For Our Leftist Elites, the Double Standard’s Meant to Be Blatant. That’s the Point

I came to understand our political situation today by watching gorilla documentaries. Let me explain.

At day’s end, when I’m exhausted, I wind down by finally turning on the television. The last things I usually watch are nature films, on the diverse, fascinating, and mostly apolitical channel CuriosityStream. For a grand total of $12 per year (as of now), you get access to thousands of polished, beautifully produced documentaries on every subject from ancient history to contemporary science. It’s the best entertainment money I’ve ever spent.

Invariably, I look for animal films. First of all, I’m a sucker for God’s innocent creatures, especially the furry ones. But I take delight in all the evidence of direct, Divine design all through the animal kingdom — from speeding sharks to circling condors. I do wish CuriosityStream would air some programming from the Discovery Institute. Its scientists do much better explaining nature via design than Darwinists do with their “just so” stories and smuggled-in teleology. (“Evolution developed the eagle’s eye to make it a better hunter… .”)

The Pyramid Is the Point

One thing I notice among most higher mammals, especially primates: the almost universal preoccupation with hierarchy. In some species, only the highest status female gets to breed. Once she claims that position, usually by bullying other females, it goes mostly unchallenged. But much more prevalent are species where the status that matters is male. The dominant male collects a harem of she-gorillas or sea lionesses, and fathers all the group’s children. Lesser males steer well clear of females, and accept the scraps from hunts, lest they summon the alpha male’s wrath. Often the dominant males will go out of their way to humiliate their lesser brethren, just to remind them who’s boss.

And that’s how to understand what’s happening politically right now in America.

Continue reading “”

From last May, but as on point now, as then.
RTWT (Read The Whole Thing)


The Great UnReason of 2020: The ‘Curious, but Quite Authentic, Inability to Think’

Upon the Nazis’ rise to power, Hannah Arendt, a Jewish woman who would go on to become a considerable 20th century philosopher, had to flee with her family from her native Germany.

Once the war was over and some prominent Nazis were brought to justice, Arendt attended the trial in Jerusalem of Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the Holocaust.

The experience left an indelible impression upon her, one that would shape the trajectory of her philosophical thinking.  What she observed was that, much to her surprise, Eichmann wasn’t the incarnation of evil that she expected to encounter.  His actions were monstrous, yes; but he was remarkably ordinary or “banal,” to use Arendt’s term of choice.

What struck Arendt was Eichmann’s “curious, but authentic, inability to think.”

However monstrous the deeds were, the doer was neither monstrous nor demonic, and the only specific characteristic one could detect in his past as well as in his behavior during the trial and the preceding police examination was something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but a curious, quite authentic inability to think.” 

Eichmann didn’t subscribe to any “theory or doctrine,” exhibited no “particularity of wickedness, pathology, or ideological conviction;” his “only personal distinction was a perhaps extraordinary shallowness.”

Note, Arendt did not intend her characterization to be interpreted as commentary upon Eichmann’s IQ.  Nor, for that matter, did she mean to suggest that he was literally incapable of thinking critically.  Rather, her point was that Eichmann showed no will to think beyond the clichés—the memes, bumper sticker slogans, and hashtags—of his day.

Continue reading “”

Okay, as requested:


Think what it says about the nation when half the people give the rioters who loot and burn private property a pass, even after more than $2 billion in damage is done to homes and businesses.
The left and its antifagoon blackshirts occupied city blocks and still control two “autonomous zones”, but when a government building that is the seat of power was infiltrated and occupied, it’s the worst day in modern history.

Leftist rioters attempted to burn down a Federal building in Portland. Leftist rioters vandalized statues and Federal monuments.
When Trump deployed federal law enforcement to protect the Lincoln Memorial and Portland Federal Courthouse, he was literally called the new incarnation of Hitler.

When the right breaks into the Capitol, and doesn’t set one fire or throw one Molotov cocktail, spray paint one slogan, or destroy one statue, the call is unanimous to arrest and prosecute them to the end of the earth them lock them up and throw the key away.

We cannot have two sets of laws and two codes of behavior in this country. It didn’t work in France in the 1790s, Russia in the 1910s, or what used to be Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

We have to return to one standard or this will happen again.

What we saw yesterday was as much a ‘People’s Revolt’ as anything else.

If you want to stop such, you have to stop treating standard operational people like dirt, and the first step there is to listen to them and not just blow them off as rednecks who live in ‘flyover country’.

Maybe some Austinites are getting fed up the demoncrap politics.


Republican Mackenzie Kelly Wins Austin City Council Runoff. Local Paper Declines to Cover It

In a stunning upset, Republican Mackenzie Kelly defeated Democrat incumbent Jimmy Flannigan in Austin’s District 6 runoff Tuesday. Kelly ran on a platform that includes restoring police department funding and ending the city’s permissive homeless camping ordinance. She won with 52% to Flannigan’s 48%, a margin of just about 700 votes overall.

