A Sowell of Great Price

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/11/17/random-thoughts-n2081476?utm_content=buffer502e5&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer



Just read it, ALL OF IT! Thomas Sowell is a voice of wisdom that gets my respect, awe, envy and a few other choice feelings and thoughts. The fact he happens to be black is a wonderful icing on the cake, but most of all he is a erudite voice of common sense, morality and reason crying in the current wilderness that was once the great nation of America!



Only one little teaser, but it is ALL worthy of reading and RE-READING!!

"Our situation today reminds me of what Winston Churchill said to his bodyguard, after the king appointed Churchill prime minister in the darkest days during World War II: "All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is. We can only do our best." He had tears in his eyes."

I wish I knew him, because his name brings to mind this ...

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Minnesota Is #1 !

Minnesota leads U.S. in recruiting ISIL terrorists, federal report finds - StarTribune.com:

... in exporting ISIL terrorists. We even beat out New York and California!

That #1 rating is one that the state richly deserves and is not at all unexpected to me. "Stupid is as stupid does".

Unfortunately, the Vikings being #1 in the NFC N is also very deserved -- they have been playing well, and the Pack has imploded.

I fervently hope that Wisconsin will rise again in the NFC N this weekend, but I definitely lack confidence at a level even worse than when the Favre Pack would journey to the confines of their nemesis the Humpty Dome.

I do agree with Dayton though -- I'm on the path to getting out of this landlocked swamp that wishes it were one of the lefty coasts. I expect MN to continue to excel in leftism, terrorism, violence and general cultural decline.

I pray they fail to continue to excel in football, SHORTLY!

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Hillary Age / Health Not Issue

New Email: Hillary Clinton 'Often Confused' as Secretary of State | National Review Online:



So she is "frequently confused" according to her own aides and she will be 69 when she takes office if she wins -- same age as Reagan was.



Never mind -- she has a "D" next to her name, issues are well ... NOT ISSUES!



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ISIS Will Sell Your Children Into Slavery

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/

I had a good long time to mull the state of the crazy world yesterday on the way back from Denver as the Packers were losing to Detroit at Lambeau for the first time since 1991, the surrealism mounts.

It seems very clear that Paris wasn't caused by some film or Global Warming.

Obama has called Global Warming the greatest threat to our future 22 times now ... apparently Bernie Sanders did the same in the Democrat debate over the weekend. Last Friday AM on ABC, BO said that "ISIL is not getting stronger, we have them CONTAINED". Often one has to a wait at least a couple days for the idiocy of BO's statements to be completely clear ... not in this case.

I read the linked article prior to Friday, it is from the Atlantic, a "near left" publication, on par with the NYTs in left tilt, and was published in March of this year. Nothing surprising to me about Paris other than the fact that such attacks have been as infrequent as they have been -- anyone paying any attention has known what we were up against since at least the first World Trade Center bombing in '93. The choice is a very simple one "us or them" -- if we want to keep following the way of BO, they intend to have our women as concubines and our children as slaves ... but Global Warming is a bigger threat. Thus sayeth BO!

Everyone decries the violence in Paris, but am I the only one that remembers that if the "Cheese Eating Surrender Monkey's" had given even MINIMAL support back in '03, we wouldn't have this problem? Anybody paying attention knew who we were fighting in Iraq back in '03 -- the linked article covers it thusly:

In November (2014), the Islamic State released an infomercial-like video tracing its origins to bin Laden. It acknowledged Abu Musa’b al Zarqawi, the brutal head of al‑Qaeda in Iraq from roughly 2003 until his killing in 2006, as a more immediate progenitor, followed sequentially by two other guerrilla leaders before Baghdadi, the caliph.

The left in this country sold the masses on the idea that "al-Qaeda was not in Iraq" -- and continues to uphold that claim if it breaks into the popular consciousness, as it did with "American Sniper", but buried in an article like that linked, they do let the truth slip from time to time. It is interesting to see what W said back in '05 on the subject of what we were and are fighting: 

 In fact, we're not facing a set of grievances that can be soothed and addressed. We're facing a radical ideology with inalterable objectives: to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world. 

No acts of ours involves the rage of killers. And no concessions, bribe, or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans of murder. On the contrary; they target nations whose behavior they believe they can change through violence. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, never give in, and never accept anything less than complete victory. (Applause.) 

