This Week’s Show

Contents

• 01m56s Make America Normal Again
• 06m09s Trump: harbinger of a new age
• 11m05s Syria is the new Libya
• 16m50s The West is best
• 21m48s Immigration roundup
• 28m39s Spared the Hitler comparison
• 30m10s Cliodynamics (not sci-fi)
• 31m30s Moore’s list
• 32m36s Signoff:  An advertisement for Cultural Appropriation

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Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On Rumble

Full Show On Odysee 

Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners. This is your demonstrably genial host John Derbyshire, back in the recording studio after nine days off the grid. So this week’s podcast is farm-fresh, not frozen and reheated like last week’s.

Mr and Mrs Derbyshire actually spent eight of those nine days in Belize. That, you can be entirely excused for not knowing, is a tiny little nation on the East coast of the Central American isthmus, a British colony until 1981 but now independent. I shall have more to say about our Belize adventure in my Diary at the end of this month.

And now I’m back in the saddle with Radio Derb’s weekly survey of the news. The transition from warm Caribbean air to the frosty New York variety has left me with a sore throat, so I’m going to sound a little hoarse [horse sound], for which I apologize. That aside, it’s business as usual.

So, the news. First, MANA.

02 — Make America Normal Again.     It is dawning on people, including big-name social and political commentators, that Donald Trump’s re-election to the Presidency marks the turning of some kind of corner. The most eloquent expression of that dawning that I’ve so far seen was by Francis Buckley at Real Clear Politics, December 3rd. Here’s the opening graf, quote:

Beneath the folds of each of our two political parties, a hidden party struggles to emerge. It’s not the woke Democratic Party of open borders and Saint Jussie Smollett, and it’s not the Make America Great Again GOP of the January 6 rioters and Matt Gaetz. It’s the Make America Normal Again party. MANA.

End quote.

Buckley’s column is mainly aimed at the Democratic Party. They need to drop the weird stuff, he’s telling them. Voters — at any rate, enough voters to give Trump the victory in the teeth of shrieking hostility from all the regime media — voters don’t want crime to be legal, our borders to be open, our energy policy to be dictated to us by some ditzy Swedish teenager, and our kids taught that they are whichever sex they want to be this morning. Swelling numbers of voters don’t want any of that. They want normality.

Progressives, some of whom are not stupid, seem to have gotten the message. Extreme anti-Trumpism — he’s Hitler reincarnated, he’ll destroy democracy, et cetera — has disappeared from the public square. Some progressive bastions have even admitted that Trumpism may have a point.

New York Times, December 11th, Headline, quote: Recent Immigration Surge Has Been Largest in U.S. History. Sub-heading: “Under President Biden, more than two million immigrants per year have entered, government data shows.” End quotes.

The Times article is nothing sensational to anyone who follows immigration issues, but by the standards of elite media it’s brutally honest. Those standards are of course set low. The Times is no way going to let go of its cherished “eleven million” for the number of foreigners living illegally in the U.S.A. It’s been given as eleven million for thirty years, to my certain knowledge. The true number is by now most likely fifty or sixty million. Still, baby steps.

There is definitely an awakening. How it will proceed in matters of official policy and law remains to be seen; but our country will be much less weird four years from now, our media more honest. We shall be more normal.

03 — Trump: harbinger of a new age.     Trump’s re-election has caused some serious re-thinking outside our nation’s borders, too. The landmark essay here is by Tom McTague writing at Unherd.com, December 10th. Sample quote:

It is striking how open so many diplomats and officials are to Trump’s approach, telling me that they see in it a degree of brutal honesty if not morality. During his first term there was a hope that his Hobbesian outlook on life would not, in the end, last. Today, there is no such hope — or even desire.

End quote.

The international politics of the civilized Western world has traditionally, like the internal politics of the member nations, been class-based: snobs versus slobs. In the global arena, the European nations have been the snobs, looking down on the crude, not-very-smart slobs of that country on the other side of the Atlantic.

Growing up in England, I early got acquainted with a mocking style of humor where Americans were concerned.

American:  So you’re British, huh? What line of work you in?

Brit:  I’m a clerk. (Pronounced British style, to rhyme with “park.”)

American:  Huh? If you’re a clark, why ain’t you goin’ “tick tark, tick tark?”