Kelly’s win, and Republican Jennifer Virden’s near-win in District 10, may signal a major shift in Austin voters’ thinking. The Democrat-dominated city was already up in arms over the homeless camping ordinance, which allows homeless people to camp just about anywhere they want all over the city (except city hall) since the council passed it unanimously in the summer of 2019. That has led to encampments under overpasses and even on the fringes of neighborhoods all over Austin. Those camps are unsanitary and unsafe; one of them recently burned. Continue reading “”

Gallup: Churchgoers Only U.S. Group That Avoided 2020 Mental Health Decline

According to a Gallup Poll released on Monday (7th), frequent church attendees were the only group in the U.S. that did not experience a mental health decline in 2020.

Gallup has conducted its November Health and Healthcare Survey annually since 2001. The 2020 results show 34% of Americans consider their mental health “excellent,” and 76% consider their mental health “excellent/good,” both are all-time lows.

Forty-six percent of Americans who regularly attend religious services said their mental health is “excellent,” an increase from last year’s 42%.

‘Hillbilly Elegy’ critics show they still despise ‘deplorables.’

Elites won’t allow any sympathy for poor whites

Netflix’s new adaptation of JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy” is devastating for the left’s political narrative. How do I know that? Because so many leftists are trying to keep people from watching it.

Critics complain that the movie has too many noble country folk — though neither Vance’s 2016 memoir nor the film version is exactly focused on nobility as such. They even gripe that the autobiography of a white guy from the hill country doesn’t have any major black characters. Well, yes.

For a film made out of a bestselling book by a well-known liberal filmmaker (Ron Howard) and featuring Glenn Close, Amy Adams and Gabriel Besso, the movie seems surprisingly controversial. And why? Because, as I mentioned above, it’s devastating for the left’s political narrative. Continue reading “”

BLUF:
It appears it will remain for the Christian underground and other resistors to stand up and be counted.  It will be the task of Christians to understand the Left is and always has been committed to the death of God and of joy. Certainly, those who believe the celebration of the incarnation of Christ should not be impeded by the State must stand up.

It also will be up to Christians to think of their fellow human beings, including those who do not share their belief in the coming of Jesus Christ. They must think of their neighbors — the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick makers who simply want to succeed and live quietly.

Resist the left’s attempt to condition Americans to accept a joyless life without holidays except those permitted by and celebrating the god of the State, who tells Christians and others who to worship.  Resist those who issue orders about when and where to celebrate, how and when to hold our religious ceremonies, and even when, how and what to chew and swallow.

Believers in Christmas have reason to celebrate!  So…celebrate!

Happy Thanksgiving and a very merry Christmas to all

First, They Came for Thanksgiving; Now They Are Coming for Christmas

Kate Brown, the Governor of Oregon, was rather ambivalent in her approach to violence during the time Portland was torched by radical mobs.  In fact, she thanked “Oregonians for expressing their free speech rights largely through joyful celebrations…”

But Gov. Brown apparently did some soul searching since the election.  She found a joyful celebration about to be held by unquestionable enemies of the people.  It turns out actual domestic terrorists are Oregonians who wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It’s extremists who wished to dine on turkey and all the trimmings who are dangerous, as they are potential super-spreaders of disease and destruction.  Therefore, it’s Thanksgiving celebrations that need to be tightly regulated. It’s Thanksgiving celebrants who need to be fined and sent to jail if they transgress the regulations the governor has established by executive order.

Among those regulations?

Private social events are to be limited to two households or six individuals in a closed group (including Thanksgiving); masks are to be worn in your own home on Thanksgiving, only removing them when eating; and you are not to leave your home during the two-week shutdown. Consequences include a fine of $1,250 and possible jail time. Neighbors should report non-compliance.

It is hard to avoid the suspicion the Governor wants the bulk of citizens locked within their domiciles while radicals once again roam free to wreak havoc.

The tight regulations during the holidays do make one think about the examples of the Soviet Union and the Peoples Republic of China. Continue reading “”

Lockdowns Are “Saving” Our Seniors? From What, Exactly?

Elderly citizens are exceptionally vulnerable to COVID-19. Ninety thousand, or 36% of official deaths, have been recorded in long-term care facilities. Strategies like lockdowns are intended in part to protect this population from the ravages of the virus.

But saved them from what, exactly?

As reported by The Associated Press, “[A]dvocates for the elderly say a tandem wave of death separate from the virus has quietly claimed tens of thousands more, often because overburdened workers haven’t been able to give them the care they need.”

