Parting Ways [National Review fires John Derbyshire!]

NRO ^ | 2012-04-07 | Rich Lowry

[cartan]

Anyone who has read Derb in our pages knows he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer. I direct anyone who doubts his talents to his delightful first novel, “Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, or any one of his “Straggler” columns in the books section of NR. Derb is also maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative. His latest provocation, in a webzine, lurches from the politically incorrect to the nasty and indefensible. We never would have published it, but the main reason that people noticed it is that it is by a National Review writer. Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise. So there has to be a parting of the ways. Derb has long danced around the line on these issues, but this column is so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation. It’s a free country, and Derb can write whatever he wants, wherever he wants. Just not in the pages of NR or NRO, or as someone associated with NR any longer.

[Zhang Fei]

John Derbyshire is about to hit 67, and is undergoing cancer treatment. He had indicated, via a third party on Steve Sailer's blog, that he would be grateful for any donations that fans and well-wishers can muster up via his website, which contains the archives of all the material he's ever done, including the transcripts of his acerbic and amusing weekly radio broadcasts.

[Carry_Okie]

The main focus was how we should deal with a society evolving that has less and less economic use for less-intelligent people. IOW, what are we going to do with these people?

Let them weed. Let them thin forests. Let them do riparian restoration projects. The land needs it badly. We need the land to be healthy. It's that simple.

[Travis McGee]

Somewhere I read, from somebody who had spent years in the “real” third world, that if you flush your toilet with drinking water (like 99% of Americans) you are not really poor.

The truly poor in the third world would think that a housing project with running water, electricity and central air was a dream palace.

[big'ol_freeper]

RE: Reminds me of when they fired Ann Coulter shortly after 9/11

Evidently they were right to do so. Ann has shown herself to be a complete phony. Her whoring for Romney, a left-winger loathe to any conservative, makes her dead to me, as she is to most conservatives.

[stephenjohnbanker]

Who owns NR now ?

Yale ?

[stephenjohnbanker]

” How deluded can you get? It’s not 1978, Rich. Nobody takes NR seriously anymore. I read takimag all the time. I occasionally read NRO, usually to make fun of them. They’ve devolved into the print version of Sean Hannity.”

I started reading NR in 1968 at age 14. It was a great magazine back then....Brookiser, Muggerige, Kirk, and
the inimitable Bill. Those were the days.....LONG gone!

[DB]

There are a large number of jobs that simply require integrity, a strong work ethic and a smile.

[annalex]

Yawn.

Karl Keating called for firing Darby for his pro-abort views combined with agnosticism. That was time to fire him, not now for this unremarkable set of statistical observations.

The article reminded me that I need to do the Talk with my adolescent daughter, just in case she hadn’t figured it all out for herself already.

[chessplayer]

“Derbyshire in 2003: I Am a Racist”

http://www.redstate.com/leon_h_wolf/2012/04/07/derbyshire-in-2003-i-am-a-racist/

People here are proud of him? Wow.

“Pat Buchanan Advertises His Book On Neo-Nazi Radio Show”

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2008/07/nazi-sympathizer-pat-buchanan-pushes/

Those singing the praises of Derbyshire going to sing the praises of Buchanan too?

[CaptSkip]

Yes and yes. Men that have the courage to tell the truth in a country mad with Political Correctness and poisoned by the lies of Multiculturalism are to be cheered.

[eater-of-toast]

Lowry is a punk. He was a decent political repoter but is way out of his league as editor. National Review was a great magazine under John O'Sullivan, who left (or was forced out, depending on the account) about 1999 - 2000. He served up strong meat, publishing Peter Brimelow on immigration and treating Murray and Herrnstein (authors of The Bell Curve) favorably on the issues of the heritability of intelligence, and race and intelligence. Neither did he shy away from the rampant social dysfunction of black America. He gave some ink to squishes like the third-world immigration enthusiast John J. Miller, but on balance took a hard and unapologetic conservative line, political correctness be damned. Soon after he left, National Review sharply reversed itself on its more controversial stands and I gave up my subscription (of some 10 years) in short order. I can't say I'm surprised it's come to this, though that makes it no less deplorable. Did Pat Buchanan box Lowry's ears on The McLaughlin Group today?

[Zhang Fei]

The author of the article you linked had the following to say about Derbyshire:

Absolutely nothing that has happened in Derbyshire’s career since then has indicated that he didn’t mean exactly what he said to Kevin way back in 2003. This is the same man who once described welfare thusly:

Following the black riots of the 1960s, these concessions have also been seen by nonblacks as an implicit contract or treaty — that is, as nonblack America saying to black America: “We’ll give you this stuff if you promise not to break our windows.”

Are you disagreeing with Derbyshire's assertion? Or simply annoyed with him for saying it?

[Forgotten Amendments]

I feel sorry for a lot of FReepers who became “conservative” in the last decade or so. They never knew what it was like to LEARN something from conservative sources that won't fit on a bumper sticker. Remember how excited we were when the new NR came to our mailbox?

Buckley was not blameless. He was always quite comfortable in high society and made his reputation by purging and sliming the unfashionable. The pathetic wuss, Lowry is trying to do the same.

Lowry bought himself a lot more guest spots as a “respectable” conservative on cable news and NPR. At the cost of his soul. Screw him.