But, those in the thrall of "The Party" and it's media KNOW that Bush was all wrong and stupid, while BO is an infallible genius. We DID back down -- BO ceded Iraq to "The JV Team", destabilized Libya and weakly intoned of "Red Lines" in Syria. Without BO, ISIS would never have gotten territory and as the linked article points out, the doctrine of ISIS is the doctrine of returning the Islamic Caliphate and it **REQUIRES** territory --

To be the caliph, one must meet conditions outlined in Sunni law—being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority. This last criterion, Cerantonio said, is the hardest to fulfill, and requires that the caliph have territory in which he can enforce Islamic law.

The article does a good job in general of pointing out the obvious VERY "Islamic" roots of ISIL and the fact that their doctrines are very much in keeping with fundamental Islam -- and their goal is clear, they mean to defeat us and enslave us.

...  the caliphate has continued to embrace slavery and crucifixion without apology. “We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women,” Adnani, the spokesman, promised in one of his periodic valentines to the West. “If we do not reach that time, then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market.”

The article gets a little long, but the important things for people that don't want to see their children and grandchildren as slaves of an Islamic Caliphate is that:

1. Their goal is VICTORY, and unlike us, they believe in it enough to die for it. Do we care enough to die to prevent their victory and our grandchildren as slaves? Guess not. 
2. They are VERY MUCH Islamic, and THEY DON'T NEGOTIATE -- they don't send "ambassadors" nor even recognize other governments. Their motto is "win or die" -- even voting is a sin worthy of the death penalty. 
3. While they are certainly still a minority of Muslims, there are A LOT of Muslims that find their doctrine appealing -- the author tries to assert a non-violent fundamentalist version of Islam as an alternative, but one wonders if he was ever a young man -- the ACTION of ISIS is way too appealing for his alternative to win out. 

I especially liked these two as telling on the fact that what ISIS is doing and the general reaction of scholars in trying to downplay it as similarly meaningless as what most of the doctrinal disputes of modern Christianity have degenerated into. 

But Muslims who call the Islamic State un-Islamic are typically, as the Princeton scholar Bernard Haykel, the leading expert on the group’s theology, told me, “embarrassed and politically correct, with a cotton-candy view of their own religion” that neglects “what their religion has historically and legally required.” Many denials of the Islamic State’s religious nature, he said, are rooted in an “interfaith-Christian-nonsense tradition".

“Slavery, crucifixion, and beheadings are not something that freakish [jihadists] are cherry-picking from the medieval tradition,” Haykel said. Islamic State fighters “are smack in the middle of the medieval tradition and are bringing it wholesale into the present day.”

I found his closing paragraphs familiar to a lot of my thinking, and chilling. Contrast the meaning of being "personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives" with "voting to redistribute other people's money, or voting to force others to bake cakes for gay "weddings", or "voting for hope and change". "Especially when it is a burden" -- the essence of "having skin in the game", rather than voting to force others to do what you want.

I could enjoy their company, as a guilty intellectual exercise, up to a point. In reviewing Mein Kampf in March 1940, George Orwell confessed that he had “never been able to dislike Hitler”; something about the man projected an underdog quality, even when his goals were cowardly or loathsome. “If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon.” The Islamic State’s partisans have much the same allure. They believe that they are personally involved in struggles beyond their own lives, and that merely to be swept up in the drama, on the side of righteousness, is a privilege and a pleasure—especially when it is also a burden.

The author didn't think that ISIS was likely to execute terrorist attacks in western lands -- Paris seems to show that he was wrong on that.

All of a sudden, BO seems much happier "leading from behind" as France steps up attacks in Syria. Like a dog chasing a car, it is much more than a bit unclear what the objectives of France, the US, or Russia really are in Syria. France probably wants to kill ISIS and is largely OK with Assad ... which would seem to align with Russia. The US has declared that we want Assad gone, but how we prevent ISIS from filling that void is a mystery. It is obvious at this point how huge a mistake BO made in pulling the troops out of Iraq -- so even if Syria "miraculously" stabilizes under Assad or someone else, ISIS has a home in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

Once we were "One Nation under God, with Liberty and Justice for all". We saw ourselves as standing for important ideals -- a Flag, a Republic, a Constitution, we were exceptional, and hundreds of thousands died in preserving those ideas, because we knew they were not free -- from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. We answered the call again after 9-11, but the corruption in the soul of America that first reared it's ugly head in Vietnam came back with a vengeance.

