The Declaration Test

Mark NoonanLeave a comment

On July 4th, 1776 we said, among other things, that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. In fact, we asserts this as a self evident truth. You know: like the sun in the sky. I don’t have to prove this is correct, it is what it is. If you reject it, you are a liar or insane, just as you would be if you said at noon at the sun wasn’t up in the sky. To be sure, people can dispute this dogma and the United States is the only nation in the world – and likely will always be the only nation in the world – to assert such a thing in its founding document. But being an American requires subscription to certain dogmas, much as being a Catholic or Evangelical, Muslim or Jew requires subscription to certain assertions. The only way America works is if, by and large, everyone excepts certain things as a given – in America’s case, the Declaration of Independence is bare minimum…if you don’t believe what’s in it, why in heck are you here?

I believe that the problems of America today – as a society – stem from the atrophy of belief in American dogma. That is, we have increasingly ignored the Declaration and gone about doing things which directly contravene what the Founders fought for. This is not some novel idea: all nations and religions eventually have the same problem: a collapse of belief. Some nations and religions recover, others don’t – but they only recover by harking back to first principles and rigidly enforcing them. This is what we must do to save America: we must make belief in America near-universal among Americans. All things we decide to do must pass what I call the Declaration Test: is the proposal in conformity with the Declaration of Independence? If it is, then let us do it. If it is not, then it is abhorrent and must be rejected.

Think about this for a moment: right now, China runs various psy-ops on us while also bribing our institutions to work against American interests. This is part of China’s asymmetric warfare model against us. China reviewed her options in the mid 1990’s after the Gulf War showed American military superiority and decided that any sort of direct military confrontation with the USA would be a high risk operation. At least, that is, until America was massively weakened. Using the lever of “free trade”, China entered the USA and set about the program of undermining us from within while continuing to build up traditional military and industrial might for themselves…so that if a war came, it would be the USA in the morally and physically weak category. And even if war didn’t come, then the erosion of American confidence would leave China the dominant power in east Asia, Africa and South America. There were many arguments made in the 1990’s about why we needed to engage in the China trade – we’d make money! We’ get a strategic partner! Wealth would moderate China’s political system! This was all drivel, as we can see in the results but what was wrong from the beginning is that the USA, as an institution, could not legitimately engage with China. Why? Because China’s government does not have the consent of the governed. The PRC is a standing insult the the ideals of our Founders. It is a rejection of American dogma from start to finish.

It must be understood that under American beliefs, the government of China has not the just authority to do anything. Sure, they have the physical power to do things, but that isn’t the same as having the just power. Never in Chinese history has there been a Chinese government which had the consent of the governed (with a Taiwan exception, of course). If we as Americans enter into agreements with China, who are we agreeing with? A treaty binding on America is a treaty negotiated by the elected President and then ratified by the elected Senate – with any further legislation needed to enforce the treaty created by Congress and signed by the President. In other words, on our side, a binding treaty is something done with the consent of the American people via the mechanisms those people have devised to determine popular consent. China’s government is a corrupt oligarchy which shot its way into power in 1949 and never let go. If we make a deal with China then it means we’ve just made a deal with what amounts to a Mafia. Deals with the mafia are never a good thing – sure, mobsters are noted for keeping their word at times, but you’re still dealing with mobsters. You know: liars and thieves who will twist the deal to suit themselves.

Think about how it would be if we had never dealt with China – certainly never dealt with China since 1949. China, herself, would still be an economic backwater and a distinctly third rate military power. We wouldn’t have Chinese money corrupting our politics and society. Our position in the western Pacific wold remain supreme…we wouldn’t have Taiwan, South Korea and Japan furiously building up their military forces, almost certain to eventually encompass carrier battle groups and nuclear weapons. If we had merely obeyed the dogmas of the USA – if we had put China to the Declaration Test, the USA and the whole world would be better off.

So, too, with one thing after another, in both foreign and domestic affairs. All of our problems stem from a rejection of the wisdom of the Declaration and the embrace of ideas contrary to it. Deep State? Where and when did the American people in Congress assembled really consent to domestic spying? When was it announced before hand that the government would collect masses of data on us and then, after reviewing that data without a warrant, launch criminal investigations of us? The Russians are kicking us out of our base in Niger…when was consent obtained from the American people for us to have a base in Niger? I’m pretty up on things…I don’t recall that debate and decision. When did we consent to sending billions of dollars to NGO’s to transport millions of illegals to the US border? Oh, sure, it was in a law enacted somewhere…but I don’t remember us having a debate about it like, say, we had an open and lengthy public debate about building the Panama Canal. All the time now our government and institutions are trying to slip things in on us – the whole trans thing came out of nowhere with no popular demand and no public debate. It was just decided one day that people can change gender and everyone just had to conform to that. On and on and on like that. Keep in mind, I’ve made no judgement on the merits of the issues I’ve listed – my complaint isn’t that we have a base in Niger or that a guy in a dress wants to be called “ma’am”. My complaint is that we did not obtain the consent of the governed on either issue. Do whatever you want – as long as there’s a debate and decision. As long as consent is obtained.

The Declaration Test must become our go-to thing. Anything that anyone wants – or any thing we discover going on – must be referred to that document and a determination must be made as to whether or not it conforms to it. This is not a Right/Left debate – it is an American/Un-American debate. If we are to be Americans – if we want to be Americans – then we’d better start being Americans.

Team Biden Implodes

Mark Noonan34 Comments

Biden’s intern put up a post on X where a picture of a smiling Biden has the caption, “On my watch, when we make promises, we keep them. And we leave no one behind.” This is after Afghanistan and was posted the day after Team Pudding Brain announced a suspension of military aid to Israel. Here’s the thing about it: as of this writing, it has 3.7 million views…and 11,000 “likes”. Of the people who have seen it, 0.29% have liked it. And keep in mind that on X a certain large percentage of likes are really just “I saw it”, not necessarily an indication of approval. For a bit of comparison, I checked Trump’s old X account – it has been restored but the only time Trump has used it since his suspension was to post his mugshot. He was routinely getting low end 50k likes, high end 300k.

