[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

See also: Manafort, Marlborough, And Robert E. Lee: Criminalizing Policy/ Personnel, Differences— U.S. Politics Regressing To The Primitive

Settling in the U.S.A. in my forties, I brought with me from the Mother Country some preconceptions.

Foremost was the U.S.A. I’d seen from a distance while growing up: a great can-do nation, victorious in two huge wars, a popular culture bubbling with vitality, technological leadership culminating in … a Moon landing!

Reading and listening, I got some historical background: a group of colonies maturing into a nation under the guidance of well-read, broad-minded Enlightenment scholars; the civilizing of great Western spaces inhabited by stone-age nomads; the Civil War (presented as high idealism in action); the steady businesslike advance to modernity.

The American story, extracted in outline from history like that, is a wonderful one: uplifting, encouraging.

But then today I open my newspaper and read about current events which have not a trace of uplift or encouragement about them: illegal aliens swarming in across the southern border, property rights surrendered to squatters, lawlessness unpunished [ It took 6 cops and 15 minutes to arrest a single fare-dodger: NYPD reveals difficulty of MTA’s turnstile-jumping crisis, NY Post, March 22, 2024], merit abandoned in favor of ideological posturing[ High-schoolers worried about antisemitism, SATs are spending thousands to apply to as many colleges as possible, by Rikki Schlott, NY Post, March 23, 2024]

And then, the lawfare against Donald Trump, which may come to some kind of a head next week.

Monday, March 25th, is the deadline for The Trump Organization to post a bond.

Why do they need to post a bond? Because on February 16th New York State was awarded a half-billion-dollar judgment against the Organization on grounds of civil fraud. March 25th was the deadline for them to pay up.

The Trump Organization has appealed the judgment. They can of course do so, and we’ll see how the appeal goes when it finally gets to some judge’s desk.

The best reason for hoping that it goes in Trump’s favor is the protection offered by the 8th Amendment against excessive bail and excessive fines.

Does that protection apply to state judgments as well as federal ones? Yes it does: That was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court on a 9-0 vote in a landmark case (Timbs v. Indiana) five years ago in a decision authored by The Notorious RBG.[Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Trump’s $355 million fine, by Susan Shelley, Los Angeles Daily News, February 24, 2024]. Numerous pundits—including, recently, Vivek Ramaswamy—have predicted that Trump’s fines will be annulled on 8th Amendment grounds[Ramaswamy predicts NY ruling against Trump could energize this key voter group ‘in droves’: ‘Seismic impact’, .Fox News, March 22, 2024].

Ramaswamy predicts NY ruling against Trump could energize this key voter group 'in droves': 'Seismic impact' https://t.co/2dsghF4gsp

— Fox News (@FoxNews) March 22, 2024

As excessive as the February judgment surely is, however, until higher courts can ponder and annul it, the Trump Organization still has to post a bond in lieu of payment.

Finding a bondsman able and willing to write a check for half a billion dollars is not easy, though. In fact it has proven impossible. So come Monday the Trump Organization will be in default on the February judgment.

That will give the plaintiff in February’s lawsuit the right to seize the organization’s assets. The plaintiff is New York State, so it all sounds coolly impersonal: a state as plaintiff, a business organization as defendant.

In fact that’s just legal cosmetics. Driving the prosecution is New York State Attorney General Letitia James. The Trump Organization is Donald Trump and his family members.

Letitia James ran for the office of Attorney General in 2018, during the Trump presidency. A key theme of her campaign was hatred of Trump, whose presidency she declared “illegitimate.” She made an oft-repeated vow that if elected she would strive to destroy Trump. This lawsuit was in fulfilment of that vow.

This is law personalized.

Tish James just sued Trump — but they’ve been at it for years https://t.co/QxJ0lksgbX via @politico

She swore she would get Trump years ago. This is personal and political and has very little to do with the law.

— Gene Pavlova (@GenePavlova) September 27, 2023

In pre-modern Britain there was a legislative process called a “bill of attainder.” This was a bill, passed through the national legislature, declaring some specific person to be guilty of a crime, usually treason or some other capital crime. There was no trial, no judicial process, just a law declaring that person to be guilty.

This hounding of Trump is not a bill of attainder in that strict sense. It can’t be, as our Constitution forbids such legislation. It’s mighty close, though.

Letitia James is not the only radical Progressive in the government of my state. The state legislature is thick with them. Probably there is a hard core of state legislators meeting in back rooms up there in Albany to see if they can’t find some way round the Constitutional ban.

And even without a full Constitution-dodging bill of attainder, major damage is being done here, and not just to Trump and his businesses.

