Conservative Values

If You Want Peace With Islam, Then be a Crusader

Mark Noonan44 Comments

It is said that only Nixon could go to China. That is, nobody but an ardent anti-Communist could talk peace with Communists. There is some truth to this. Not that talking with China worked out all that well, but the basic concept is correct. For there to be peace there has to be reality – we can’t live in a world of illusions. Anyone else trying to break the ice with the Chi-coms would have been immediately tagged as a sell out. That Nixon did it gave us some assurance that there was reality behind the move. So, too, with Islam – only a Crusader can befriend the Saracen.

I put up a comment on X pointing out that part of the reason for the Church’s soft touch with Islam is the plain fact that anything provocative would lead to bloodshed. Specifically, the blood of innocent and defenseless Christians in the Muslim world. This touched off a firestorm of criticism. I was torched for a whole day! In fact, there are still people dropping by to call me a coward, an Islamist stooge, a traitor, an apostate and so on. I do note, though, with great care that all of those calling for a Crusade against Islam are very unlikely to actually join the effort…that those who want bloodcurdling Papal statements about Islam won’t actually pay the price for same.

Now, to be sure, I do believe the Church should take a far stronger stance against Islamist oppression of Christians. A lot stronger. But what I was trying to do there is put myself in Papal shoes…and in Papal ears. I’ll bet big money that the Christian leaders of the Muslim world are always urging a soft stance. Great issues of the day aside, these people are trying to shepherd very small flocks through very large wolf packs. They don’t want a very difficult task made even harder. People are almost incapable of nuance here in 2026 and so I was flamed on it.

I want the stronger stance not to provoke violence, but to get the Muslims to the table – to be the Crusader who earns the respect of the Saracen, and so can make peace with him. Sorta like Trump is doing. Part of the reason the Muslim world was diddling over Iran was lack of trust in our determination. Why provoke Iran at the behest of the Yanks if they’re going to cut out on you when it gets rough? Trump has shown he has the will to get the job done regardless how much people whine about it. And, so, now we’re seeing real efforts at peace with Israel among Muslim nations and a growing determination to see an end to the Mullah regime. They know they can trust Trump. The President has shown he has the courage of Richard the Lionheart. So, too, I think the Church should become – a bit of Urban II is called for.

I think the Church leaders should issue a firm statement – not just calling for more dialogue, but calling for Christian emancipation in the Muslim world. No more second class citizenship. No more routine denial of Christian rights. No more death penalties based on Sharia law that Christians are not in any way bound to obey. Certainly the statement must also say that Christians in Muslim countries must show deep respect for their Muslim neighbors and not needlessly provoke them…but it must be a two way street, and it must be the foundation of a true dialogue between Islam and the West. We can’t talk sensibly if we’re not talking as equals in all things. We can do this. And we must do this. War and death might seem the easy way out – and getting a pound of flesh after decades of outrages might seem satisfying. But it isn’t the way. A peace between equals who respect each other is what we must have.

And we can see signs of its possibility. The King of Jordan is a decent man. So, too, the King of Morocco. The UAE is a land of decent, honest people. Perfect? Not by a long shot. But people we can work with. And signposts to a better relationship between Islam and the West. I’m not saying we’re going to love each other. I’m not saying we won’t find conflict. But I am saying that we can live in peace. In this, what Trump is doing is crucial – because the Mullah regime is the cancer in the Muslim world. The entity which inflames all hatreds and makes peace impossible. If he can destroy it – or even just degrade it significantly – we will have a window of opportunity. A chance to build so much peace and reconciliation that the purveyors of hatred and death will become a small minority, shoved into a corner, shouting at itself.

Finding the Truth

Mark Noonan7 Comments

It is surprising what you can find in second hand stores if you’re just poking around. I mean, take me with my deep interest in history and especially military history. There I was, wandering around the store and I spot this book: The War Lords. Looks interesting. Edited by Field Marshal Sir Michael Carver. Never heard of him. Picture on the back though looks like a thoroughly English officer of the mid-20th century. Open it: printed in 1976. Cool: way before anything like Woke became fashionable. Flip through it: ah, it is a series of sketches covering the main military leaders of the 20th century – varied from Kemal to Bradley. I buy it, take it home and start to read it – and am immediately enthralled. Why? Not because it is all new – though it does provide some info I hadn’t heard before – but because it isn’t written to make a point…just tell us what the men were like as war leaders. Strengths and weaknesses, all of it given out without any political axe to grind.

