This Week’s Show

Contents

• 01m57s Thank you, Columbus!
• 08m45s Kamala’s Fox interview
• 18m59s Bring on the triumvirate!
• 26m15s Skeptical on Kamala’s Glock
• 28m39s Anarcho-tyranny, U.K.
• 31m35s Anarcho-tyranny, U.S.A.
• 34m13s Triggered by Chaucer
• 35m54s Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 in a big band arrangement, and this is of course your intractably genial host John Derbyshire with thoughts on the passing scene.

Two weeks this coming Tuesday is Election Day, if Comrade Merrick Garland doesn’t find a way to cancel it — don’t think he’s not trying. What are the prospects? I have no idea, but I’ll cover some relevant events.

First, though, my weekly reminder that you can help support my efforts here via snail mail or PayPal, relevant address and link at johnderbyshire.com, or using Zelle direct to my bank, or with a tax-deductible donation by a check earmarked with my name and mailed to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you for your help.

02 — Thank you, Columbus!     Monday, October 14th, as well as being the 958th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, was Columbus Day. Our nation’s Vice President marked the occasion in her own inimitable way.

[Clip:  It is an honor of course to be with you this week, as we celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day, as we speak truth about our nation’s history.

Since 1934, every October, the United States has recognized the voyage of the European explorers who first landed on the shores of the Americas. But that is not the whole story. That has never been the whole story.

Those explorers ushered in a wave of devastation for tribal nations, perpetrating violence, stealing land, and spreading disease. We must not shy away from this shameful past; and we must shed light on it, and do everything we can to address the impact of the past on native communities today.]

That’s the charge sheet drawn up by our enlightened ruling class against our European ancestors: violence, stealing land, and spreading disease.

Where violence and the stealing of land are concerned, the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas would have been perfectly well acquainted with both. They were far more common before the conquest than after, as of course were slavery, cannibalism, and mass human sacrifice.

The real horror that the Conquest brought with it was disease. The death toll was appalling. I don’t have a large-scale reference for the Caribbean islands where Columbus did most of his exploring, but here’s a quote from Charles Mann’s book 1491 about Hernán Cortés in Mexico twenty years later. Quote:

Berkeley researchers Cook and Borah spent decades reconstructing the population of [central Mexico] in the wake of the Spanish conquest. By combining colonial-era data from many sources, the two men estimated that the number of people in the region fell from 25.2 million in 1518, just before Cortés arrived, to about 700,000 in 1620 — a 97 percent drop in little more than a century.

End quote.

This wasn’t the result of any malice on the part of the conquistadors; the Mexicans just had no resistance to European diseases; and disease transmission was anyway not well understood. As Charles Mann points out, the conquistadors would have preferred for the native peoples to have survived in their original numbers so they could be used for forced labor. It was the mass die-off of natives that pushed the Spaniards to import slaves from Africa.

So yes, the conquest was a catastrophe, but not one that anyone willed, certainly not something that anyone alive today should feel shame for, as Kamala Harris claims we should. The Spaniards weren’t wilfully doing anything they didn’t do back home in Spain, nor anything the natives hadn’t been doing to each other for centuries.

It worked both ways, too. The natives seem to have had some diseases of their own to pass on to the Europeans. Coming home from his second expedition, Columbus told his diary that many of the Europeans had fallen ill from an undisclosed malady. A different historian, Suzanne Austin Alchon, reports that, quote: “By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed two-thirds of the Spanish settlers.” End quote.

And taking the long historical view, the arrival of Columbus was a great blessing to the people of the New World. Left to themselves I suppose they would eventually have attained civilized modernity — constitutional government and rule of law without slavery, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. It would have taken them three or four thousand years, though, as it took us. Columbus and the settlers who followed him spared them all that — started them off on a short-cut route to modernity.

Of course no such complicated thoughts ever crossed the shallow mind of Kamala Harris. If they had, she would have quickly dismissed them as heretical. The point of her Columbus Day speech was to signal to her admirers that she, like them, is on the side of the oppressed against the oppressors; and that the oppressors here, as everywhere, are white European males like Christopher Columbus.

03 — Kamala’s Fox interview.     Forward to Wednesday, when Kamala Harris submitted herself to a half-hour interview with Bret Baier of Fox News.

What the open-minded viewer hopes for from such an interview is some outline view as to what policies the candidate would promote if elected. In that respect the Vice President was deeply uninformative.