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

Colorful rhetoric was in the news this week, the color being red.

Campaigning in Ohio for a Republican Senate candidate in last Tuesday’s primary, Donald J. Trump had words to say about automobiles being imported from China. The actual words:

We’re going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country, that’ll be the least of it. But they’re not going to sell those cars, they’re building massive factories.

Bloodbath, by Liz Wolfe, reason.com, March 15, 2024

The Regime Media promptly interpreted that, in their suspiciously unanimous way, as Trump threatening a violent, bloody uprising if he is not elected President in November.

Their shrieks of pretended outrage soon drowned out the few calm voices pointing out that most dictionaries allow the word “bloodbath” as a metaphor for, to quote the dictionary.com website: “A period of disastrous loss or reversal.”

This little episode—I suppose someone somewhere has already called it “Bloodbath-gate,” may that person rot in Hell—goes into the file of Trump verbal stumbles along with the 2015 warning about illegal border-crossers from Mexico,

They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

�They’re rapists.’ President Trump’s campaign launch speech two years later, annotated, Washington Post, June 16, 2017

And then, two years later, at a presser following the Charlottesville demonstration against taking down a Robert E. Lee statue, when a reporter said the demonstrators were neo-Nazis:

You had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.

In Context: Donald Trump’s �very fine people on both sides’ remarks (transcript), Politifact, April 20,2019

So: Rapists-gate, Fine-People-gate, and now Bloodbath-gate.

You may call Donald Trump a sloppy speaker. When you do as much public speaking as he does, though, and when an almost uniformly hostile media is keenly looking out for every possible opportunity to mis-represent his words, these -gates are what you’re bound to get.

I do approximately zero-point-zero-zero-one times as much public speaking as the Donald, but I can easily recall things I’ve said that would be just as easy to mis-represent as Bloodbath-gate etc. etc.

The other specimen of colorful—in fact blood-colored—rhetoric that caught my eye this week came from old Clinton warrior James Carville in an interview this Wednesday night at CNN.

At one point in the interview Carville told Anderson Cooper that

To be candid, Anderson, President Biden is not the best attack politician I’ve ever seen in my life. And hopefully leave it at that. But there are a lot of people to do what I call “the Wet Work.”

Anderson Cooper remarked, smiling: “It sounds like a mob hit.”

Carville replied:

Kind of, but it’s paid TV and stuff like that. But yes, it’s a CIA term to take a guy out.

Carville: Biden Should Let Surrogates Do the �Wetwork’ Against Trump, by Pam Key, Breitbart.com, March 20, 2024

That had the reverse effect to Bloodbath-gate. The Regime Media was silent, but It brought out Trump supporters alleging that Carville was proposing the assassination of Trump [Clinton Operative James Carville Suggests Biden Campaign Assassinate Trump to Win Election, by Nick R. Hamilton, Slaynews.com, March 22, 2024].

Clinton Operative James Carville Suggests Biden Campaign Assassinate Trump to Win Electionhttps://t.co/rzKBxOo0hH

— Slay News (@Slay_News_) March 22, 2024

I doubt that’s what Carville meant. Like Trump in Ohio, he was just being careless with his metaphors.

There has, though, for some time been an undercurrent of speculation that the Regime might indeed try to take Trump out Sicilian-style. That undercurrent came to the surface last summer in Trump’s interview with Tucker Carlson.

Ep. 19 Debate Night with Donald J Trump pic.twitter.com/ayPfII48CO

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 24, 2023

Here was Tucker at 7m11s into the interview:

I’m looking at the trajectory since 2015, when you got into politics for real, and then won. It started with protests against you, massive protests, organized protests by the Left, and then it moved to impeachment twice …

And now indictment. I mean, the next stage is violence. Are you worried that they’re going to try and kill you? Why wouldn’t they try and kill you? Honestly?

Tucker on X Debate Night Interview with Donald Trump Transcript, Rev.com, August 24, 2023

Trump gave a long-winded indirect answer. If he has thought about the possibility of being assassinated, he doesn’t want to share his thoughts in public.

It isn’t just Tucker Carlson who’d like to know. A possible Trump assassination comes up in private conversation a lot.

A few weeks ago, chatting with a friend who follows developments in military technology much more closely than I do, he expressed surprise—genuine, so far as I could tell—that no political assassination has yet been carried out by drone.

Those gadgets can apparently do facial recognition, greatly reducing the probability of error. Said my friend, shaking his head: “It’s only a matter of time.”

