Category: Culture

America Needs a Return to First Principles
How to revive U.S. vitality and confidence? Economists John Cogan and Kevin Warsh offer a way to think about what made the country prosperous. Pay attention to the ‘three I’s’—ideas, individuals and institutions.

The 21st century so far hasn’t been the best of times for America. First 9/11, then a financial crisis and deep recession, then a global pandemic without recent precedent. The economy has suffered, and politics has been upended. American self-confidence has been badly bruised, and public trust in institutions has plummeted. What can we do about it?

That’s the question that John Cogan and Kevin Warsh, both policy veterans and Journal contributors, asked themselves in September 2020 when prompted by former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice. She had just taken over as director of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, where both men are affiliated, and she made a pained but probing observation.

As Mr. Warsh tells it, Ms. Rice said that while “people know what we conservatives believe about economic policy, it doesn’t seem like we’re winning. It doesn’t seem like we’re persuading people.” American policy makers and businesspeople, and leaders around the world, “are less sure why we believe what we believe, and they’re less sure why they should believe it, too.”

The two men treated Ms. Rice’s lament as a challenge and set out to write what Mr. Cogan describes as “a call to action.” Titled “Reinvigorating Economic Governance” and just released, it outlines a policy framework based “on our nation’s foundational principle of natural liberty.” Governments at all levels, Mr. Cogan says, aren’t dealing effectively with America’s challenges: “It’s because economic policy has strayed from what I think of as the first principles.”

The two are well suited for the role. Mr. Cogan, 75, is an economist at Hoover who served in Ronald Reagan’s budget office and is the author of an encyclopedic book on the history of U.S. entitlement programs. Mr. Warsh, 52, worked in the George W. Bush White House and was a governor at the Federal Reserve during the financial crisis.

Their paper is optimistic, almost revivalist, in tone, even as it highlights the many faults with American policy. The U.S. economy, it states, “is among the most powerful forces for good in the history of humankind.” The authors credit the “micro-foundations of the economy” for having driven living standards “to heights unimaginable at the nation’s founding.”

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
For Americans who seek forward-looking inspiration, the lesson is simple: The nation-state, and the tangible flourishing of the nation-state’s people, must always come first. There is no more important lesson for a decadent, late-stage republic to imbibe.

The Great Sovereignty Reclamation Movement.

The great debates of our time are not exclusively those hard-hitting ones affecting human anthropology and political community—how many genders exist, what criteria we should look for in prospective immigrants, and so forth. Certainly, many of our most notable debates do implicate those most foundational rifts. But some of our other most politically urgent and galvanizing disputes revolve less around substantive questions, such as the nature of justice, than they do around one of the oldest procedural questions in the history of political science: “Who decides?”

A look around the world at this present juncture suggests an emerging consensus: Through our own internal deliberations and our own political processes, “we, the people” should decide the fate of our own nation-states. Recent or ongoing examples in Hungary, France, Ukraine, and Israel are instructive. For political actors paying attention here on the American homefront, there are clear and compelling lessons to take away.

In Hungary last Sunday, Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who had been facing relatively tight polling in the lead-up to the national election, cruised to a fourth term. Orban’s defiant national-conservative Fidesz party utterly dominated the unified opposition, which had included everyone from outright communists to full-on anti-Semitic fascists in a ham-fisted—and ultimately ill-fated—attempt to topple the government. Fidesz was wildly successful everywhere outside Budapest itself, and even gained seats in the parliament—this despite the sustained, yearslong campaign to decry Hungary’s alleged “democratic backsliding” from the New York Times, George Soros-funded nongovernmental organizations, and the other usual suspects.

The key lesson from Hungary: A proud nationhood is one that fights to secure its customs, folkways, and traditions from the overweening, heavy hand of the liberal imperium (here, the Brussels-based European Union).

Continue reading “”

Psaki again confirms she’s nothing more than a political hack that will say anything if the pay is good enough.
Trying to wrap my head around this level of insanity only brings me to the conclusion that since abortion is becoming increasingly more difficult to get in some states (and maybe soon nationwide), these pagans are still trying their best to sacrifice their children to their gods, and this goobermint is trying its best to aid and assist them.

White House’s Latest Threats Expose Depravity That Can Not Stand

If you were in a coma for the last decade and suddenly woke up, there’s likely nothing that would shock you more than how quickly radical transgender ideology has overtaken society.

Imagine hearing arguments in 2012 that children should not only be able to “choose” their “gender,” but that they have a civil right to physically mutilate themselves in response. Yet, that’s exactly where we are. As RedState has reported recently, calls for “gender-affirming care” have moved out of the fringe and firmly into mainstream Democrat politics.

But things are now shifting into an even more dangerous place, if one can even imagine that’s possible. While Republican-led states are seeking to limit the physical abuse of children through the use of “gender-affirming” surgeries which cut off the genitalia or breasts of minors, the White House is now threatening legal action in response.

“Today, in Alabama, instead of focusing on critical kitchen table issues like the economy, Covid or addressing the country’s mental health crisis, Republican lawmakers are currently debating legislation that, among many things, would target trans youths with tactics that threatens to put pediatricians in prison if they provide medically necessary life-saving health care for the kids they serve”…

…”But Alabama’s lawmakers and other legislators who are contemplating these discriminatory bills have been put on notice by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services that laws and policies preventing care that health care professionals recommend for transgender minors may violate the Constitution and the federal law.”

