Definitely one of the heroes that I worship just a bit too much. Now 86 and no longer doing a column, interviewd here by WSJ. A sage indeed.
"How has America changed over Mr. Sowell’s lifetime? “Oh my God,” he responds, “that is truly a depressing subject.” He laments the “huge degeneration” and what he sees as the spread of “the grievance culture to low-income whites—and even to places like Great Britain.”
An idea has taken root “that you’re entitled to certain things, that you don’t necessarily have to earn them,” he says. “There’s a belief that something’s wrong if you don’t have what other people have—that it’s because you’re ‘disadvantaged.’ A teenage dropout mother is told she has a disadvantage. But if you’re going to call the negative consequences of chosen behavior ‘disadvantage,’ the word is corrupt beyond repair and useful only for propaganda purposes.”"
Excellent discussion on school choice and how it could move blacks that care about their kids to the R colum.
READ IT! I hope he lives to a 110 with all his faculties intact, however I intend to keep listening to him as if this was his last day!
When we live through history, we tend to not notice the major mileposts until they are well in the rear view mirror. I'm not going back to Gettysburg today, although I have been there both physically and intellectually. I will return to Brandenburg for a bit, because I think it is the most recent model that helps us understand the potential parallels to Trumps speech in Warsaw.
Reagan and his battle against the forces of socialism and communism had a very happy ending for those of us who believe in God, Family and limited government. I covered a good book on the subject here, a key quote from that book is a message between an East German leader and the leader of the USSR, Khruschev:
"The experience of the last years have proven that it is not possible for a socialist country, such as the GDR to cary out peaceful competition with an imperialist country such as West Germany with open borders".
My contentiion is that the forces of "progressiveism" are generally intelligent, (or at least their leadership is). There have been WAY too many historic (USSR, East Germany) and current (Venezuela, North Korea) examples of the failure of Godless Socialism to provide anything but both physical and spirital poverty to the bulk of the people under its control, but they feel their superior intellects are just too great a blessing to deny the masses their" benevolent" authoritarian rule. They know what the common man needs, FAR more thant he common man.
Trump calls out these adversaries here:
Finally, on both sides of the Atlantic, our citizens are confronted by yet another danger -- one firmly within our control. This danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles: the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people. The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.
Americans, Poles, and the nations of Europe value individual freedom and sovereignty. We must work together to confront forces, whether they come from inside or out, from the South or the East, that threaten over time to undermine these values and to erase the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are. (Applause.) If left unchecked, these forces will undermine our courage, sap our spirit, and weaken our will to defend ourselves and our societies.
Trump is making Trumpism, which is essentially a return to Western civilization, very clear in the above -- and here as well:
We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?
Our elite generally hates Western civilization, covered well here. Their attacks on this speech are largely along the lines of "Western civilization is Christian and white, and therefore exclusionary and racist, and it, along with Trump, must be repudiated".
Our MSM tells us that the Russians love Trump -- always have, helped get him elected, he is in their pocket -- lots of MSM stories on that narrative. Reminds me of when Reagan was totally dangerous buffoon for suggesting that the USSR would be "consigned to the ash heap of history". Gotta love our media -- always certain, frequently VERY wrong. They do however really understand that everyone needs a narrative. Push theirs, block their opposition -- anyone not worshiping at the progressive altar. Simple.
Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington intimately involved in the negotiations with the Americans, said he was surprised. "This is a U-turn in US policy," he said. "But first we expect the US to honour its commitments. If they don't they may have problems generating support for Afghanistan and on other things."
BO was certainly a reliable enemy to our friends and a reliable friend of our enemies.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has called the missile defense systems in Eastern Europe a "great danger." Putin also threatened to enhance Russia's own missile strike capability in response.
I have no doubt that Russia is always happy to cast doubt on our elections by any means possible -- leaking actual emails showing that Democrats rigged their primaries, colluded with the media on the debates, and colluded with the media to have Trump as their opponent certainly doesn't make our poltical system look "fair and balanced". Those of us not in thrall to "The Party" (TP-D) pretty much knew that already.
My contention is that the Russians fully expected Hillary to win like everyone else. My guess is that they were much happier with that prospect than with Trump winning because of things like the above and the fact that his policies are much more likely to make them have to confront a srtonger BOistan.
No doubt what they are REALLY unhappy about with Trump is that he is certainly going to "drill baby drill", "frack baby frack", and even put in pipelines to transport the oil! As one of the big energy producing nations, Russia HATES competition, and has spent millions of dollars trying to stop fracking.