We are no longer a nation under God. We no longer respect a Constitution, nor even generally realize the difference between a Republic and a "democracy". To the extent we have any ideals at all, they are those of Mizzou -- declared by some majority or court decree, and not to be questioned under threat of state or institutional sanction. The young of university age expect their views to protected from even discussion -- they have no interest in defending them verbally, let alone on a battlefield.

Those that have nothing to live and die for eventually find that someone else will tell them if they live, and exactly how they will live, because their masters don't share their lack of commitment.

The human condition is slavery -- to the Devil, the State, addiction, money,  etc.  I'm a slave too -- to Christ, praise be to God!

20% of Americans Still Believe We Have Freedom of Speech

Little Support for Punishing Global Warming Foes - Rasmussen Reports™:

But only 20% of Americans think they have true freedom of speech today. Seventy-three percent (73%) think instead that Americans have to be careful not to say something politically incorrect to avoid getting in trouble.

I'm hoping that the 27% that haven't figured out "hate speech" are black, in nursing homes, or some other "special class" (gay, transexual, muslim, etc), because if you accidently say "niggardly", or something else in total innocence in the wrong crowd, you can at the very least lose your job if not be actually prosecuted.

Just over one-in-four Democrats (27%), however, favor prosecuting those who don’t agree with global warming.

So ONLY 1 in 4 Democrats are willing to say to a pollster that they believe those willing to present evidence contrary to Global Warming doctrine ought to be PUNISHED -- as NY State is doing with Exxon. They may not want to admit it to a pollster yet, but I'm sure the real numbers have to be a LOT higher or there would be some outcry in favor of that tired old concept of freedom of speech.

This column doesn't go into campaign finance laws directed at stopping conservative speech, anti-Chrisitian laws relative to praryer, crosses, ten commandments, etc.

Free speech was never free -- but we failed to pay the price to keep it, and now it is GONE -- the only thing going on now is "how big is the punishment" for "unapproved speech" -- loss of job, boycotts,  being arrested, jail, or eventually death.

The 20-27% need to get their minds right -- before somebody else makes their minds right by some level of force! Freedom of speech is HISTORY.

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The Oppressed Missouri 1%er

Blog: Mizzou hunger striker protesting 'white privilege' has a father making $6 million last year:

Turns out the father of the black "hunger striker" who took down the university head makes $6 Million a year and is worth north of $20 Million.

The mainline media doesn't report it, and Snopes says "doesn't matter".

Indeed, if it didn't matter what income people make, "income inequality" wouldn't be much of an issue, would it?

As you know -- I'd be fine with that. The Koch brothers have a right to their opinions as does George Soros, the New York Times, etc -- people at lots of different incomes have lots of different opinions. As long as income level isn't an issue for the Koch brothers, then it ought not be an issue for this young "oppressed" protestor either.

I'm sure that we won't hear any more about the Koch brothers income! -- and pigs are sure to fly very soon!

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White Officers Shoot and Kill 6 Year old Autistic Black Child

2 Louisiana Officers Charged With Second-Degree Murder in Killing of Boy, 6 - The New York Times:



Think my headline would be a bit more newsworthy? Oh well, it was two BLACK officers that shot and killed a 6 year old autistic WHITE boy, and shot his father -- who according to some film actually DID have his hands up and was unarmed.



I almost missed this story, it is pretty much already gone from the news. Doesn't fit the narrative, no story here, move along.



I have no idea what the circumstances really were -- it is a terrible tragedy, it APPEARS like the officers MAY have been in the wrong, but there is no drumbeat for their hides -- as there should not be! Let it be investigated, and if they are guilty of "whatever", even racism (it IS possible for blacks as well!), then they pay the price. Even if two black cops turn out to be racist it DOES NOT mean that "lots", "a majority", are as well.



Maybe they are guilty of nothing -- but low light, mistaken identity, poor but understandable decision making, being afraid, etc ... it is all possible. Humans DO make errors, sometimes grievous ones and then we all move along.