The interview actually lasted 26 minutes and 44 seconds. Working from the published transcript I broke it down time-wise into the nearest percentages as follows:

• 40 percent:  Immigration.
• 5 percent:  Taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners and illegal aliens awaiting deportation.
• 7 percent:  The economy.
• 16 percent:  “Turning the page” — how would Harris be different from Biden?
• 11 percent:  Why do so many Americans support Trump?
• 6 percent:  Biden’s mental capacity.
• 12 percent:  Foreign threats to the U.S.A.
• 3 percent:  Wrap-up

Harris had nothing original or interesting to say on any of these topics. Much the longest one, taking up the first 40 percent of the interview, was about immigration.

Harris gave us the only lines she has on this: that we have, quote, “a broken immigration system” — dear God, for how many decades have I been hearing that? And that, quote, “Congress ultimately is the only place that that’s going to get fixed,” end quote. And that the Biden-Harris administration strove mightily — from Day One! — to get laws passed in Congress to fix that “broken immigration system.” But that evil Donald Trump used all his power and might to thwart the passing of those righteous laws.

A moment’s reflection shows what nonsense that is.

One:  The Trump administration clearly had better control over illegal immigration than Biden-Harris; yet they did so without new laws, simply by the President exerting his constitutional powers through executive orders. Joe Biden — in his first week, although not precisely on Day One — annulled those orders. The colossal inflow of illegal aliens followed.

Two:  That Day One bill that Biden-Harris sent to Congress in January 2021, the U.S. Citizenship Act would have legalized illegal aliens and put them on an eight-year path to citizenship, increased the legal immigration numbers to the detriment of U.S. tech workers, expanded chain migration and the absurd “diversity visa lottery,” and so on. No-one acquainted with the defects of our current system could support it.

Three:  The administration’s second attempt at legislation, last year’s Lankford-Schumer bill, was more of the same. I gave you the essentials on that bill two podcasts ago with a link to the Center for Immigration Studies’ very thorough debunking of it. My bottom-line comment on that, quote from myself:

Just the name of the Bill tells you how bogus it is. As if Chuck Schumer would put his name to anything that might hinder the Great Replacement!

End quote.

Four:  What happened to the Lankford-Schumer bill, according to Harris, was that, quote:

Donald Trump learned about that bill and told them to kill it because he preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.

End quote.

“Told them to kill it”? Told who? Congressional Republicans? What, they all snap to attention and click their heels when they get a phone call from Trump? I wouldn’t personally mind very much if that were so, but … it ain’t. Ask any Congress-watcher. In any case, as Bret Baier kept trying to point out, six Democrat congresscritters voted against the Lankford-Schumer bill.

Points One, Two, Three, and Four aside, the subject of legal immigration barely got a mention. Remember the fuss in the run-up to the 2016 election about big corporations laying off citizen workers in mid-level technical jobs in order to replace them with cheaper foreigners on guest-worker visas?

Remember that? Remember how the citizens had to train their cheaper foreign replacements or else lose their severance packages? Remember how it was all pushed by big “body shop” recruitment firms and the immigration lawyers’ lobby,with congresscritters all bought and paid for? Remember that stuff?

It’s still going on, although somewhat more discreetly. Wait, though: Didn’t the Trump administration put the kibosh on that nasty little racket? No, they did nothing. I tell ya, the immigration issue is a hard field to plow.

Bottom line on the Fox interview: Why should you vote for Kamala Harris? Because Donald Trump is a bad, bad man! I counted twenty-four mentions of Trump by Harris in the 26 minutes, 44 seconds of the interview. That’s one mention every 66.8 seconds, close to one per minute. Trump is Harris’s main issue — really, her only issue.

Harris is a seriously stupid person who has never, to the best of my recollection, ever said anything interesting at all. I can make an excuse for her, though — no, really, an honest excuse.

In a way, the kind of dumb show she put on in this interview is inherent in the position of any Vice President running for President when things aren’t going well for the country. Things aren’t going well? Then the current administration must be at fault. But you are a key figure in the administration!

You can’t very well blame yourself. You could blame the President; but that wouldn’t go over well in a national culture where loyalty is counted a virtue. So, just keep heaping blame on the other candidate, even when it makes no sense to do so.

It’s all a bit unfair. For all Kamala Harris’s proud talk about being “the last person in the room” when key decisions are made, the U.S. Vice President has very little power or authority.

If things aren’t going well for the country, that most likely is the President’s fault — the more plainly so when, as in the case of Harris, the Vice President seems to have spent her time in office doing absolutely nothing at all.

04 — Bring on the triumvirate!.

