again.
Kerry Howley

As a historical example of panicking over birthrates, we read:

“Waves of birthrate anxiety swept through France at the beginning of the 19th century…

And, of course, all that French hysteria over Germany having a higher birthrate and thus being able to field a bigger army turned out to be just a hallucination as the Germans never ever bothered France again.

The article includes three mentions of Mark Steyn’s America Alone., without mentioning the ongoing court battle in Canada over whether the leading newsweekly up there has the legal right to print part of it.

And, of course, there is zero mention in the article of the most prominent public calls for maintaining the quantity and quality of the race–from Jews.

For example, Elliott Abrams, who served during the first Bush II administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs and then was promoted to Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, spent the Clinton Administration years trying to keep Jews from marrying shikses. Abrams wrote in Slate in 1999:

“But the accommodationists are wrong. Intermarriage is both inevitable in our open society, and immensely threatening to Jewish continuity here. The Jewish community must avoid excuses and circumlocutions, and recognize that only a powerful Jewish identity built on the faith and practice of Judaism can enable young American Jews to resist the temptation of intermarriage. Only that faith can explain to them why they should resist the melting pot and build a family that takes its place in the covenant of Abraham.”

Putting a race warrior like Abrams in charge of America’s Near East policy was a little like making Rev. Bob Jones III ambassador to Nelson Mandela’s South Africa. But nobody seemed to notice the joke. That’s just one of those things you aren’t supposed to talk about, especially in Reason.

Jim Bowman just posted “From the streets a message” about white Catholic Chicago priest, Fr. Michael Pfleger, who had been suspended from his parish, St. Sabina following an anti-white rant he had delivered on May 25 against Hillary Clinton. Fr. Pfleger was a guest preacher that day at black supremacist Trinity United Church of Christ, at that point still the church of Barack Obama.

[Mocking whites] “Don’t hold me responsible for what my ancestors have done.” But you have enjoyed the benefits of what your ancestors did, and unless you are ready to give up the benefits—throw away your 401 fund, throw away your trust fund, throw away all the money they put away in the company you walked into, because your daddy, and your granddaddy, and your great—unless you’re willing to give up the benefits, then you must be responsible for what was done in your generation, because you are the beneficiary! of this insurance policy. [Much cheering.]

It must be honest enough to expose white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head. I said before—I don’t want to make this political, because you know I’m not political [some laughter]—but Rev. Moss, when Hillary was cryin,’ and people said that was put on, I really don’t believe that was put on. I really believe that she just always thought, “This is mine. I’m Bill’s wife. I’m white. And this is mine. I just gotta get up and step into the plate, and then, out of nowhere, came “Hey, I’m Barack Obama.” And she said, “Oh, damn! Where did you come from?! I’m white! I’m entitled! [The congregation is on their feet.] There’s a black man stealing my show!” [He does a sobbing routine, wiping his eyes with tissues.]

Obama immediately responded by ending his 20-year relationship with Trinity United, simultaneously throwing Fr. Pfleger and the Rev. Wright’s successor, the Rev. Otis Moss III, under the bus.

Bowman noted a Chicago Tribune story by Margaret Ramirez and Rex W. Huppke, which quoted Chicago activist Tio Hardiman as saying “Father Pfleger has always been a community activist first and a Catholic priest second. The black community accepts Father Pfleger as one of their own. But now I think he’s going to have to make a decision about whether he’s going to be a black community activist or a Catholic priest.”

Fr. Pfleger doesn’t serve the Church; he uses it. I have more respect for Church teachings than that man does, and I’m not a Catholic, but then, neither is he. About a month ago, when I checked “Faith Community of Saint Sabina’s” Web site, not one of its scheduled guest speakers was Catholic. They were all black Protestants. And on June 3, black supremacist “Dr.” Jawanza Kunjufu was scheduled to speak.

The aforementioned Chicago Tribune story, “Parish, public await Pfleger’s next move: Can priestly duties, activism co-exist?,” says,

Because he was so committed to the black community and its needs, many parishioners began to feel as if he was a black man trapped in a white man’s body.

As Pfleger developed St. Sabina into one of the city’s most vibrant [!] Catholic churches, he routinely broke archdiocese rules, becoming a thorn in the side of three successive cardinals. Violating church policy, Pfleger adopted three sons, one of whom was killed in gang crossfire in 1998. He was arrested several times for civil disobedience. He paid prostitutes so he could preach to them about God…

When [Cardinal] George tried to reassign Pfleger to another parish in 2002, the priest refused, saying he would start his own church before he would leave St. Sabina.

“He threatened schism,” said Dennis Martin, an associate professor of theology at Loyola University. “That is just not Catholic….”

The good father, a practitioner of Black Liberation Theology (no, that is not a Catholic order; it’s not Christianity at all but black supremacy), worships a black God. The Tribune reporters spoke of “racist phone calls” that came to St. Sabina, in the wake of the Father’s May 25 rant, but the closest they come to calling him a racist is to call his rant “a rancorous—some say racist—roar against Sen. Hillary Clinton that made international news.”