Understand what this means. Yes, it’s couched as the targeting of anti-child abuse laws in states like Texas and Alabama, which is crazy enough on its own. A state absolutely has the right to disallow certain medical procedures it deems demonstratively harmful and abusive (including abortion, by the way). But the implications here go much further.

If it is somehow illegal for a state to say that children can’t be given “gender-affirming care,” specifically in regards to the mutilation of their bodies, because those children have a “civil right” to such care, that means that parents who refuse to take such steps can be held liable as well. Recall that several years ago in Texas, we witnessed a high-profile case involving a father who not only lost custody of his son but was forced to help pay for the “transition.” The legal system is not going to protect parents as these precedents become more and more common.

This kind of thing can not stand. Republicans lost a lot of ground over the last several decades because they felt they could float above the fray and not get into the trenches of the culture war. But we’ve now moved past disagreements about adult behavior. These are children we are talking about, and the Democrat establishment is now wholesale endorsing the destruction of their bodies, not just in the womb, but throughout adolescence.

Remember when some Republicans argued that we must get rid of Donald Trump because he broke “norms and traditions.” Meanwhile, the White House is proclaiming it possibly illegal to not mutilate kids based on childhood confusion. Does that sound normal or traditional to you? Elections do have consequences, and there’s a big one coming up in November. Perhaps more importantly, right-thinking individuals (i.e. those who object to child abuse) have a chance in 2024 to retake this lost ground and solidify the ability of states to protect children.

If there’s one issue that animates voters for the next three years of elections, this should be this. Do not forget. Do not relent. Make them pay at the ballot box.

The notion is people are moving away from proggie controlled places to ‘free America’. Let’s hope they leave those politics behind them too.

More Bad Census News for Blue America.

Blue cities and states have lost ground since the spring of 2020.

The Census Bureau formally counts the population only once every decade, but it updates its population estimates annually. While those estimates are not always rock-solid, they reflect the best available data — more precise than moving-truck rentals — to show where our people are shifting.

The latest data add the population change for counties between mid 2020 and mid 2021, following the release in December of the population shifts for states. First, the grim national news:

  • “The population of the United States grew in the past year by 392,665, or 0.1%, the lowest rate since the nation’s founding.”
  • “33 states saw population increases and 17 states and the District of Columbia lost population, 11 of which had losses of over 10,000 people.”
  • “More than 73% (2,297) of U.S. counties experienced natural decrease in 2021, up from 45.5% in 2019 and 55.5% in 2020.”

With immigration sharply curtailed during the pandemic, Americans just aren’t reproducing fast enough to make up for deaths from Covid. Some of this is a temporary problem that should get a bit better as things reopen, but it also reflects long-term trends as birth rates fall. The United States remains in an enviable position: We can add as many people as we need just by letting in more immigrants, if we want. But depending too much on immigrants is a poor substitute for a more balanced approach to population growth built around more born-and-raised Americans.

 

(census.gov)

The boomingest place in America? Idaho. If we measure from April 2020, when the official census was taken, to July 2021, only ten states have grown their population by 1 percent or more:

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s seven states with Republican governors and Republican legislatures, one with a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature, and two with a Democratic governor and Democratic legislature. Of course, political leadership isn’t the only factor; who governs a state doesn’t even fully describe its governing climate, which may be built into long-standing laws. But the pattern is nonetheless pretty pronounced. Most of the growing are states in the Sun Belt or the Rockies with large religious populations.

By contrast, ten jurisdictions (eight states, D.C., and Puerto Rico) lost at least half a percent of their population:

Again, if we are keeping partisan score, the big blue states (New York, Illinois, and California) stick out along with D.C. and Hawaii as the top five slots on the list, with the Democrat-affiliated government of Puerto Rico in seventh place. The rest of the list includes two states with unified Republican governments, one (Louisiana) with a Democratic governor and Republican legislature, and one (Massachusetts) with a Republican governor and Democratic legislature.

(census.gov)

Drilling down to the county level, we see Idaho and the surrounding areas with the strongest growth, as well as big parts of Tennessee, east Texas, north Georgia, and most of Florida outside Miami, but also people fanning out of cities such as New York and D.C. to the surrounding suburbs. The Rockies and the southern Appalachians are doing strongly, as Americans literally headed for the hills; the big cities and the Mississippi Valley took a pounding, and no state suffered as uniformly between its big blue city and its red counties as Illinois.

The hardest-hit counties in population decline, reflecting remote-work patterns and rising crime and housing costs, were dominated by the big blue cities. Four of the top ten were Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and Brooklyn, plus San Francisco and neighboring San Mateo County, Boston, and Jersey City.

What do we see in the booming areas? A lot of communities like The Villages and Myrtle Beach, and nine of the top ten in Florida, Idaho, or Utah.

As I have discussed at some length before, Democrats dodged a bullet by having the census conducted as of April 2020, rather than after a year of pandemic, remote work, and progressive law enforcement. If we take the mid-2021 population figures and run them through the formula for reapportionment, two states gain an additional House seat (Texas and Idaho), while two lose a seat (California and Minnesota). That is likely a net gain of two seats for Republicans in the House, and almost certainly a net gain of two electors in the Electoral College in a normal year.