One thing is clear however, in America today what we are shown is very carefully controlled by THE PARTY -- we see the narrative that they want us to see. The real world is largely invisible.



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Black and White, United In Death

White Working Class: Rising Death Rate| National Review Online:

A good angle from Victor Davis Hanson on the shrinking lifespans of working class white Americans, a subject that I covered here. I believe there are lots of reasons for what has happened -- I tend to focus on religion and culture, but in reading Hanson, a couple other major items came to my mind, both of which can fit under the heading "America Gave Up".

Up through the 60's, we were certainly THE "exceptional nation" -- the land of the free and the home of the brave. A nation specially blessed by God. A nation with liberty and justice for all. We were that shining city on a hill that Reagan invoked in our memories during the 1980s.

While we reached one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the world in the late '60s, the Moon Landing, we also lost a war, saw racial strife spill onto our streets, had two leading figures assassinated, had riots on our campuses, and saw morality publicly decline precipitously with the "sexual revolution" and the rapid rise of divorce and welfare.

We began to lose our way and with it our confidence in the '60s, in the seventies we lost more -- Watergate, inflation, Americans held hostage by Iran, the Carter malaise. The '80s brought a lot of re-birth, but an awful lot of it was consumption and even worse, debt based. We might have taken pride in the end of the USSR, and some of us did, but the message from the elites was muted -- the end of the USSR kind of "just happened" as far as we were told.

We could go on, but the bottom line is that being a part of something bigger than oneself -- say an exceptional nation with a God-given purpose is MOST important to those people to whom individual recognition of a public sort, great wealth, or other external validation is not likely to happen. Being a part of a great nation, working toward a better tomorrow for their children and grandchildren with the idea that what they are doing is unique, moral, and exceptional in the world is most important when you are "just plain folks" -- not "thinkers", elite, wealthy, highly educated, etc. Those are the people that most need to wave the flag on the sidelines of the 4th of July parade -- the ones that BO calls "bitter clingers".

Turns out that neither being bitter nor clinging -- as in just barely hanging on, is conducive to a long nor healthy life. America lost it's way -- and it lost it's soul, and those people that are not "special" in the sense that they are called out positively by those in power in media and government feel that loss the most.

We also decided that we could not or at least would not compete on the global market in the area of relatively unskilled labor. We declared what a "living wage" was and was not, and decided that jobs that didn't pay more than that were best done overseas or by illegal aliens. "We can't compete with "less than a dollar an hour" -- or some such figure, so we stopped trying to compete. The sad part is that "living" becomes a lot too optional when one's labors are declared and forced by government policy to not be worth even going through the motions of. You have been declared "not competitive" -- sit back and take your check.

Better to not work at all and draw welfare and assistance than to have a job that doesn't provide a "living wage" -- only nobody really ran any "studies" to decide if that is in fact true. Perhaps it is better to work for even a very low wage than it is to fall under dependence to the very elites that have declared you to be "not worthy to compete in the world market".

In any case, what was there to do? Consumption is bad ... not sustainable, the planet has a fever! We seem to have no more exploration or expansion desires -- not looking to exploit more land here, in Alaska or anywhere around the globe -- who knows, if the US was still into expanding, we might have companies trying to "exploit" Siberia, parts of Africa, parts of the oceans, or who knows what? We used to be innovative! But now it is settled that the greatest problem facing the US and the planet is "Global Warming"!

To even consider old terms like "expansion", "development", "advancement", "exploration" is positively immoral -- we are back to the 1970's. America needs to lie low -- to be a "leader" in reducing! Our malaise is so universal that nobody seems to notice -- very few see any potential for recovery.

I've been talking about this for 10 years in this blog -- there really wasn't a lot of "prediction" involved, it has been happening all along, but now the pace is accelerating and some things like the cost in human lives is becoming more obvious. It is also obvious, as it is with the cost in thousands of black lives lost each year because they shoot each other, that to the elites that are running the country, THESE LIVES DON'T MATTER!

Except for those at the very top of the Fascist connection between "The Party" (D), the elite universities, media and corporations, NO LIVES MATTER! In a Godless nation, all that ultimately matters is POWER, and all the rest is just a matter of how to best consolidate that power -- no matter the cost in the loss of a once great culture and the lives destroyed along with it.

Black and white, we are united in death as TP destroys even the desire to live.