Then there’s the comments! It is hard to find positive comments at all – and the post has been “ratioed”; that is, far more comments than reposts (and indicator that the best time to delete the post was before you sent it; second best time is right now). Most of the comments you’ll find could be shortened to two words beginning with “f” and “y”. This guy is getting scorched by a nation increasingly outraged by how bad things are going.

Meanwhile, Decision Desk (a normally very reliable source) figures that Trump leads in both head-to-head and wide-field matchups in the 7 crucial Swing States.

You can never tell when a shift will happen in politics. In hindsight you can always see it, but while it is happening it is easy to miss. We might not be at the point where it all changes. Heck, Biden could still win this thing. But it seems to me that people are just sick and tired of all this. The betrayal of Israel to curry favor with college anti-Semites might be the last straw – not that most Americans are deeply invested in the outcome in Gaza (they aren’t) but it is just a sleazy move. Everyone can see why Biden is pressuring Israel – and pressuring Israel by denying aid which he and his people rammed through Congress just a couple weeks ago on the assertion that it had to be sent right now. This might be straw/camel’s back stuff.

But it is also a rather large pile of bad – the war in Ukraine is clearly failing. We’re pumping money into Ukraine and while the number of Ukrainian millionaires is at an all-time high, the Ukrainian government has announced that they’ll be combing the prisons for men to draft into the army. Russia continues to advance slowly but seemingly inexorably and we’re just waiting to see if there’s a major Russian offensive this summer (June is the time when the ground is really hard and dry enough in Russia for major movements).

Inflation continues to bite – gas prices are high, food prices are getting ridiculous. Everyone but the rich are being priced out of single family homes. The American Dream is currently unobtainable by youth.

The border remains open – today the story broke of an illegal dragging an 11 year old girl into a van in broad daylight and raping her. Yep: Biden’s people had refused to deport this Dreamer who Just Wants a Better Life. Hey, we gotta have these illegals in order for wages to be crushed so guys who fly private jets to climate change conferences can make a higher rate of return. We’re talking maybe a whole percentage point more annually, guys. That ain’t chicken feed…and if your daughter has to be raped, that’s a price they are willing for you to pay.

And what is the Team Biden program here? Abortion! Our Democracy! Orange Man Bad!

That’s it. All they’ve got. Could it work? Yes. As I said, if it does, we never had a chance.

But I think it won’t work. In fact, I think Biden might already be toast.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan34 Comments

The Trump documents case has been put on hold indefinitely – from what I can understand, the judge is rather concerned about the whole premise of the case and will essentially engage in what amounts to a trial of the prosecutor. This is not a surprise – the case is ridiculous and any decent judge would see right through the scam.

On the other hand, today we saw in the hush money trial in New York the testimony of Stormy Daniels – a proved liar who’s whole monetary existence depends upon getting attention. Gee, no chance she’d be playing an angle here, right? Don’t get too upset about it – the case is also ridiculous but as its in New York, it will proceed to the jury, where conviction is 50/50. But the conviction will be thrown out – you can’t actually do what the judge is doing: that is, allow salacious, uncorroborated testimony designed only to provoke an emotional response from the jury. That Democrats are going ape over the delay in the documents trial is all we need to know about the New York trial: that dog won’t hunt. Convicting Trump in New York will just burnish Trump’s credentials as an outsider. Democrats know this. They wish they could just make it go away. It was all supposed to prevent Trump from getting the nomination. Now “backfire” doesn’t begin to cover it.

The Israelis are restarting their Gaza offensive. They are still taking way too long here. Absolute brutal use of force to finish this quickly is still what they need to do. The longer this drags out, the worse it gets for them. Naturally, the world is screaming bloody murder – the world wants Hamas to survive. They want it to survive because their Arab money bags have ordered them to secure Hamas’ survival. It is really no more than that – the kids out protesting in the colleges have no idea what is going on. They’re just doing what the organizers – who are not students – tell them to do. The whole thing is disgusting – but it all stems from an unwillingness on the part of the Israelis to drive the sword all the way in. I realize that Israel feels a need to stroke the American government – but there comes a time when you choose your nation over your benefactor.

Israel has time and time again had their Arab enemies on their knees, only to hold off from dealing the fatal blow. People forget that for all the early Arab success during the Yom Kippur War, less than three weeks after the Arabs started it, the Israelis were poised to force both the Egyptian and Syrian armies to surrender in the field. They could easily have taken Damascus and Cairo and dictated peace. We told them not to. They went along with it. They have to stop doing that. Kill them. Finish this. Dictate the terms of settlement.

Aside: Kirby was out there announcing that you can’t crush an idea with weapons. As if World War Two never happened. Guys: force works. In fact, it is ultimately the only thing that does work in human affairs. Being law-abiding is a learned habit. Sure, you can find saints. Lots of them, in fact, if you just poke around a bit, and sometimes in the oddest areas. But for most people, most of the time, what keeps them in line is the learned behavior of civilization. Learned so deeply that most people don’t even realize it isn’t something that comes naturally. And what taught the child to share wasn’t a reasoned argument; it was a rap on the knuckles. The adult doesn’t even remember being taught to share. To say “please”. It happened so young that our memories don’t stretch back to it. So, too, with societies – especially when they’ve gone terribly wrong. What burned the cancer of Nazism out of the Germans was 1,000 bombers unloading on their cities night after night. So it will have to be with the Palestinians. A lot of them will have to die so that the shell-shocked survivors understand that it was all a lie, and never fall for it again.