A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country’s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those “excess deaths” beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March. [Emphasis mine.]

In too many cases, stopping a COVID death has meant isolation, loneliness, and neglect in the patient’s last months.

I had occasion to share my thoughts on senior care back in September. Eldercare was a daily reality for me from 2014 until 2017, when both my parents passed away a few months apart.

Mom spent the last three years of her life in a nursing home. She was slowly slipping away with dementia, but remained as a sweet teenager still in love with my Dad to the end. He saw her nearly every day, but was unable to take care of her. These Depression-era savers lived modestly, which meant at the end Mom could afford a private sitter — an extra set of eyes and ears to insure proper care — in addition to the considerable expense of private nursing care.

There are good nursing homes and not-so-good nursing homes, but in the end, each one is a business. In 2017, my parents could afford a good sitter; with dementia, it’s more about preserving the patient’s dignity than it is about prolonging their life.

Take away visits from family and friends, and standards are bound to suffer.

Dad, by contrast, had all his faculties. We moved him into assisted living, a wonderful place where he made new friends. He never got used to the “chow”, as he called it. In his last three years, I listened to his old Navy stories many times over and came to appreciate just how socially engaged he was. … In a lockdown, Dad would have felt just as depressed and isolated as Mom [because he would have been denied his daily visits to her nursing home]. It may have been worse for him because he had the capacity to understand.

My parents died in their 92nd year, their 73rd year together as husband and wife. Neither was afraid to die. Toward the end …

… Dad became more patriotic than ever. He would tear up at the sight of a flag, and military displays on TV invariably caused him to weep openly. He spoke constantly of how he cherished our God-given freedoms and how his grandchildren and great-grandchildren represented our nation’s future.

Our nation has blundered in this pandemic because we have focused on counting that which is easily counted: COVID deaths and infection rates. Our strategy has been to keep those numbers low at all costs. When you’re an epidemiologist, every problem looks like a novel coronavirus.

Who is keeping score of the diffuse (but real) negative costs of our response? Not just hidden nursing home deaths, but suicide, drug overdose, domestic abuse, depression, anxiety, and mental illness are part of the tally. So are the consequences of delayed and deferred health care.

It remains to be seen if the vaccines will be effective and for how long. Political leadership seems to be slouching toward renewed lockdowns. We need clear-headed leadership who realizes that dealing with COVID is not a one-dimensional problem; interminable rolling lockdowns are of limited use.

At some point, we must get back to normal.

Survey Finds Gen Z Most Likely To View Faith As VIP In Pandemic

Three-fourths (74 percent) of Gen Zers surveyed recently by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty view religious faith are either somewhat or extremely important to them in dealing with the Covid-19 Pandemic.

“Surprisingly, Gen Z respondents, who across polls tend to be less religious and least at risk during the pandemic, were also much more likely than the average to say faith and religion had been extremely or very important,” the Becket survey said in its summary.

Gen Z individuals were born between 1997 and 2012, meaning the oldest member of the generation is now 23 years of age. Continue reading “”

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” ~ Cicero

Few Students Know Anything About Our Civilization

Most American high school and college students can hector you all day long about an array of “social justice” issues, but if you asked them anything about the roots of our civilization in ancient Greece and Rome, you’d get a blank stare. Of course, that’s because their coursework fills their heads with trendy politics and neglects subjects that used to be the pillars of educated citizens.

A recent report published by the Independent Institute makes that point and in today’s Martin Center article, Shannon Watkins focuses on it.

Rather than the blatantly misleading “1619 Project,” the authors of the report argue in favor of a “490 B.C. Project,” that being the date of the first great clash between the Persian Empire and the Greeks. The authors say, “Our ideas about democracy, the idea that there is a natural law for all human beings, the question of whether slavery is natural, all come from the ideas and politics of the Greek poleis. Both Greece and Rome wrestled more than two thousand years ago with what citizenship meant, what freedom meant, what justice meant— just as we wrestle with them today.”

Watkins writes, “At UNC-Chapel Hill, for instance, students can fulfill the ‘Historical Analysis’ general education requirement by taking either a class on ‘Classical Greece’ or one on ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Histories in the United States.’”

She concludes, “At the university level, it is not enough to simply offer courses on the classical world. Students need guidance and should not be expected to discern what general knowledge is the most essential for them to learn to be well-formed thinkers and responsible American citizens.”

 

BLUF:
If so, this new definition justifies animus toward you. It‘s now okay to hate you for “clinging” to beliefs deemed unacceptable.

“Bigot” has been given a new dictionary definition and it TOTALLY isn’t aimed at you ?

