So, former NR writer Kevin Williamson got canned by The Atlantic today. Why? Because he had views which the left found offensive. I’ll wait a moment while you pick yourself up off the floor: gotta be the most shocking thing you’ve ever heard.
As readers here know, I’ve had my issues with Williamson: I view him as someone who has a cruel, elitist attitude towards anyone who hasn’t risen into his social circle. He ascribes their failure to do so to a moral failing on their part…they are too busy taking opiods and pushing out kids and don’t have the gumption to rent a U-Haul and get themselves to Manhattan, where high paying writing gigs await.
Just before Williamson got the axe, he wrote a piece at The Atlantic. It still hasn’t been scrubbed from the website, so you can read it if you wish. I went off on a bit of a Twitter rant about it. It was just so wrong about everything. The most egregious bit of wrong was in Williamson’s utter lack of understanding of why the regular folks are in revolt.
You see, the thing about democracy is that it is only partially related to voting. Self-rule is not just people casting votes – people cast votes in all sorts of governments, some of them quite oppressive. No, it isn’t voting. What is democracy – self-rule, that is – is when the people decide what they are going to debate and vote on. It wouldn’t matter if 99% of us turned out for an election if we’re only allowed to vote on issues pre-selected for us by a Ruling Class. On the other hand, we’d have democracy if only 10% of the electorate had the franchise but the issues voted on are those which rise from the people.
Of course, we have a Republic rather than a Democracy because we figure that some issues really aren’t up for a vote – or, at least, aren’t up for an easy vote. Such things as our right to free exercise; to self defense, etc. But in the democratic aspect of our republican government, what must happen is that the things we vote on are our things. We very much want to debate and vote on abortion; gender issues; gun regulation; immigration; corporations; trade…the elite – people like Williamson – figure we shouldn’t. We might get it wrong, you see? We might not see the wisdom of open borders or free trade with Chinese tyrants. And therein is really why you got Trump. Flawed as he is, he was still clever enough to find out what we, the people, wanted to talk about and then he started talking about them. It was really no more than that…Hillary and the rest of the GOP field was talking about what they believed we should care about; Trump talked about what we actually cared about. Presto: President Trump.
That is the real bone of contention: who really rules this nation? We, the people, rather think that we should rule it. The Elite thinks that it should. Who will get to? We’re going to find out over the next two to four years.
As for Williamson and his like, I’ve no real sympathy. He wanted to curry favor with the masters of our Elite (almost all are liberals, of course) so that he could get the good gigs…and, of course, be able to look down on those poor slobs who don’t know anything. Well, he got what he wanted – for about a week. So blinded in his arrogance, he simply didn’t see that the left doesn’t tolerate dissent. Not any real dissent. To be a Conservative in the Elite, you’ve got to be so entirely milquetoast that your Conservatism is more of an attitude than a thing…and an attitude which will instantly change on command. I’ve been saying that the Never Trump right would “evolve”, and they have. True, I thought they would “evolve” on abortion first, but it turns out that the press of liberal issues has been on gun control, and so their first step in evolution was to suddenly find flaws with hick morons owning weapons. They’ve also evolved to the point where any thought of border security – even if it was only lip service in the past – is gone. But, don’t worry, they’ll get around to abortion in the by and by. Williamson has been, so far, strong enough to retain some actual Conservative views…and, so, out he went. We’ll see now if he really thinks it over and realizes he’s got two choices: us, or them. Because that it how it is: we’re in an us or them situation. Either they win and impose their views, or we win and impose ours. Pick which one you want – there won’t be a compromise between them.
Blogs For Victory 
Compromise always precludes sacrifice. We’ve been compromising too much in America, and that’s how the left gets away with taking away our freedom. That’s how they get away with brainwashing the future generations. People sacrificing their greatest asset to a bunch of communist educators, think about that. And the deal was, “they get a good job”
But then their educators taught them that conservative values are “old fashioned, repressive and bigoted” so how do they vote? But then go to Berkley and try to get a conservative speaker on campus and watch the devil come out of the students.
Yes, it is us or them, and if we want to keep our our freedom then people are going to have to get a fire in their belly, have some guts and fight back.
Either they win and impose their views, or we win and impose ours. Pick which one you want – there won’t be a compromise between them.