Without getting too far into the math, these are the districts that just make it, and the ones that just miss, if we run the 2021 numbers:

While California would lose a seat if reapportionment was done as of mid 2021, it would also not be that distant from losing two seats. That is a grim trend for the Golden State if it continues in that direction for the rest of the decade, even at a slower pace post-pandemic. New York may also continue its downward trend, which has been ongoing for quite some time; the state had 45 House seats in the 1940s. Florida and Arizona, by contrast, have edged closer to adding another seat just from growing their populations since the census. In terms of the national balance of political power, this seems like good news for Republicans — but help that won’t arrive until 2032.

At least in the political climate of the moment, if not a decade from now, one thing all of this suggests is that we may see shifts in the relationship between the national popular vote for Congress and the presidency and the outcomes, as the major blue states in the next few years are likely to represent fewer people per House seat than the major red states.

BLUF:
In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda.
What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.
The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public….

The Real ‘Reset’ is Coming

President Joe Biden believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a “new world order.” In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a “great reset.”

Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten us on taxes, diversity, and green policies.

When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.

There is a common theme here.

In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political Left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.

We saw that last year: fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.

These “new orders” and “resets” always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.

So we common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.

Hunter Biden’s lost laptop will be declared, by fiat, not news. In contrast, the fake Alfa Bank “collusion” narrative will be national headline news for weeks.

Middle-class lifestyles will be curbed as we are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.

In truth, we are about to see a radical reset – of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.

Continue reading “”

BLUF:
The public still has the will and the ability to organize resistance through protests, labor actions, and civil disobedience. Such resistance is essential for anyone who doesn’t wish to live in a dehumanizing and nightmarish dystopia.

The Great Reset Is Real

Communicable diseases have always shaped civilization. The consequences of an epidemic can last for centuries, and the outcomes of many wars have hinged on viral and bacterial infections. Smallpox, for instance, played a central role in the European conquest of the New World. During the American Civil War, nearly two-thirds of soldiers’ deaths were caused by diseases like dysentery and typhoid.

The spread of the bubonic plague through medieval Europe presents one of the clearest examples of how an infectious disease can alter the course of history. By some estimates, the Black Death killed 30 percent to half of Europe’s population. The plague severely shrank the peasant workforce, boosting its labor power. Attempts by the nobility to curtail this trend only fueled turmoil and peasant revolts. With reduced agricultural output, the merchant class gained influence at the nobles’ expense, setting the stage for the transition away from a land-based economy and the eventual disintegration of the feudal system.

From 2020 to 2022, we have witnessed an attempt to engineer a reversal of this historical development. Covid-19, a disease many orders of magnitude less deadly than the plague, has been deliberately exploited by ruling elites to bring about a neo-feudal order. This regression has so far been marked by diminished quality of life, sharply increased inequality, and the erosion of personal freedoms and civil liberties. Plans for digital IDs and central-bank digital currencies may further accelerate these developments, and the result will be total domination of a property-less underclass by ultra-wealthy elites and their expert class of technocratic clerics.

Much has been made of the World Economic Forum, its cartoonishly villainous chairman, Klaus Schwab, and the infiltration of various governments through its “Young Global Leaders” program. The focus on this particular group of actors is useful for illustrating how coalitions of financiers, corporations, and unaccountable nongovernmental organizations shape global policies. Schwab’s pet slogans—“the Great Reset,” “the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” “You will own nothing, and you will be happy”—are now a sort of shorthand for the effort to impoverish the world population and technologically expand elites’ control.

This agenda, however, doesn’t need to be tied to one particular organization or group of leaders. Elites’ desire to subjugate the rest of the world isn’t a “conspiracy theory,” but a pattern of class conflict evident from world history. The outcome of this conflict, now raging across a tangible battlefield as well as a digital one, will determine the shape of the world to come.

Continue reading “”

WaPo columnist says “fans of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have a new favorite word: ‘grooming'” … and I think someone hit a nerve.

You can always tell how insular a person has become in their politics when a term that has been used regularly regarding a topic that has been in the news for years strikes them as something “new.”
Of course, people who don’t share columnist Monica Hesse’s Bryn Mawr value system have actually been using the word for some time.
Okay, I shouldn’t be so hard on Bryn Mawr. After all, it has a politically diverse student body with only around 42% identifying as “liberal” and the rest identifying as Marxists.
Not only that, but, you know, grooming happens.
A lot.
Do a quick search and you find stories like these.
So, you’ll excuse us if we’re a tad sensitive about the teacher grooming issue.
I’m sorry, did I say “sensitive?” According to Hesse, it’s an obsession.
Anti-gay activists are obsessed with talking about “grooming.”
People wouldn’t be obsessed with talking about grooming if leftists weren’t obsessed with talking about sex with five-year-olds.
Elite NYC school is using the creepiest video of all time to teach first graders about masturbation and I have questions.

Of course, the most obvious question is, will there be an AP Program for the advanced students?

