Most readers will be aware of the Southern Poverty Law Centre: a well-funded left-wing American group which targets those who don’t accept the “diversity” agenda.

Well, the SPLC have scored another victory, one which is politically revealing.

Kevin Lamb was managing editor of a weekly magazine called Human Events. It’s a magazine which professes to have conservative social values, in particular on family issues. Yet after just one phone call from the SPLC Kevin Lamb was summoned to his employer’s office and given his marching orders.

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To those who have sent MR this latest piece from William S. Lind at Antiwar.com, thank you.  It is not overly long and my comment at this stage is superfluous.  So I reproduce it here as it stands ...

The recent votes in France and the Netherlands against the proposed constitution of the European Union are not merely political phenomena. They represent significant actions in the development of Fourth Generation war. Why? Because the root cause of Fourth Generation war is a crisis of legitimacy of the state, and the two referenda saw the French and Dutch people rebel against their elites’ efforts to empty the state of its content.

Understanding what happened in these two votes requires a counterintuitive mindset. Normally, we would think of elites as representing the state and the common people rebelling against the state. That is not what happened here. On the contrary, the elites represent the destruction of the state and the French and Dutch people rebelled in defense of their historic, national states. In effect, the aristocracy was crying “Down with the king!” while the peasants shouted “Vive le roi!” (which happened quite frequently during both the French and Russian Revolutions).

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For around six hours today MR was offline again.  Last time a “server issue” was reported to be the cause.  It is, of course, true that you can’t get good servers today.  But if I am given a proper explanation for this latest annoyance I will post it on the thread below.

So science has pronounced.  The final, seemingly unanswerable question has apparently been answered.  Woman and her mystique lies bared beneath the detached, indeed pitilessly disinterested gaze of, to all intents and purposes, androgenous scientific enquiry.

The varying ease with which women reach sexual climax is more heavily influenced by genetic factors than any other, British scientists have found. Inheritance outstrips the contributions made by upbringing, culture or male bedroom skills.

The study of almost 1,400 pairs of female twins revealed that genes affect arousal at least as strongly as they do medical conditions in which their role has long been established, such as hypertension, migraine and depression.

It also suggests that the elusiveness of the female orgasm is evolved, probably because it confers a reproductive advantage that is triggered only with a particularly desirable partner ...

... “The theory goes that if a man is considered powerful enough, strong enough or thoughtful enough, in bed or in the cave, then he’s likely to hang around as a long-term partner and be a better bet for bringing up children,” Professor Tim Spector, of St Thomas’ Hospital in London, who led the research, said.

“Women who orgasm too easily might be less good at selecting partners.”

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There was a fleeting moment during my curious boyhood when it seemed possible that I might actually transmogrify into … an academic pupil.  I treasure the memory.  Purley Grammar School for Boys it was, on a September day in the late 1960’s.  An upstairs classroom overlooking the quad.  Chalk dust caught in the sunlight, rows of ink-stained desks, twenty uninterested, fish-eyed youths, Dougie Firmer and old Nicholson.

Dougie was the school genius.  It was already accepted that he was on his way in two years to Cambridge and then some top-Gag career in the higher etherium of the State.  Frankly, we were in awe not only of his intelligence but of his quite unreal urbanity.  Not only was he all brilliant polish for a seventeen year-old but he was brilliantly funny, too, and a natural mimic and extemporiser.  If by chance after the boiled ham and carrots he’d begin to extemporise in the lower sixth common room on the subject, say, of how old Jewitt got his limp or Rainforth his taste in shoes everyone quieted down instantly.  You knew to shut your silly prattle when Dougie gave forth, and belly-laugh with the best.

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Today, as the peoples of Europe blink with amazement at last week’s momentous referenda, the political elite of the continent are mulling over their options.  The bottom line takes just six words to summarise: don’t let the British change things.

In Berlin tonight Chirac and Shroeder – one who challenged his people to consent to the Constitution and lost, and the other who dare not challenge them at all – must contemplate the awful cost of political failure.

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Apologies to all our readers for the several hours today during which the blog was down.  No explanation has been forthcoming from our web hoster as yet, but it appears to have been a simple tech failure.  As if it could possibly be anything else!

In a seven-minute televised address yesterday President Chirac responded to the people’s resounding rejection of the EU Constitution.  There are three (not unpredictable) threads to his response.

1. The direction of Europe will not be fundamentally affected by the May 29 vote.  Chirac said quite specifically, “It was not a rejection of the European ideal. It was a demand to be heard, a demand for action, a demand for results.”  The people – as all elites averr when it suits them – were not answering the question put before them.  They were voting on the French economy.

2. As a rejection of French unemployment the vote was also a rejection of the Anglo-Saxon economic model (code for market discipline) with which the Constitution was, apparently, heavily imbued.  You might consider this perverse and an egregious conflation.  But Chirac is an opportunist, like all politicians, and the referendum vote provides an opportunity to rein in British influence in Europe.

3. The French governmental predeliction for paternalism and elitism sails on unaffected.  Chirac explained his Prime Ministerial appointment of Dominique de Villepin as a response to “worries” and “expectations” about, basically, unemployment.  Quite what “action” and “results” a career diplomat, gris eminence and would-be man of letters who has never once stood for election will be able to effect (and through “The French model”) remains to be seen.

Plus ça change …

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