Since returning from his suspension, Fr. Pfleger is back to his old habit of organizing local blacks to protest in support of the confiscation of all legal guns, which he fantasizes will solve the problem of criminals killing people with illegal ones. One year ago, Fr. Pfleger threatened to murder (“snuff”) a legal gun dealer and any legislators who failed to go along with his crusade.

Ft. Pfleger’s spokesman later insisted that the cleric had no idea that to “snuff” means to murder. So honesty isn’t his strong suit, either.

Four years ago, during Obama’s U.S. Senate campaign, his three closest spiritual advisers were the Rev. Wright, Fr. Pfleger, and the Rev./State Sen. James Meeks, who is fond of calling black political opponents the “n” word, and who has a thoroughly Christian, and thus for Obama embarrassingly un-PC, position in opposition to gay marriage. (Obama has ditched his earlier opposition to gay marriage, as I predicted he would in 2004.) Look for Obama to throw the Rev./Sen. Meeks under the bus between now and November.

LA Times has video of Matt Welch doing an interview about this book, McCain: The Myth of a Maverick . ,

When the book came out, I wrote “Welch believes that a President McCain would send more troops overseas–I just wish he’d save a few for the US Border.” Welch didn’t get much cooperation, but he’s read all five books McCain has written over the last few years, as Steve Sailer did with Barack Obama, and General Patton did with Erwin Rommel.

Some interesting facts from France:

France says tough immigration policies are working

June 19,2008

By Gerard Bon
Reuters.com
PARIS, June 19 (Reuters) - Tougher immigration policies launched in President Nicolas Sarkozy’s first year in office are working, with more illegal migrants expelled and more skilled workers let in, France’s immigration minister said on Thursday.

France has said harmonising immigration policies at EU level was one of its priorities for its six-month presidency of the bloc that starts on July 1, and the ruling UMP party said the data released on Thursday should help it persuade EU partners.

“The UMP would like to see our country’s firm and just policies become the policies of the whole of Europe on the occasion of the French presidency,” the party said after Immigration Minister Brice Hortefeux’s statement.

Hortefeux said 14,660 illegal migrants were expelled from France in the first five months of the year, up 80 percent compared with the same period in 2007.

In the 12 months to May 2008, Sarkozy’s first year in office, almost 30,000 illegal migrants were expelled, up 31 percent year-on-year, Hortefeux said.

“Never have so many clandestine immigrants been taken back to their own countries in a year,” Hortefeux told a news conference at his ministry in Paris.

The number of illegal migrants in France, estimated between 200,000 and 400,000, is decreasing, he said.[More]

Interestingly, Sarkozy has actually given the French immigration department a quota of expulsions to meet–in America, quotas like that are more likely to be applied to incoming legal immigrants, or grants of citizenship.

Also, the number of illegals seems fairly low–I assume all the alienated youths burning cars in Paris were either legal immigrants, or alienated second- and third-generation inhabitants of France.

Jacob Sullum has an article on the subject of the attempt to ban flavored cigarettes, on the specious theory that they’re aimed at kids. Such a bill would not ban menthol cigarettes, which have been around for years. Sullum has been arguing that the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which Congress is once again considering, would stifle competition, raise prices, reduce variety, block the flow of potentially lifesaving information, [The FDA hates it when you say that cigars are better for you than cigarettes, or chewing tobacco safer than either.]and impede the introduction and promotion of safer tobacco products.”[ Cigarette Flavoratism, Reason Magazine, June 11, 2008]

All to no avail, but Sullum reports a new objection–the bill is racist. If menthol cigarettes are the choice of 75 percent of African-American smokers, but only 32 percent of whites, then not banning them is unfair to African-Americans. The mind boggles. There is no way that you can figure this out so it’s not racist.

You realize that that if you do ban cigarettes which are popular with African-Americans, that’s racist too? It’s racist when crack dealers get heavier sentences that powder cocaine dealers, and on exactly the same disparate impact principle. Suppose a store that sold cigarettes refused to sell menthols? Wouldn’t they get in trouble?

Sullum goes through some of the permutations of this:

There are other ways to look at it. Given that white menthol smokers outnumber black menthol smokers by three to one, maybe this isn’t such a black thing after all. Alternatively, since the bill allows blacks to smoke the cigarettes they prefer, a freedom it does not allow whites who like clove cigarettes or Camel Cremas, you could argue that it discriminates in favor of blacks.

People who want to ban flavored cigarettes, of course, believe that letting smokers have what they want is a hostile act. But if so, the fact that the bill allows tobacco companies to continue selling the non-mentholated cigarettes overwhelmingly preferred by whites suggests that it blatantly discriminates against European Americans.

Trying to run public policy on this basis is probably what makes politicians so crazy. My head is starting to hurt just thinking about it.

Finally, the bit about “white menthol smokers” outnumbering “black menthol smokers by three to one,” is because there are a lot more whites that blacks, sot that 32 percent of whites is more than 75 percent of blacks. This is something Steve Sailer has been trying to convince GOP strategists of for years for years and years.