George Will's latest book is called The Conservative Sensibility. In the Washington Post, Notre Dame law professor Patrick Deneeen calls it a "defense of conservatism that veers toward liberalism."

He's not kidding, I looked inside it. There's a whole section that blames black problems on "redlining", which in this case refers to the FDR Administration's refusal to guarantee mortgages in black neighborhoods, that could come straight out of Ta-Nehisi Coates book.

And it's in a section defending and justifying the "Affirmative Action" created by Lyndon B Johnson.

Lyndon Johnson, the greatest presidential benefactor of African-Americans since Lincoln, advanced the nation’s thinking on June 4, 1965, at Howard University in Washington, D.C. There he delivered the most consequential speech on race ever given by an American president, and perhaps the most important ever given by a white American. Johnson’s crucial contention was that “freedom is not enough.” He declared:

“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you want, and do as your desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, and bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”

The subsequent pursuit of even incomplete fairness—there can be no other kind—has been generally noble and in many ways successful. It also has been an arduous tutorial in the truth of Michael Oakeshott’s axiom that attempting the impossible is inherently corrupting.

It would have been helpful—wholesomely disconcerting and embarrassing—if Johnson had given an example of how the federal government itself had closed to African-Americans “the gates of opportunity.” Created in 1934, the Federal Housing Administration invented and enforced “redlining,” explicitly steering new mortgages away from black buyers to maintain the racial homogeneity of neighborhoods. A 1946 FHA manual said: “Incompatible racial groups should not be permitted to live in the same communities.” And: “Properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes.” And: “Appraisers are instructed to predict the probability of the location being invaded by . . . incompatible racial and social groups.”

Invaded. During World War II, when a developer sought FHA guarantees for proposed housing on the last of the farmland still within the sprawling city of Detroit, the FHA initially refused because the development would be contiguous with a black neighborhood. The developer proposed a solution: I will build a wall. It would be between his development and the incompatibles. He did; you can see it today. Mollified, the FHA guaranteed mortgages on the white side.

Almost half of all postwar suburban homes built in the United States had FHA mortgage guarantees. From 1934 through 1962, whites received 98 percent of those guarantees.

Wills footnote for these claims about FHA discrimination is: "Duggan, “Mayor Mike Duggan Keynote Address,” 2017."

Duggan is the white mayor of what's left of Detroit. His speech, in which the historical facts about the FHA may have been properly checked by his staff, is about how what happened to Detroit is white people's fault. [Duggan confronts Detroit racial history in Mackinac speech, by Chad Livengood, Crain's Detroit Business, June 01, 2017]

I wouldn’t put all that in a book based on the word of one politician, but whatever.  

So let's talk about what the underwriting policy of the FHA was about. Underwriting is about being careful with money, in this case the public money of the United States.

For example, I Googled the phrase “properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes” and discovered the text of the 1936 Federal Housing Administration, underwriting manual. The context, unmentioned by either Duggan or Will, is this:

"If a neighborhood is to retain stability it is necessary that properties shall continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes. A change in social or racial occupancy generally leads to instability and a reduction in values." [Emphasis added]

So here’s what’s going on, apparently unclear to anti-redlining black pundit Teh-Genius Coates, and the New Model George Will: FDR’s Federal Housing Administration was not in the business of keeping the black man down, it was in the business of being fiscally responsible for government guaranteed loans. If they guaranteed a $10,000 mortgage on a house in a white neighborhood, and ten years later when you have to foreclose it’s a $4,000 house in a black neighborhood, the Federal Government was out the difference.

The issue of reparations for black slavery got an airing in Congress last week, curiously coinciding with renewed Main Stream Media drumbeating for the white-guilting Central Park Five Rape Hoax.  I discuss reparations below, but first a word about an obviously-related news item that doesn’t seem to be getting any drumbeating at all.

A 23-year-old  “Man,” Temar Bishop, who is black, was arraigned in court in New York las Saturday for charges including rape and attempted murder. He had raped a 20-year-old white woman and then beaten her unconscious.