Don’t get me wrong. Americans were generally liked. We street urchins particularly liked the way they’d give us chewing gum after a little cadging. It was just that the Brits and Euros thought Yanks uncultured and none too bright.

The 2016 election of Trump played into that snobbery. He was the archetypal American slob — loud, coarse, rich. The Euro snobs looked down on Donald Trump steadily for eight years. Well, goodbye to all that.

Further quote from Tom McTague at Unherd.com:

The comprehensive nature of Trump’s victory coupled with European rolling political and economic crises, seems to have robbed the continent’s leaders of any last delusion of superiority.

End quote.

“Rolling political and economic crises,” indeed. All the big Euro powers — Germany, France, Britain — are in poor shape. All have Trumpish new political parties with increasing appeal to these nations’ native slobs: the AfD in Germany, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in France, Nigel Farage’s Reform party in Britain. All over Europe the traditional party arrangement is looking less and less relevant to voters’ concerns.

So when Donald Trump shows up over there still draped in his victory laurels, as he did last Saturday for the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, he is greeted as — and I have to quote Tom McTague again, he’s hit so many nails on their heads here — quotes: “the harbinger of a new age … a clarifying presence” end quotes.

It would take a braver man than I am to predict how this will all play out long-term; but yes, we have turned a corner. And the rest of the civilized world is following us: us, and our leader, Donald Trump.

04 — Syria is the new Libya.     So much for the civilized world. How are things going among the barbarians?

The big news here is of course the fall of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad after 24 years in power. Al-Assad was helicoptered out from his palace December 8th to asylum in his longtime ally Russia.

Why does Russia care about Syria? Because Russia has a key naval facility at Tartus on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. They’ve been leasing it from the Syrians for more than fifty years, since al-Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad took over the country. Tartus is a key power-point for Russia in the Mediterranean.

Will it go on being so now that these rebels have taken over? Beats me. The power line-up here among the barbarians and the civilized nations enabling or opposing them — I’d put Russia in the “enabling” category — is more than my poor tired brain can encompass. If you want to give it a try, take a look at the long thread by geostrategist Martin Skold on X.

Other players aside, the consequences for Syria itself are not hard to guess. The place has been in a state of civil war for thirteen years. It has no politics above the level of al-Assad’s brutish despotism, and no significant economy. There are lots of squabbling ethnies, most notably the Kurds who Turkey sees as threatening. Most Syrians with anything on the ball have left.

Syria’s future is Libya’s and Iraq’s present: endless tribalist war, famine and disease, neighbor nations snatching what they can (Israel has already snaffled some more of the Golan Heights), destitution and misery, more floods of refugees heading for Europe, where they are increasingly unwelcome.

It’s an all-too-common fate for Arab nations not blessed with big oil reserves. Is it especially Arab? Or Muslim? — Afghanistan and Iran are not exactly advertisements for non-Arab Muslim governance. Or for clannish nations in general, with their tribal loyalties and cousin marriage? Sorry, above my pay grade.

My only book-length engagement with this particular brand of barbarism was reading David Pryce-Jones’ 1989 book The Closed Circle thirty-some years ago.

I had a slight acquaintance with David when we were both contributors at National Review. He is a very smart guy indeed, and terrifically well-read. I remember glowing with pride when he complimented me once on something I’d written.

In The Closed Circle … Well, I’ll just quote from the book’s description at Amazon. Quote:

This important book explains how Arabs are closed in a circle defined by tribal, religious, and cultural traditions. David Pryce-Jones examines the forces which [inner quote] drive the Arabs in their dealings with each other and with the West. [End inner quote.] In the postwar world, he argues, the Arabs reverted to age-old tribal and kinship structures, from which they have been unable to escape.

End quote.

Absent some really major social changes — perhaps even genetic ones — the Muslim Arabs of the Middle East — at any rate, the ones with no oil — seem destined to follow that same dismal path into despotism, misery, and squalor.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” screech the demonstrators in our streets. No it won’t, not ever. It’ll be another rattletrap crap-hole country ruled by gangsters. Check out The Closed Circle.

05 — The West is best.     I’m a bit free, sometimes ambiguously, with the terms “civilized” and “Western.” Aren’t there nations out East that are civilized?

Of course there are. Japan is certainly a civilized nation. So is Taiwan, although with slight qualifications: the island was under a strict military dictatorship until 1987. Mainland China? Eh; I’d say “civilized … with major qualifications.” They really need to get themselves properly constitutional government under a rule of law, with civil liberties and free elections.