And note the term she uses to defame proponents of the Florida bill: “anti-gay activists.”
As is well known outside MSNBC newsrooms and the confines of blue-city newspapers, the word “gay” does not appear anywhere in the bill. Nor does “LGBTetc.”
Were Hesse truly interested in knowing what was in the bill, she would have bothered to read it. It’s very short and easily found. (pdf)
Of course, had she done that you know what would have happened.
Not only does the bill not have the word gay in it, but search for the words “gender” and “sex” (and its variations) and you’ll find they appear only twice each.

Continue reading “”

Poll finds Republicans would stay and fight, Dems less so

It’s not exactly breaking news that there are profound differences between Republicans and Democrats. We see them every single day, especially in how we view the Second Amendment.

Now, understand, there are pro-gun Democrats. There aren’t many of them, but they do exist and I’m more than prepared to stand side-by-side with them to defend our right to keep and bear arms.

But they’re the minority in their party.

Yet the Second Amendment was meant as a bulwark against tyranny, either domestic or from foreign invasion, which brings us to Ukraine. What if something like that were to happen here. Who would stay and fight and who would flee the country.

Well, Quinnipiac decided to ask in a recent poll, and the results are fascinating.

As the world witnesses what is happening to Ukraine, Americans were asked what they would do if they were in the same position as Ukrainians are now: stay and fight or leave the country?
A majority (55 percent) say they would stay and fight, while 38 percent say they would leave the country.
Republicans say 68 – 25 percent and Independents say 57 – 36 percent they would stay and fight,
while Democrats say 52 – 40 percent they would leave the country.

“When confronted with a terrible hypothetical that would put them in the shoes of the Ukrainians, Americans say they would stand and fight rather than seek safety in another country,” added Malloy.

Nearly half of Americans (49 percent) say the attack on Ukraine has contributed to them feeling anxious, while half (50 percent) say it has not.

1,374 U.S. adults nationwide were surveyed from March 4th – 6th with a margin of error of +/- 2.6 percentage points.

So more than two-thirds of Republicans and more than half of independents would stay and fight for their homes compared to more than half of all Democrats who would run.

Fascinating.

Continue reading “”

New firearm owners shaking up gun culture and American politics

HARRISBURG — Richard Reisinger, of New Bloomfield in Perry County, leaned in as David Walker of Savage Guns, a Massachusetts-based firearm company, showed him how to work a new innovation that allows the owner to adjust a gun for right- or left-handed users.

“I have grandchildren; some of them are left-handed, some are right-handed, so now if you purchase a gun, all you have to do is place this on the handle and it accommodates either, so you buy one gun and multiple kids can shoot it,” Mr. Reisinger said, admiring the practicality of the design.

“It is really nice.”

Mr. Reisinger — who was visiting the Savage booth at the Great American Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show complex recently — said he comes from a long line of hunters, a tradition he now enjoys with his grandchildren.

“I do a lot of whitetail hunting at the moment — but with grandchildren, I’ll take them out to hunt pretty much anything that they’re interested in. I love coming to the outdoors show because I get to see, and touch, and feel a lot of different firearms that I might be interested in down the road,” he explained.

Mr. Reisinger — like dozens of other people interviewed that day — said gun ownership is about a lot of things: “Putting food on the table and providing for my family, self-protection and the motor and dexterity skills it sharpens when you go target practicing. You meet more and more new gun owners all of the time; most of them said they bought their first gun for those exact same reasons … they found all of it personally empowering.”

This is a truth that conflicts with our culture’s misconceptions about who “the American gun owner” really is and what his or her motivations are for enjoying firearms. If you turn on the national news or log onto social media, you’re likely to find lawful gun owners portrayed as cultish, backwoods white males who have a gluttonous appetite for violence.

Gun owners see themselves quite differently — and their demographics and motivations don’t fit neatly into the stereotypes.

Despite the millions spent in digital advertisements by gun control advocates like former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the appeal of gun ownership is only increasing. Of all the firearms sold last year, 30% — 5.4 million purchases — went to new gun owners, according to a retailer survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

A new interest in self-sufficiency, caused by collapses in our supply chain, has also led to an explosion in applications for hunting licenses.

According to Stateline, a Pew Trust initiative, many states across the country saw a dramatic rise in both men and women taking a hunter safety class for the first time — with states like Michigan seeing a 67% hike in new hunting license buyers in 2021 compared with 2019, including a 15% increase in female hunters.

People who would never have considered owning a gun were now curious about hunting to provide for their families — and about target practice to learn how to defend themselves and their homes.

Continue reading “”

U.S. president Gerald Ford told Congress in 1974: “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” That goes for rights too.

Canada Shows Why It’s Called ‘American Exceptionalism’

It’s shocking to me that some people are surprised by how the situation with the Freedom Convoy went down. It was never going to end well, the odds of them winning were as long as a summer day for a very simple reason: Canada is not the United States.

That may seem obvious, and in the easiest way, it is. But in the way that matters most, it’s probably not that clear.

We have a tendency to think things that simply are not true, like the Iraqi people yearned to be free and democratic when in reality they simply wanted Saddam dead so they could return to settling ancient tribal scores. They had no idea what “freedom” meant, and the concept of individual liberty never occurred to them. It went over like introducing Sharia Law to San Francisco would.

One thing to notice about the coverage of the Canadian Freedom Convoy is how the American media, particularly from conservative outlets, didn’t reflect the will of Canadians. You’d think Justin Trudeau going full totalitarian, turning into a little Fidel Castro (like father, like son – look it up), would bring about a collapse in his popularity, but it hasn’t. Most Canadians were upset he didn’t act sooner.