2+2=4
Now that we have that out of the way, there’s a new update on the coming Orwellian dystopia. Take a gander:

Yes, the Oxford Dictionary, used by Google in this case (and thus the foremost definition anyone on the interwebs will see) has updated their definition of “bigot.”

The historical definition was someone who was “intolerant toward those holding different opinions.” Even this definition has a bit of post-modern flare, since all people with common sense reject opinions contrary to morality and logic, but it’s still vague enough to encompass the general truth of the meaning.

The term “bigot” dates from the 16th century, and its historical meaning was “sanctimonious person” or “religious hypocrite.” Its meaning expanded outside religious connotation by 1680.

Historically, a bigot would be a hypocrite who refused to listen to or tolerate any viewpoints other than their own. You might also call such a person obtuse and unagreeable. Today, the word is applied to anyone who doesn’t follow the diktats of the Woke mob; hence why a Christian believing in 5,000 years of biblical teaching on marriage is deemed a bigot for opposing a transgender two-spirited furry that wants to marry xi/xer chandelier.

The new definition leaves little doubt that this inference is being taken further by the intelligentsia that want you to know what to believe and think: Continue reading “”

The left is again showing that it can’t stand anyone who disagrees

This year’s presidential election hasn’t provided the catharsis that many on the left were awaiting. Instead of the hoped-for “Blue Wave,” we have a still-too-close-to-call presidential election, while Republicans picked up House seats and appear to have held on to the Senate.

One response might be self-criticism: to wonder how, after four years of single-mindedly trying to get rid of Trump and marginalize his followers, things didn’t go better. Instead, Democrats’ thinkers seem to be asking themselves variations on “How can I live in a country where half the people supported Donald Trump?”

According to the Campus Reform Web site, professors around America were expressing anger and claiming to feel “genuinely unsafe, given the sheer number of people willing to vote for Trump.” Some canceled classes for the rest of the week, apparently because of the emotional strain.

An article in The New Republic by Andrew Cohen asks: “What do we do with all these Trump supporters?” (Spoiler: “Learn to live with them and respect your differences” isn’t on the agenda.)

Instead, Cohen writes about “one of the most grievous if underappreciated wounds of the Trump era: the sad discovery for so many of us over the past four years that so many of our friends, neighbors, business partners and heroes are not who we thought they were.”

Cohen worries, “No one really has a good solution about how to strongly and honorably respond to the Trump supporter in our lives. Do we forgive and forget? Turn the other cheek after it’s been slapped?”

CNN’s Don Lemon offered one possible answer: He said on air that he “had to get rid” of friends who support Trump, because “they’re too far gone.”

In The Atlantic, meanwhile, Tom Nichols worries that “a large portion of the electorate chose the sociopath.”

“Sadly, the voters who said in 2016 that they chose Trump because they thought he was ‘just like them’ turned out to be right. Now, by picking him again, those voters are showing that they are just like him: angry, spoiled, racially resentful, aggrieved and willing to die rather than ever admit that they were wrong. . . . It’s clear now that far too many of Trump’s voters don’t care about policy, decency or saving our democracy. They care about power.”

Well, to be fair, elections are about power. That’s certainly something that Democrats have traditionally understood. But then Nichols turns to racism, arguing that “although Trump appears to have received a small uptick in votes from black men and Latinos, the overwhelming share of his supporters are white.”

Well, to be fair, America is a majority-white country, so pretty much any mass movement — certainly including the progressive movement — is likely to be majority white. (Have you seen a Bernie Sanders rally?) But Nichols’ pivot to racism and talk of “the obsessions of white anxiety” provides a clue to what’s going on.

Moral superiority is an addictive drug, and perhaps the most unfortunate legacy of the Civil Rights era is that it got people on the left dependent on moral superiority for their self-esteem. It was easy to feel superior to the likes of Orval Faubus and Lester Maddox, and it felt good.

But once you become dependent on moral superiority, you need moral inferiors. Thus, every issue must become one of great moral urgency, in which the people who disagree with you are not simply wrong, but actually evil.

It’s even better if you can think of them as being stupid as well, since that lets you think of yourself as smart.

This was nicely encapsulated by photographer (and class-war expert) Chris Arnade. Asked “Why did anyone vote for Trump? Anyone?” Arnade replied: “Cheap answer is, some people are frustrated that a professor of philosophy makes three times what they do for cleaning their house, or making sure they are supplied with electricity, or keeping them safe from muggers, or cooking them Pad Thai, only to then be talked down to” and “scolded.”

People can tolerate differences in wealth and power. Sanctimonious scolding is less tolerable. And treating half the nation as moral lepers is itself a moral failing.

And, as Arnade suggests, bad politics as well.