My advice to Donald Trump:

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

Earlier: St. Patrick’s Day Is NOT Immigration Day—Irish-Americans Are White, And Being Replaced Like The Rest Of Us

Tomorrow, Sunday March 17th, we mark St. Patrick’s Day. I’m sure you all know the story of St. Patrick, but I’ll offer a very brief reminder.

Patrick was a BRITISH! lad who, when just a teenager, was kidnapped by raiders from IRELAND!! and carried off to be a SLAVE!!! in their country.

ARRGH!!

This was actually a common occurrence sixteen hundred years ago. Some of us Brits have been petitioning the U.K. government to bring a case for reparations against the Irish in the International Court of Justice, but so far without result.

Eventually, young Patrick escaped back to Britain, where he then studied to become a priest. After ordination he returned to Ireland to convert his former slavemasters. Snakes feature in the story somehow, but I forget the details.

Patrick duly became the principal Patron Saint of Ireland. And there is news from Ireland on the cultural front that’s worth noting.

The people of Ireland—the Republic of Ireland—had a referendum on March 8th.

The referendum concerned their country’s Constitution, which has been the basis of Ireland’s law and identity since its adoption in 1937.

In particular, the referendum was about whether or not to amend two particular parts of the Constitution. To amend them or not to amend them? Yay or nay?

Both concerned Article 41, which concerns the family. Currently, it opens with a firm declaration of the importance of that institution.

The state recognizes the family as the natural primary and fundamental unit group of society, and as a moral institution possessing inalienable and imprescriptible rights, antecedent and superior to all positive law.

The state pledges itself to guard with special care the institution of marriage, on which the family is founded, and to protect it against attack.

Constitution of Ireland Online PDF

That’s Section 41.1. Immediately following is Section 41.2:

In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved.

The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.

I’m sure you see the problems there. “The institution of marriage, on which the family is founded”? “By her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved”?

You can hear the Progressives howling. WHAT IS THIS, THE MIDDLE AGES? AFGHANISTAN?

So the proposals before the voters were to amend the Constitution by changing the wording there.

The proposal for that first section there was to change it with an addition and a subtraction. The addition would have enlarged the section by adding a qualifying clause after the word “family.” Here’s the proposed clause: “Whether founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.”.

That addition of words in the first section was to be swiftly balanced by a subtraction. In the existing Constitution the word “marriage” is followed by the clause “on which the family is founded.” The proposal would have struck out that clause.

For the second section, about a woman’s life within the home as a key support of the State, the proposal was for total replacement. The section would be replaced by new wording that identifies as the key support “the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them.”

The word “woman” would then not be present at all.

So Yay votes on these two questions would amend Ireland’s Constitution to bring it more into line with the sensibilities of our Ruling Classes in the modern Western world.

A key axiom of those sensibilities is of course that there is no such thing as sex. So what need to mention women or traditional marriage in one’s national Constitution?

So on March 8—which happened to be International Women’s Day—Ireland’s voters went to the polls to vote on these Constitutional amendments.

The result, not to keep you in suspense: Overwhelming majorities voted Nay on both proposals.

• On the first, the one with an addition and a subtraction both designed to suck all meaning from the word “marriage,” the Nays were 68 percent.
• On the second, the one annihilating talk of “a woman’s life within the home,” the Nays were 74 percent.

Ireland Rejects Constitution Changes, Keeping �Women in the Home’ Language, by Megan Specia, NY Times, March 9, 2024

The single district that voted Yay: Dún Laoghaire, an upscale suburb of Ireland’s capital Dublin, no doubt contaminated, I’m ashamed to say, by its historic role as the terminus of the ferry from England.

The large context here is the West’s Cultural Revolution, in which Ireland has played the part of a key indicator.

I’ve been writing about this for more than twenty years. Here I was for example in March 2002 at National Review Online, a column I titled “All Eyes to Ireland.”

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

See earlier: Majority Deport: Canada’s Pre-Crime Hate Speech Law and Sam Melia: UK Man Convicted Of Hate Speech For Saying ”It’s OK To Be White” And “Reject White Guilt,” Etc.

Two items here on the rapid decline of free speech in parts of the Anglosphere that do not enjoy our First Amendment.

• Canada

To your mental list of Indians and Pakistanis who have risen to positions of high power in Anglosphere nations—Rishi Sunak the U.K. Prime Minister, Sadiq Khan the Mayor of London, Humza Yousaf the First Minister of Scotland, Leo Varadkar the Prime Minister of Ireland, and I’m sure others I have forgotten—to that mental list you can add, if he’s not already on it, Arif Virani, below, a Gujarati Muslim born in Uganda who serves as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice for Canada, our friendly neighbor to the North.