The problem with that is, OUR views don’t have to be imposed, at least mine don’t.
And this is a problem with the Left: they have to impose their views, either by force or by eliminating any opposing views, while our perspective speaks for itself.
I’m old enough to have read Orwell as cautionary tales, warnings of the dangers of totalitarianism. Like others of my era, I was chilled by the prospect of Big Brother being able to watch people to know where they were at all times. Like others of my era, I was scared silly by the idea of a government so powerful it could silence views it didn’t like. Like others of my era, the very concept of Thought Police, of being punished for thinking the “wrong thing” was terrifying. Like others of my era, I got the message in the eventual writing on the wall in Animal Farm—-“All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”—-and understood it to mean no equality at all. Like others of my era, I understood that when the promise of taking care of the old horse was broken and he was sent to be slaughtered, it was a warning of what an all-powerful government could and might do once we surrendered our freedoms for the promise of security.
Now, if people read Orwell at all, they see an accounting of the world they live in. And accept. Thought Police are perfectly acceptable, and so is that believing the wrong thing SHOULD be punished—even by death, as some Liberals have proclaimed. Now the darling of the Left, their cherished hope for an extension of the Obama years of fundamentally transforming our country, interprets Orwell in such a sinister light it is truly scary: Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign memoir includes a questionable interpretation of the central lesson of George Orwell’s novel “1984,” namely that individuals should trust those in positions of authority. “Questionable”? How about “ominous”? (BTW, the root word of “left” in Latin is “sinister”. Jes’ sayin’)
But if the Left didn’t fear the prospect of people learning lessons from the history of inevitable failures of Leftism, of the appeal of freedom and liberty, they wouldn’t fight so hard to shut down all access to those lessons and those ideas.
In a sense, though, we must put it so…we won’t really force anyone to do anything, but they will be forced to not do some things.
You might recall that a while back ago I kicked around the idea of a law which would prohibit a corporation from imposing any penalty on an employee for political, religious or social activities done outside the workplace, as long as those activities were legal. Some people did push back on that, and I understood why…but the SJW’s use the fact that they are tightly organized and, further, that most people running corporations are actually of a liberal ideology…they find someone who offends them, and then seek to have them lose their job. For each person they actually do it to, 10,000 others then remain silent for fear of it happening to them. So, my proposal was to make it illegal for them to do something they’d like to do…use social pressure to punish people for holding heterodox views. That must be stopped.
It would be difficult – and often in violation of the Constitution – to force States to really uphold liberty, if they were under the control of liberalism and thus created things like human rights courts…which are, as we’ve seen, nothing but kangaroo courts SJW’s use to punish private entities which step out of line…with the process being the punishment. However, the federal government does have a responsibility to protect our liberties. Unfortunately, we saw under Obama that some times the federal government will become uninterested in protecting such liberties, at least of certain groups of people. So, solution: set up a Civil Liberties Trust which covers the cost of citizens suing State agencies for civil rights violations. All it does is cover the cost – it makes no judgement on the particulars of the case. There will be lawyers lined up for miles to take the cases…whether they be SJW or Normal People cases. The mere fact of the existence of such a thing will make State agencies wary of allowing themselves to be a bludgeon for SJW activities…and as it will be a trust outside of particular partisan control, even when a liberal is in charge, Conservatives will have the ability to sue the State for violations.
On and on it goes like that – mechanisms to make it illegal or at least extremely difficult for the left to do what is does to impose oppression.
OR…….we could just shoot them.
I like Spook’s idea
I recently became reacquainted with a song I use to love back in the 80’s – Invisible Sun by the Police. There is a line in that song that defines who I am –
“I never want to play the part of a statistic on a government chart”
And this is why I am so opposed to Democrats – their life mission is to make us all statistics on a government chart. F**K ’em
Let’s say I work at a magazine. I am not the face of the magazine, my name isn’t on anything, I am not recognized on the street as an employee of the magazine, and magazine readers would not recognize my name. So I should be able to do anything I want in my personal time, as long as it is legal, and as long as it does not reflect on the magazine—that is, that my penchant for sled dog racing or Bigfoot hunting or practicing Santeria can’t be claimed to show support of the magazine for that activity.