Number of Pro-Life Women in the House of Representatives DOUBLES in Blow to Pelosi

Pro-abortion Democrats often condemn pro-life Republicans as misogynistic, attempting to give male legislators control over women’s bodies. Yet after the 2020 elections, the number of pro-life women in the House of Representatives will double as another pro-life woman enters the U.S. Senate.

“The surge of victorious pro-life women candidates in the U.S. House is a stunning blow to Nancy Pelosi and her pro-abortion agenda,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement. “So far, we have more than doubled the number of pro-life women in the House, with more races to be called. Seven pro-life women candidates flipped pro-abortion Democrat-held seats.”

All 11 pro-life women incumbents won reelection, while at least 13 new pro-life women will join the House in January. At least seven of them flipped Democrat-held seats: Maria Salazar (Fla.-27), Yvette Herrell (N.M.-02), Michelle Fischbach (Minn.-07), Nancy Mace (S.C.-01), Stephanie Brice (Okla.-05), Ashley Hinson (Iowa-01), and Nicole Malliotakis (N.Y.-11).

At least six other pro-life women will replace pro-life men in the House: Lauren Boebert (Colo.-03), Lisa McClain (Mich.-10), Kat Cammack (Fla.-03), Diana Harshbarger (Tenn.-01), Mary Miller (Ill.-15), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.-14).

Eight races also featuring pro-life women have yet to be called: Claudia Tenney (N.Y.-22), Victoria Spartz (Ind.-05), Beth Van Duyne (Texas-24), Esther Joy King (Ill.-17), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa-02), Young Kim (Calif.-39), Michelle Steel (Calif.-48), and Tiffany Shedd (Ariz.-01).

At least six pro-life women will serve in the U.S. Senate in January. Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) won reelection, while Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) won her Senate race. They will join Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is headed to a runoff in January.

“This is a resounding victory for pro-life women everywhere and an enormous advancement of Susan B. Anthony List’s mission,” Dannenfelser declared. “We expect when all votes are counted and the races are called, we will have a record number of pro-life women serving in the next Congress. These gains are a repudiation of abortion extremism and further evidence that life is a winning issue in politics.”

Only 21 percent of Americans say abortion should be “available to a woman any time during the entire pregnancy,” while a vast majority of Americans (70 percent) say abortion should be restricted to the first three months of pregnancy (24 percent); cases of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the mother (26 percent); only cases involving a threat to the mother’s life (11 percent); or never in any circumstance (9 percent).

According to a 2019 study, most Americans believe biologists should decide when human life begins, and 95 percent of biologists say that human life begins at conception. Three-quarters (75 percent) of biologists agreed with the statement, “In developmental biology, fertilization marks the beginning of a human’s life since that process produces an organism with a human genome that has begun to develop in the first stage of the human life cycle.”

Cultural Superiority Isn’t Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries

Elements of the left and their allies in the media are constantly driving this point home: White people are bad and so is the culture that they have created. Everything we value as a society is bad and, more than that, little more than an ex post facto justification for the subjugation of non-whites. Western culture is white culture, and all things white are bad.

But as with everything else which these elements of the left and their allies in the media push, this is simply false. While the overlap between white people – that is, people of European descent and some Christian populations in the Caucasus – and Western culture is undeniable, it is likewise undeniable that Western culture is no longer the exclusive domain of whites. What we can call, without the slightest bit of stretching the truth, Western culture is present not just in Western Europe, North America and Australia, but also in former British colonies such as Israel, Singapore and Hong Kong.

What’s more, a country simply being part of Europe does not make it “Western” in any meaningful sense. While there is a certain Western cultural continuum based around Christianity that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok, it would be overly simplistic (and indeed, a bit demeaning) to label the post-Soviet countries as “Western.” They have a similar set of cultural values rooted in Christianity, however, even the introduction of democracy has not made many post-Soviet and post-colonial nations more liberal in the true sense of the word – open markets, an emphasis on free speech, strong private property rights, an independent, impartial judiciary, and the primacy of the individual over that of the group.

Throughout this article we will provide some terms to define what we mean by “Western culture.” We will also make the case that Western cultural values have a universal aspect in the sense that they can be applied with success anywhere in the world, that these values are objectively superior to other value sets at maximizing human freedomquality of life, and potential, and that the belief in this superiority has nothing to do with “racism” in the sense that it is commonly understood by ordinary people.

One demonstration of the proof that these values are objectively superior is that “people vote with their feet”, as Dr. Jordan Peterson points out: “The fundamental assumptions of Western civilization are valid. Here’s how you know: Which countries do people want to move away from? Not ours. Which countries do people want to move to? Ours! Guess what, they work better. And it’s not because we went around the world stealing everything we could get our hands on. It’s because we got certain fundamental assumptions right – and thank God for that.”

What Are Western Values?