Mr. Virani is currently championing the Online Harms Bill, a law to greatly increase penalties for so-called “Hate Speech” online.

At that point when I’m reading a news story—I mean, the point where the phrase “Hate Speech” shows up—I wander off down through the news story looking for their definition of “Hate Speech.”

Aha! Got it. CTV News, March 6th,

In both its human-rights legislation and the Criminal Code, the government is now seeking to define Hate Speech as “content that expresses detestation or vilification.”

Government says only extreme online hate speech would be probed by human rights body The Canadian Press, March 6, 2024

That article is accompanied by a picture of Virani doing a press conference, backed by, presumably, his visibly multiracial staff.

Government says only extreme online hate speech would be probed by human rights body https://t.co/21sKliuUA5

— CTV News (@CTVNews) March 6, 2024

That’s actually a toned-down definition. An earlier version of the Bill defined “Hate Speech” as “likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt on the basis of their race, gender, religion or other prohibited ground of discrimination.”

Seems to me that on that earlier definition you could find yourself behind bars for an off-color online joke about Jews or blacks. That would rule out about half the stuff online that I find funny; also much of the stuff that Jews and blacks find funny.

Examples:

Even with that toning-down, though, the Bill will still get you life imprisonment for “advocating genocide,” and five years porridge for “hate propaganda.” I couldn’t find a definition for either of those terms, but I’m betting there’s room in them for plenty of judicial mischief to further erode freedom of speech.

• Britain

In my mother country, there is an organization called Patriotic Alternative, standing up for the legacy population of the country and against mass Third World immigration. I have only just heard about them so I can’t tell you much other than they have a nifty website.

Up front on that website, if you scroll down a page or two, is a big clear display of numbers.

When I looked just now it was headed with a big number: 27. Underneath that, left to right, were the numbers: 19, 13, 308, 41.

You have to read the numbers in reverse order. Patriotic Alternative did some demographic research and came up with the precise instant when white British people will fall below fifty percent of the country’s population.

It will be at some point in the year 2066. The precise point is given by those numbers, read in reverse order: 41 years, 308 days, 13 hours, 19 minutes and 27 seconds from when I glanced at the screen. Cute.

Thirty-four-year-old Samuel Melia is a regional organizer for Patriotic Alternative. As a side activity he set up a group called the Hundred Handers on the social media platform Telegram, winning himself more than 3,500 subscribers. These subscribers could download and print white nationalist stickers.

What did these stickers say? “Reject white guilt,” “Nationalism is nurture,” “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” and “Diversity—designed to fail, built to replace,” and that perpetual favorite (and hate object) “It’s OK to be white”. [UK man with Hitler picture in home used sticker campaign to stir racial hatred, court told, by Robyn Vinter, Guardian, January 16, 2024]

Hateful stuff, eh?

On March 1st Mr. Melia was sentenced to two years in prison for the offense of “Publishing or distributing material intending to stir up racial hatred,” and another two years, to run concurrently, for “Encouraging or assisting the commission of the offence of racially aggravated criminal damage.”

I don’t know what the criminal damage was in that second charge. Since it got Mr. Melia the same two-year sentence as the first offense, “Publishing or distributing material intending to stir up racial hatred,” I guess it didn’t involve anything very destructive.

In an Orwellian twist, the prosecution acknowledged that the stickers themselves said nothing illegal or untrue. It was Mr. Melia’s intention in printing them that was at issue. He has literally been convicted of a Thought Crime.

That’s the state of free speech in Britain today.

Both these free-speech items record the poison fruit of multiculturalism, without which legislation like Canada’s Online Harms Bill and whichever law Mr. Melia broke by printing a sticker saying “Reject white guilt” would have no reason for existing.

[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]

Mr. Bumble, the beadle in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, was present when his wife sold stolen goods. He therefore shared responsibility for that offense, he was told, because “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.“

Mr. Bumble, a man of spirit, replied that “If the law supposes that, the law is an ass—a idiot.“

Reading the day’s news, I am more and more inclined to agree with Mr. Bumble. The law, which is the foundation of all our rights and liberties, looks more and more like a gibbering fool: an ass—a idiot.

That is the case with both criminal law and civil law. They are two fools; or, as Mr. Bumble would say, two asses.

I came to the recording studio this morning after reading the New York Post with my breakfast.

A young white male student, 29-year-old Iain Forrest, was playing his cello for the entertainment of passers-by in a central Manhattan subway station February 13th. A black female stranger, 23-year-old Amira Hunter, picked up Forrest’s metal water bottle and whacked him over the head with it.