Their main mission on this front (and ours in reverse) is to make us weaker -- and making it look like our elections can be "manipulated" is a great way to do that. So relative to elections, Russion mission accomplished. Relative to actual interaction on the world stage, not so much.
If a white Castile was high on pot, stopped, yelled out "I have a gun" and started reaching for it, he would be dead and outside of friends and family, nobody would know or care. Let's call him "White Castle".
Naturally, lefties will claim "profiling" ... the description of the robbery suspect was that he was black (eg black and male), so until we get to descriptions like "subject was humanoid, certain height, weight, etc", that will be a problem.
When people select their race, gender, and sometimes species, how can any observer make descrptions like "black, male, large, etc" ... I personally identify as 5'10", 180 lbs with a full head of hair. Certainly nobody in society would disrespect my right to identify as such -- however, it is quite likely that they might err in describing me were they not to check out what I identify as!
Perhaps we could name a program at the U to study this important area after Castile -- however, I'm afraid the combo of being stoned, smoke rolling out of your car and saying out of the blue "I have a gun" then reaching for it is likely to cause problems no matter what you may think you are.
In honor of the general surrealistic state of our world today, I vote we name the new program "Trans Lizard At White Castle" -- in honor of, well, the "reality" which our times have created.
I'll start out with two quotes from the linked article:
"The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. "
The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech—perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime—was his claim that “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.”
This is the Atlantic, so naturally the conclusion is that Trump is a racist using religion to increase paranoia. If you want that view, go read the article.
First, what is "Western"? At one time we would have all agreed it was "Western Civilization" ... Judeao-Christian, Greek, Roman, Enlightenment, England followed by the US as leadership in it's latter centuries. Now? Well, we will get to that, but "the modern enlightened" ("liberal", "progressive", etc) know they hate it. This is from this excellent article, "Yes They Really DO Despise Their Civilization".
I mean, really, how ignorant and provincial do you have to be, Messrs. Beinart and Bouie, to hear Trump’s speech and think of it as a #MAGA version of a Nuremberg Rally Address? Is the degree of self-hatred of the West required to be a virtuous, woke person such that you cannot tell the difference between Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus and the Horst Wessel Song? Do they really think Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation (all of which is available on YouTube, starting here) is a plummy version of Triumph of the Will? If standing against this kind of liberal insanity means I have to stand with Donald Trump, well, okay, I’ll stand with Donald Trump. I won’t like it, but at least Donald Trump doesn’t hate his own civilization.
So if you hate your own civilization, where do you go? We need a cartoon reminder:
What "other civilization" are they after? One without Trump and his "supporters"? They make it pretty clear that it IS NOT "Western Civilization", because that is "Christian and white". So what is it? Islam? Marxism? Black Lives Matter? I suspect they would vaguely say it is "A new fully tolerant, equal, secure, well educated (with progressive education), environmentally friendly, gender free, priviledge free, moral judgement free, etc ... culture/civilization".
I've not really heard them say in any detail though, and certainly not with any discussion of "how" -- essentially, the message of the left continues to be "pull the trigger, we will figure something out on our descent into the abyss" ... trust us. The police are playing the role of Western Civilization, the Terminator is "progressivism" ... they don't tend to honor their "promises", and they have some BAD feelings about Western Civilization!
As the quoted paragraph says -- it is pretty damned easy to support Trump as opposed to people that hate their own civilization, and maybe worse, consider civilization to be their enemy, and VERY disposeable in order to reach their goals.
The Trump Warsaw speech is WELL worth reading the whole thing -- here is my take on it (Hint, think Reagan at Brandenburg gate!)
Jonah Goldberg is having a tiff with the editors of NR over "What is America" (Rich Lowrey is editor in chief). The editors declare they would still love America even if it had a completely different set of ideals -- and Jonah apparently doesn't realize that the area of N America where the nation of America used to exist DOES have a completely different set of ideals -- which is why I call it BOistan.
Rich started by saying that America is a nation, not an idea. He then went on to demonstrate the ways in which America is a nation (it’s got borders and a people and a culture and the like). That’s fine with me, I suppose. I concluded a while ago that the “Nation vs. Idea” argument is poorly framed. If all you have to do is cite borders, roads, and a post office to prove it’s not an idea, then what’s the point?
Every philisopher understands neccessary vs sufficent. Philosophers all breathe, sweat, defecate, etc -- which are neccessary conditions. NONE of those is SUFFICIENT to call yourself a philosopher. All nations have borders, people, culture, post offices, etc -- those are neccessary conditions, not sufficient to being called "America".