Canada is not like the United States. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms grants Canadians various rights that, if you don’t think about it, are similar in a lot of ways to the rights we enjoy here. But there’s a major difference.

Our Constitution grants exactly zero rights to anyone, it acknowledges the rights with which we were born and denies the federal government the ability to infringe upon them. The Canadian Charter gives citizens certain rights, explicitly. If a government can grant rights, there is no justification for them not being able to take them away, temporarily or permanently.

When Trudeau invoked emergency powers, US conservatives recoiled in horror. Canadians did not.

Continue reading “”

It’s loonnggg, but still, RTWT
Warning, there is some amount of foul language used.

FISKING ANTON – BY IAN BRUENE

== BREAKING NEWS: Journalist maintains high word-to-knowledge ratio! More at 11… ==

A couple weeks ago an article was posted by a certain Michael Anton which contains one true and interesting point, drenched in enough manure to solve the coming phosphate supply issues before they ever get started. I meant for this to go up much sooner, but was busy and then caught Xi’s Death Rot.

Let’s dive straight in:

Regime propaganda is so ubiquitous that even if, like me, you make no effort to seek it out and even take steps to avoid it, you can’t help but notice that our masters have fastened onto a new narrative: the coming “civil war.”

This was the crux of all the maudlin, dishonest January 6 retrospectives, of several “think pieces,” and at least three new books: America is facing a second civil war and it will be started by the Right.

These first two paragraphs are the true and interesting part. The Enemy does indeed want a war, and wants us to fire the first shot to provide them with their casus belli.

But this is not new. Anyone who lived through or has read history of the 80s and 90s remembers the hysteria which was stirred up about “right wing militias”, where every policy and action seemed tuned perfectly to piss off the barely stable loose cannons on the right which the Enemy was *sure* existed in large numbers.

Continue reading “”

Jim Taylor often said that throughout history pagans have always sacrificed their children to their gods.

BLUF:
Leftists may claim to be secular but that’s not true. They just worship different gods—themselves, Gaia, criminals, etc. And their gods are hungry gods who demand young blood, which leftists seem awfully glad to provide.

In the 21st century, we’ve entered a brave new era of child sacrifice

In ancient times, pagans sacrificed children to propitiate angry, erratic, and inscrutable gods, hoping that giving up their most precious possessions would save the entire community. Leftists are still doing that, not just with abortion, but with their COVID policies and the madness of their decriminalizing crime.

Child sacrifice was normative across the ancient world. It was only the combination of the Torah’s proscription against human sacrifice (The Binding of Isaac, Genesis 22), combined with Jesus Christ offering himself as the ultimate sacrifice, that pagan societies eventually abandoned the practice.

Their reluctance was understandable. From one pagan culture to the next, their gods were motivated by the basest human emotions and, when triggered, were likely to visit drought, flood, earthquakes, hurricanes, famines, and disease on unwary humans who, somehow or other, offended these prickly deities. Whether as a preemptive bribe or an ex post facto apology, the offering had better be big, and what could be bigger than one’s children?

But we in the modern West are better than that, right? We’ve abandoned child sacrifice. We wouldn’t dream of killing children to appease a god. After all, most on the left don’t even believe in the capital “G” God and they’re probably materialists who don’t believe in small “g” gods either. Or do they?

Image: Aztecs sacrifice a child to appease angry gods (1499). Public domain.

A few stories got me wondering if leftists are quite the rational atheists they think they are.

Continue reading “”

Data shows there’s more diversity at a gun range than a university faculty lounge

“Gun-ownership in America is diversifying, because of safety fears,” says a headline over at The Economist. As those of us in the Second Amendment community have known for a while, the sociopolitical climate since the start of the pandemic – egregious criminal–coddling behavior by the state, releasing dangerous prisoners because of COVID, nationwide “fiery but mostly peaceful” riots, rising violent crime, looting / shoplifting, hate crimes, falling trust in law enforcement – contributed to a sudden surge in gun purchases by groups historically not inclined to own them. The Economist reported the following:

Of the 7.5m Americans who bought firearms for the first time between January 2019 and April 2021—as gun-buying surged nationwide—half were female, a fifth black and a fifth Hispanic, according to a recent study by Matthew Miller of Northeastern University and his co-authors.

The 7.5 million number may well be a low estimate; one estimate from the NSSF is that there were 8.4 million new gun owners in 2020 alone. As I’ve written before in these pages, adding up numbers for 2020 and the first half of 2021 points to a potential 11.6 million first-time gun owners. The team here at Bearing Arms has written a lot about growing diversity in the Second Amendment community. We see this not only in data collected nationally and over the long-term, but also experience it first-hand at gun ranges. (As an immigrant who grew up without guns and didn’t touch one well into his adult life, I’m living proof of this demographic shift myself.)

However, diversity is a whole lot more than ethnic bean counting or about the superficial differences – religion, sexual orientation, etc. – among us. What counts the most, in my opinion, is diversity of thought and opinion, and the ability to express those freely without the fear of retaliation or retribution. This is where I think gun owners are simply outstanding; respect for individual freedom, for not treading on someone else lest our freedoms be tread upon, appears to come naturally to lawful gun owners. There is some data on political diversity among gun owners. Anecdotally speaking, the gun owners at my local club cover the gamut from traditional blue-collar tradesmen to Ph.D. holders, from the MAGA coterie to Medicare-for-All supporters.