Cultural Superiority isn't Racism: Why Western Values Underpin the World’s Best Countries

Before going any further, it is necessary to define what we mean by “Western values.” Indeed, what we mean by this is very specific and has a basis not in the West at large, but specifically in Anglo-Saxon culture. Virtually all of the values that we will identify in this article as being “Western” are perhaps more accurately termed “Anglo-Saxon values.” However, as the former term is more concise, succinct and in greater general use, we will use “Western values” throughout this article.

So what are these values? What is their origin? Where do they come from?

Again, it is our belief that what we call “Western values” are rooted firmly in the Anglo-Saxon tradition above all else. The formalization of these values can be found in the Magna Carta, but this simply codifies values that had been practiced in long standing in post-Anglo-Saxon Britain and likely long before it in some sense, going back to the days when the Angles and Saxons roamed the border regions between what is now Germany and Denmark.

While the Magna Carta is a complicated document, for our purposes it means something succinct and simple: it means that the king is not above the law.

There are a number of principles that flow from this general recognition that form the bedrock of Western civilization: Legal norms apply to everyone regardless of social class. The right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers and the right to face one’s accuser in open court. The right to one’s own property and the right to defend that property using deadly force. While these rights have all been hemmed in – in extreme ways in some cases, particularly since the events of September 11, 2001 – the point is that they form the bedrock of our legal structure and value culture in the West.

To boil this down to a single sentence: the West believes that men have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and that these rights can only be deprived through due process of law. Both national constitutions and prevailing moral attitudes prevent angry mobs or powerful oligarchs from systematically depriving unpopular and powerless minorities of their rights. Continue reading “”

History Demands We Wake Up the Woke

Editorial cartoonist Branco recently designed artwork showing an Antifa donkey with BLM explosives in its hand threatening America with, “Biden wins or the country gets it.”

At first blush, it seems extreme. But is it?

Most liberal “woke” do not participate in violence. But their blind silence on riots and authoritarianism perpetrated by their fellow leftists is a mindless stab in the heart of their own future liberty.

They refuse to view anything that doesn’t fit what they believe is their compassionate narrative, and seem oblivious to the human cost of socialism and its better-dressed uncle, communism. Thinking Constitutional protections only apply to them, they holler “love not hate” while normalizing censorship and threats to anyone who disagrees with their left-wing talking points.

It is almost as if history doesn’t exist for the woke. Yet Americans who have fled oppressive regimes know the erosion of human rights at the core of leftism and socialism doesn’t occur overnight.

Like Katarina Lindley, a successful family physician who is a leader in the osteopathic family physician community, and a board member for DPC Action, an organization supporting doctor/patient-based healthcare reforms.

She started out as Katarina Sokolic, a Croatian girl born in Soviet Yugoslavia in the 1970s behind the Iron Curtain of hunger and despair.

Katarina learned about oppression early when instructed to keep her family’s religious faith secret as it could cause her father to lose his job in a time of unrelenting unemployment. She escaped her homeland in its early post-Soviet phase, trading violence and suffering under a different leftist regime for America.

According to Katarina, “it took years to realize Yugoslavia was not ‘utopia.’ Eventually, everything was controlled by government, and freedom of thought was highly discouraged.”

Midwest physician “Elizabeth Williams” fled Liberia at 14. Her family was chased off ancestral lands by leftist Liberian president Charles Taylor after her father spoke against Taylor’s suppression of speech.

As Elizabeth notes, “first they didn’t allow us to air our views. That led to their stealing our entire lives.”

Left-wing violence destabilized Colombia for decades, and led to wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands and displacement of millions. Young “Enrique Velez,” who now lives in the Washington, DC area, recalls “my family saw kidnapping and extortion of friends and family.

“My parents made the difficult decision to join millions of displaced people after my father was held up and threatened by leftist groups. In America, we finally felt safe. Many families do not get the opportunity to flee here. We pray this country never experiences the same thing.

These now-liberated Americans have real fear for our future. The obliviousness of the woke heightens that fear.

Socialism was previously abhorrent to Americans, but has been sold to America’s youth as “progress,” thanks in part to the false, glorified view Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders presents of central control. It has permeated the ranks of the Democrat’s progressive leaders.

The socialism embraced by the wokes has a history of global oppression. Chairman Mao “freed” Chinese peasants by murdering 45 million of them. National Socialist Adolf Hitler harnessed his leftist power base by murdering six million Jews. Wikipedia has an entire page dedicated to “Mass killing under communist regimes.”

Totalitarianism starts out as the rhetorically more benign socialism. First they come for books and newspapers, then guns, then property, then people’s lives.

The woke may argue these horrors would never come to America. But if they opened their eyes and their minds, they’d know it’s already here, and they are ushering it in.