The New York Post report gives no career or occupation for Ms. Hunter, but she has a rap sheet going back to mid-2019, when she would have been 18 or 19 years old: assault, assault, criminal contempt, criminal contempt, petit larceny, petit larceny, grand larceny (items worth $2,050 from Bergdorf Goodman). Occupation-wise, I guess “petty criminal“ fills the bill.

For the assault on Iain Forrest she was arraigned in a Manhattan court Thursday this week, charged with second-degree assault [Thief busted in brutal subway cello attack released without bail—despite even DA Bragg’s office wanting her behind bars, by Joe Marino, Amanda Woods, Alyssa Guzman, NY Post, February 29, 2024].

Woman, 23, arrested for attacking NYC cello player in subway station after weeks on the lam https://t.co/HtXvCrP4W8 pic.twitter.com/I1dkI2BDb6

— New York Post (@nypost) February 29, 2024

Her criminality was so obviously chronic, and her inclination to show up for court dates so faint—she missed three of her five dates last year—that the Manhattan prosecutors asked the court to hold her on bail, $15,000 cash or a $45,000 bond.

(If you don’t follow the Manhattan courts you may not know that the sentence “Manhattan prosecutors asked for bail“ sounds as astonishing to us locals as “Joe Biden held a one-hour press conference, patiently fielding reporters’ questions,“ or “Xi Jinping said that Taiwan has every right to be an independent nation if that’s what its citizens want.“ Any kind of restraint on criminals, even the minimal restraint of a bail order, is frowned on by Manhattan’s first black District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, right.)

The judge ignored the prosecutors’ request. Ms. Hunter was set free on supervised release, which I suppose means she has to check in with some kind of counselor once in a while, unless she can’t be bothered.

Plainly we are in Mr. Bumble’s territory here. What explains it?

Race and sex, that’s what. Black female petty criminal clocks white male cellist. She’s arrested and brought before a judge, name of Marva Brown, who is… a black female, pictured below.

Who in any position of judicial or administrative authority nowadays is not a black female?

Reading about universities taking the side of Hamas after October 7th, I was a bit surprised to see that the President of Harvard is a black woman. There's a HUGE demand for black women who can fill such posts—will it exceed the supply? @DissidentRight https://t.co/IYi4G4AaT4

— VDARE (@vdare) November 12, 2023

Am I jumping to unwarranted conclusions based on irrational race and/or sex prejudice?

Am I hell.

Just tell me with a straight face, if you can, that had the person in the dock been a white male petty criminal charged with assault on a black female cellist, or even a white female ditto on a black male ditto, Judge Brown would have shown that same leniency. Tell me if you can.

Unless you are a continental-scale liar or deeply delusional, the words would stick in your throat unspoken.

So the criminal-justice system is FUBAR. How about civil justice?

Forward a few pages in my New York Post. Here are two retired New Yorkers, name of Landa, both 68 years old. They have an adult son afflicted with Down Syndrome.

Retiring last year, the Landas purchased, for two million dollars, a house in the pleasant New York City suburb of Douglaston, on Long Island’s north shore, twenty miles and a million-and-a-half dollars west of your genial host’s rustic abode. They signed the contract last October.

The Landas haven’t been able to move into their new home, though. There’s a squatter in there, a young fellow named Brett Flores, 32 years old. Mr. Flores was a resident caregiver to the previous owner, who died early last year. He just went on living in the house while whoever had inherited it conducted the sale to the Landas.

He’s still living there, refusing to move. He’s even tried to rent out rooms in the house to other tenants. He himself of course pays no rent. Nor does he pay property tax or utility fees—the Landas have been paying those since October. When the Landas tried to enter this house they own, Flores called the cops on them:

They’ve been to civil court five times to try to get him out; at a hearing in early January, he showed up without an attorney—which under the law halted proceedings, rather than forcing him to represent himself or forfeit.

More recently, he filed for bankruptcy, which under city law again blocks the owners from even continuing the case to get him out.

Queens couple’s squatter nightmare shows the madness of New York’s �tenant protections,’ NY Post, February 29, 2024

These laws protecting squatters’ rights are a serious nuisance. I opened my January Diary with a segment about them, from which, quoting myself:

In New York State a squatter who’s been living on your property for thirty days or more has tenant rights, and those rights are generous. In the minds of our progressive lawmakers and the fools who vote for them, tenants belong to the class of oppressed people while landlords are of course oppressors. Get it? Seen through the CultMarx who-whom prism it all makes perfect sense.