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Carson, Character, Consistency, Caring, Contrast

Ben Carson and West Point, another look | Power Line:

"In general" (always a dangerous statement), people of a conservative bent care deeply about character and consistency. Liberals at least say that they "care about caring" -- they say they want to have a belief that their candidates "care", although from a conservative perspective the fact that they have no concept of consistency in the sense of any general application makes it hard to even understand how they can support their oft repeated "we care" claim.

The problem seems to be desires vs results. They at least claim to believe that their government programs "help", although the facts show that among the groups targeted by those programs, families have been destroyed, poverty, substance abuse and crime have risen, and thousands of young black men shoot each other each year. They claim that they fervently desire to help black families, their programs demonstrably destroy those families consigning the vast majority of them to poverty, substance abuse, despair and early often violent deaths.

But liberals FEEL good about their programs, so the programs continue.

Conservatives actually have feelings as well -- no matter what liberals say. A person like Ben Carson, a child of poverty, who lived the dysfunction of the liberally imposed system in Detroit, rose to be the pre-eminent brain surgeon in the nation, is a Christian and a conservative, brings a shiver of pride to our spines and maybe a bit of a tear to our eye. While we know in our hearts that he is "just a man", our tendency is to love him and idolize him. A guy like Carson makes conservatives FEEL really good!

I've said before, I have doubts about him as a presidential candidate -- he is brilliant, but he has no executive experience nor political experience, and being president is BOTH -- big time. But I'm human too ... he is a symbol of what I believe many more black men could be if their culture were recovered from the clutches of The Party.

I also knew that the left must HATE Carson! They have no choice -- in their world model he is Satan. A successful "real black man" ... of the inner city, of a single mother and according to his genesis story, even angry enough to try to stab someone until he found Christ. If Ben Carson is real, then at least a significant amount of what liberals feel good about is a lie -- which if they looked at data, they would already know to be true, but humans need stories and liberalism depends on mythology. If Carson and his story are true, then what liberals feel very good and completely smug about is at least significantly false -- not just statistically, but in terms of a real human narrative.

So Carson must be destroyed -- and since he is human, we know he has flaws, so the likelihood is that he will be. Since conservatives DO care about character and consistency, the liberal onslaught tends to have the desired effect on us  -- like Nixon swearing on the tapes, or W Bush's DUI, conservatives can't help but feel bad when flaws are pointed out in leaders that we had hopes were at least closer to "perfect".

I thought the linked column was a great example of the effects of media attack on even those that are among the most intelligent in the conservative camp -- the universal human tendency to write our own stories with an eye to positive mythology is of no concern from the left, it is almost "endearing" (eg. Hillary named after Edmund Hillary, etc, etc), but from the right it is immediately translated as a disappointing "lie". It isn't "all politicians" that have a life story that is somewhat mythological, it is ALL HUMANS,  ME! -- but for those of us not in public life, our friends and family share in the covering of the secrets and the celebration of the triumphs -- both the embellished "real", and the very nearly entirely myth.

Conservative Christians aren't allowed to hate anyone -- BUT, we certainly can hate policy and sin -- as in abortion, gay "marriage", single parenthood, etc, and feel bad when they win and lives are destroyed. Being Christian and conservative often means feeling sorry for our own sins and the sins of those of like belief in this world as well as those who war against belief itself. We have the hope in Christ of ultimate victory, but we deal with the knowledge that in our walk through this very imperfect world, we will often be disappointed in both our own feet of clay, and of those who take on the mantle of leadership for our cause.

The left has no admonition against hate -- and we can observe that they hate Ben Carson as they must, and have great joy in attacking him with abandon. He makes them feel bad -- and one of the big reasons to be liberal is that you desire to feel GOOD ... superior, smart, just,  powerful (at least as a group), self righteous, proud and smug -- the fruits of the left. Conservatives trade some good feelings for virtue in this world and the promise of the next, for liberals, this life is it, and they are willing for others to pay ANY price so that they can feel good! (we Christians can't brag -- Christ paid even more for our hope than the millions of dead babies, tens of thousands of dead young black men, and now rising death toll of lesser educated whites sacrificed on the altar of liberal good feeling)

Such is the shape of the battle that will continue until the day Christ returns -- we often need to prayerfully "let go and let God", because how the manner in which the victory is to the righteous often seems very well shrouded.

