In the new July-August Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz reviews the latest volume of Kevin Starr’s history of California: Golden Dreams: California in the Age of Abundance: 1950-1963.. It makes me nostalgic for what once was. Schwarz is a half-decade younger than me and, I would guess from this, had a similar San Fernando Valley upbringing:

It was a magnificent run. From the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s, California consolidated its position as an economic and technological colossus and emerged as the country’s dominant political, social, and cultural trendsetter. … In 1959, wages paid in Los Angeles’s working-class and solidly middle-class San Fernando Valley alone were higher than the total wages of 18 states.

It was a sweet, vivacious time: California’s children, swarming on all those new playgrounds, seemed healthier, happier, taller, and — thanks to that brilliantly clean sunshine — were blonder and more tan than kids in the rest of the country. For better and mostly for worse, it’s a time irretrievably lost. …

Starr consistently returns to his leitmotif: the California dream. By this he means something quite specific — and prosaic. California, as he’s argued in earlier volumes, promised “the highest possible life for the middle classes.” It wasn’t a paradise for world-beaters; rather, it offered “a better place for ordinary people.” That place always meant “an improved and more affordable domestic life”: a small but stylish and airy house marked by a fluidity of indoor and outdoor space … and a lush backyard — the stage, that is, for “family life in a sunny climate.” It also meant some public goods: decent roads, plentiful facilities for outdoor recreation, and the libraries and schools that helped produce the Los Angeles “common man” who, as that jaundiced easterner James M. Cain described him in 1933,” addresses you in easy grammar, completes his sentences, shows familiarity with good manners, and in addition gives you a pleasant smile.”

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The root of Obama’s Sotomayor Problem is this: Having decided for political reasons that he wanted a female Hispanic who was liberal on affirmative action and not too old and had plausible credentials, Obama then ran into a reality that is unpleasant but was logically inevitable: There just aren’t that many Wise Latinas (whether self-proclaimed or not) out there. After all, if there were, then they wouldn’t need affirmative action to avoid the “cultural biases” that cause disparate impact, now would they? If there were lots and lots of very smart Latinas, then they wouldn’t be an aggrieved interest group demanding that the Supreme Court continue to protect their special legal privileges.

So, that left Obama with exactly one name: Sonia Sotomayor, Esq.

But, it turns out, she doesn’t have the kind of oily personality that allowed Obama to slip-slide through a 20 month Presidential campaign with only a few brief snags during the Rev. Wright contretemps. Nor, does being a Puerto Rican give her the kind of anti-skepticism race card Kryptonite that Obama’s claim to being an African American gave him. Finally, in the worst bit of bad luck, she had gotten the Ricci case, which puts the issue of affirmative action on the kind of personality basis that average Americans can understand.

Of course, I presume, she’ll wind up on the Supreme Court anyway, but it has been a bit of an eye-opener for the naive.

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Dr. Sean Gabb will be on The Chuck Wilder Show today at 3:30 p.m. ET to discuss his VDARE.com article, “England: The Peasants are Revolting.” The program airs in Los Angeles and can be streamed live here.

The rush of media lemmings to attempt utilizing yesterday’s peculiar Holocaust Museum shooting to rescue the Hate Crimes Bill is producing some clear examples of the anti-free speech motives of this crowd.

The leftist media gad fly website TPMMuckraker says it directly in
When it comes to hate crimes, there’s no such thing as “acting alone” June 10, 2009,

The origins of a hate crime should be viewed as an integral part of an actual hate crime. We can’t just look at the final act of a terror play.

Instigation is critical here. We need to make a serious assessment of those who disguise their hate speech as free speech.

It’s all connected.

Note the enthusiasm for this wild assertion in the comment thread.

A somewhat more confused but equally dangerous response appears in Hate crime on the rise? John Romero KDVR.com June 10 2009.

The TV station got an email

Subject line: “Holocaust Memorial Shooting.”

making the innocuous observation that many people are under great stress

There are a million powder kegs ready to explode …” a Denver man wrote. “And I am one of those potential powder kegs.”

“Still discouraged, still unemployed despite a master’s degree and no one is listening.”

There will be millions upon millions of powder kegs. And many are more violent than I am.”

KVDR reacted as if they had received an unpinned grenade, cheered on by (of course) the usual suspects

We showed the email to the Anti-defamation League, and they were greatly concerned.

The only solution for all of us, they say, is to speak out before it’s too late.

“Because by shining the light on hate it helps reduce the acts of violence that stems from hate…”

The man who e-mailed us said he was saddened by the Holocaust shooting, and was not violent. Still experts we talked to said the letter needed to be handed over to the appropriate authorities.

(VDARE.com emphasis)

Send a mildly emotional email to KVDR and get the police on your doorstep!

Paul Craig Roberts is right – legislation of this kind metastasizes. Given the openly stated intentions of its main supporters, this is inevitable.

Happily, according to today’s email from the Rev.Ted Pike’s invaluable warning service (subscribe at the top of this web site) the Hate Crime legislation has hit trouble.

Unhappily, the Senate Democrats plan to rescue it by attaching it to another Bill

Senate Democratic leaders will push the federal hate crimes bill to the floor of the Senate as another amendment to a “must-pass” bill…Democrats say there will be no hearings and no amendments allowed. There will undoubtedly be a minimum of debate on the floor of the Senate, probably no more than an hour.

This would be a sad and squalid end to American free speech.

With the reasonableness which has become his trademark, The Kvetcher has posted a comment on the Jewcy website suggesting that his fellow Jews having hysterics about the BNP’s recent European Parliament success consider the causes of that success:

instead of merely condemning, we should ask ourselves why this is happening….To publicly question mass immigration is to ensure being labeled a right-wing extremist. And therefore the only people willing to do so are often… right-wing extremists. And therefore the only electoral avenue for protest of mass immigration is by voting for these right-wing extremists.

Unfortunately there is no sign, judging from the comments, that his readers comprehend what he is saying.