What about South Korea? Most people would reflexively put it in with Japan and Taiwan, especially considering the contrast between it and North Korea, which has pioneered a whole new style of modern high-IQ barbarism, nukes and all.

I’d put South Korea together with Taiwan as “civilized with slight qualifications.” The place was under military dictatorship for thirty-odd years until the June Uprising of that magic year 1987. But yeah: I won’t begrudge them the adjective “civilized.”

South Korea is not a happy place, though. I was reading about that a couple of weeks ago in Newsweek magazine, which put President Yoon on its front cover and a long story inside about how unhappy the country is.

Having Kim Jong Un as your nextdoor neighbor is of course not conducive to happiness. That’s not the South’s main problem, though. Their main problem is demographic. I mentioned this a couple of weeks ago. Quote from me:

South Korea’s Total Fertility Rate is now at a sensationally low 0.68 children per woman. That’s a decline from 1.2 children per woman since 2014, so a 43 percent decline in just ten years.

End quote.

Here is what the Newsweek November 15th article has to say, quote from them:

For while the threat of new conflict with the nuclear-armed North has long loomed across the armistice line, the South’s domestic problems are growing — from the strains on its health care system to worries over the labor force to education. A deepening divide between genders, a collapsing birth rate and an aging population have set it on course for a demographic collapse as dramatic as any in the industrialized world.

End quote.

Forward to this month. On December 3rd President Yoon declared martial law. Armed troops were sent to surround the Parliament buildings. Yoon said this was to maintain order, as the opposition party in the national legislature had been wantonly trying to undermine his administration through legislative maneuvers, including impeachment motions against top officials.

The martial law decree only lasted six hours before being overturned by a unanimous vote in the National Assembly. As I go to press here, South Korea’s Parliament is debating a motion to impeach President Yoon over the martial law declaration. Halfway through his five-year term in office, President Yoon is in serious trouble.

So, Eastern civilization? Yeah sure. I’d still say, though, that with all our well-advertised problems, the West is best.

06 — Immigration roundup.     Just a few notes on the immigration front.

New York is of course a sanctuary city, with major restrictions on city agencies and law enforcement assisting ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

That’s going to change some. Thursday this week Mayor Eric Adams had a sit-down with Trump’s Border Czar Tom Homan. It seems to have gone pretty well. Thursday evening, after the meeting, Homan was praising Adams on Fox News for his willingness to work with ICE, at least where dangerous illegal-alien criminals are concerned. Sample quote:

He gets it. And today he proved that as the mayor of New York City, he’s more concerned with public safety than politics. He wants to help ICE take criminal threats off the street. He wants to help ICE look for national security threats. He wants to help ICE find over 340,000 missing children, of which many are going to be in the city.

End quote.

That’s nice. As the New York Post observed, though, quote from the print version: “Any order, though, by Adams’ own admission, would only address a small fraction of the tens of thousands of migrants who have been living in the big apple on the taxpayers’ dime.” End quote.

I’d also note that an order from the Mayor to do anything at all about the city’s illegal aliens would meet stiff opposition from the City Council, whose political center of gravity is about ninety-three points to the left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Meanwhile on the legal immigration front, there are problems a-brewing in Trump’s administration-designate.

Trump himself seems to be naive about our policies there. He favors pretty much unrestricted work visas for high-tech workers. Elon Musk is of the same mind. Musk has called for fixes to make immigration easier for, quote, “super-talented people,” end quote.

Musk is apparently not aware of the racket being run by Indian employment agencies — “body shops” — in cahoots with AILA, the American Immigration Lawyers’ Association, to replace mid-level American tech workers with cheaper foreign replacements.

Those cheaper replacements are “super-talented people” only by comparison with Guatemalan fruit-pickers. Any adjustment to the work-visa system, though — for sure, any adjustment acceptable to AILA — will have them pouring in in their tens of thousands, with corrsponding layoffs of U.S. citizens.

Trump himself did seem to be aware of the racket when running in 2016. He spoke angrily about the cases like Disney Corp., when citizen IT workers had to train their cheap foreign replacements on pain of losing their severance pay. Apparently he’s forgotten that now.

One person who hasn’t, and who successfully stood up for American workers in the Trump 45 administration, is Stephen Miller, designated to serve as White House deputy chief of staff for policy in Trump 47.

