Large and small, the media almost all bow before an agenda set by the Left:  A report from the front

By Nicholas Stix

I'd come to New York City from West Germany in 1985, planning to become a millionaire philosopher. That hadn't quite panned out.

In 1990, while employed as a full-time social worker, I also produced the first of three issues of A Different Drummer, a political literary magazine I conceived of during grad school, and used its title as a stepping stone into New York City journalism.
New York Newsday was by far the most radical leftwing paper in town, but it was also the only one that actively solicited and published submissions from local nobodies for its "Urban I" op-ed feature. To borrow from Chicago pol Abner Mikva, I was the ultimate "nobody nobody sent."

When in March 1990, NYN published my essay about working as a foster-care caseworker with racist, violent, black parents, my boss (of a new job - not as a foster caretaker) immediately canned me and, I found out later, resolved to blacklist me.
I kept sending in submissions, all "on spec," i.e., with no obligation on the paper's part, and in early 1991, NYN published another, a quintessentially Jewish New York piece about an encounter with an obnoxious, black panhandler, "Beggars Can be Schmoozers."

In the piece, I echo my old grad school logic professor, Michael Levin, who argued that since 25% of black men ages 20-29 were convicted felons then under the supervision of the criminal justice system (in jail, prison, or on probation or parole), one was justified in crossing the street to avoid them.

In response, NYN published a sophomoric essay by a black, CUNY Baruch College sophomore who suffered from toxically high self-esteem. He smugly lectured Levin that the black man he avoided on the street was a potential friend.

NYN stifled my reply and all my best pitches were suddenly DOA. Op-ed editor Ken Emerson would respond, "No light's going off, Nick."

I managed to get in one more piece with NYN, but only by pulling a string. My big sister was friends with another NYN op-ed editor, Annette Fuentes, and through her, it published my essay on the "death sentence" the media had levied on my Brooklyn community, Bensonhurst, ostensibly due to the 1989 murder of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins, but actually because of the MSM's murderous hatred of working-class whites.

NYN promoted the essay on its table of contents inside the cover, but welshed on paying me my $150 fee.

They had pirated New York's most popular columnist, Jimmy Breslin, away from the Daily News in 1988, by giving him $400,000 per year ($835,690 today), and were in the process of losing $100 million from 1985-1995 ($189 million in 2015 dollars). But they were making a point of cheating a freelancer out of $150.

Never underestimate the role of pettiness in human affairs.

After months of chasing after my fee, I got my $150 only by suing the paper in Small Claims Court.

NYN's attractive, tall, blond, gentile lawyer denied that I'd been blacklisted, and invited me to submit again.

Which I did. But not as Nicholas Stix.

I got an old friend from grad school to let me use him as a front-you know, the way those poor, genocidal, Communist millionaires like Dalton Trumbo had done during the 1950s?

I used my buddy's address and telephone number. And who was I? Nicholas Stix had a working-class, staccato, Jewish New York, intellectual voice that was so distinctive that a lawyer I'd never met recognized me over the phone from having heard me on a radio call-in show. By contrast, "Mark Rust" was an upper-middle-class homosexual with a diffident (no lisp), slow, low voice. (I was an old amateur stage actor.)

My ("Rust's") essay, "We Don't Need Another Hero," about a racial turf battle between black Rev. Calvin O. Butts in Harlem and rappers, was typical of my work in those days.

Ken Emerson told "Rust" over the telephone, "Wonderful, wonderful essay!"

And so, I became a man of multiple identities.
In the late 1990s, while an adjunct lecturer at my alma mater, the City University of New York system, I wrote a series of whistle-blowing essays on CUNY for the New York Post and Daily News as "Robert Berman," a name I'd come up with when I'd gotten caught shoplifting in Waldbaum's when I was 13, so the manager wouldn't reach my mom. I came to work to find a stack of photocopied essays attacking me.