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Losing Gender, Losing Life

This Isn't A Culture War. It's A War On Culture:

Houston has decided that male and female should continue to have separate bathrooms and locker rooms -- and so it is now is some hick backwater with a three term lesbian mayor, worthy of being boycotted and pilloried.

What part of THOU SHALT completely follow and bow to today's aggrieved group is it that they failed to understand? As the linked article put it:

Yet, progressives are so wrapped up in the notion that social change can only be achieved through politics and regulation, that when they do lose a vote, they act like the social order is crumbling and the nation is careening towards a theocratic nightmare.

Boycott Houston!

After gay "marriage", I no longer predict how far the destruction of culture will go, I only know that it will continue. We lost marriage, a cornerstone of culture, it would be no surprise to lose gender next -- ALL culture must be destroyed, and that does mean ALL!

 For a "progressive",  there is nothing that is sacred except today's hot new idea of "progress". In a world of complete moral relativism there can be no culture, because culture must endure from generation to generation to exist. Fads, fashions, memes, mass movements, manias, causes, etc are not culture unless they take hold and survive for multiple generations. We have lost our culture and gained a lot of "flavor of the day".

When  "progress" is primary, culture cannot endure, and since human reality is one of living in a working culture, there is no human reality of existence and life slides to the abyss. So more and more people simply pass away -- naturally as a result of their actions, in killings as they rebel against the meaningless world, or by their own hand, alone in their despair.

In the real world, our sex is determined at conception. Females have two x chromosomes, males have an x and a y. While there is something less than 1% of the population that have somewhat ambiguous sex organs (formerly hermaphrodites, now supposed to be called "intersex"), even the vast majority of THOSE are properly wired prior to birth to one sex or the other. Females  and males have major differences in the brain (the human difference), not just sex organs. One of these differences is the corpus callosum which connects the right and left halves of the brain. In computer terms, men have a dial-up connection, women have a terabit bus. Girls interact earlier and more with others ... we could go on and on.

Once, all  this was completely known to science, like the Vostok ice cores that clearly show four previous warm periods like our current now 10K year old period in the last 500K years. However, like the ice cores, something even as basic as our gender is now on the path to being hidden away in the name of "progress" so a another harmful scam can be perpetrated.

Jeremy Bentham, a founder of "Utilitarianism" ... "the greatest good for the greatest number" assumed that doing away with class distinctions and religion to focus on what he saw as a very simple and easy "moral" (in his mind) of the "greatest good" would clearly produce a wonderful utopia. As all attempts to ignore the wisdom of the ages and God, it has produced a hellish chaos.

Why? A very significant problem with the definition of "good" -- science can say nothing at all of a value judgement like "good". The Bible ... and really Buddhism as well, make "humility" the greatest good -- "the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God". People might like to think it is "happiness" -- as in the "pursuit of", but if we still believe in science at all, pursuing happiness for yourself guarantees that you will not find it. Happiness is what sometimes happens when you follow the purpose for your life -- but in a random universe, life is purposeless, so there is no happiness.

Humans only live in the context of a culture. We have destroyed ours, so death is winning -- in abortion, in drug and alcohol addiction, mass killings, suicides ... the list will just keep growing. We gave rejected God, and therefore rejected wisdom -- and we are dying.

Our confusion clearly knows no bounds.

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Frenimies, Libertarians and Conservatives

Fusionism -- Conservatives, Libertarians & National Review | National Review Online:



I blog this mostly to keep track of some good descriptions of the history of American Conservatives and Libertarians -- it's a rocky relationship. Conservatives would largely like to maintain strong relations with a "libertarian wing" at least in recent times, Libertarians mostly like to point out that they are NOT conservatives!



I found the summary a bit too obscure, but with some elements of truth:

Conservatism is an ethereal thing rather than a political system. It has no written constitution to rely on in dark times. And while it is not free of ideas, it is, as a positional ideology, resistant to formulation in a simple, fixed credo. As such, it always stands at risk of being exploited by someone who yokes personal ambition to popular passion in the service of a movement that is conservative in name only. And if that happens, the time will come for libertarians to ask, “Who lost the conservatives?”