So if someone finds out that I work for the magazine and complains, saying she saw me doing a witch doctor dance at a Santeria ritual, the magazine ought to tell her to go pound sand. If the magazine fires me for my personal life or beliefs, the magazine becomes complicit in furthering mob rule and silencing of individual rights. As long as I don’t do my witch doctor dance wearing a T shirt with the magazine’s name or logo on it or do anything that implies the magazine might approve of Santeria or participate in it, it’s nobody’s business.
What would happen in today’s world is that the magazine would fire me, or if they didn’t fire me the howling mob would organize a boycott of the magazine to punish it for employing someone with the “wrong” belief system or the “wrong” hobby, such as a PETA boycott because I race sled dogs. Or the mob would pressure advertisers to stop advertising at the magazine, for the same reasons——lack of commitment to the “correct” beliefs or activities. But it still comes down to mob rule, and that never ends well.
It’s not completely clear-cut: if I teach in a preschool and moonlight as a porn actress even using a fake name I can see a conflict between my jobs. But we are well beyond that kind of analysis of who should be punished and for what, and why.
It is Orwell’s warnings coming true.
“Human rights” is now just a catchword for whatever the Left decides humans have a right to do or feel. As soon as “human rights” fails to include the right to be born, the whole phrase becomes meaningless. Look at the Left’s blithe ignoring of the other huge human rights violations in the world, that of sex trafficking. They will puff up and claim the higher moral ground if an adult female decides to engage in sex to get a job and then whines that she was abused, but will do nothing to try to stop actual sex slavery.
Except, I add, for Ashton Kucher, who is actually fighting for that cause, using his money and his influence, and he is largely ignored.
http://time.com/4672257/ashton-kutcher-human-trafficking-speech/
Ashton is one of the few beacons of light in Hollywood
A message to all B4V’ers, and B4B’ers, for those of you who go back that far. You may all remember Mitch. Mitch was a radical leftist to be sure, and someone who was mind numbingly annoying when discussing politics, but I got to know him outside of politics and he was a decent enough guy. New York born from a strong Jewish family with two buys he adored. Well, I learned that Mitch passed away suddenly last Tuesday. He kept in touch with me often over the years, jabbing me about politics but also telling me about his boys and his life. He was an interesting cat – he sold high end performance cars, was very knowledgeable about them, and was always restoring one or more classic race cars. He sold his home about 5 years ago and he reached out to me for some counsel while he was going through that process. His passing kind of hit me, because although I never met him, I had been going back and forth with him for 10 years so I actually got to know him pretty well and came to like him even though I would never want someone like him governing the country …. and I told him that often. I too would jab him on his politics but we both got to take it in stride …..
So folks, life is short and we never know when that call comes in. Everything in this life is temporary so don’t let the insanity of the day negatively impact your soul. Take care of your loved ones and always be a source of light, positivity, and encouragement for everyone else. This is a journey we are all trying to get through and I believe we will be judged on whether we were of help to others or an obstacle.
Good article re: the Williamson firing:
The Williamson firing should be a wake-up call to conservatives who pine for civility and respect from liberals. The Left only likes conservatives if they serve the larger goal of attacking the Right.
Leftists want ideological hegemony, not civil debate.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/06/kevin-williamson-respectability-conservatives/
From the last line:
Seeking the respect of people who only have contempt for your worldview no longer pays off.
Where’s this guy been? I discovered that about 5 years ago. It was your friend, Mitch, (RIP) who taught me that.
LOL … true that. Hard for me to even be civil anymore when talking with a liberal
Hard for me to even talk to them period. I mean, what’s the point?
Derek Hunter has an excellent piece at Town Hall aout the Williamson firing and more.
Here’s another interesting read on an issue I hope gets more attention:
Claims by the Clinton Foundation concerning its supposed grant to CBHF [Clinton Bush Haiti Fund] do not and cannot be squared with CBHF filings. Someone here is lying and many people are doing their best to cover up what looks like a crystal-clear instance of charity fraud and other serious crimes.
How much money did the Clinton Foundation actually receive during 2010, while soliciting to help poor Haitians after their devastating earthquake? More important, where did the money raised for Haiti by Clinton, Bush, and their associates actually go? And remember, 2010 was a key election year, with much at stake for Democrats.