At The Weekly Standard, William Kristol published an essay of mine on the destruction of standards at CUNY's City College, and commissioned an exposé on remedial college ed. The manuscript didn't even mention IQ, but the cowardly Kristol got cold feet, and backed out of publishing it. After I reminded his deputy that the work was not on spec, she remembered to cut me a "kill fee" check.

Anne Neal at ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, asked "Berman," to write a report on reforming CUNY. She got a 10,000-word report that she neither published, nor so much as acknowledged.

Several years ago, I sent a pseudonymous letter to my local community paper about violent black kids attending my son's predominantly white elementary school. The editor immediately wrote back, asserting that the letter was "too racist" and had to be re-written (i.e., ruined), saying "I think I know who you are"-I'm sure he did!-and demanding that I appear in his office with photo ID, before he'd even consider running my letter.

Journalism is so bad in America because it's dominated by the anti-white Left, while the alleged Right is made up of hollow men. On top of that, as a West German said to me of mainstream journalism over 30 years ago, "Das ist ja alles Beziehungen." ("It's all connections.")

NYN went out of business 20 years ago, the Daily News veered radically to the left in the 2000s, and the once fearless Post has been trimming its sails in recent years. The "Overton Window" is so narrow that, front or no front, I can't write in New York City anymore.

Thankfully for me and my babies, who like to eat, there's VDARE.com, which I discovered for myself in 2000, and have read ever since.

VDARE.com Editor-Publisher Peter Brimelow has been publishing my work for over 11 years. I don't have to call up Peter using a fake voice or fake name, or triangulate so much in my writing that my point is completely lost.

The only problem is that he wants me to write ever-shorter manuscripts. (You'll talk to him, right? Something like, "You have to publish longer articles by Nicholas Stix!")
Please https://www.vdare.com/contribute">support VDARE.com
as generously as possible. I thank you-and your posterity will, too.
Via email

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The Lonely Yardstick

"There are three yardsticks by which the nations of the world are measured," someone once said, "One for Dictatorships, one for Democracies and one for Israel."

The last one is not only the loneliest yardstick, it also seems to be the busiest.

Why is Israel judged in a category all of its own by so many both from within and from without the country? Moreover, why is it judged so harshly, and on issues to which most Dictatorships and some Democracies do not devotedly adhere themselves, as Israel is expected to do?

I doubt there is anyone who would claim that Israel is a dictatorship and would be able to bring forth proof of that. There is plenty of evidence that it is not.

On the other hand, I doubt that there is anyone who would be able to provide evidence that Israel was not founded on the principles and pillars of Democracy, and operates according to them on a daily basis. Perhaps it is not the ideal of democracies but it unquestionably aspires to reach it. It certainly is expected to be the ideal based on the harsh manner in which the world responds to its efforts to survive as a sovereign nation.

What is it that makes Israel so different in the eyes of the world? Why is it that the world feels a greater and more pressing need to put Israel under the most gigantically magnifying microscope, and monitor each and every one of its moves?

The answer, in my opinion, rests on its very rare and unique Jewish Democratic essence.

Israel is a strange breed in the eyes of the world. It is a kind of an experiment on the timeline of history, a close to seventy - years - old experiment.

Arabism and the Western World which seems to be intoxicated by its venom, seem to be sitting there watching and following very closely the experiment called "Israel, the Jewish State." Not only does it seem to examine each and every one of its actions, responses and maneuvers, but Dr. Kadar and I honestly believe that it is probably hoping and praying that this experiment fails. Moreover, they seem to do all they can to ensure that it will never succeed.  Why?

We both believe that the world is jealous. It is envious of the Jews and the Jewish State on a few planes.  It is perplexed by the sight of the rebirth of a sovereign state that was able, in a relatively short period, and after an ensanguined history of its people, to overcome and cope with, thrive and flourish in a reality very few other nations were ever faced with, let alone overcame. It is baffled, lost and mystified by the face of a nation that has defied all odds and all efforts by the many people who toiled hard to erase its traces, remove it from the family of nations and turn it into a mere page, or at the most, a chapter in the history of mankind. Israel is the mirror that reflects the failure of the world, a constant reminder of its own inadequacies.  And who wants to be reminded of their shortcomings?