Conservatism isn't a political system or religious dogma, but it does have some basic principles. A respect and firm regard  for the mysterious workings of culture and religion, with a strong desire to not abandon either. An appreciation for the limitations of man and his governments, and the wisdom of "First, do no harm!". Civility, manners, restraint, tradition and perspective. 

Oh, and the belief that 20 year old Scotch is superior to fresh swill from the still! 

There were also a couple of GREAT words in the column, in homage to William Buckley I thought ... 

"defenstrated" -- directly "thrown out a window", a more urbane version of "thrown under the bus". 

"syncretic" -- combining different, often contradictory beliefs while combining schools of thought. The Catholic Church co-opting pagan holidays like Winter Solstice for Christmas is a great example. 

Not a gem, but worth a pass.


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28 Year History of Conservative Media

Rush Limbaugh & National Review -- Conservative-Media Revolution | National Review Online:

We often forget just how short a time there has been any sort of a conservative "popular media" answer to the massive amount of left wing outlets. National Review was around as a magazine, but with a very small readership ... it peaked at just over 250K readers an issue in '94.

So Limbaugh came on the national airwaves 28 years ago in 1988, Fox News showed up in 1997, not quite 20 years ago.

Would there have been a 50 year period with no Republican control of the House of Representatives if the American people had been able to listen to conservative mass media over that time? How much did Rush Limbaugh have to do with the Republicans finally taking the House in '94?

I know that when Jimmy Carter convinced me that there HAD to be a different and better way to look at the world than he espoused, I had to SEARCH to find National Review. I've certainly "converted" more than a few people to at LEAST QUESTION what it is they hear drummed into their heads each day by the standard left wing mass media -- "The Mainstream Media" or MSM. Rush definitely allowed millions more to be aware that pretty much all issues have AT LEAST two sides -- if not many more.

Sadly, at nearly 30 years into a major revolution of choice in media, conservatism is LOSING -- badly, and along with it, the ability to maintain anything recognizable as "America" --  God, Family, hard work, delayed gratification, personal responsibility, thrift -- all those "old time" values.

It isn't hard at all to see how the conservative light could be easily extinguished -- a return to a government administered "fairness doctrine" where the FCC decides what is "speech", and what is "propaganda" and has to give the other side "equal time".  Citizens United being overturned -- so the NYTs, NPR, Michael Moore, CNN, etc can say all they want, but conservative political speech is strictly controlled. "Net Neutrality" -- where blogs that are considered "biased political speech" (in the eyes of the government) are blocked, slowed, sanctioned, removed from search, etc. ... the list could go on.

The calls for "doing SOMETHING about the disruptive right wing media" by the left are fairly constant. The hatred of "Faux News" oozes from those who lean left -- and when those from the left hate something, it is not enough to turn the channel, it means that what they dislike should be destroyed!

A lot of prayers and a lot of hard work will continue to be needed to at a minimum slow the leftward slide as much as possible -- and to hope against all odds, the tide will yet be turned!

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Jews Shall Be Silent in MN!

Israeli Speaker Shouted Down at the University of Minnesota | Power Line:



A professor of Jewish thought and philosophy from Hebrew University was shouted down at the UofM Law School yesterday PM. The WaPo reported on it, but according to PL, the Strib has failed to do so.



Christians, Jews, those that disagree with Climate Change being our largest problem, those that believe in some restraint of government, etc -- all are treated to the only left wing argument that really works. SHUT UP! Disagreement with leftist dogma is a "trigger" -- our tenderly wrapped university law students must be spared hearing opinions not in line with left wing diktat!



As always, if the left's view of winning arguments -- intimidation! -- fails, then sterner types are chosen. Have the IRS investigate them, pass some bogus "campaign finance law", call what your opposition has to say "hate speech" and make it illegal. Or, in the case of Israel, just arrange for their enemies to gain nuclear weapons.



Left is control -- right is chaos, but just to the right of center there was LIBERTY ... what America once had. As we skid, slide, slouch and tumble down the left ditch, the day where the argument is won by herding those who refuse to bow to the will of the left into chambers where the "ultimate truth" of the left is exposed in the belching smoke rising from the ovens.



Why do people not figure out what Fascists are about before it is too late? Ask the Star Trib.



