Ray Harvey

The Goths, as recounted by a Gothic historian named Jordanes (mid 6th Century AD), were a Teutonic-Germanic people whose original homeland was, according to Jordanes, in southern Sweden. At that time, this half-barbaric band was ruled by a king called Berig. It was King Berig who led his people south to the shores of the Baltic Sea, where they split up into two groups: the Ostrogoths (or Eastern Goths), and the Visigoths (Western Goths).

According to Jordanes, the Goths reached the pinnacle of their power around the 5th Century AD, when they conquered Rome and most of Spain.

The original Goths — and this is important — have no real connection with what that word eventually came to mean.

It was many centuries later, you see, that a certain non-classical style of architecture emerged. Because this style of architecture wasn’t classical, it was pejoratively termed Gothic, which meant “barbaric.”

Gothic literature came about centuries after this and is so called because a great number of these novels are set in Gothic monasteries and Gothic Abbeys.

That is how the genre of Gothic literature came to be.

Setting is the crucial component to Gothic fiction. As Ann Blaisde Tracy wrote in her 1981 book The Gothic Novel, this literature depicts “a fallen world,” a world of ruin and desuetude, dilapidation and disrepair, death, decay — a vital and thriving world no more.

The English author Horace Walpole is generally credited with writing the first Gothic novel, and that novel, written in 1764, is called The Castle of Otranto.

Though she didn’t originate Gothic literate, the enigmatic Anne Radcliffe (1764 – 1823) is undoubtedly that genre’s greatest early popularizer, and her Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolopho was immediately parodied by the likes of Jane Austin and Thomas Love Peacock, among others.

The early Gothic novels are, however, diffuse and stylistically difficult to our modern-day eyes and ears, the pace often bogging down in its baroque prose. Among the best of the early Gothic novels ever written is Melmoth The Wanderer, by Charles Robert Maturin (which Victor Hugo and Lord Byron also loved).

Yet for all its difficulty now, Gothic literature employed wildly intriguing plot devices which at the time were quite new — secret closets, mysterious manuscripts, ghostly abbeys, unspeakable deeds — so that at it’s best, there is an undeniable sense of strangeness and fascination that pervades Gothic literature. That is the reason some of the world’s greatest writers have used Gothic literature as a model for their own non-Gothic novels.

Happy Halloween.

Here’s Michael Moore in an interview from 2002:

“I’m a millionaire, I’m a multi-millionaire. I’m filthy rich. You know why I’m a multi-millionaire? ‘Cause multi-millions like what I do. That’s pretty good, isn’t it? There’s millions that believe in what I do. Pretty cool, huh?”

“That was the same year as ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and two years before his big success with ‘Fahrenheit 9/11,’ so however many multi-millions he had banked at the time, he’s got more now — and that’s not counting the millions he claims he’s owed but hasn’t received.”

(Source).

Now watch Michael Moore, just last week, caught lying through his teeth:

In related news, Peter Schiff, an economist and financial adviser whom I much admire, confronts Wall Street protesters and asks them very basic questions the answers to which they do not know:

One woman who was recruited from a homeless shelter to protest and then canvass as part of a campaign ostensibly aimed at home foreclosures told Fox, “I get the money and then the money is being used for Occupy Wall Street—to pay for all of it, for supplies, food, transportation, salaries, for everything … all that money is going to pay for the protests downtown and that’s just messed up. It’s just wrong.” So in case you were wondering how they can afford the new Port-a-Potties, there you go.

Jason Mattera, author of the excellent book Obama Zombies — which captures very well the mindset of the brainwashed masses who went in for Barack Obama without any real regard for the actual content of his political philosophy — is refreshingly fearless in confronting politicians and calling them out. Politically, I do not always agree with Jason Mattera, but I always enjoy watching his videos:

Also, in response to Joe Biden’s false and outrageous remarks, as Ed Morrissey notes, “the President’s ‘jobs’ bill doesn’t go directly to hire police officers anyway. Instead, it allows states to paper-over budget gaps for another year rather than address their systemic budgetary issues, and protect unionized bureaucrats whose jobs should be on the chopping block.”

Here are a couple of other Jason Mattera videos that I hope you enjoy as much as I did:

Openly socialist Vermont senator Bernie Sanders selling his book (capitalistically) at (capitalistic) Barnes & Noble:

Jason Mattera to Barney Frank: “All right, sir. Fist bump?” Barney Frank: “No.”

Al Franken to Jason Mattera: “You have to shut up right now and listen to me.”

“Show some respect for taxpayer dollars?”

Many more of these instructive videos here.

Regarding the Wall Street protests, Robert Robb, a columnist for the Arizona Republic, has a recent and fairly interesting article. Here’s an excerpt:

The protesters are massively wrong about the incompatibility of capitalism and social justice.

Social justice shouldn’t be measured on what the rich have, which is the fixation of the protesters. Instead, the focus should be on the lot of the poor. The spread of market capitalism has done more to improve living standards for more of the world’s poor than anything else in human history.