Who will have Trump’s ear on behalf of U.S. citizens, Musk or Miller? Get some popcorn ready.

And finally on this topic, just another instance of the nasty spitefulness of the outgoing administration.

Yes: Trump 45 was tardy about fulfilling his campaign promises to build a big, beautiful wall along our Southern border. He did eventually make a good start, though; and when he left office there was border-wall material stacked up along strategic sections of the border waiting to be erected.

Those erections never happened. When Joe Biden took office, he immediately halted all border wall construction. The wall material has been lying there since 2021.

So after January 20th construction can get going again, right? With the materials that have been lying there unused for four years, right?

Not if the Biden administration has anything to say about it. The Daily Wire has got video evidence of unused sections of the wall being hauled away on the back of flatbed trucks to be auctioned through GovPlanet, a surplus government equipment auctioneer.

The material is perfectly good and usable, and of course it was paid for by your tax dollars and mine. The Biden people are just determined to do anything they can to keep the border open for illegal entry. Open borders isn’t just a policy for these folk; it’s a religion, and Trump is a blasphemer.

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

Imprimis:  The endless invoking of Adolf Hitler as the epitome of political evil is of course tiresome. Sure, Hitler was evil, but so were many others. My own candidate for the epitome of political evil in the last century would be Lenin, but his name is never used in that context.

Stalin, a strong runner-up, gets an occasional showing, though. Here was neocon loony John Bolton the other day, addressing the nomination of Kash Patel as FBI Director. Quote from Bolton:

Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrenty Beria. Fortunately, the FBI is not the NKVD. The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0.

End quote.

Lavrenty Beria was the head of Stalin’s secret police, so Bolton is pointing to Stalin as the epitome of evil, at one remove. Let’s be grateful for small mercies; at least we were spared the Hitler comparison.

Item:  I spoke back there about our society turning a corner, socially and politically. That metaphor actually belongs to an academic — or sub-academic — discipline, the one called “cliodynamics.”

Clio was the ancient Greek muse of history. Cliodynamics seeks to figure out natural laws governing the transformation of societies from being like this to being like that.

Hari Seldon’s “psychohistory” of course comes to mind, from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series of sci-fi novels. I don’t know how much space the cliodynamicists have managed to put between themselves and science fiction, but their discipline is respectable enough to have an international, peer-reviewed, open-access journal to its name.

I may look into it; or … I may just re-read my Asimov.

Item:  Wednesday this week Stephen Moore put out a list of suggestions for DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency to be headed up by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

There are some great suggestions there. Defund sanctuary cities and states … End foreign aid programs … Sell off unpaid federal loans to private bill collectors … Fire the 30,000 new IRS agents Biden hired … and so on.

Here’s my five cents worth: Declare war on public-sector labor lobbies. (I refuse to call them “unions.”) Ban them at the federal level: somehow make it really expensive and difficult for states and municipalities that tolerate them.

08 — Signoff.     That’s all I have, folks. I had planned another segment on the acquittal of Daniel Penny in the New York City subway case. My voice is giving out, though. In lieu of my commentary, I urge you to watch the eleven-minute clip of Jared Taylor talking about the acquittal. There’s a link to it right here in the Radio Derb transcript; and the transcript is available both at the Z-man’s website and at my own, johnderbyshire.com.

Then, when you’ve listened to the clip, fire off a post to X demanding that Elon Musk re-instate Jared’s X account. Its continuing suspension is an insult to a great and brave patriot.

1. Thanks as always for your time and attention; now get to work wrapping those presents to put under the Christmas tree.

For signoff this week I’m going to give you a Michael Jackson number, Beat It. That’s the name of the tune, Beat It. Please don’t beat it — I mean, don’t quit listening if you’re not a Michael Jackson fan — because this is a Chinese adaptation of the tune, played on a gŭzhēng, which is to say, a traditional Chinese plucked zither. This, I tell you, is an advertisement for Cultural Appropriation.

The performer here is the accomplished and beautiful 29-year-old Péng Jìngxuān, who is a student of Musical Theory at Bordeaux International Music Conservatory in France. Ms Péng has been doing impromptu public performances in the streets and parks of France for six years now. She’s posted videos of those performances to the internet and become quite a star online.

There will be more from Radio Derb next week.