"Idea, ideals, values, principles" -- The TRUTHS that America held to be self evident and endowed by GOD. To believe in America is to believe in divine founding -- else there are no transcendent truths, and America could not exist without transcendent truth. The founders certainly allowed people to live in the territory of America (the neccessary but not sufficient borders) without acknowledging God -- they were just to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and declare that the founding principles were self evident "just cuz" ... like created equal without any creator, rendering "equal" just another man made thought changeable by the only remaining moral authority when God dies -- power. "Might is right" with a ballot or a bullet.
Roe V Wade, Obergefell, BOcare, not impeaching Bill Clinton, 20 trillion in debt and a few hundred other things finally convinced me that "We weren't in Kansas (America) anymore".
The unwillingness of someone of Goldberg's stature to even recognize that we are fish swimming in a BOistani rather than American pond is traumatizing -- failure to recognize and accept reality is not a good sign for ability to remedy our situation. Jonah ends his column rather whimsically for such a serious matter.
Imagine one person tells you that his ideal form of government would be to get rid of the Constitution and make Kim Kardashian queen. You’d think that person is silly, probably even deranged. Now imagine that 270 million Americans believed that and, having the necessary supermajority to pull it off, voted away our Constitution. As the coronation of Queen Kim, First of Her Name, unfolded on every channel, would you not change your view of America, her culture, and her people? Might you not fall out of love with America as it is?
My hunch is Rich et al. would still love America, but you know what America they would love? The America That Was. They might even join the resistance to the regime of Queen Kim (I’m fairly certain Charlie would) in an effort to restore self-government to America. And here’s the funny thing: They’d be fighting against the American nation in the name of that great and glorious cause, the American Idea. And that’s the crucial difference.
It would really be nice to have a discussion about what ideas/values/truths/etc that we seek to return to -- I think we need a much clearer picture of the America that we see receeding away from us ... sort of a philosophical version of this shot of Queen Kim ... only in this case a picture of "The America That WAS" (TATW) receeding -- what would she look like in your mind?
Steve Scalise is back in intensive care listed as "serious" with infection concerns. While the MSM has pretty much forgotten the politically motivated assassination attempt because it is not "their team" that got shot, it would be nice if there really was still something more important that politics in BOistan.
We all heard that he was shot in the "hip / pelvis / bullet went through him / etc". Depending on just where, there is a LOT of bone, nerves, blood system and unfortunately bowel to increase the infection concerns.
Heavenly Father, God of all, we humbly pray for healing for our brother Steve Scalise, wisdom for the doctors attending him, and peace for his family. Please heal Steve and help our nation to see that only in you can we hope to continue on. In Jesus holy name, amen.
Along with the belief that ANYTHING can be legislated by government -- from health, to wealth, to happiness, to peace; -- the faith that what I like ought to be mandatory, and what I don't like should be criminal, is deep in the liberal psyche.
Philando Castile, high on weed with a gun, a girlfriend and kid in the back of a car has a traffic stop that isn't as fun as the Cheech and Chong version in "Up In Smoke".
In the big liberal spinner of "who / what to blame, cuz we are never responsible for even our own actions", this time the spinner came up "racist cops". This one happened to be hispanic, which seems inconvienient, but never mind -- that was the story, and they have stuck to it.
Weed causing a problem? Uh, like was I speeding man? ... You are parked! ... Wow, heavy man!
Back in the '70s, college kids liked to get stoned and listen to "Firesign Theatre" ... lots of speaker to speaker, foggy background stuff, odd interruptions -- just the stuff to make people stoned out of their gourd (and I use that term with apologies to gourds) giggle and laugh uncontrollably.
Without the "benefit" of mind altering substances, it seems a little well ... "odd", however the fact that is HILLARIOUS to stoners, might give some insight to the thought that driving while stoned and carrying might not be the safest way to go.
My suspicion is that the liberal brain is pretty much like Firesign Theatre 24x7 -- here is the "important part" of the fireworks ban column ...
I get that this might be annoying because this land is your land ('Merica!), but this land is also my land; it was made for you AND me (and our pets and veterans, and the people who want to go bed before you're done celebrating). So, regardless of how much we might love fireworks, I think it's time we find new ways of celebrating the Fourth and 24th of July.
There we have it ... fireworks scare dogs and veterans, so we need to ban them nationally and find "new ways" to celebrate the "4th and the 24th of July" -- hey, one day is pretty much the same as the next when you are stoned. Perhaps we could all go out, drive around with our guns while stoned and yell out "I've got a gun!!" to scare the cops if we are stopped.
Weed is safe, guns and fireworks are dangerous. Guns and fireworks give people weird ideas and cause them to do bad things. Weed has no such complications.
Ah, Washington DC, never will we find a more wretched hive of scum and villany.