The charge sheet also includes “Hate Crime,” based on words Mr. Bishop spoke to a witness after the event. Here are the words,

She was a white girl. She deserved it because us minorities have been through slavery … This is what they used to do to us. This is what they did to us during slavery. They used to beat us and whip us.

Man nabbed for Bronx rape allegedly said she ‘deserved it’ for ‘slavery’,by Larry Celona and Stephanie Pagones, June 18, 2019

This personal invitation arrived in my email inbox recently:

Naturally, I was delighted. I had been very impressed with the Israeli scholar Yoram Hazony’s book The Virtue Of Nationalism and had even had an affable exchange with him via Twitter Direct Message about his publisher’s curious failure to release the book in audio form:

So Lydia and I duly paid our $285 fee (each) to register. But we got this response:

It’s a form letter. Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, who tried in his frugal way to get press credentials, got exactly the same thing.

Jared very reasonably wrote back to ask if would he be denied press credentials if he were “a socialist or Open-Borders advocate” a.k.a. a typical member of the Main Stream Media.

Needless to say, Hazony and Brog did not have the courtesy to reply.

But the answer to Jared’s question, of course, is “NO!”—cuckservatives are always desperate for MSM attention. And Hazony (alas) and Brog turn out to be cuckservatives—although not, I think, for the reasons (stupidity, cowardice, careerism) that motivate the typical American cuck.

I’m pretty battle-scarred after nearly three decades in the Immigration Wars. But I must admit I felt a twinge of sadness about Hazony. Apart from his book, I think his tweets display a really interesting, and I had thought fair, mind.

Thus as Editor of a website that for nearly twenty years has focused on “The National Question”— defined as "the viability of the US as a nation-state”—I was naturally delighted by this:

I keep thinking of those self-identified conservatives who knew for decades that I was a Jewish-Israeli nationalist and thought that was fine and good. But when it turned out I thought Brits and Americans could be nationalists too, they suddenly went all wobbly on me.

— Yoram Hazony (@yhazony) January 28, 2019

President Trump's first speech of the 2020 campaign recalled his 2016 glory days, and that's good news for immigration patriots. He emphasized immigration as a danger to the U.S.. He slammed Democrats' extremism on the issue. He didn't make any missteps like trying to pitch the audience on Amnesty or increasing legal immigration. Unfortunately, his fire was still targeted against just illegal immigration, when it's legal immigration that poses the ultimate danger. And he exaggerated his accomplishments. But it showed immigration will be a core theme of his re-election effort. Like it or not, patriots definitely have a dog in this fight.

Trump’s main point: Democrat immigration extremism. In Trump’s telling, the Democrats want Open Borders and no immigration enforcement at all. The president directly referred to the Democrats’ demographic bet: The more immigrants America has, the more Leftist it becomes. Additionally, Trump accurately noted Democrats want to take away conservatives’ free speech and “use the power of the law to punish their opponents.”

“They would strip Americans of their constitutional rights while flooding the country with illegal immigrants in the hopes it will expand their political base, and they'll get votes someplace down the future,” he said in his strongest line of the night. “That's what it's about.”

California Sen. Kamala Harris unthinkingly confirmed Trump’s demographic argument the same day. “Let's call this what it is: an attempt to remake the demographics of our country by cracking down on immigrants,” Harris tweeted in response to Trump’s plan to deport more illegal aliens.

Illegal immigrants as future voters—Democrats are not supposed to say that part out loud.

"Apologize for what? Cory should apologize. He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body."

Thus did a stung Joe Biden answer rival Cory Booker's demand he apologize for telling contributors, in a southern drawl, "I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland, He never called me 'boy.' He always called me 'son."

Joe was recalling fondly a time in the 1970s when he came into the Senate at 30, having lost his wife and child in an accident, and "Jim" Eastland, the arch-segregationist from Mississippi, took him under his wing and became a patron, mentor and friend.

"You don't joke about calling black men 'boy'," Booker had said. "Biden's relationships with proud segregationists are not the model for how we make America a safer and more inclusive place for black people."