Contrast that with a typical university faculty lounge and the difference is night and day. There is hard data showing how limited diversity is among university faculty. They may look different, have different national origins or sexual orientations, but politically they are incredibly alike. There’s also plenty of publicly available data that shows how faculty donations to candidates for office is overwhelmingly left-wing. Consider these recent examples: 96% at Harvard University, 97% at Yale University, and 98% at Cornell University.

Continue reading “”

Better place for it anyway, although T.R. was an early progressive who gave credibility to later elitist progressives with tyrannical aims, like Woodrow Wilson.

Teddy Roosevelt Statue Bound for North Dakota After Being Removed From Outside Museum of Natural History in NYC

A statue of President Theodore Roosevelt that has stood outside the Museum of Natural History in New York City for more than 80 years was removed Wednesday night after complaints of racism and colonization.

The bronze statue was removed in pieces and is expected to be shipped to the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library in Medora, North Dakota, The New York Times reported. It is estimated to cost $2 million for the removal process.

No, Gun Culture Has Not Been Radicalized

In a single issue in March of 1961, Guns & Ammo ran ads for a “Sniper Model” Enfield Match rifle, a French 8mm machine gun (“used in two World Wars”), a Mannlicher military pistol, a U.S. .30 M1 carbine, and a police-ordnance Ingram Model 6 submachine gun chambered in .45 ACP (only $49.95!). If you’re surprised that these machine guns and high-powered military rifles were marketed to hunters in the 1960s, you might have unconsciously accepted a flawed but popular narrative about American gun culture.

According to this story, gun owners have only recently become “militarized,” thanks to the machinations of the National Rifle Association and its infamous leader, Wayne LaPierre. That military-style attitude has further resulted in a recalcitrant stance toward gun control and an obsession with armed self-defense.

There are many examples of this fable, but the most recent comes from the New Yorker, in a declaratively titled piece, “What Happened to Gun Culture.” As author Benjamin Wallace-Wells helpfully explains, gun culture has become “one of the most dangerous elements of the right” during LaPierre’s tenure.

“Military” or “militarization” appears nine times in the article, as Wallace-Wells claims that only since the 1990s have manufacturers been allowed to sell “military-grade weapons” and “market them as military weapons.” Ultimately, Wallace-Wells writes, LaPierre’s NRA “brainwashed an entire country” by transforming a political base of hunters into a “new, expanded audience of gun guys” who support a “maximalist defense of guns.” This new gun culture has spawned characters such as Kyle Rittenhouse, the January 6 rioters, and, most horrifically of all, Black Rifle Coffee Company.

As with all stories that attempt to shoehorn the history of a community into a convenient political narrative, this myth is mostly untrue.

Continue reading “”

The only thing really surprising is that the demoncraps feel ‘sporty’ enough to let what they’d like happen out in public.

COVID-19: Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated

While many voters have become skeptical toward the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.

A new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of voters favor President Joe Biden’s plan to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the employees of large companies and government agencies. That includes 33% who Strongly Favor the mandate. Forty-eight percent (48%) are opposed to Biden’s vaccine mandate, including 40% who Strongly Oppose the mandate. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Continue reading “”

No moderate utopia

A central theme that I often see in Idaho is to default to labels of extremism when discussing Idaho’s right spectrum.  It’s a regular occurrence to read op-eds suggesting that Idaho’s right has gone too far to the right and that what we really need is a broad center.  But studies from even left-leaning organizations like Pew consistently show that it is in fact the American left that has gone off of the rails. When billions in riot damage and dozens of murders by leftist organizations like Antifa and BLM are labeled mostly peaceful and downplayed, while January 6 is labeled tantamount to Pearl Harbor or September 11, Houston, we have a problem.

The primary issue with this assertion of extremism is who is making this assertion.  My friends, might I point out that it is the authoritarian spectrum that is making this assertion of extremism?

Continue reading “”

The Times May Be A-Changin’

Over time, we’ve seen changes in focus by the hoplophobic elements of society. Originally, it was all about banning handguns or at least “Handgun Control Inc.” The “assault weapon”, that is, the AR ban of 1994-2004 followed, with no discernible effect on crime, homicide, etc. Movement mutation continued, with groups dropping wording advocating bans, moving to claims of fighting pure “violence” and promoting gun “safety”.

Now they want to address “root causes” of violence instead of just restricting legal gun ownership, though still advocating extending background checks while “not taking anyone’s guns”. Intervening within high-crime communities, and with those at high risk of committing and becoming victims of violence, is appropriate, though far more difficult than they may imagine.

Throughout, we’ve had no reason to believe that these anti-gun activists have had any real change of heart. Their “conversation” always comes around to the desirability of somehow limiting the rights of law-abiding American gun owners in some way, even if in “just” creating more hoops to jump through in order to purchase, keep or bear our arms.