I've come to believe that Trump's Tweets are the way that he beats the media at it's own game -- it allows him to keep them constantly chasing squirrels. However, if anyone actually is REALLY bothered by them, then quit being weak minded -- IGNORE THEM!
In this fake world we live in however, honesty, even with ourselves is rare in the extreme. "The Party" (TP-D), the media, the Deep State, the RINOs, etc hate Trump independently of mere tweets. They hate him vicerally and spiritually -- we are not talking mere "policy" here, we are talking metaphysical hatred at an existetial level. It is their hatred that gives him the primary power over them -- they simply CAN'T ignore him or anything he does -- no matter how small and meaningless it might be.
He tasks them -- he sticks in their craw. They will stop at nothing to destroy him -- and there, is the only slight advantage that he has. Their hatred has made them blind -- they are certainly more powerful, but while hate has a lovely way of making one feel "wise, moral, justified, proud, etc", it has a strong tendency (as does love in the opposite direction) to drive otherwise rational people deep into the ditch of emotional reasoning.
If the Republicans can't get this done, they don't deserve to lead!
SALT is a $100 billion YEARLY tax break to high tax states and cities. Surprise surprise it goes to the blue state wealthy. A full half of the break goes to California, Illinois, New York, Maryland, Massachusets and New Jersey! What's more, the richest 20% of taxpayers get 14x the benefit!
This is nothing but encouragement for higher state and local taxes -- low tax red states get to subsidize high tax blue states. KILL IT!
Government is a WHOLE lot more voracious than a T-Rex crossed with a velocirpator! Keep throwing it the life blood of your "enemmies" (how "The Party" views red states), and it just gets HUNGRIER!
Not a particularly good article, but I like it's introduction of the "precariat" -- part time conditional workers.
I grew up on a dairy farm where there were plenty of security concerns. My father tended to talk about the security of "union jobs" as the gold standard, however IBM in '78 was a place that seemed VERY secure to me and one didn't even have to put up with a union -- the idea of "seniority" vs pay for performance was always one of the things I hated most about the unions.
The fact is that even our next breath is ALWAYS precarious and not in our control. While we are all masters of rationalization, ANY idea of "security" outside of God is and always has been a fools errand. For tens of thousands of years, it was understood that the family, the church, and the immediate community were the closest thing possible to "security" in this life.
This of course does not fit well with state power and control. The state always seeks to become "god" -- either via a state religion, or by making the godless state to BE the religion as in BOistan. Today we have a criminal state over $20 trillion in debt with $130 trillion of unfunded liabilities on top of it that prints vast sums of money and tells us "there is no inflation". Sure, fake news and climate change are near gospel compared to that crock.
Never the less, for youth that have never experienced even the 20% stagflation of the late '70s, or even heard much first hand description of the last depression, the government "seems secure"? Why not just have the government guarentee us "everything" ... food, shelter, clothing, medical care, education ... possibly even enough guaranteed income for a little entertainment. Then we will all be "set with no worries" -- simple.
Here is the introduction to the "precariat".
"The “Bernie Bros” who made Sanders such a sudden and unlikely political force in 2016 were disproportionately young white voters who swelled the ranks of the precariat -- part-time, conditional workers. The numbers of such people is destined to grow with the emerging “gig economy” and the digitization of retail, which could cost millions of working-class jobs. Even university lecturers in Britain, notes the Guardian, fear that their jobs will be “Uber-ised,” a phenomena also seen at American universities.
For most Americans, the once promising “New Economy” has meant a descent, as one MIT economist recently put it, towards a precarious position usually associated with Third World countries. Even Silicon Valley has gone from one of the most egalitarian locales in the country to a highly unequal place where the working and middle class have, if anything, done worse (in terms of income) than before the tech boom."
The idea that the government can't fail is just one more of those wishful human dreams -- and so we are in a government bubble, and naturally, as in all bubbles, the biggest answer is MORE MORE MORE! (government in this case, however it could be stocks, tulip bulbs, houses, land, gold claims, etc ... bubbles are as much a part of human nature as the illusion we are "in control")
Government intervention has already drastically slowed the economy, raised the prices of everything (especially medical car), reduced the value of work, and come close to destroying the family, the church and the community. So it makes perfect sense that until the bubble bursts, more government is the obvious answer to EVERY problem!