Does ANYONE still pay for the print version of NR?

[Albion Wilde]

They’ve been held in an indentured position by the democrats for over a century (which perpetuates their constitutional ignorance). Churches and spiritual points of view are irrelevant to their political/moral decline. They’re still slaves, they simply don’t know it.

Kind of harsh, and characterizes their group as completely passive, which the history of slavery itself would belie, since many slaves made valiant attempts to escape and many fought in the Civil War, and every war America has fought. So I don't completely buy your black-n-white assessment of their situation. Consider our Jewish friends, who, although Jews are often tested and found to be statistically the most intelligent humans, also have been historically in the tank for the Democrats. It is also a mystery to me.

Setting race aside, the plot of the Italian classic novel Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) has to do with the Sicilian aristocracy vs the peasants, who, the book claims, just want to be peasants because it is a life of less responsibility. There is no racial difference; just a characterological one. I believe we need to do missionary work in our own country.

[Albion Wilde]

The truly poor in the third world would think that a housing project with running water, electricity and central air was a dream palace.

Maybe instead of high school, we should send our entitlement youth to work in an African country. Might open their eyes to how great a nation we have had in the near past.

[Bullish]

It was fascinating to hear Buckley string words together so eloquently. He could really make you think.

[DaxtonBrown]

[Lowry is a pussy. This shows how weak that magazine has become since Buckley died. Screw You NR.]

Lowry was on McLauclan a week or so ago going on about what an injustice Trayvon had suffered. Even IF Zimmerman is guilty, it just showed an incredible lack of judgement on Lowry’s part before any facts were in.

Time for NRO to see if they can get jobs with Frum or work at the NYR with Brooks.

[Fledermaus]

Dr. Hanson is good and some of his writings are only at NRO unless he’s putting them back on his website, he stopped for a while.

[Fledermaus]

He has a website. There you can link to his infamous role in a Bruce Lee movie!

[NVDave]

He might have been satirical - I haven’t made up my mind yet.

But, let’s take some other statistics and take people (of any race) completely out of it.

There are a few people killed every few years by bears in the US. This has been true for centuries. Reading the Lewis and Clark journals, especially when they got into western Montana and met the Grizzly Bear, make for humorous reading these days.

Now, let’s say you’re a person who enjoys the outdoors.

You meet a bear.

What do you do?

Which informs your policy? The number of times that bears run from humans, or the maulings and deaths you read about? Do you carry arms or pepper spray in preparation for meeting a bear if you hike in bear country?

If the latter, congratulations, you’ve met the test for evolutionary stereotyping. You see a few events with maximal consequences, your brain says “Hmmm. Might want to learn something from that and formulate a pretty drastic response to ward off possibly lethal outcomes...”

Now, where bears are concerned, one might laud the aforementioned stereotyping as coherent and rational self-preservation policy and it isn’t too terribly controversial. Those who differ would claim that carrying arms or pepper spray is an “overreaction” and they might choose to wear bells or make noise, etc. Still, they’re forced to admit that there can be problems when one stumbles into the wrong place at the wrong time with bears. No one gets shouted down over this issue, we agree on the general facts that bears are apex predators and they can (and do) maul and kill humans.

Let’s now switch back to the subject at hand. Only the delusional deny that there are incidents where whites targeted for their race by blacks. Only the delusional will go walking through certain urban black neighborhoods while being white or Asian. I personally got “the talk” from a little old lady who happened to be black when I was in DC. I was walking southeast out of the capitol district, crossed a street (can’t remember which) and she was waiting for the orthogonal light on the other side of my street. Upon arriving on her corner, she buttonholed me immediately and told me “Son, turn around and go back where from you came. Please.” And she explained why, and I suspect in today’s racial huckster environment, she’d be shouted down.

I followed her advice and, when my light came again, I reversed course.

Now, was she offering advice based on statistics or individuals? I rather suspect she was operating off statistics and likelihoods. And that’s simply smart policy, as with bears in the woods. You might not know every bear. You can’t predict every outcome with every bear. But you can look at the stats and say “There is a significant, non-zero likelihood of potential great bodily harm, assault or even death by ignoring the statistics and going into certain places.”

The recent incidents of black wildings would appear to dispute your assertion that “...neither a random white or a random black are likely to kill anybody.” Let’s not worry about being killed, specifically, but broaden the spectrum of crimes to include assault, rape, robbery, etc.

But three examples out of many more:

http://www.ajc.com/news/in-teen-beating-death-735285.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2009109978_apusiowacitybeatings.html

And the events in Philly, which I’m sure you’ve heard more about in your news markets.

Another would be the flash mob of black youths robbing a store near the Martin rallies in Florida recently.

The point is, these events are on a rapid upwards trend. People want to ignore the national trend of flash mobs of black youths robbing stores, beating people on streets and in crowded venues, but they’re real, they’re not specific to one urban area and they’re on the increase. They’re attacking at random, in broad daylight. All of this should be uncontested statistical fact, but too many people want to look the other way and pretend it isn’t happening.

Derb appears to have been cataloging these events, if in no other way than having a good memory for news stories, and offering rational advice, based upon what he sees happening and possibly extrapolating beyond the time of his death, which might be near at hand from what I’ve read. He’s a man who no longer need suffer any fools, and he has the ultimate liberty to speak his mind... and I believe he just did so.