However, there is a fundamental factor that will trump all their intentions, both open and disguised. That is us, the people (and voters) of democracies. As Andrew Breitbart famously said, “Politics follows culture” and culture is changing. Much of this is due to the past 2 years of violence approved and applauded by “progressive” politicians who thought this would garner minority votes. Their groupthink about ethnicity blinded them to the reality that people of all ethnicities, communities and societies want crime stopped lest it hit them.

People are simultaneously realizing that they can’t count on being protected and must plan to do that for themselves. Thus the huge rise in gun purchases by more diverse buyers than ever, including women, minorities (especially African-American women) and self-described liberals. It’s been speculated that this increase in valuing self-protection with firearms may transfer to an increase in valuing Second Amendment rights—and now, that’s no longer speculation.

The Trafalgar Group, a non-partisan polling operation, just released a poll in which over 84% of respondents believed that “strict gun laws” either make no difference in or worsen the current surge in retail thefts. Less than 16% believed such laws can make this better.

In November, Quinnipiac found that 48% of those surveyed opposed stricter gun laws versus 47% who support them—following a trend beginning in 2015, now over the tipping point to plurality opposition. Gallup’s polling in November correlates, with a new low of only 52% of Americans caring that “laws covering the sale of firearms” should be stricter (down from a high of 64% in 2019, falling through 57% in 2020).

Meanwhile, ABC/Ipsos found that 66% of Americans disapprove of how President Biden is addressing gun violence (which could imply wanting more or less strict laws). Republicans’ opposition to more gun laws has strengthened, Democrats’ preference for more strict gun laws is lessening, predictably. But the most important political demographic—independents—have shifted dramatically in favor of, shall we say, individual independence on this issue.

In the latest National Firearms Survey published in July 2021, nearly 1/3 of respondents acknowledged owning guns, more than half of those carry them and almost 1/3 of them reported having to use them defensively in one or more of the estimated nearly 1.7 million episodes of self-defense. In 82% of these DGUs, it wasn’t necessary to fire. Almost 80% of these incidents occurred in the defender’s home or on their property, with the rest mostly occurring in public or at work, still a very substantial number.

NSSF also found that 49% more Hispanic Americans (no, none use “Latinx”) purchased firearms in 2020 than in 2019. With 40% of all gun purchases during the past 2 years coming from new gun owners, it’s no surprise that Hispanics (as well as African-Americans) are increasingly voting more for individual rights than for government “protection”.  In Berkeley, California, of all places, the Latino Rifle Association has grown by hundreds of members since 2020. Its “leftists . . . socialists, progressives” members realize that “The police and the government aren’t taking care of me, so I have to do things on my own.”

Funny thing, that’s what conservatives have recognized for generations. And a much bigger organization, the National African-American Gun Association, has added tens of thousands of new members since 2016, accelerating (along with many local gun clubs oriented toward minorities) during the past 2 years.

Even our less demonstrative Anglophone cousins, Canadians and Kiwis, aren’t cooperating any more with government orders to turn in their newly banned guns than Americans have. Neither are turning in their formerly legal, acceptable firearms—only 160 of an estimated 100,000 affected firearms have been surrendered in Canada in a year and a half. In New Zealand, the 2019 ban of most repeating arms “has had no impact on a rise in gun crime and violence”, except for a steadily increasing rate of the offense of still possessing such firearms.

This is precisely the cultural change that precedes and triggers political change. Most Americans already knew that protecting individual rights is the uncompromisable basis of the success of American society and polity. Many others know that now and more are learning. While Donald Trump improved the Republican share of the Black and Hispanic votes (especially among men), this wasn’t about him or the party. It is about the importance of each person’s rights as an American.

Most expect that the Supreme Court will affirm the Second Amendment with a ruling in Bruen voiding New York City’s may- (= non-) issue handgun carry permitting, along with the 8 other states that persist in that tyranny. The “progressive” left will keep caterwauling if they don’t get their way. But should the decision go otherwise, their wailing would be nothing compared to the anger of the majority who are now convinced that individual rights are more important than political correctness. And that would assuredly lead to even greater political change in favor of ensuring those rights.

To paraphrase St. George Tucker, “the true palladium of liberty” isn’t just “the right of self-defence.” The right to keep and bear arms for the purpose of self-defense and opposing tyranny is necessary to a free people in a free state. But it is a means to the goal, along with representative democracy lustily embraced, which is “to keep our republic” (h/t B. Franklin). The ultimate mark of liberty is individual autonomy, where the rights of the individual are placed above government’s privileges, which are only bestowed by us individuals.

Third Worldizing America
Our elites, like the Third World rich, have mastered ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst.

In a recent online exchange, the YouTuber Casey Neistat posted his fury after his car was broken into and the contents stolen. Los Angeles, he railed, was turning into a “3rd-world s—hole of a city.”

The multimillionaire actor Seth Rogen chastised Neistat for his anger.

Rogen claimed that a car’s contents were minor things to lose. He added that while living in West Hollywood he had his own car broken into 15 times—but thought little of it.

Online bloggers ridiculed Rogen. No wonder—the actor lives in multimillion-dollar homes in the Los Angeles area, guarded by sophisticated security systems and fencing.

Yet both Neistat and Rogen accurately defined Third Worldization: the utter breakdown of the law and the ability of the rich within such a feudal society to find ways to avoid the violent chaos.