The sort of sanctimony that Moyers exhudes is very special ... it reminds me of Garrison Keillor, or the most extreme of the sanctimonious in my far fundamental Baptist youth. Certainly the Scribes and the Pharisees had nothing on Billy M. It is **ALL** the fault of "the other side" ... in his view "the right". The following is a great summary paragraph of the view:
"This unenlightened, know-it-all mindset, completely impervious to conflicting facts and theories, is just not the stuff of rationality, progress and constitutional democracy. It is, rather, the stuff of superstition, cults and fascism. Fortunately, the brainwashed right constitute a minority — only 35 to 40 percent — of the American population. This is why Republicans have to cheat to win local, state and national elections. Because they can’t be honest about their self-serving, oligarchical motives, they have to resort instead to the most ruthless, unscrupulous, anti-democratic tactics: voter suppression (including voter purges), unconstitutional gerrymandering and dissemination of fake news."
Simmering just below his righteous angry surface is the horror that people believe in GOD! The genesis of "superstition, cults and fascism". "Only" 35 - 40% of our population has been "brainwashed" -- Moyers has to feel pretty good about THAT!
Billy obviously really hates Newt ... and Trump, and Reagan, and God, and well ... it's a long list. When one is completely rational, it rather strangely seems that hate and anger smoulder to the top. How strange.
No question that Moyers is WELL past his expiration date -- he used to be semi-known, but these days is more of your crank in the wilderness vs your crank on Public Television (ok, that is the widerness too, but he is deeper in the wilderness now). How the unhinged have fallen.
The level of smug "certainty" on the left is always trotted out so proudly -- and then, at the first hint of an actual discussion, they melt like the Wicked Witch into a steaming puddle of anger forced to be contained because their emotions have overcome them, they can not longer talk, and realize that any attempt at the violence seething out of them would only result in them getting their ass kicked.
I suppose it is some consolation that they can slink off to stew in their bile completely certain that it is "someone elses fault". There is always that. (see Hillary)
When you are the dominant political strain, you tend to spend the bulk of your time focused on those evil unwashed masses that hail from "the right" ... that strange set of morons that believe in God, freedom, families, hard work, personal responsibility, and trash like that. As William Buckly used to say of NPR, they were even handed -- they tended to cover both the left and the far left views with great detail.
Given US propoganda since 1950, it continues to mystify our media, educational institutions, entertainment industry and the vast state and federal bureaucracy that there STILL exist people out there in Red State flyover country that are not "of the body", better known as "The Party", TP-D. Why, it is almost like there is actually a God, and that people somewhere live in a reality with actual work and some divine grace bringing forth crops and energy to keep the lefties alive!
This article is a bit different -- it takes notice of the fact that there is a leftward fever swamp, and has been for a very long time. MoveOn.org, Daily Kos, Huffpo, Slate, etc. How odd for them to be bringing this up post Dan Rather letting the Fake News cat completely put of the bag back in '04, and just in the last couple of weeks, CNN giving 3 "star journalists" the heave ho over shall we say "imaginative reporting" on Trump / Russia.
The HuffPo was nice enough to take down the following ...
Just this month, editors were forced to delete a contributor post that began, “Impeachment and removal from office are only the first steps; for America to be redeemed, Donald Trump must be prosecuted for treason and — if convicted in a court of law — executed.”
Come on folks, we have seen the severed head, we certainly know that the left has wanted those that think differently executed since the French Revolution! Are we to think this is "new"?
It is WAY too long, and WAY too much navel gazing ... I got a good chuckle out of this:
Before we go on, let me try to quiet the cries of “False equivalence!” before they begin: No, these personalities and publications do not yet wield the same influence in the Democratic Party that their counterparts do in the GOP. But ignoring them would be a mistake.
Yes, those Democrats are might selective on their news sources -- I know they never stooped to Dan Rather in the past or CNN more recently. The big left wing fiction is that the NY Times is anything "better" that the left wing poltical believer version of "AM Coast to Coast!"
The tinfoil hat on a pink background WAS a very nice touch for the lead though -- gotta give them credit for that degree of self awareness!
Can it be any more obvious? This is the HEADLINE on the news today. Does ANYONE nationally, certainly not anyone that is not a hyperpartisn lefty really care if the Governor of New Jersy is overweight and wants to sit on a beach the weekend before the 4th? How many things are regularly closed down so the president can tavel or attend? Happens all the time -- who cares. Even being governor has it's occasional perks, though obviously not enough to get any privacy.
Is it possible that the Fake News Network has lost it's sense of caring to such a degree that they fail to see the self reference here? I assume they realize that Cristie is not the only one beyond caring.
The state can't give life, it can only take it away -- however, it KNOWS when it is best for you to die. The more power you give it, the more of EVERYTHING it takes from you -- until there is no freedom, no happiness, and no life save a state sancioned simulcrum of bureaucratically approved existence.