Where the office of Vice President is concerned, Kamala Harris is shoddy goods, but she looks all the shoddier by comparison with J.D. Vance, Donald Trump’s running mate.

That’s partly an age thing: Harris will turn sixty this weekend — the age at which, in Huxley’s Brave New World, citizens are put to sleep — while Vance only just turned forty.

Still, the age gap is a minor issue by comparison with the yawning gulfs that separate the Vice President from the would-be Vice President in intellect and accomplishment.

By way of illustrating that, here’s a sound clip from an appearance by J.D. Vance on the Fox and Friends show Wednesday.

[Clip at 8m53s in:  She is of course the deciding vote on trillions of dollars of Joe Biden’s spending. She bragged about being the last person in the room when major decisions were made.

But we have to sort of step back and appreciate there is something pathological going on here. She has been in power for three and a half years, and when asked about how she would be different she goes and talks about Donald Trump. And when, y’know, when it’s pointed out, “Well, you’ve actually been in office for three and a half years,” she says, “Well, you know, he’s been talking about politics for ten years.”

What is it in the mind of this person that can’t just acknowledge that she has been in power for three and a half years and bears some responsibility as the sitting Vice President for the condition that the country is in?

Now, she could do any number of things. She could actually say, “Well, I think that things are a little bit better than you’re giving me credit for.” Or she could say, “Well, this wasn’t totally my fault.” Instead she pretends that Donald Trump bears the responsibility for problems that happened while she was the sitting Vice President.

She does that about the border, she does that about the affordability of groceries, she does that about the chaos on the world stage, … I’ve never seen a person who’s running for President as the sitting Vice President who pretends that she has nothing to do with the condition of the country she’s been governing.]

Again, I’d give Kamala Harris a very small pass on account of the dilemma I mentioned in the previous segment, the dilemma faced by any sitting Vice President running for President. Could she really say: “Well, this wasn’t totally my fault”? Asking around among friends, opinions differ.

What that sound clip makes clear, though, is a difference in presentation. It’s clear that Vance is a smart and articulate guy, just as it’s clear from Harris’s appearances that she is a dumb and inarticulate gal. And no, I don’t at all mind women in high political office. Drop by some time, I’ll show you my Margaret Thatcher commemorative coffee mug.

I did not actually watch the Bret Baier interview on Wednesday. I was out of the house, attending a dinner in Manhattan. I’ve culled my information about the interview from the published transcript and some online video clips.

Guest of honor at that dinner in Manhattan was Vivek Ramaswamy, who gave a fine speech. Watching him and listening to him, J.D. Vance came to mind. That wasn’t because of any particular physical or oratorical similarity, but just the happy reflection that our side — the side of reason, calm good sense, and patriotism — includes two such smart, accomplished, and eloquent guys.

And both of them young! — Well, young by political standards: Ramaswamy is 39, Vance is 40. Musing about it on the Long Island Railroad going home, Elon Musk came to mind, too. Musk is older — he’s 53 — but he belongs with the other two where smarts and accomplishments are concerned.

How does the proverb go? “Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.” So Musk is young in that proverbial sense, at any rate. He certainly presents as young: agile and quick-witted.

Musing thus as the landscape of Nassau County flickered past the window of my train, I wandered off into a fantasy centered on the word “triumvirate.” If you missed classical history classes in school, the triumvirate was a political arrangement in first-century-B.C. ancient Rome when supreme power over the Republic was shared by three men. This was when the Roman Republic was on its last legs, just before it gave way to Empire.

There were actually two triumvirates, one right after the other. For good fictional accounts of both I recommend Alfred Duggan‘s novels Winter Quarters for the first triumvirate, Three’s Company for the second.

Is our republic on its last legs before giving way to an Emperor? Should we adjust our Constitution to allow for a triumvirate? If we do so any time soon, those would be my three candidates to be members of the triumvirate: Elon Musk, J.D. Vance, and Vivek Ramaswamy.

05 — Miscellany.     And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.

Imprimis:  Asked in her 60 Minutes interview whether she owned a handgun, Kamala Harris replied cheerfully that yes, she owns a Glock.

That seemed a bit fishy to some listeners. For one thing Harris, who is as far out on the progressive left as it’s possible to be, has campaigned against private ownership of handguns.

For another, handgun owners are usually more specific when asked about their guns. If you ask me I’ll tell you that, yes, I own a SIG Sauer P239 and a Colt Detective Special.

So is Kamala’s Glock a Glock 17 or a Glock 19, or something else?

And for another, it’s hard to imagine Kamala Harris operating a handgun. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere within a quarter mile of that.