We certainly will never know the answer to that question if we must rely on Rosenstein, Mueller and Comey, who, it must be remembered, were failing to catch obvious frauds during those early years.
So the Bush’s were tied to the hip with the Clinton’s and the Haiti debacle?? Interesting. The elitist corruption is palpable, and the respect I have lost for the Bush family is immense.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/04/springing_forward.html#ixzz5C5VsfcMo
It is true that GWH Bush became best buds with Bill Clinton and they created the picture of bipartisan cooperation to deal with a disaster. I always questioned that, and quite frankly thought it indicated some fuzzy-mindedness on the part of Bush. In light of his rapid mental decline in recent years I think this may have played a role in trusting Clinton, who dangled the prospect of international respect and admiration for achieving a great humanitarian goal, which would be pretty appealing to a man who had been at the center of public life and was then just a footnote. Anyway, they formed the CBHF and money was collected, ostensibly for the benefit of Haitians. We know this. We also now know that much, if not most, of this money never made it Haiti, or as far as we can tell to anyone else.
But before I throw the Bushes under the bus, I would like to know what they expected regarding the distribution of these funds. We seem to have some choices of what to believe.
(1) The Bushes, or at least Bush The Elder, knowingly joined up with the Clintons to perpetrate a massive fraud in the name of charity, and were fully aware of the intended outcome of the fund raising, which was to have the money disappear into well-hidden accounts totally unrelated to any charity.
(2) The Bushes, or at least Bush The Elder, joined up with the Clintons in a well-intended (though naive) belief that the two families could, together, raise more money than either of them alone, money to be distributed by what was believed to be a legitimate, fully functioning, charitable foundation with the infrastructure in place to administer this kind of charity, and then left it to the foundation to do its wonderful works without oversight, fully trusting in the image of the foundation as a functioning and valuable charitable entity.
(3) The Bushes, or at least Bush The Elder, believed they were providing oversight regarding the distribution of the money, but (at least partially due to the mental deterioration of the mental faculties of the elder Bush) were deceived as to how the money was being distributed.
(4) What role, if any, did any of the Bush sons play in the creation of, management of and supervision of the CBHF?
Without answers to these questions, or at least to whichever question is deemed most relevant, I am not ready to write off the Bushes, father or son(s). We don’t know what the Bushes were told, what documentation they received, or if they even realized how much money came into the CBHF from the Clinton Foundation, to disappear down the rabbit hole. The Clintons put on a good show, as all con men do, and the Bushes would not be the first suckers to be drawn into a mess.
So I am inclined to say yes, it is a mess, and yes, the Clintons are at the center of it and guilty as hell, but aside from that I want to know more.
And then if you aren’t yet convinced that liberals have lost their minds, this article should erase all doubts:
View this collection on Medium.com
In this current period of American politics, at this juncture in our history, there’s no way that a bipartisan path provides the way forward. The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago.
http://dailycaller.com/2018/04/07/twitter-jack-dorsey-second-civil-war-trump/
Poor silly Libs, constantly tap dancing around defining of words. This funny Twitter exchange is typical, just a new version of “it depends on what the meaning of “is” is”. Peter Hasson comments on the swooning by Jack Dorsey over the article, and Dorsey, instead of disputing the characterization of his response to the article, snipes about the use of the word “love”.
@peterjhasson
6 Apr
Twitter’s CEO loves this article about driving conservatives from public life and turning the rest of the country into California in the “new civil war.” Literally what it’s about https://twitter.com/jack/status/982096889930657792 …
@jack
Where did I say “love”
They also redefine the word “forward” as “regressing to an always-failed economic and political system that has invariably led to economic misery and too often to totalitarianism, oppression and death”.
The way forward is on the path California blazed about 15 years ago… if by “forward” you mean off the edge of the cliff. Right now the only redeeming factor of California is the object lesson the state is providing to the rest of the country—“there, but for common sense, goes the rest of the country”. The state is a slow motion train wreck, picking up speed as it goes down its death spiral, making promises it can’t keep, writing checks it can’t cash, painting pictures of itself that don’t relate to its reality, while it loses its identity and becomes a Third World country with a few fabulously wealthy elites at the top of the heap and millions upon millions of increasingly restive dependent paupers at the bottom. Like Guam, it may just tip over some day.
