WRU Unplugger of the Year

The WRU Unplugger of the Year need not be a monarchist, nor regret the fall of the Old European Order. The WRU Unplugger of the Year is simply the one who is considered to have done most in bringing about the unplugging of the Wilson Revolution.

This year's awardee has done a most excellent job at opposing the global presence of the federal government of those United States that is at the core of the Wilsonian world order. The awardee is the author of No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the Surveillance State, which was published in 2014 and had its first full year of sales in 2015 – and had a new edition published in 2015. He also featured in the film Citizenfour.

The 2015 WRU Unplugger of the Year is:

Glenn Greenwald

previous

Quote of the Month

Writes Mr. Theodore Harvey:

Democracy, especially republican democracy, is the problem. It will never be the solution.

previous

Money at Year's End

Some view points at LewRockwell.com:

• Jim Rogers warns of the development ahead.
• Doug Casey makes the case for gold, saying:

  Keep these things in mind, though, as you listen to the current blather from talking heads about where gold is going. Most of them are just journalists, reporters that are parroting what they heard someone else say. And the “someone else” is usually a political apologist who works for a government. Or a hack economist who works for a bank, the IMF, or a similar institution with an interest in the status quo of the last few generations. You should treat almost everything you hear about finance or economics in the popular media as no more than entertainment.

• Claudio Grass gives an outlook for the year ahead, proclaiming:

  Looking to the future, it seems that the current situation will continue to get worse and that we are headed towards an Orwellian state, under which no one is entitled to his financial privacy anymore.

• Mark Nestmann reports on bank secrecy and Switzerland.

The Daily Telegraph reports on an interesting upcoming Swiss referendum on banking (H/T: LRC).

Peter Schiff:

Jim Rogers:

Jim Grant:

Marc Faber:

Political Correctness

Over at LewRockwell.com, Dr. Thomas Sowell and Mr. Jeff Deist debunk political correctness.

Hungarian Coronation

A year short of a century ago today, the latest coronation in Hungary took place.

In Virginia

A year short of eight score years ago today, the bête noire and the Persona Non Grata of this weblog was born.

Says “Foseti” in a comment:

What do we have to do to get a post on the removal of your bete noire from his alma mater?

The reactionary/progressive alliance must be able to agree on something[.]

Well, I don't know about that. Although I can see his point, it's a double-edged sword. The ongoing fuss about ousting names of leaders of old is in the end all about ousting views that today are unfashionable. If this ousting crusade is taken to its full extent, all but everyone revered at this weblog will be ousted. We won't be “allowed” to express those viewpoints either, such as that Rhodesia was better than Zimbabwe (cf. a recent comment). The bête noire will never be ousted for his crusade for democracy as long as the God Demos reigns supreme. That being said, I guess I won't mind a few scratches in the lacquer of this “secular saint.”

Also, over at LRC, John V. Denson quotes Stanley Weintraub in a counterfactual scenario:

Wilson, who would not be campaigning for reelection in 1916 on a platform that he kept America out of war, would have lost (he only won narrowly) to a powerful new Republican president, Charles Evans Hughes.

Furthermore, Denson says:

The last chapter of Weintraub’s book is entitled “What If— ?” This is counterfactual history at its best and he sets out what he believes the rest of the twentieth century would have been like if the soldiers had been able to cause the Christmas Truce of 1914 to stop the war at that point. Like many other historians, he believes that with an early end of the war in December of 1914, there probably would have been no Russian Revolution, no Communism, no Lenin, and no Stalin. Furthermore, there would have been no vicious peace imposed on Germany by the Versailles Treaty, and therefore, no Hitler, no Nazism, and no World War II. With the early truce there would have been no entry of America into the European War and America might have had a chance to remain, or return, to being a Republic rather than moving toward World War II, the “Cold” War (Korea and Vietnam), and our present status as the world bully.

Her Britannic Majesty Speaks

Merry Christmas

Wishing everyone a merry Christmas.

Enjoy from the Kaiserstadt:

Romanov Christmas memories:

Truce at the Trenches

101 years ago, the first Christmas Truce of the Great War took place.

Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary

178 years ago today, Elisabeth of Bavaria was born.

Nightmare before Christmas

Shopping for the Season?

Christmas in Rhodesia

Mr. John Edmond sings Christmas in Rhodesia:

Salerno on the War on Cash

Gallipoli Evacuated

A century ago today, British forces started a full retreat from Gallipoli.

To Design a Continent

97 years ago today, the bête noire of this blog arrived for the post-WWI Versailles conference.

Russian "Absolutism"

I was at a meeting last week on Russian history at the National Archives of Norway.

The main speaker, a Norwegian author of a trilogy on Russian history, whose first volume was recently published, made some comparisons between the Stalinist and Tsarist regimes.

He got off too easily on the issue of total political power as an inherited feature in Russian political culture from Tsarist Russia.

Said Nicholas Henshall in his The Myth of Absolutism:

There is growing dissatisfaction with the belief among Western historians that Russia was an Asian despotism alien to the traditions of European monarchy.

Matthew Raphael Johnson wrote in his book The Third Rome: Holy Russia, Tsarism and Orthodoxy:

[T]he English language historical literature on Russia merely rehashes 90-year-old Bolshevik propaganda and calls it history.

Oscar II Passed

Nine dozen years ago today, Oscar II, King of Sweden and formerly King of Norway, passed on – in his 79^th year.

A Day of Infamy

98 years ago today, the bête noire of this weblog signed the declaration of war against Austria-Hungary, after having spoken three days earlier.

Doug French on Democracy

To Sea for God Demos

Three years short of a century ago today, the Persona Non Grata of this weblog set sail aboard the USS George Washington to carve up Europe and make the world safe for God Demos.

Emperor Francis Joseph

Three years short of seventeen decades ago today, the reign of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria commenced.