There is, however, a serious social justice problem that has developed in American market capitalism. Two of the bridges to the middle class for those without a college education — manufacturing and construction — have been eroded. Manufacturing jobs haven’t been lost mainly to free trade, as the brief against capitalism would have it, but to sharply improved productivity. And construction wages have been undermined by illegal immigrant labor.

The American economy hasn’t really developed substitutes for these bridges. While the protesters misdiagnose and exaggerate the problem, conservatives shouldn’t be so dismissive of the rising income gap based upon education.

The protesters are occupying Wall Street because they see large investment banks as the heart of American capitalism. They are also wrong about that, but their mistake is shared by the policymakers in both of the country’s major political parties.

Capital is the bloodline of commerce. Businesses produce first, then get paid by those who buy their goods or services. They need money to get from Point A to Point B.

There are an infinite number of ways that businesses get capital. Large Wall Street investment banks play a role, but a rather small one. And almost exclusively for big businesses, which isn’t where the growth in the American economy occurs.

(Read the full article here.)

In related news — and in response to the emails I keep getting from folks who insist that these protests aren’t Marxist — please check out these recent vids:

The so-called Wall Street Protesters have posted a list of grievances, ostensibly to codify all the things they’re against, and if, heaven help you, you take the time to actually read that list — grammatical errors and all — I predict you’ll no longer be in any doubt that these people are truly Anarchists For Big Government.

Here’s an example, taken from their website:

Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This demand can only be met by ending “Freetrade” by re-imposing trade tariffs on all imported goods entering the American market to level the playing field for domestic family farming and domestic manufacturing as most nations that are dumping cheap products onto the American market have radical wage and environmental regulation advantages. Another policy that must be instituted is raise the minimum wage to twenty dollars an hr.

Why not just make the minimum wage $50.00 an hour? Or $100.00? Money, after all, doesn’t actually need to be produced. Businesses just have it. Therefore, businesses can pay any amount demanded. Also, as Ryan Young of OpenMarket.org articulately explains:

Take as true that importing goods across international borders kills jobs. Well, as a matter of logic, importing goods across state borders is no different. Oregonians should be forbidden from importing goods from Californians. Inter-city free trade has the same harmful effects. Consistency demands banning that, too. Even inter-household trade kills jobs under this line of thought.

And of course, one of the main things these protesters are against is “corporations” — this despite the fact that they don’t have any good idea of what a corporation really is.

As I wrote in Leave Us Alone:

Any business, no matter its size, can become incorporated.
Incorporated simply means that businesses draw up contracts, known as the Articles of Incorporation, which contain information about intended activities of the upstart business and also the intended financing. The state then issues a certificate of incorporation, at which point the certificate becomes an enforceable contract….

The present-day model of the American corporation began right after the Civil War, with the development of the trust movement. The trust movement was against the existing laws, imposed by the state, which made the formation of corporations extremely costly and difficult. It took a special act of legislation to deregulate, so that following the Civil War, this new legislative act made it possible for private corporations to combine with one another, via stockholders, turning their shares to “trustees.” This is all private, contractual, and voluntary.

Under the trust arrangement, stockholders of separate corporations can and will turn their shares over to trustees, who then have the power to vote the shares and run the incorporated business. By assembling the shares into the hands of the same trust, it’s possible and perfectly legitimate to run the corporation as a single unit.

The protesters have said (and I quote): “We’re tired of Big Money dictating what [government] programs get funded.”

Really? Is Big Money, then, funding over two-thirds of the federal budget that’s spent on social security, medicare/medicaid, unemployment checks, welfare, food stamps, public schools, and so much more (all of which, incidentally, dwarf national defense spending)?

The answer is no. We the taxpayers are funding these profligate and endless programs, which the Wall Street protesters are calling for more of.

Here’s another question I have: if corporations are so powerful and Machiavellian, why hasn’t corporate money stopped the above-mentioned federal spending — which spending, for the record, is what’s driving the crushing national deficit we’re all laboring under?

As Mark Levin sensibly asks:

• Who’s the biggest health insurer in the country?
• Who’s the biggest bank in the country?
• Who’s the biggest land-owner in the country?
• Who runs the biggest retirement plans in the country?
• And who alone has the force of law to force you to comply with their decisions?

Answer: the federal government.

Reader, make no mistake: the philosophical underpinnings of these protesters are socialistic to the gills.

Who in their right mind would turn up their nose at these beauties?

It may or may not surprise you to learn that the anti-corporate Adbuster quacks, who are protesting on Wall Street, the Brooklyn Bridge, and now in cities across the United States, have garnered some support from the anti-corporate libertarians.

The following video clip will give you an idea of the caliber of economic understanding these protesters possess, and I post this clip not because I side with Adam Kokesh (I don’t), but because I myself have been astonished by the number of emails I’ve received from libertarians asking me if I “stand with” the Wall Street protesters.

Emphatically I do not.

Here are a handful of the reasons why:

If you wish to know more about these Adbuster hypocrites, who have made a lot of money with their anti-capitalist campaign, read this.