Paleocon Diary is a hilarious parody blog in which are recorded the works and days of one "John M. Harris." He is a convert to Russian Orthodoxy and American Conservative subscriber who hates neoconservatives, Likudniks, money-changers, and the bourgeoisie, struggles with leading his family amidst the moral waste-heap of contemporary liberalism, and exhibits an unsettling preoccupation with the bodies of youths in adolescence.
The Journal of American Greatness is a blog that often descends into self-parody. Its contributors, an anonymous band of "Paleo-Straussians," dislike the "Davoisie," the Republican donor class, neoconservatives, and reform conservatives, and enjoy being provocative by trying to make a serious case for the candidacy of Donald Trump.
I’ve been reading a lot of the former this week, and some of the latter, and have come to realize that it can be easy to confuse the two sites. Thus, I present this quiz. Who said it? (Answers below.)
- Is not the similarity between slavery and mass immigration obvious? (Note to the hysterical that I said "similarity" and not "identicality.") They both serve the same fundamental purpose: sources of cheap labor to squeeze out the working class and enrich a few.
- Russia may not be exactly Western. But it’s not like much Tchaikovsky is being played in the concert halls of the new caliphate or Tolstoy read in the madrassas of Africa, whereas these and other Russian luminaries are still popular in the West among people with taste.
- More important than that is the total victory in our political discourse of the idea that loyalty to one’s own tribe is unacceptable—an expression of "racism," that constant bugaboo of the subject of the late American empire.
- Steve Sailer (we further assume you don’t like him, but credit where credit is due) recently wrote that the Wall Street Journal’s agenda of revitalizing individualistic conservatism made sense in the 1970s, when the country was stalled owing to the exhaustion of several decades of corporatism and collectivization.
- The key point is that this idea is instrumental to our cosmopolite American "elite." The Wall Street capitalist finds it crucial because it sanctions the borderless labor regime that floods the country with Third World labor, immiserating the once-proud American yeoman in the process.
- In this case, we can’t say that post-Communist Russia—with its oligarchs and Moscow bling culture—is more infected with leftist, leveling equality. As noted, Russia puts up more active resistance.
- Certainly, Caldwell was always one of the few men in the political media who evinced a deep culture—who showed signs of serious and catholic reading. Almost alone in the political media, he deserved that by now quaint honorific: "man of letters."
- One of the most famous speeches in the history of the English language is unfortunately lost. Yet many were present to hear it and later scribbled out notes to the best of their recollections. We refer, of course, to Cromwell’s dismissal of the "Rump" of the Long Parliament, April 20th, 1653.
- Russia has its problems, inflicted mostly by outsiders who seek to destroy her and enslave her people. But she is also a model for a truly conservative society…
- This nexus of corporate power, social liberalism, and an American version of soixante huitard totalitarianism must be contested. But how?
How did you do? If you aced this quiz, my advice is to get a better hobby!
Answers: 1-JAG; 2-JAG; 3-PD; 4-JAG; 5-PD; 6-JAG; 7-PD; 8-JAG; 9-PD; 10-PD