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KY Governor Race "stolen"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/businessman-who-has-been-likened-to-trump-wins-kentucky-governors-race/2015/11/03/8693d97e-8274-11e5-9afb-0c971f713d0c_story.html

The WaPo apparently feels that the Governorship of Kay is Democrat property!

Republicans stole a key governor’s seat in a hotly contested race in Kentucky on Tuesday, installing an outsider businessman who has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump as the state’s next chief executive.

Dying White, Cultural AIDs

Death Rates Rising for Middle-Aged White Americans, Study Finds - The New York Times:

The Bible simply says "Man does not live by bread alone". Brain science says people need connections to others, a sense of competence/value,  and meaning in their lives.

The mortality rate for whites 45 to 54 years old with no more than a high school education increased by 134 deaths per 100,000 people from 1999 to 2014. 

“It is difficult to find modern settings with survival losses of this magnitude,”

“This is a vivid indication that something is awry in these American households.”
Dr. Deaton had but one parallel. 

“Only H.I.V./AIDS in contemporary times has done anything like this,” he said.

We know who these people are. Obama calls them "bitter clingers". Many of them are in the south, or in "flyover country". They are often "racist, homophobic, low information, etc". You don't have to listen to much media to know that these people are not someone that America currently cares about.

While the article claims that it is just "the uneducated", I certainly know of and personally understand the same pains and temptations from those with more education. Life used to have certain anchors -- religion, family, work and community being very large. In the US the left has attacked each of these systematically, along with destroying the culture that was once America -- this is unlike what has happened in Europe and Japan.

In Europe, the state has grown and religion has suffered, but since church and state were intertwined, most of the people are at least nominally part of "the church" -- for baptisms, Christmas, sometimes Easter, weddings and funerals. As a practicing Christian, I don't applaud that, however, it is "something" as opposed to "nothing".

Even more importantly, it is completely fine -- and EXPECTED to be a PROUD "Irishman, Brit, Frenchman, German, Swede, Italian ... etc, etc". The rising statism in Europe was not anti-culture, nor anti the dominant ethnicity of the nation state. One can even take pride in being a German, although the nation was largely responsible for two world wars and the genocide of six million Jews.

Not so white Americans -- we are guilty for slavery over 100 years ago, it is a stain that our leftward marching elite wants ever fresh so that even though they were the party of both slavery and Jim Crow, eternal white guilt must be recognized to keep their black voters voting over 90% for them -- ONLY "Black Lives Matter".

We could go on, but this is likely a case where a more complex analysis obfuscates rather than clarifies. Just as AIDs in the developed world was the result of a complete breakdown in sexual morality among a specific group -- gay males, what we see in middle aged whites is the ongoing destruction of the culture and values of Americans of European descent.

We know that black inner city culture was destroyed by welfare and urban development in the '60s -- their numbers for this same age group are still worse, but whites now largely infected by the same pathogens -- rampant out of wedlock births, welfare and unemployment, dependency, loss of community and religious values, are rapidly falling to the same fates. This was well covered and predicted in "Coming Apart" by Charles Murray ... an excerpt and few comments here.

So far, Hispanic, largely Mexican culture has resisted the statist pathogens -- they cling to the Catholic Church, family and since they are often undocumented, they are more likely to live in packed houses working hard for often less than minimum wage to keep their families intact and send money back to other family members. They don't earn a lot, but they earn what they earn, it is respected, and has value.

the rate for middle-aged Hispanics is far lower than for middle-aged whites at 262 per 100,000.

Will the next generation of Hispanics be able to resist destruction by "The Party" (D)? The temptations for the young women are great -- get pregnant, get aid and raise children with a series of young men -- often with what appears to be a better economic deal, but one that goes very sour at middle age. As I covered here, the unmarried young woman with HS or less education and children has this choice ...

A). Stay at home and get from $20 - $35K a year
(B). Go to work 40 hours every week often at two jobs, since BOcare has mandated benefits MUST be provided for a job regularly over 30hrs, with no vacations and take in MAYBE $30K.

The choice doesn't come with a warning like a pack of cigarettes:

"Warning, living on welfare as an unwed mother may entail risks of depression, substance abuse and even death by suicide before age 60 for you and your sexual partners"! 

Not very likely that the very people that produce and push the values and pathogens that lead to the problem are very likely to warn where it leads is it?

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