Social and mainstream media are suppressing and censoring content critical of the Democrat candidate for president. Citizens participating in a New York Jews for Trump convoy were attacked and children threatened with pepper spray by a leftist demonstrator. Liberal officials are closing houses of worship but allowing leftist riots.

Antifa and Black Lives Matter are radical left/Marxist groups who do not embrace peace. Their rioting and blind eye toward looting has cost countless billions and robbed minority and immigrant business owners of life savings and livelihoods. These groups and their woke supporters do not free people—they enslave them to tyrannical mobs and oppressive government.

History is a lesson book. Americans who lived it, or understand it, must explain to the woke that they are sleeping through a montage that heralds an oppression which will eventually include them.

Thanks to liberal educators and entertainment culture, young people are not even aware that socialism is the precursor of abject misery, and the loss of even the smallest of freedoms.

Kat Lindley says America is a beacon of hope. Katarina Sokolic fears a nation that loses its liberties to the deliberately misinformed will never get it back.

That would leave freedom seekers nowhere left to go.

This is how freedom fails. When parents let their children get their heads filled with the mush of marxist professors let loose in our schools, colleges and universities.
“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”—Ronald Reagan


Kids today: 4 in 10 call Constitution ‘outdated,’ OK with silencing speech.

Free speech, support for the Constitution, and even having a variety of friends are taking a hit on America’s campuses as college undergraduates appear to be adopting a “my way or the highway” attitude.

A new survey of campuses developing the nation’s future leaders shows an antagonistic approach by students to views they don’t agree with. And worse, a majority feel that they can’t express a view different from those of their professors.

The survey for Yale University’s William F. Buckley Program, provided to Secrets, is the latest to show the fading of thought diversity on campuses and shrinking support for the First Amendment and the Constitution overall. Continue reading “”

In Championing the Goodness of America, Trump Defines the Choice in This Election. 

Étienne de La Boétie, who graced this planet from 1520–1563, may have died young, but he made his mark, mostly because he was best friends with Michel de Montaigne.
It was Montaigne who helped assure the literary and political immortality of his friend’s most important work, an essay called “Discours de la servitude volontaire” (“Discourse on Voluntary Servitude”).
La Boétie’s curious work has been an arrow in the quiver of anarchists and libertarians as well as classical liberals for centuries. It is an impassioned attack on tyranny, longer, perhaps, on denunciation than prudence but nevertheless a tonic reveille.
Among other things, La Boétie points out that even those who are duly elected can be tyrants, a fact that was pressed home upon me from a recent visit to the state of Michigan, whose governor, Gretchen Whitmer, is the very model of the modern major mandarin.
Whitmer has issued hundreds and hundreds of executive orders that impinge on the quotidian freedoms of the people she was elected to serve (how ironic that sounds: they also serve who only play the scold).
Whitmer was recently upbraided by the Michigan Supreme Court for exceeding her authority.
Her response was to transfer that authority to the state public health establishment, which set about enforcing her edicts about mask-wearing, “social” distancing, communal gatherings, quivering in place, and kindred impositions on liberty.

‘Voluntary Servitude’

“Voluntary servitude”: isn’t that where we find ourselves now? This is no “social contract,” wherein we implicitly pledge allegiance to a regime in exchange for an escape from a sanguinary “state of nature” and entrance to a realm of law and order.
On the contrary, we find ourselves more and more subject to the extraordinary whims of those—and they are legion—who would be our masters, for our own good, we are told, but we can’t help noticing it is also very much for their good, or at least their profit.

Continue reading “”

There are people who believe that Christians should be anti-gun.
Some who call themselves Christian believe that.
Many more though, don’t.


Christians with guns as American as apple pie

JACKSONVILLE, ARKANSAS — Imagine if you will a place where kids as young as 3 years old are taught to handle a firearm — where women with increasing frequency are trained to defend self and family with guns — where middle-schoolers and high-schoolers alike are both competent and competitive at ready-aim-and-firing — and where going to church on Sunday is as natural as hitting the shooting range on Monday.

Twilight zone?

Nope. That’s the AGFF/Jacksonville Shooting Sports Complex in Jacksonville, Arkansas. That’s the scene of small-town, beyond-the-D.C.-bubble-Beltway America, where God, guns and flag-waving patriotism is part and parcel of the normal growing experience.

Where Christians who shoot are as American as apple pie.

“In my opinion, it’s our right as a Christian, as a non-Christian,” said Jerry Hill, the manager of the Jacksonville shooting range — which is actually operated and funded under the local Parks & Recreation Department, rather than privately owned and maintained.

Gasp, go the liberals.

What would Jesus say, scold the leftists.