The Boy Scouts will now be Scouting America – for diversity. Bottom line: if you have a son, do not send him there. They will be groomed by perverts. The leadership of the scouts has absolutely no idea what the Boy Scouts are about – and after bankruptcy brought on by sex scandals, they are trying to DEI their way back into relevancy. What the Right has to do is create an entirely new organization – I favor calling it the Rangers, as that has a distinctly American ancestry going back to pre-Revolutionary times and brought forward into modern times by the Army Rangers in World War Two. I’m not particularly concerned with sex segregation; certainly not for members under 12. As long as proper segregation is maintained in the most crucial areas, there can be groups that have both boys and girls. But they can also be segregated. I’d allow local chapters to decide. The program would mostly be just scouting: that whole camping, hiking, doing good works in the community thing. Kids need that – kids today especially need something that will get them away from video screens. But I’d have it emphasize self reliance, hard work and honesty. They idea is to help parents craft their youngsters into sober, hard working citizens of the Republic. And I think it would experience rapid growth.

The Limits of Self Determination

Mark Noonan10 Comments

One of the principles of global affairs that is universally accepted is the right of peoples to self determination. That is, as far as possible, every identifiable nationality should be able to determine its own fate by its own means of arriving at national consensus. For the most part, this is the correct way to go because human beings have a right to their community and their community may express itself. Certainly, as we sit here in our United States, we do not wish to have any alien power dictate to us how we shall conduct our affairs. Any such effort would be considered by us to be an act of war and we would almost certainly fight against it. But even with that, I think that the expressed principle of self determination is incorrect.

To take a step back out of any modern controversy, back from the late 19th century until World War One, the Serbs were considered to be rather pests in the European body politic. They were primitive, nearly barbarous and were given to insane outbreaks of violence. Part of this, of course, was because they had for centuries been under Turkish rule and that rule was not conducive to the development of civilized behavior…but, still, the Serbs had agency and once they gained full independence from the Turks, they did a lot of really lousy things and well earned a reputation in Europe for being a problem to be dealt with. One of the more hideous things was the murder of King Alexander and his wife Draga during a coup; not just murdered, but mutilated. One of the major conspirators in that effort had a hand years later in setting up the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand which led to WWI. Nutshell: not nice people. But once World War One got rolling, Anglo-French propaganda turned these barbarians into the “plucky little Serbs” fighting the mean, old Austrians. Truth be told, the Serbs deserved all they got and more.

Given all that they had done, were the Serbs really people you want self-determining? If it was just that they were being lousy to each other, that wouldn’t be so bad, but they also touched off a world war. It is when you review the full story of the run up to WWI that you understand why the Great Powers of Europe tried to sustain Turkish rule over Serbia…the Turks were holding down people who very often needed a beating. So, there’s our fly in the ointment: we want people to rule themselves, but what do we do if they rule themselves so badly that it causes catastrophe?

Now lets jump over to today: we’re told that the Palestinians deserve their own State, totally free and independent. Leave aside that the Palestinian leadership says they want all of Israel and the massacre of all Jews. Lets just go with the concept that in Gaza and the West Bank the principle of self determination dictates an eventual fully independent State. It isn’t just Islamists saying this – it is some of the most reasonable, intelligent and educated people in the West. It is taken as a given that our end must be Palestinians governing themselves. And to be sure, in theory I think that all of us would want that – given that we want the same for ourselves.

But here’s the problem: Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Sure, the Islamists called it an “open air prison” with the Israeli border controls but that is just nonsense; and if it was a prison, it was enforced not just by Israel, but by Egypt, which has controls at least as strict as Israel’s (and probably more). However you want to slice it and no matter what complaints you wish to make about it, Gaza was free of Israeli occupation. The people of Gaza could choose their course. They were also the recipient of untold billions of dollars in aid from all around the world. They had the freedom and the money to choose.

They choose to build rockets and rape/murder squads.

Self determination suddenly looks a lot less cool, if you ask me.

How in heck is Israel supposed to live next to that? And a fully independent Gaza and West Bank just means even less ability for Israel to check those forces in favor of rockets and rape. The Israeli city of Sderot is 2,800 feet from Gaza. Do you want people who build rockets and rape/murder squads 2,800 feet from you? From your daughter? It is not something that any rational person can agree to – especially after 10/7. Maybe in the days when it was just a few rockets that Iron Dome could mostly stop and the every now and again stabbing attack…but when its 1,200 dead Jews including women who were raped to death, that makes it impossible to lived next to the people who did that. People who do that have to be watched; controlled; ruled.

Perhaps some day in the future the Palestinians can regain self government, but it would take at least a couple generations of instruction – basically un-teaching them hatred of the Jews. Until then, I can’t see any reason other than stupidity for wanting a Palestinian State. We can’t let adherence to a theory blind us to reality. However it happened, and whoever was at fault, the Palestinians have become essentially a national Einsatzgruppe bent on the murder of Jews. Until that is changed, they can’t decide for themselves.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan31 Comments

Biden promised to unify us – and if you click here you’ll see Right and Left both shouting “F*** Joe Biden”. Unity: achieved. Biden doesn’t win with this sort of attitude at large in the Republic. Its not that the Hamasses will vote Trump, but they’ll vote third party or stay home. I remember the Carter years: I don’t recall anyone held in as much contempt as Biden is.

Trump is doing well right now – and we are getting to the point in time where it would take something massive to shift it back to Biden. One can’t predict massive events, of course – they come when they come. But if polling is still tied or favoring Trump by June, then the November result is probably baked in. That said, we are having trouble down ballot. Lots of it. To be sure, special elections are not very predictive of general election results, but we are seeing a general lack of enthusiasm for GOP Congressional candidates all across the country.

Democrats are, naturally, pointing to this as an endorsement of Biden…but its is more that GOPers just aren’t showing up. And I believe this is because there’s no reason for them to. The Congressional GOP has knifed the base in the back over and over again…so what does it matter if the GOP keeps the House? We used to all think that at least we’d get something if we had a majority…now we know we won’t just get nothing, but we’ll get nothing along with egregious insults. If the GOP wants to win Congress, they’d better pick a fight with Biden. A big one. As it stands right now, the only thing that can possibly save them is a big Trump win dragging a few marginal GOPers over the finish line (this is why there’s still a solid shot at the GOP retaining a House majority and gaining one in the Senate). But we could have had a Red Wave year in Congress…if the GOP had just given GOPers any reason to fight for one.

