Clyde Wilson's speech, "War, Reconstruction, and the End of the Old Republic," is one of four speeches which is somehow absent from the Mises Institute's official playlist for the "Costs of War" conference, along with Murray Rothbard's "Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861," Sam Francis' "Classical Republicanism and the Right to Bear Arms," and Thomas Fleming's "Did the South Have to Fight?"

I daresay I know why these speeches in particular are absent from an otherwise complete playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Lgg5vP-4k&list=PLALopHfWkFlErKd7UwReRURqpw6spLz7f&pp=iAQB

I was too young to attend or even be aware of this conference, held in May of 1994 at Atlanta, but when I became involved with the 2008 Ron Paul Campaign and began reading LRC.com daily, I eventually encountered John V. Denson's edition of "The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories," which republished all of the papers that had been presented there. That book, along with Mr. Denson's edition of "Reassessing the Presidency" (LvMI's March 1998 conference in Callaway Gardens) and David Gordon's edition of "Secession, State, and Liberty" (LvMI's April 1995 conference in Charleston) were political epiphanies for me. Thenceforth, I've remained steadfastly pro-secession and anti-war.

I'm sharing these four speeches on YouTube, because even though they remain available on Mises.org, there only those who are actively looking for them will find them, whereas here they may be found by someone like me 16 years ago. I knew that they were important then, and now they are more relevant than ever, if not downright urgent. Indeed, it is manifest why our regime is so zealously removing the symbols of American history, irrespective of the will of the people or even the rule of law, for what those great symbols represent is a standing rebuke to its own corruption, criminality, and, to be candid, cretinousness.

The "Costs of War" poster is copied from Mises.org. The headshot of Clyde Wilson is copied from the of the SPLC (Soviet Poverty Lie Center), which in December of 2004 included it in a disgust-inducing and defamatory "Intelligence Report" on him and other scholars associated with the Abbeville Institute and the League of the South.

"Since the spread of film studies programs in the 1970s, too much academic film criticism has been egregiously unhelpful, failing in the crucial humanistic mission of interpretation and enlightenment. Clotted with abstruse jargon and precious attitudinizing, it has arrogantly interposed itself between the film and the general audience, starting with the students themselves, whose natural responses to art have been shamed and smothered with a priori political ideology...This book celebrating the work of Alfred Hitchcock was conceived as a protest against the opaque pedantry of campus film studies, with its rote mantra of the 'male gaze'--a concept born from 1970s Lacanian feminism that was uncritically adopted without reference to world art. The few film journals that took notice of the British Film Institute's 1998 release of my book on 'The Birds' were predictably not kind: One reviewer flatly declared, 'This book does nothing.' How true: There are no arch contortions of mechanical 'theory' here. All my poor book does is put Hitchcock's film front and center, with every accessible detail of this masterpiece itemized and scrutinized from first scene to last."
(Camille Paglia, BFI Film Classics: The Birds, foreword to the 2020 edition)

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRuncwwJyQ

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y3-KIesYRE

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iv7LvRhvgNI

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1nHvvzxQYs

"Since the spread of film studies programs in the 1970s, too much academic film criticism has been egregiously unhelpful, failing in the crucial humanistic mission of interpretation and enlightenment. Clotted with abstruse jargon and precious attitudinizing, it has arrogantly interposed itself between the film and the general audience, starting with the students themselves, whose natural responses to art have been shamed and smothered with a priori political ideology...
This book celebrating the work of Alfred Hitchcock was conceived as a protest against the opaque pedantry of campus film studies, with its rote mantra of the 'male gaze'--a concept born from 1970s Lacanian feminism that was uncritically adopted without reference to world art. The few film journals that took notice of the British Film Institute's 1998 release of my book on 'The Birds' were predictably not kind: One reviewer flatly declared, 'This book does nothing.' How true: There are no arch contortions of mechanical 'theory' here. All my poor book does is put Hitchcock's film front and center, with every accessible detail of this masterpiece itemized and scrutinized from first scene to last."
(Camille Paglia, BFI Film Classics: The Birds, foreword to the 2020 edition)

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2V-DoQGY70

"From the moment feminism began to solidify its ideology in the early 70s, Hitchcock became a whipping boy for feminist theory. I've been very vocal in my opposition to my simplistic theory of the 'male gaze' that is associated with Laura Mulvey (and she herself has somewhat moved away from) and that has taken over feminist film studies to a vampiric degree in the last 25 years. the idea that a man looking at or a director filming a beautiful woman makes her an object, makes her passive beneath the male gaze which seeks control over woman by turning her into mere matter, into 'meat,' I think this was utter nonsense from the start. It was formulated by people who know nothing about the history of painting or sculpture, the history of the fine arts. It was an a priori theory: First there was feminist ideology, asserting that history is nothing but male oppression and female victimization, and then came this theory--the 'victim' model of feminism applied wholesale to works of culture."
(Camille Paglia, "The Savage Id," Salon, 1999)

"I believe in objectification. The human eye makes objects. That's kind of my philosophy of art. There's all this demonization of the so-called 'male gaze.' It's such a bunch of malarkey. Human visual faculties are very tied up with eroticism as well as idealization of every kind."
(Camille Paglia, interview in "Chatelaine," 2017)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqrwKkrCzOY

Wherein Christopher Hitchens not only refutes the feminist theory of "objectification," but also the entire practice of identity politics.