Seven months from today we’ll have a better feel for where we’re headed in at least the short term. If the Dems don’t gain control of the House (I think the Senate is a bridge too far), then I fully expect the radical elements of the Democrat Party to come completely unhinged and go on a violent rampage. If that happens, it’s not going to end well for them.
It wouldn’t be the worst situation to happen. Sometimes when looking in the rearview mirror or life, there were times I thought we were in to worst period of history with the worry it would continue to grow more desolate. For the grace of God, it appears many of those bleak moments actually sparked the stimulus for change to an era of hope, as I see happening in many ways today. I pray our path out of the darkness continues as we strive toward the light. That however is not a given. The power(s) that generate the darkness will not rest or quietly go away until they’ve eliminated all who oppose it. Evil will be conquered. How & when that happens has yet to play itself out. If the left loses the mid-term elections and fail to tie up either the House or Senate, that could certainly be a moment where they become fully unhinged and display their vile hatred for all to see, even those who’ve been blindly following them. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact I would welcome the moment when evil is exposed in such a fashion where the flames of its ugly hatred bring reality to its destructive force. Then the work to rebuild begins. Hope for our children’s sake, we get to see it start and they have a clearer view on how to continue it.
Adding to commentary about the level of class on the Left: a Tweet about the fire in a private apartment in Trump Tower that claimed a life.
jesse farrar
✔
@BronzeHammer
Trump Tower is on fire. It’s because Donald Trump was inside of the tower, and he poured gasoline on his head, then struck a match and set his entire body aflame. He died a long, painful death that will stain the history books for all time. He also had diarrhea at the last second
4:44 PM – Apr 7, 2018
This person actually worked on this wording, and thought it witty enough to post.
Yes, this is the kind of class we have learned to expect from the Left.
The gang over a Townhall also took notice on the “California Dreaming” article:
“California Democrats actually cared about average citizens.” Yeah, uh huh. Drive 10 miles inland from the beach and California dreamin’ becomes California nightmarin’.
California is a bankrupt failed state that is essentially Illinois with palm trees and better weather. Outside the coastal urban enclaves where Jack and his pals mingle, drinking kombucha and apologizing for their white privilege to their baffled servants, it’s a crowded, decaying disaster. Bums wander the streets, littering the sidewalks with human waste. Crime is rising. Illegal aliens abound, more welcome in the Golden State than actual Americans. California is an example all right, but a cautionary one.
I have always thought it strange how Democrats can claim the mantle of “caring for the average American” when ALL of their financial support and votes come from the Coasts.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2018/04/09/liberals-announce-plan-to-crush-normal-americans-in-a-new-civil-war-spoiler-its-not-a-great-plan-n2469023
If you didn’t read the linked article in Kurt Schlichter’s column, you need to. It takes delusion to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL, and ends with this:
Which begs the obvious question, when California slides into the economic and cultural abyss, who are Democrats going to blame?
I think this quote from the linked article sums up the attitude of the American Left, now known as the Democrat Party:
The Republican Party was trapped in the brain-dead orthodoxies of an ideology stuck in the past.
This one sentence contains the four pillars of Leftist theology. That is, the word “trapped”—-old-timers here might remember the sneering accusation hurled at me by one of the Pitchfork crowd that I was “TRAPPED in history”—as well as the claim that the ideology of the Right is both brain-dead and “orthodox” (a pejorative implying stagnation and rigidity) and of course the final insult, of being “stuck in the past”.
And upon these accusations is built the self-congratulatory preening of the America Left. They smugly brag that they are not “trapped” in history because they simply ignore it. They ignore its lessons, as well, but that is not a problem for them. They reject “orthodoxy” and its implied rigidity as being, well, just being too restrictive. They just wanna be free. So to them knowledge of history and its lessons equal being “brain-dead”, and they gloat over their refusal to be “stuck in the past”. They remain ignorant of the historical lesson that their brand of “freedom” inevitably ends in loss of freedom.
What they refuse to acknowledge is that civilization itself is built upon understanding and learning from the mistakes of the past and also from its successes. When someone figured out that it was easier to roll a round rock than a square one, technological advances were built upon that discovery. It was not rejected as being too “orthodox” or too “stuck in the past”.