Red State colleges are being brought under control. Blue State colleges are still the home of raving anti-Semites. One funny note – at one college, some frat boys dragged down a Palestine flag and raised Old Glory. There’s now a go fund me to give them a party and last I checked it was over $270,000.00. It is all great and fun – and watching our flag go up was moving. But I think the GOP – and Trump – could make a big impact. They should have the party – and Trump should be there. It just so perfectly encapsulates what is going on…Democrats coddling foreign savages and domestic traitors while we patriots stand tall for America.

It is just terrible what we’re seeing here – Jewish kids being denied access and physically assaulted. As if an American who happens to be Jewish has anything to do with Israel. Even if one wants to say that Israel is the bad guy, what does a 20 year old college kid in New York have to do with it?

Nothing, of course. But, neither did the 20 year old Israeli girl who was raped and murdered on 10/7 have anything to do with Israeli policy. This is the wages of anti-Semitism. Once you start down the road of saying “the Jews” then you’ll become an increasingly evil person…willing to commit and tolerate all manner of horrors. I blocked yesterday a Catholic account on X because they started in on “the Jews”. I know that ignorance is the foundation of it all, but I think, also, there is something more sinister…something deeply embedded within Fallen Man. That is, to find the scapegoat. To relieve ourselves of responsibility by finding someone at fault for our own shortcomings…or even our own cowardice when faced with a difficult problem. It is hard to do things…but blaming someone is easy. And it is an ego-stroke when it presents itself as esoteric knowledge that only the Wise have access. Rely on it: if you confront an anti-Semite and find an unanswerable argument, their response will be “educate yourself” as if it was you, not they, who is ignorant. But that sort of ego boost is what keeps people on the train…and makes them become worse over time as they must either repent or go all the way.

There is a bill now passed by the House which makes anti-Semitism illegal. This is Democrat/Uniparty window dressing – something to do to make it appear they are doing something (and you know darned well that if the law is enacted it’ll be turned against us in a heartbeat). The bottom line is that the Hamas protestors on campus are already violating civil rights laws. If two or more people conspire to deny a right or privilege then that is a civil rights violation carrying a max of ten years for each offense. When a Jewish kid is blocked from access to campus because he’s Jewish, that is against the law. Period. Under US law you are allowed to hate Jews all you want, but you can’t stop them from enjoying the rights and privileges that all have under law. All of these kids are looking at hundreds of years in jail…if they get prosecuted. And that isn’t happening. And nobody in the Ruling Class wants it to happen. Why? Because of Arab oil money – nobody wants to jeopardize that. Huge amounts of it flow through American institutions and it is all predicated upon allowing the anti-Semitic tropes about Israel to persist.

If we do get Trump in, my hope is that he goes after these people – the statute of limitations is 7 years for these offenses. I want hundreds of these rich, privileged white kids dragged through the judicial system for years over this. We must instruct them: you can’t do that. You can’t, that is, sign on to a fashionable cause and violate rights and think you’ll just walk away from it.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan43 Comments

Vile anti-Semites have largely taken over many US colleges and in just a few areas, the authorities are moving against them – recently in Texas. Once this happened, quite a number of people on the Right got upset. You see, we’re suppressing free speech.

I am so very tired of this drivel – this Libertarian nonsense that I’m obligated to look after the rights of people who will have me shot at the first opportunity. There was a time when I believed that an open airing of ideas would lead, by and large, to the correct ideas being adopted. It doesn’t work that way. People lie – and liars lie because lies work.

Aging has-been Susan Sarandon was out there and when asked about the rapes on 10/7, she just flatly denied they happened. She’s lying. She knows they happened. We all know they happened. But she’ll bare face that out – because there’s no consequence to her for it. She’ll still be an honored person; the Left takes care of their own. And because people like her are willing to lie, the lies become commonplace…and young people, ill-equipped under the best of circumstances to detect a lie, fall for it. I’m supposed to let liars tell America’s youth that Israel is evil? That America is evil? That the Constitution I swore to defend has a built in mechanism for self destruction?

No. I won’t do it. I will not play by rules the other side rejects. Anything we can to do hamper the propagation of anti-American views and anything we can do to punish those who hold those views will be done. It has to be. Its either destroy these people or they’ll destroy us.

Polls are still going back and forth (though mostly favorable to Trump) but the official word from almost all Experts is that Biden has it in the bag. Maybe he does? Who knows? But with Trump stuck in NYC for his bogus trial what we’re seeing is outpouring of support from working class New Yorkers for Trump. Will Trump win New York City? Not a chance; the working class there is actually rather small – the connected rich and the welfare bums make up a majority of the population and they’ll keep voting Democrat. But I think it does show something…perhaps some sort of fundamental shift: the working class is turning to Trump. No to the GOP, but to Trump. So is the middle class outside of the government-supported middle class. The Democrats are the party of the richest and poorest Americans…Trump is the candidate for everyone else. We’ll see if that’s enough in November…and if it is enough, if the GOP is willing to see that their future is as a populist-conservative working/middle class party.

One thing that is an advantage for us is how utterly delusional the Left is becoming. One of the history accounts on X posted a video of Goering’s arrest in 1945 – where he’s turning in his weapon and about to have all his decorations and badges of rank stripped from his uniform. What struck me on that was the expression on Goering’s face: he was crestfallen. It was the moment when he knew that the game was up. Got to keep in mind that just before this, Georing was still working on the theory that the Allied leadership would want to talk to him. Himmler had similar delusions. That after all of WWII and the emerging evidence of the Holocaust, they’d still be players. Goering having his sidearm taken let him know that he was just another criminal being processed. He was a man who had completely separated himself for all human decency but who thought he was still human. Rely on it, not too long before that video was taken, he had hugged his daughter and told her he loved her…as if he was human. But, he wasn’t. Only repentance could have restored him to humanity. As far as we know, he never did. He play acted as a human being, but he wasn’t human. The plain fact of the matter is that he never loved his daughter…a man who can be instrumental in murdering millions can’t possibly love. But such a person can delude themselves into thinking they do.