After traveling the last 45 years in the Middle East, southern Europe, Mexico, and Asia Minor, I observed some common characteristics of a so-called Third-World society. And all of them might feel increasingly familiar to contemporary Americans.

Whether in Cairo or Naples, theft was commonplace. Yet property crimes were almost never seriously prosecuted.

In a medieval-type society of two rather than three classes, the rich in walled estates rarely worry that much about thievery. Crime is written off as an intramural problem of the poor, especially when the middle class is in decline or nonexistent.

Violent crime is now soaring in America. But two things are different about America’s new criminality.

One is the virtual impunity of it. Thieves now brazenly swarm a store, ransack, steal, and flee with the content without worry of arrest.

Second, the Left often justifies crime as a sort of righteous payback against a supposedly exploitative system.

So, the architect of the so-called 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, preened of the summer 2020 riotous destruction of property: “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.”

Third Worldization reflects the asymmetry of law enforcement. Ideology and money, not the law, adjudicate who gets arrested and tried, and who does not.

There were 120 days of continuous looting, arson, and lethal violence in summer 2020. The riots were variously characterized by the burning of courthouses, police precincts, and an iconic church.

And there was also a frightening riot on January 6, where a mob entered the Capitol and damaged federal property.

Among those arrested in the latter Washington, D.C. violence many are often held in solitary confinement or under harsh jail conditions. That one-day riot is currently the subject of a congressional investigation.

Some of those arrested are still, 10 months later, awaiting trial. The convicted are facing long prison sentences.

In contrast, some 14,000 were arrested in the longer and more violent rioting of 2020. Most were released without bail. The majority had their charges dropped. Very few are still being held awaiting capital charges.

A common denominator to recent controversies at the Justice Department, CIA, FBI, and Pentagon is that all these agencies under dubious pretexts have investigated American citizens with little or no justification—after demonizing their targets as “treasonous,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists,” or “racists.”

In the Third World, basic services—power, fuel, transportation, water—are characteristically unreliable: In other words, much like a frequent California brownout.

I’ve been on five flights in my life where it was announced there was not enough fuel to continue to the scheduled destination—requiring either turning around or landing somewhere on the way. One such aborted flight took off from Cairo, another from southern Mexico. The other three were this spring and summer inside the United States.

One of the most memorable scenes that I remember of Ankara, Old Cairo, or Algiers of the early 1970s were legions of beggars and the impoverished sleeping on sidewalks.

But such impoverishment pales in comparison to the encampments of present-day Fresno, Los Angeles, Sacramento, or San Francisco. Tens of thousands live on sidewalks and in open view use them to defecate, urinate, inject drugs, and dispose of refuse.

In the old Third World, extreme wealth and poverty existed in close proximity. It was common to see peasants on horse-drawn wagons a few miles from coastal villas.

But there is now far more contiguous wealth and poverty in Silicon Valley. In Redwood City and East Palo Alto, multiple families cram into tiny bungalows and garages—often a few blocks from tony Atherton.

On the main streets outside of Stanford University and the Google campus, the helot classes sleep in decrepit trailers and buses parked on the streets.

Neistat was right in identifying a pandemic of crime in Los Angeles as Third Worldization.

But so was Rogen, though unknowingly so. The actor played the predictable role of the smug, indifferent Third World rich who master ignoring—and navigating around—the misery of others in their midst.

Refugees from Communist Countries Are The Canaries In The Coal Mine

What we learn from history is that we do not learn from history.” — Hegel

In the classic movie Alien, the crew of a spaceship accidentally brings a small specimen inside their ship when they land on an uncharted planet. As they resume their voyage, the alien transmogrifies into a bigger and deadlier form and begins to kill the crew one by one. At wit’s end, the few remaining crew members ask their android how to kill it. In a tone of incredulity, the android answers back, “You still don’t know what you’re dealing with, do you?”

People such as myself who have lived in countries controlled by Communist totalitarian regimes are thoroughly acquainted with their characteristics: censorship, divide-and-conquer tactics, fraudulent elections, mutilation of the arts and science, forbidding books, sadistic repressions, absence of comedy, snitching to authorities by friends and family members, constant propaganda, rewriting history books, toppling statues, relentless fanaticism, the rule of law jettisoned, political prisoners, self-censorship, propaganda posing as news, ruining the country’s economy, distorting the meaning of words. We can smell the stench of Communism, the plague of the 20th century, a mile away.

Except we can smell it here. Now.

We are the canaries in the coal mine.

I can give hundreds of instances of the above characteristics being carried out in America, which have been increasing in frequency and intensity. However, most people are unaware of them because the major propaganda outlets (CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, etc.) ignore them and, on the other hand, conservatives are notorious for only preaching to the choir and stubbornly and stupidly not reaching out to the general public because they are so lazy.

Equally affected by the news blackout of the propaganda outlets are the frantic warnings from immigrants from Communist countries. On several other occasions in various conservative outlets, I have expressed my alarm at what is happening and I could repeat myself here. Instead of writing yet another article sounding the alarm that the barbarians are not at the gates, but inside the gates, I will cite other refugees and dissidents if for no other reason that their voices deserve to be heard by more people, contrary to the efforts of the media hivemind to suppress them. Some may object to my merely listing their voices and that it is a long list. Well, the point is that it is a long list. So, you should pay attention.

Continue reading “”