So was she just lying for effect? It seems to me her claim should be easy to verify. She lives in Los Angeles, right? And presumably spends a lot of time in Washington, D.C. Some diligent reporter could easily check around the relevant neighborhoods for shooting ranges that accommodate handguns to find out if anyone remembers seeing her shooting.

Or, if she has a personal shooting range in her basement, check with neighbors to find out if anyone’s heard her practicing.

Or can’t we find a mole in the California Pistol Licensing Bureau, or whatever they call it over there, to tell us whether she’s licensed?

Perhaps someone did these checks and I just missed it. Or perhaps diligent reporters have gone the way of the dodo bird.

Item:  It is just thirty years since the late Samuel Francis coined the very useful term “anarcho-tyranny.” He defined it thus, quote:

The combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety.

End quote.

Anarcho-tyranny has found its true home in the Mother Country. July 29th this year three little girls aged six, seven, and nine were stabbed to death by a lunatic in Southport, northwest England. Initial rumors said the killer was one of the illegal aliens who’ve been flooding into Britain the past few years.

It turned out this wasn’t so. The killer was born in Britain to immigrant parents from Rwanda. The utter failure of the British authorities to curb mass illegal immigration has generated much anger, though.

Forty-one-year-old Lucy Connolly, hearing the rumors, blasted out angrily on X, calling for mass deportations and saying that the hotels being used to house illegal aliens should be set on fire. She quickly regretted the tweet and deleted it, but not before it had been reported to law enforcement.

Arrested and jailed on remand, this week she was sentenced to 31 months in jail. Ms Connolly had no previous convictions. She has two children; her husband serves on a local County Council.

Meanwhile the percentage of crimes solved in England and Wales fell from 16 percent nine years ago to less than six percent last year. Friends and relatives over there tell me it’s a waste of time to call the police if your car is stolen or your house burgled. Frequently heard, quote: “You’re lucky if they pick up the phone.”

Item:  In the matter of anarcho-tyranny the U.S.A. is pretty far along that same road the Brits are travelling.

My New York Post this morning, October 18th, ran a story on drugstores closing because of rampant shoplifting. One on Manhattan’s Upper East Side — quite a tony area — told the local civic group they get robbed about once an hour. An employee there told another news outlet that criminals are, quote, “stealing more than we’re selling,” end quote.

The Post reports that the drugstore chain CVS will be closing ten percent of its U.S. locations by the end of the year. Walgreen’s is planning to close 1,200 stores; Rite Aid, 500 stores.

“Crime has definitely picked up” in the last five years, one of the Post’s informants told them. Further quote: “Obviously it’s a revolving door of justice, nobody spends any real time … and I think the criminals have figured this out.” End quote.

While New York City cops are relaxing at the donut shop, though, federal law enforcement is leaving no criminal stone unturned. October 9th in Floyd, Va., 36-year-old John Paul Bordeaux was arrested and has been charged. So, that same day, were 52-year-old Rebecca Marshburn and 31-year-old Kelsie Marie Watkins, both in Wilmington, N.C. So, the previous day, October 8th, was 49-year-old Michael T. Fagundes in Costa Mesa, Ca.

What have these federal lawbreakers been charged with? Why with being at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th 2021. Off with their heads!

Item:

Whan that Octobre with his shoures coole
Sees cheery freshmen settling in to schoole,
All swathed against the chilly autumn mornyngs,
Than longen folk to put forth trigger warnyngs …

I beg your pardon. I flipped into Chaucer mode for a moment there (not for the first time). I had just been reading this story from the October 13th London Daily Telegraph. Headline: The Canterbury Tales given trigger warning over “expressions of Christian faith”.

Yes: the University of Nottingham over there has slapped the warning on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Why? Quote from the story:

A Freedom of Information request found that the university warned students that the medieval literature contains expressions of Christian faith as well as violence and mental illness.

End quote.

That’s not all Chaucer’s Tales contain. I shall know that the old country is gone for good when I read that they have removed The Miller’s Tale from college curriculums …

06 — Signoff.     That’s it, ladies and gents. Thank you as always for your time and attention, your encouragement and support.

Two weeks to go, two weeks this coming Tuesday, when perhaps we shall be spared the butcher’s axe. If we’re not, and things come to a Constitutional crisis, I offer to the nation — free of charge — my suggestion of a Musk-Vance-Ramaswamy triumvirate. You’re welcome!

To play us out, here’s an old favorite of mine from the great Mr. H.W. Ledbetter. There will be more from Radio Derb next week.