So, too, with our Lefties. They think they’re human, but they’re really not. Once you’re at the point of nodding along with abortion to birth and having healthy body parts cut off of children, you’ve left your humanity very far behind. You’ll still play-act like a human, but you aren’t. As with Goering, only repentance can restore humanity. This is why we see the Left endlessly bemoaning the dead Palestinians while not even mentioning the dead Jews. They’re play acting. They don’t care about either. But the gambit for power is, at the moment, to support the Palestinians and hate the Jews…so one dead Palestinian brings forth tears…a Jewish baby burned alive brings forth nothing. This is also why as Christians are massacred by Muslims in Africa we don’t hear a peep…because the Left doesn’t care that they’re dead. It means nothing to them, not even in theory. Only if the deaths can help the Leftist gain wealth or power do they matter.

But this is not a strength. It is ultimately a fatal weakness. Just as it was for Goering in days gone by. When you get delusional you simply don’t understand how you look to sane people. You, in fact, start to think that the more delusional you are, the more admirable. You start doing increasingly stupid things to service your delusion…until it all comes crashing down. I think we’re at that point; we’ve tipped. Sure, the Left still has all the power, but its based upon people not figuring it out…and day by day, more and more people are figuring it out. The Left is just crazy…doing insane, stupid things. Think about this: the illegal immigration issue is simply killing Democrats in polling. They won’t even slow it down. They could easily do so; one crisp order from whomever is pulling Biden’s strings and border crossings will drop 90 percent. But insane people don’t respond to rational incentives. The Left is committed to the open border and believes that they are admired for it.

An Atomic Lie

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Got into a very long debate on X about the morality of the use of the Atomic Bomb. It is seriously gotta be the biggest engagement post I’ve ever had there: as of this moment, 56,600 views, 358 reposts, 3,100 likes and 474 comments. In strict X parlance, I have been “ratioed”. This means you have more comments than reposts and usually means you’ve said something ridiculous. Not in this case. If you clicked on it, you’ll see that my post was a picture of my Dad as a young Marine, the notation that he was waiting on Okinawa to invade Kyushu in November of 1945 and finishes up with a small, editorial comment about those who say that A Bomb was bad.

Some of the comments are bad faith but most, in my view, simply betray ignorance. Some times well meaning ignorance, but ignorance nonetheless. And that actually has me a little worried. If you go through the comments you’ll see that several times I pointed out the four options available to Truman in July, 1945. They are, sometimes very briefly stated:

  1. Blanche at the cost of finishing off Japan either by nukes or invasion and agree to negotiate a peace which would force Japan to surrender their Empire, but leaves in place the Japanese Ruling Class which waged the war…and that Ruling Class now convinced that their suicidal fight to the death got us to blink. That they are our moral superiors and just need better material for Round II. In other words, this end almost certainly means another war – and maybe a nuclear war as Japan did have a nuclear weapons program. So Pearl Harbor Two might have been Los Angeles and San Francisco getting nuked.
  2. Starve Japan to death. The Japanese were incapable of feeding their population from domestic food production. Like Britain, it was import, or starve. Japan had no means of obtaining resources of any sort as our command of the sea was absolute. We could have just stood off and let starvation kill Japanese until they quit. This would have been up to tens of millions…and they might not have quit. Once their population dropped to sustainable levels, they might have still refused.
  3. Invade Japan. This is a very well known option and all post-War analysis indicates this would have been a horrific affair with maybe a million American casualties and untold millions of Japanese deaths.
  4. Drop the Atomic Bombs and so instruct the Japanese that we could kill them with no loss to ourselves; that any future dying would only be Japanese and to no avail.

As I also pointed out at various points, commanders in war, civil and military, are besieged by a host of information arriving all at once from every point of the compass. Some of it is false. Some irrelevant. Some flat contradictory with other information arriving at the same time. Out of this morass of data, the commander must tease out the correct information or lose. This is not an easy task. It is not a neat and tidy exercise as it can sometimes appear in a history book. This is why when looking back, caution must be taken. We weren’t there. We weren’t under those particular stresses. We benefit from hindsight no matter how much we try to set that aside. In my view, Truman made not just the best of a bad situation, but the correct moral decision. The intention was not to massacre Japanese, it was to end the war by the swiftest means…to end the effusion of blood, Japanese as well, as quickly as possible. And it was done; in the end, no matter what else, it worked. And if you want to call it wrong, you simply must come up with an obvious, superior option which was known to the decision makers at the time. There simply wasn’t any beyond these four. None of them were perfect, all of them posed risks: Truman chose the best one.

Do keep in mind that the comments condemning Truman as a monster issued from both Left and Right. People are getting united in a shared insistence that there was simply no justification at all for dropping the Bomb. What this tells you is that the general propaganda line has worked. And, of course, we know that propaganda does work. But this is doubly disturbing this propaganda issued to condemn the Bomb originated in the Soviet Union to denigrate our effort in WWII – to make out that we were bad, and so excuse Soviet actions. This line was picked up by Nazi-apologists as a means of getting around the Holocaust. But now it has morphed into a general belief that America is morally tainted. When added to slavery, it is being used to make out that America is the bad guy in the world. That we’re the nation that has to be destroyed. And the Right is participating in this – going along with it. And from what I can tell, they are doing it mindlessly…just so they can have something they agree with the Left on. A “see, I hate that, too” moment.

When we combine this with the “anti-colonialist” attitude of the Left and the increasing number of people on the Right who are condemning Israel’s war in Gaza, we can see our problem: basically, our entire civilization is in the dock and it is being found guilty. That it is ignorant people making the ruling is neither here nor there: ignorant jurors get a say. And the USA is being found guilty.