But this just shows how different the thinking and mindsets between Outside City dwellers and Inside City dwellers — between the largely Democrat-dominated cities and the largely Republican-dominated suburban and country settings.

“He is the ultimate peacemaker, but he also lost his temper … and tore everything apart,” Hill said, in reference to the Bible passage about Jesus turning out the money-changers in the temple.

In other words: Jesus approves of righteous anger and self-defense. Being Christian doesn’t mean being a docile victim. Continue reading “”

Who are the Proud Boys?

In Tuesday’s presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace tried to corner President Trump: “Are you willing tonight to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down and not add to the violence in a number of these cities as we saw in Kenosha and as we saw in Portland?” “Sure.” responded Trump, before noting that all the violence he saw was the fault of ANTIFA and other left-wing groups. Both Wallace and Biden then implied that white supremacists and Proud Boys were responsible for the violence in Kenosha and Portland, which Trump rebutted by referring to ANTIFA. “ANTIFA is an idea, not an organization.” Biden responded.

Wallace’s repeated references to “white supremacist violence” in Kenosha are obviously attacks on Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was attacked in a dimly lit parking lot by a convicted pedophile under cover of a riot, and later by an ANTIFA mob incited by an illegally-armed felon who later admitted that his intent was to murder Rittenhouse. It is disgraceful for a journalist at Fox News (or any outlet) to attack a victimized minor as a white supremacist without evidence, much less in the middle of a presidential debate. Worse yet was Wallace’s implied white supremacist smear against Aaron Danielson, a Patriot Prayer member who was executed by an ANTIFA member in the streets of Portland for being a Trump supporter.

By associating the Proud Boys with white supremacists and blaming them for the violence committed against right wing groups, Wallace inverted moral status between victimizer and victim. Last summer, rioters received political permission slips in the form of bail funds, law enforcement stand down orders, and prosecutorial amnesty, allowing left wing mobs to run rampant in their violence and arson. The only time prosecutors took action was when someone defended themselves against the mob.

Enter the Proud Boys. This group was formed by Vice News Founder and comedian Gavin McInnes, who set it up as a joke. Their name is a reference to a song by the hit Broadway show Aladdin and their initiation ceremony is to name breakfast cereals while getting punched on the arm. Affirmation of the superiority of Western Civilization is at the heart of the group’s ideology, as reflected in their flag:

The group holds monthly meetings at bars and style themselves in the fashion of a 19th century fraternal order (sorry ladies, this is a boy’s club) similar to the Shriners or the Knights of Columbus.

Just as with many fraternal orders, the Proud Boys actively engage in charity events. During and after the historic flooding of Houston in 2017, the group rented boats, trucks, trailers, and even an 18-wheeler to distribute emergency supplies to affected areas. Journalists caught wind of the event and attempted to track the Proud Boys by asking confused Houston residents “where the Nazis were.”

The Wikipedia entry on the Proud Boys leads off with a bald declaration featuring 13 footnotes.

The Proud Boys are a far-right,[1][2] neo-fascist,[3][4][5][6] male-only[7][8] organization with ties to white supremacists[9] that promotes and engages in political violence.[10][11][12][13]

What earns the Proud Boys the ire of the media is their advocacy of Western Civilization and their free speech activism, specifically their confrontations with ANTIFA. While Proud Boys stay away from ANTIFA events, Proud Boy events inevitably draw ANTIFA presence, usually resulting in self-defense violence and landing the group bad press and legal trouble. Why opposing ANTIFA would invite negative press is answered by a study by Dr. Eoin Lenihan, a professional political extremist group researcher. Dr. Lenihan mapped out the social media connections that American journalists have with ANTIFA members and ANTIFA twitter accounts. Some journalists are members of ANTIFA or actively source information from ANTIFA members who know the journalists will write sympathetic articles. Continue reading “”

How do you argue for the truth when at this point only moral “truth” seems to matter?

A great article that asks the question but unfortunately doesn’t provide the answer.

We need an answer. Or maybe the answer is one we (or at least I) don’t want to hear – that there is no good answer because the situation is too far gone. Maybe even that some sort of violence is inevitable?

I’ve noticed the problem cropping up more and more in my own private life as I’ve been engaging more frequently in discussion with people who disagree with me politically. I’ve noticed that in these talks, if I utter a fact that contradicts their preferred version of what’s going on, and I offer to send a link about it, some of them reject that suggestion either by screaming that I’m lying, by changing the subject, or by abruptly turning their backs and leaving in rage.

I had the latter happen to me twice in one evening last week, from two different people. These are both people I’ve known for many years, and although they are not close friends, they are friendly acquaintances with whom I’ve never had a fight before. But what I was saying was apparently so threatening – even though I stated my case briefly and mildly – that they had to leave the field.