Note: The thumbnail is the magazine used in the interview to illustrate "objectification."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or1_13OZhh0

Camille Paglia argues that there was greater sexuality in cinema when there was greater sexual restraint and even repression, as well as when the sexes still had separate social spheres.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqrwKkrCzOY

Camille Paglia telling a funny story about why she was banished from organized feminism.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvmTHQviAHM

Camille Paglia telling a funny story about why she was banished from organized feminism.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIPqEYz6S3w

Camille Paglia telling one of her famous stories about why she was banished from organized feminism.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPhjN5VDP2E

In an interview with Paula Marantz Cohen at Drexel University, Camille Paglia explains why, in her opinion, "Gone with the Wind" is "the more classic American movie." She says all that needs be said about race and slavery here, acknowledging that it is indeed "portrayed in a superficial manner" without denying what is great about the film, such as its un-superficial portrayal of the reality of war and the fall of a civilization, or the un-superficial performances of its cast. For her, the film's "racial injustice" is "inconvenient" and "unfortunate" because of its greatness otherwise, an attitude which is a world apart from the critics who go through art with a red pen, so to speak, looking for what is wrong with it according to their political ideology. To paraphrase one of Prof. Paglia's famous stories, to say that "nothing which demeans [black people] can be art," as the critics of this film now say, "is the totalitarian theory of art, in which art must serve a political agenda."

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oD9UAOOWIbY

Camille Paglia telling one of her famous stories on why she was banished from organized feminism.

Enjoy the strong 90s aesthetics.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-chbRF8z-c

Camille Paglia telling one of her funny stories about why she was banished from organized feminism.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88_3AhU0-B0

Camille Paglia argues that some degree of sexual restraint and repression (and indeed, in the case of Code-era Hollywood, censorship) had the paradoxical effect of producing greater sexuality, or "sizzle," in art than today, when sexuality is free to be explicit. As examples, she mentions scenes from "Gone with the Wind" and "Butterfield 8" (Elizabeth Taylor being one of her icons).

Case in point: The poster alone for "Gone with the Wind" remains one of the most romantic and erotic images of all time.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VefECwF7AHk

Camille Paglia telling a funny story about why she was banished from organized feminism.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSRuncwwJyQ

"I once heard the late Abba Eban, one of Israel's more polished and thoughtful diplomats and statesmen, give a talk in New York. The first thing to strike the eye about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, he said, was the ease of its solubility. From this arresting start he went on to say, with the authority of a former foreign minister and UN representative, that the essential point was a simple one. Two peoples of roughly equivalent size had a claim to the same land. The solution was, obviously, to create two states side by side. Surely something so self-evident was within the wit of man to encompass? And so it would have been, decades ago, if the messianic rabbis and mullahs and priests could have been kept out of it. But the exclusive claims to god-given authority, made by hysterical clerics on both sides and further stoked by Armageddon-minded Christians who hope to bring on the Apocalypse (preceded by the death or conversion of all Jews), have made the situation insufferable, and put the whole of humanity in the position of hostage to a quarrel that now features the threat of nuclear war. Religion poisons everything." (Christopher Hitchens, "god is not Great," 2007)

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9V85OykSDT8
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBwDmepta7g
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsJEnlKW2vQ
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqrs-Ycf74w
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAUS681SQq8
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNMKVkPwDCw

John Wilkes Booth's fourth scene in "Gods and Generals" (2003) which was cut from the original theatrical release but restored in the director's cut.

I do not own the copyright to this video. Uploaded for educational purposes under "fair use." I hope that posting it piques interest in the film and the novel, as well as the history whereon the latter works are based.

John Wilkes Booth's fifth and final scene in "Gods and Generals" (2003) which was cut from the original theatrical release but restored in the director's cut.

I do not own the copyright to this video. Uploaded for educational purposes under "fair use." I hope that posting it piques interest in the film and the novel, as well as the history whereon the latter works are based.

John Wilkes Booth's third scene in "Gods and Generals" (2003) which was cut from the original theatrical release but restored in the director's cut.

I do not own the copyright to this video. Uploaded for educational purposes under "fair use." I hope that posting it piques interest in the film and the novel, as well as the history whereon the latter works are based.

Herein Christopher Hitchens demonstrates that it is possible to be critical of abortion with scientific-materialist and secular-humanist ethics and epistemes. I'm not an atheist, but in my opinion, the overtly religious and right-wing character of the so-called pro-life movement has poisoned the argument and alienated many Americans. We're not all chauvinistic patriarchs who want to control women's bodies or theocratic tyrants who want to tear down Jefferson's wall. For us, this is a matter of human rights, of the rights of human life at its most innocent and vulnerable.

SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RExo5JOn4tg

Herein Christopher Hitchens demonstrates that it is possible to be critical of abortion with scientific-materialist and secular-humanist ethics and epistemes. I'm not an atheist, but in my opinion, the overtly religious and right-wing character of the so-called pro-life movement has poisoned the argument and alienated many Americans. We're not all chauvinistic patriarchs who want to control women's bodies or theocratic tyrants who want to tear down Jefferson's wall. For us, this is a matter of human rights, that is, of the rights of human life at its most innocent and vulnerable.

SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJG-lgmPvYA

John Wilkes Booth's first scene in "Gods and Generals" (2003) which was cut from the original theatrical release but restored in the director's cut.

I do not own the copyright to this video. Uploaded for educational purposes under "fair use." I hope that posting it piques interest in the film and the novel, as well as the history whereon the latter works are based.