This is worrying not just for the fate of our nation, but for the fate of anything resembling civilization. Islamists savages went on a rape/murder spree and that’s in the Memory Hole while college kids riot on campus in favor of the savages. We’re being told we have to save Democracy in Ukraine even though elections have been suspended there. The Free World we defend with NATO arrests people for misgendering. China buys whatever influence it wants – and our open border and drug addiction may very well be a Chinese op. But we’re not allowed to fight against it because we’re the bad guys…the people who held slaves and who cruelly and needlessly nuked Japanese children. You see?

We really have to win this November. Not for Trump. Heck, he’s not even the guy we remotely need right now. He’s just massively the superior of the alternative. But we, the Americans – those of us who are left – have to take control of our country. Or we simply won’t have one – it’ll be falsified out of existence. We must find the ways and means of getting the liars out of all power and influence and simply re-instructing an ignorant population on what America actually was, and can be again.

The Anti-Semitic Moment

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Candace Owens made a splash a few years ago as black, female conservative but now is branching out – she’s taking up the cause of the Third Reich. Whether as a matter of conviction or because there’s lots of anti-Semitic clicks to be had from the Gaza war is unknown. Superficially, you might think that National Socialism is something black people can’t do but it is actually infinitely applicable. The key isn’t being German, or even white. The key is to be anti-Semitic. If we could dig up Zombie Hitler he’d probably still assert that black skinned people are inherently inferior, but that would only be until he got his bearings and realized there’s room for everyone, except Jews. Hitler, after all, made alliance with the Japanese…and for all his granting honorary Aryan status to the Japanese, this was a violation of strict Nazi ideology.

The first step to Nazism – the gateway drug – is blame Jews for something. Not a Jew, but Jews, as such. The Gaza war has provided ample opportunity for people to blame the Jews. There are now right and left people who have found that in spite of all other differences, a shared hatred of Jews can unite them. And once you start hating the Jews, all sorts of vistas open up for you. For Owens, it was the shocking revelation (to her, at any rate) that Germans in 1945 were treated very poorly. What she mainly found out about was the expulsion of the German population from central and eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII.

Nobody knows for certain how many people were involved but it was certainly more than 10 million Germans forced from lands Germans had lived in for centuries. In the process, unknown numbers of Germans were robbed, raped, beaten and murdered. Poles and Czechs were especially notable in their brutality but nobody ever exceeded what the Russians did when they got into Germany. Over on the western side, the French unleashed their North African soldiers on the German population with the expected result. The Anglo-Americans were the most gentle but as we went into Germany we were quite savage is suppressing the least sign of resistance, we confiscated huge amounts of undamaged housing (giving the Germans literal minutes to clear out) and there were robberies, rapes and murders of Germans. Candace is shocked by all this. And on her posts about it, a huge raft of neo-Nazis have posted article after article making out that the Germans were the victims. That the whole war was orchestrated by the Jews to destroy Germany.

This is all pure, unadulterated nonsense.

As I’ve noted before, the Germans got off light in World War Two. They started a war they had no cause to start. They behaved with inhuman savagery towards the people they conquered. Their plan was to massacre millions and settle Germans on the lands of the dead; any survivors among the conquered were to be reduced to slavery. As they retreated they gratuitously destroyed as much property in occupied countries as they could. And they did this because they thought they were superior. Hitler didn’t start the concept of Germanic superiority. Oddly, it was started by a Frenchman Arthur de Gobineau. He asserted that the more Aryan you were, the more superior. In his view, France was undone because the inferior, non-Aryan part of the nation had managed to overthrow the superior, Aryan part (of which he was a member). From Gobineau to Hitler is a whole raft of race theorists who built into the German mind this idea that they were superior and that superior people must rule the lesser. Bottom line: the Germans wanted Hitler and his war. They wanted him and it to be a success. They looked forward eagerly to being masters over slaves. Of course, Germans aren’t superior and all the Aryan blood in the world isn’t going to help you deal with 1,000 8th Air Force bombers overhead, Montgomery’s 21st Army Group crossing the Rhine or Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front staffed with men who had their whole families massacred by Germans. The Germans, in the end, were stupid. And what they got in 1945 was what was coming. The Jews had nothing to do with it: the Germans called down the wrath of God upon themselves.

But we also have a population of highly uneducated people. And thus Owens’ being shocked to find that the people who caused World War Two weren’t treated with kid gloves. That’s bad enough: the worst part of it is that its all being worked into blaming the Jews, and this as part of the larger Islamist/Western Leftist program to annul the State of Israel. We’re just a step away from a major portion of the Western world holding to the view that there is a Global Jewish Conspiracy. As noted, blaming Jews is the gateway drug to Nazism – but once you’re through that gate, then its increasingly easy to blame all problems on your target. That is what Owens is doing vis WWII. But you’ll find voices saying that the border invasion, the trans movement, child trafficking, drug addition and on and on are caused by the Jews. And if we could just get rid of these damned Jews, we could fix it all.

It can’t be emphasized enough that we must stamp on this. We cannot permit this line of thinking to grow. Those who are propagating it must have their ability to do so taken away. This isn’t a matter of free speech of anything trivial: the people propagating anti-Semitism are, knowing or not, preparing for a Holocaust. They have to be stopped before they get enough adherents to first massacre the Jews of Israel, then massacre the Jews of the world. We have found that “Never Again” is just words – just saying you won’t have a Holocaust isn’t enough to prevent it. You must stop it – and as we learned last time, it must be stopped early. There are some ideas so evil that they must be suppressed – and one of those ideas is that Jews, as a group, control things. Like your Jewish neighbor goes to the Jew Conspiracy Meeting once a month to make plans. It is just stupid – but just because it is stupid doesn’t mean it isn’t lethal. In fact, an argument can be made the more stupid the idea is, the more lethal it can be. Basically, once someone signs on to be stupid, they usually feel they can’t back away from it for fear of ridicule…so they just double and triple down on it. The SA guy who beat up a Jew in 1929 became the gas chamber operator in 1943.