The ‘orthodoxy” of the much-reviled “past” loathed and rejected by the American Left was built upon the analysis of what had, and what had not, worked in that past. The system so loathed and reviled by such as this smug smart-ass author was developed in an intellectual laboratory in which the lessons of the past were examined, evaluated, analyzed and applied to a new template of what the Founders wanted to achieve. Then their conclusions were put to the test, and in the following centuries they were proved to be right—-their new system was vastly superior to any that had gone before.
The 20th Century proved the superiority of this system. While the monarchies of Europe were evolving into democratic monarchies with political power left to the elected representatives, and the American system was proving to be such a resounding success that America had become a beacon of freedom and economic opportunity attracting people from around the world, the system so beloved by the American Left was butchering its opponents, implementing absolute tyranny over millions of people, systematically starving millions to advance political power, and showing itself to be dependent on brutality and dominance of its people.
So we can see why the American Left wants to ignore history. History is not only not kind to Leftism, it is lethal to Leftism. So the Left has to ignore history, denigrate it, insult those who understand it and have learned from it, and ridicule those who find its lessons valuable. They have to treat the system created by the America Founders with the same disdain and contempt, because it, and it alone, stands in stark contrast to the inevitable failures of Leftist ideology. They have to preen that their ideology is not “stuck in the past” because to acknowledge the past would be to condemn it, reject it and refuse to consider it.
This is what the “smart” people over at MSNBC are talking about. You know, those people who are not “trapped in the past”
Sunday on her weekend morning program, MSNBC’s Joy Reid seriously discussed a situation where President Trump refused a subpoena and would have to be arrested and put in jail until he testified before a grand jury. Reid envisioned a scenario of a White House besieged by federal marshals who would wait for Trump to give the Secret Service a stand down order so he could be taken into custody.
“Let’s say that Donald Trump decides he doesn’t want to give an interview with Mueller, but Mueller says ‘Oh, but you will.’ And he’s subpoenaed to [be] interview[ed] [by] Robert Mueller. And Donald Trump simply says, ‘I don’t recognize that subpoena.’ This is a president whose behavior is different as president of the United States. He doesn’t follow convention. Who would force him to comply with the subpoena ordering him to do an interview with Robert Mueller?” Reid asked.
I could see a similar situation in which Trump orders federal marshals to arrest a half dozen or so people in the FBI and Department of Justice for conspiracy and obstruction of justice — and about as likely to happen as Joy Reid’s scenario.
I am fascinated by the peeks into Leftist pathology, creepy and disturbing as it is. These people evidently spend a LOT of time inventing scenarios that give them pleasure to anticipate, and what gives them pleasure simply creeps me out. Joy Reid, of course, is a bona fide batshit crazy nut case anyway, so nothing she says is really surprising, but this little fantasy she has created is quite detailed, leading me to think that she spends most of her time in this ugly fantasyland.
She’s still not (quite) as sick as the psycho who concocted a cherished vision in which the president of the United States poured gasoline on himself and lit it, dying a long and agonizing death, while soiling himself in the process. The compulsion to add that fecal detail tells us a lot about this guy.
And what about the ghouls celebrating the death of a man just because he bought an apartment in a building named after Trump? These people getting the giggles over that tragic fire seem completely oblivious to the fact that there are citizens living there, people who paid to buy or lease a place to live, who have nothing at all to do with the president—–they are still tickled at the thought of these people losing their homes, and even dying, because of their address.
There seems to be no level too low for the Left to seek out and inhabit. Yet they persist in acting as if they hold the Higher Moral Ground.
How long are we going to allow this charade to continue?
The F.B.I. on Monday raided the office of President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, seizing records related to several topics including payments to a pornographic-film actress…………” The search does not appear to be directly related to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, but likely resulted from information he had uncovered and gave to prosecutors in New York.
I didn’t think I would ever see anything like this in this country. Democrats are hell bent on making America a shithole third world country, and with feces lttering the streets of California, they are well on their way.
From the article: Justice Department rules require prosecutors to first consider less intrusive alternatives before seeking records from lawyers. Which leads to the question of what other alternatives were pursued before this dramatic raid. A polite query, perhaps? A subpoena? But that all seems to lack the drama of the unexpected raid.