As matters look from where we stand, it seems that the lonely yardstick will remain the loneliest and the busiest for a long time. We, the Jews, do not intend to give up, so the world it seems will have to contend with the experiment called "Israel" for many years to come.

SOURCE

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Privatize the Marriage Market

By Abigail Hall

December is one of the most popular months to get engaged. It seems that every time I get on social media, one of my girlfriends is posting a photo of her left hand and new engagement ring. After getting engaged, and even before, many couples have already combined their lives. They share bills, checking accounts, other financial and life decisions, and live together.

Depending on where they live, that could make them criminals.

Yes, you read that correctly. In some states, like Florida, such couples could be fined $500 or spend 60 days in jail. Why? They are living together before they’re married. Under current Florida statutes, more than half a million people in the state could be convicted for the crime of “living in sin.”

To be clear, I’ve never heard of this law actually being enforced and I doubt confessing one’s living situation will cause any trouble. Given the fact that some two-thirds of American couples walking down the isle live together before marriage, many are calling for the law to be removed from the books. Other states have recently repealed their mandates against premarital cohabitation and a bill in Florida has passed in the Senate.

State lawmakers have pointed out that Florida is one of only three states (with Mississippi and Michigan) that still outlaws living together before marriage. They say such a law will have a negative impact on the state’s image. Moreover, the law does not apply to same-sex couples, making it discriminatory against heterosexual couples. While the law against premarital cohabitation in Florida may seem trivial, it is indicative of a larger problem. That is, why is the government involved in marriage at all?

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. Many throughout the country celebrated marriage equality among heterosexual and homosexual couples. Others decried the ruling as an unwarranted, counterproductive, immoral, and foolish nationalization of marriage (see here, here, and here) and erosion of American social fabric. Once again I ask, why is the government involved in marriage in the first place? Last time I checked, my husband and I married each other. Same-sex couples are getting married to their partners. At what point did we and other Americans consent to enter into three-way marriages between our partners, the state, and ourselves?

There is no need for the government in marriage. A variety of people have made this argument, suggesting that state-sanctioned marriage does nothing but create problems. Having the state sanction marriages does nothing more than invite government expansion and intrusion into our private lives. Colin Jones pointed out in The Independent Review almost ten years, it’s the fact that marriages have to be state-sanctioned that gave rise to the same-sex marriage controversy.

There is no reason why marriage shouldn’t be completely privatized. If we can contract for things like cars, life insurance, wills, power of attorney, and a house, why can’t couples come up with their own marriage contract? Are individuals not in the best position to understand their personal needs? Why is the state setting the terms of marriages and not the couples involved?

Many argue against such ideas from religious standpoints. This argument is invalid. If marriage is privatized, this doesn’t mean that churches have to recognize marriages with which they don’t agree. In fact, it implies the opposite. If a church doesn’t want to recognize a privately contracted same-sex marriage, polygamous marriage, a marriage between formerly divorced persons, etc., they would not be legally compelled. They can recognize marriages that align with their institution’s rules.

Others argue that privatizing marriage would be problematic because of state benefits. Under the current regime, marriage has implications for taxes, and legal and medical decisions, among other things. The problem with this, however, isn’t the idea of privatized marriage, but government benefits. It’s confusing two disparate problems.

The couples getting engaged this month will spend the coming months making big decisions about their weddings. On the “to-do” will be getting a marriage license. They’ll spend time and money to have Uncle Sam say they’re a legitimate couple.

Maybe by the time their children decide to get married they won’t have to get the state to sanction their relationship, or maybe they’ll decide to buck the system all together. After all, I guess their parents have set some kind of an example–you know, as cohabitating outlaws.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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