We do have some means of stopping this. First off would be cutting of the anti-Semitic money. Huge amounts of Arab oil money flows into America’s schools, thus paying for anti-Semitism. Huge numbers of anti-Semitic Muslim students are enrolled in our colleges; expel and deport them. Cut off funding for UNWRA, the Red Cross/Red Crescent and a huge number of other NGO’s who have become overtly anti-Semitic over time. Fire the government and education bureaucrats and professors who have talked up drivel like “anti-colonialism”. Doing all of this might be sufficient to protect the American body politic from the anti-Semitic virus – but we must also keep in mind that an application of violence against the worst offenders might prove necessary. This is that crucial; the future of human decency is at stake. How a person views the Jews is the litmus test on whether or not they are sane, reasonable people. Those who hate them must be ostracized at a minimum, destroyed as a last resort.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

They got Trump on trial and so he goes and visits a bodega in NYC where the owner was persecuted by the DA for defending himself…large, friendly crowd. To be sure, Harlem is rapidly gentrifying so its not like Trump got popular in the ‘hood…but, still: it is NYC.

Do they get him convicted? Possibly, but I rate it at best 50/50 for them. It only takes on juror to have a mistrial…and the charges are so obviously politically bogus that even a NYC jury might refuse to play along. And it isn’t like the New York government is ragingly popular these days. Acquitting Trump is an excellent way to poke it in the eye. If they get a conviction it is over trivial charges which are likely unconstitutional…so, Trump doesn’t go to jail.

Democrats are crowing that while they have Trump in court he can’t campaign while Biden is free to hit the trail. That’s saying the quiet part out loud! But the fly in their ointment is that Biden can’t actually hit the trail. His latest mental breakdown had him claiming an uncle was eaten by cannibals in World War Two. That was before he warned Israel not to move on Haifa, a city that has been Israeli since 1948. Anyways, the cannibals thing stems from an uncle of his who was in the Army air corps in WWII. The poor man was a passenger and the plane went down in the ocean. One man survived but all others – including the plane – were never located. So, where Biden gets cannibals into this, I don’t know. And the man died before Biden was 2 years old, so its not actually a memory, just something Biden was told about and mangled by his desire that every story about him be the most interesting story there is.

There are some less-bad polls for Biden out there, keeping in mind that to get past 270, he’ll have to get atop Trump by more than 3 percentage points (and anything below 5 is dicey). Other polls show Trump lead steady. Doesn’t really matter. The Mrs paid $4.88 for gas today. If Biden wins in spite of that, we never had a chance. That is, we lost our country ages ago and have just been going through the motions. But those gas prices, those food prices, Biden’s bizarre mental ramblings and increasing physical breakdown, the open border, the crimes committed by illegals, the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine (which is tipping towards disaster, by the way; the MSM isn’t covering it because nothing good for Biden is about to happen there), the sense that nobody is in charge…all of that, and more, is making Trump 2017-2019 shine in retrospect. He’s not nearly as hated as some think.

And if you drill down into the “Biden wins” analysis, it is all based upon a low-turnout election where Democrat GOTV swamps Trump just enough to give Biden 4 more years. Maybe it will be that way. But if its a high turnout election, then it looks like the higher the number of voters, the more Trump is going to get (in some polls of people who didn’t vote in 2020, Trump is up by double digits). Nobody can really know this – there’s no way to know, for certain, who will actually show up. Sure, we can know that a certain number almost certainly will show…but even among the most consistent voters there is some up and down election to election. For those who are occasional voters, its a crap shoot. And as GOP voter registrations continue to improve, we’re getting a class of voters who rarely or never vote. Absolutely no way to know how many of them show – can’t even take a guess at it. The “good” polls for Biden are all D+5 to D+7, predicated upon the GOP just staying home out of disgust for Trump. But if the electorate is R+1, the polls showing it good for Biden are worthless. R+2 or 3? Political earthquake.

More trouble in the House. MAGA blames RINOs, RINOs blame MAGA. There is blame to go around – and MAGA does need to get a larger sense of the possible here, especially with a razor thin majority. But most of the blame must lay at the Speaker’s feet. The Speaker has immense power in the House – Democrats made sure of that over the years. You’ll note that when Nancy was running the show, nothing good for GOPers ever got to the floor. Johnson can do that, too. Democrats can pass whatever they want through the Senate given their majority and our RINOs, but Johnson can pretty much spike anything unless he gets what he wants. And his job was to get us something. We know with a Democrat Senate and White House we’re going to have to put up with huge amounts of Commie garbage. Way of the world, GOP. Do better at the next election. But we did win the House…and that means every bit of Commie garbage should have something MAGA attached to it – if Democrats get money for an NGO to send migrants to the border, then we get money to pay for Texas to build a fifty foot high wall. Like that – and so on and so on. But we got nothing. We always get nothing. And Johnson and the RINOs are smart enough to know that if we don’t get something, there will be trouble. If Johnson falls – and even if we get a Democrat Speaker – then let the lesson be learned: don’t betray the GOP base. Make certain to stroke us. This is the growing pains of a new GOP, guys. Don’t get too upset about it. In the 1850’s the House was a complete mess because the new GOP also hadn’t figured itself out and so essentially handed power to Democrats. It takes time to change.

Punish the Barbarians

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I wrote not too long ago about the need to punish – that is, if we want to have civil society then we are going to have to start punishing the miscreants who are increasingly making civil life intolerable. And this wasn’t a call to jail criminals – it was a call to punish. To physically harm these people. And often for what we have been conditioned to call relatively trivial offenses these days. It is necessary to do this – and we will as a society eventually do it – because human beings, because we’re Fallen or just perverse, take your pick based on theological/philosophical beliefs, can only be made civilized. You can’t politely ask a barbarian to behave – you have to whip him into compliance. As we learned over a thousand years, after a while force is reduced to habit and hides its claws. That is once you’ve punished enough people become polite and transmit this moral code to their children on the regular and so barbarism largely vanishes. Unless you do something stupid like think that people are naturally nice and so you can put away the whip forever.

This is also necessary in the realm of international affairs. States are made up of people and so have all the inherent weaknesses people have. But a bit worse in that there is no cop you can call on a nation that has decided to become outlaw. Only other nations can bring it to heel, often at high cost and a lot of bother; war being a fearsome thing, most nations prefer to avoid it as long as possible and often for far too long, allowing the outlaw nations to gain quite a lot before their avarice awakens their enemies to the peril. And that is just for the more conventional nation trying to grab land and resources. At other times, especially in the modern world, the outlaw nation isn’t merely trying for a bit of larceny (though that is always at the bottom of any aggressor’s actions), but are also imposing inhuman cruelty as a part of national policy. The Nazis are, of course, the prime example of this: not only wanting to conquer the world, but also enslaving or murdering everyone they deemed non-Aryan.

The Nazis to a large degree did get what was coming to them. Not enough, in my view: the Germans (as well as the Japanese and Italians) got off far too lightly for putting the world through the Second World War. But it was still sufficient punishment to ensure that no German, Japanese or Italian would decide that a program of conquest and massacre is the way to go. We’re now approaching 80 years since the end of the war and such sentiments in all three nations are only held by tiny numbers of kooks who have no chance of national power. But what was done to the Axis powers during and after WWII also shows the necessity of doing it.

Think about World War One; we are taught that the harsh peace of Versailles caused German resentment and so led to World War Two. Drivel! The reparations were, relatively, no different from what Germany had imposed on France after the Franco-Prussian war. The territories sliced off from Germany were territories the Germans had taken in unjust wars of conquest in the past. And then you really have to think about Belgium and France: they literally did absolutely nothing to bring on the war. They were minding their own business, not offering any threat to anyone in 1914 when the Germans demanded their abject surrender with the threat of invasion if not complied with. It took both of those countries massive blood drain to expel the Germans. Huge amounts of their territory was ruined by war. And, remember: they were completely innocent! And all the French demanded post-war was the return of stolen land and cash compensation for all the death and destruction. That was reasonable. The Germans were unreasonable to so much as resent it. A Germany which had been far more severely punished for WWI would never have started WWII…just as the severely punished Germany of 1945 has not and will not start WWIII.

And you know why I’m bringing this up – the Iranian attack on Israel. While it was ongoing the leaders of the West – from Pudding Brain on down – were calling on Israel to show restraint. Not calling on Iran to show restraint: Israel. And more than likely Israel will show restraint, just as they have in Gaza. Just as they have with their Arab/Muslim enemies since 1948. And that’s the problem: the restraint. As we see in American streets that allowing barbarism just gets you more barbarism, so it is in international affairs. When a savage attacks and you let him live, that just means he’ll attack again…and probably more nasty each time as he figures out new ways to be a son of a bitch.

How should Israel punish? Ideally with their nuclear arsenal. I know: we’re not supposed to say things like that. How could you! The Ultimate Weapon can never be used! Whatever; its just a big bomb. And if Israel really wants to make a point, they’d target Iran’s primary nuclear facilities with nuclear weapons. It would get the Mullahs attention. It would let them know they are outclassed and facing an enemy unafraid to push the button. It is, in fact, the only way for Israel to really punish Iran as Israel is too far away and has too small a population to go toe to toe in a ground war. Sure it would cause outrage – but only among the people who really just want Israel to die already so they can get on with living off Arab oil money in peace and quiet.

In the larger context, if we want to end this international anarchy where States use lunatic proxies to wage war against us – and infiltrate our societies with Islamists committed to our destruction – then we’re going to have to start punishing the nations causing the trouble. To nutshell it: there are no innocent Palestinians. No innocent Iranians. Point blank: if a nation uses its own or irregular forces to attack us – any of us, anywhere at any time – then that nation and its people are outlaws. And outlaws must feel pain. Lots and lots of pain. So much pain that no matter how much they hate us, they’ll never dare look crossways at us again. Our mistake post-9/11 was our assumption (and I did share it at the time) that there was a separate part of the Muslim population causing the trouble and if we could just isolate that part and destroy it, all would be well. Doesn’t work that way. Just as the SS doesn’t work without Fritz delivering the mail, so Islamists don’t work without Abdul milking the goat. All Germans were collectively responsible for Auschwitz. All Muslims were collectively responsible for 9/11. And the only way a German in WWII got out of his responsibility was by actively working for the downfall of the German regime – so, too, the Muslim on the street: he’s guilty unless he actively joins the fight against the Islamists. Want me to make it clear: all Muslims were responsible for 10/7 and Israel has a right to punish all Muslims any way they see fit until such time as all Muslims stop 10/7 from ever happening again.

If we don’t start to see it this way, then we’ll never get out of this mess – and that is bad for Muslims as well as for us. Had we spent WWII just trying to hit SS infrastructure, we would have lost. The SS would have remained in control – and along with killing and oppressing non-Germans, the SS would to this day be killing and oppressing Germans. The Islamic world must learn a harsh lesson; in this case, that they can’t harbor Islamist supremacist thoughts and remain safe. That just allowing it to be means eventually a bomb is coming for you and your family. The only way to safety for Islam must be surrender of all dreams of Islamist conquest – just as the only way to safety for Germans in 1945 was to give up the Nazi dream.

What, then, is punishment? Aside from direct military action there must be surrenders of territories. Removals of populations. Trials of criminals. Occupation by victorious enemies. In other words, what happened to Germany in 1945 must happen to Islam.

We are in no way physically or mentally ready for any such thing; but we’re going to have to get ready. Because they won’t quit. Israel will respond in some military fashion to Iran – and maybe even hit some pretty important targets. But the Iranians are expecting that. It won’t alter the game as far as they are concerned; just a bump on the road to their ultimate victory is how they’ll view the matter. In fact, that Israel won’t use nuclear weapons will likely be seen in Tehran as proof of Israeli cowardice and will actually encourage them to try more attacks. Until we steel ourselves to some very harsh actions, this just goes on and on.