That is so very important here in our Age of Lies: just telling it as it is. One of my favorite books about World War One is The Great War written by Cyril Falls. Not that Falls was perfect – no, he was a loyal British officer and he would not stick a knife into the back of his chief – Field Marshal Douglas Haig – just to sell a book. But his book is good because, as he put it, it was written in the sense of a grandchild asking, “tell us about the war, and what they fought each other for”. He just told the story. He didn’t varnish it – but he wasn’t trying to make a point; just tell the tale, and that is what makes it so good. If you want a brief and well written history of the war – by a man who served in it – Falls’ book is the go-to. And I’m thinking that The War Lords will be added to my selection of first rate books and one which I will end up reading multiple times.

We must keep in mind that history is whatever the historian decided to say – and if the historian wants to make a point, then what you’re getting is a point of view. It might be a very well written point of view. It might be a logically sound and well sourced point of view, but it is a point of view. William Manchester was an excellent historian and biographer but no matter how you slice it, he was a mid-20th century liberal (and he would have been the first to admit that is what he was) and his books are written through that lense. He might admit to his bias, but that bias did not prevent him from excluding things which worked against his Narrative. For instance, as a mid-20th century liberal, he was of the view that war is a stupid, tragic waste. It is how he saw his own service as a Marine in World War Two (and there are doubts about the accuracy of some of the war stories he relates…so, even when recounting his memoirs, his Narrative was paramount) – and it is how he views the men who lead the wars. Even the best were, in a sense, bad. Maybe less bad than some, but bad all the same. This is why his contribution to war literature must be taken with a grain of salt. He never got over his fury about how many of his friends died on Okinawa…and this prevented him from telling us, except as an aside, how incredibly brave his friends were. War is not mere glory. But it isn’t merely sordid, either. It is a human activity…and it is therefor a mixed bag and if we’re really being honest, we tell the whole story…even the parts that don’t support our argument.

It is so very important to find the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. It is also pretty rare…but it is what we must always seek. It is amazing how just a little bit of truth will upend perhaps even decades of settled thought in the mind. And how once you reach a critical mass of truth in your mind, you simply can’t be fooled. You also stop being fearful. Or worried. Once your quest for truth passes a certain point, a certain calmness becomes your main sensation. You can tell the liar a mile away, and you stay away from him – except, perhaps, to point out to others he’s a liar. You can tell instantly when someone is just making stuff up to sell a garbage idea. Even if you’re not an expert on a particular subject, you can tell when someone is lying about it. This, I think, is what was meant by “the truth shall set you free”. Not free in your body – someone might throw chains around you at any moment. But if you have the truth, you are free…you already know what is going to happen and you rest content knowing that no matter how triumphant a liar appears at any given moment, total disaster awaits him because lies are always destructive.

Anti-Semitism: it is Part of the Modern Barbarism

Mark Noonan19 Comments

A Priest-mutual I have on X posted the following:

One doesn’t have to support Israel. I don’t support Israel. I simply refuse to hate Jews.

Which is, of course, simply true. Now, on my part, I do support Israel – explicitly as a Jewish State. One thing the past century has taught us is that even in the most advanced and tolerant societies, Jew-hatred is both easy to stir up and quickly becomes deadly. But the bottom line is that reasonable people can take exception to Israel – both in its actions and in its reason for being. That is, you can think it was a mistake to create Israel…but this doesn’t entail hating Jews.

We’ve talked here before of the genesis of modern Anti-Semitism, which is different from that of the Middle Ages where it was simply thought that Jews were foolishly wrong for not accepting Christ as savior – and this, indeed, could and did often lead to violence against Jews. But in the modern world, anti-Semitism changed…from a dismay to a hatred. And it became tinged with race – that is, Jews are not a religious but a racial group…and no matter how secular a Jew is, or even if a Jew converts, they don’t stop being Jews. This was the baleful ideology which was created by Gobineau, refined by Chamberlain and Schonerer and then wound up given full expression by Hitler. The crucial aspect of all this is that it was plain and simple stupid. Not supported by anything scientific nor the result of any logical chain of thought. It was just idiocy produced by losers to explain why they weren’t on top – later taken up by Hitler and his Nazis and carried out to the detriment of Germany’s own future. You’d think that Nazi defeat in 1945 would have killed it off completely, but it never did.

To be sure, it took decades to get it back on track – surviving Nazis worked long and hard at it, starting mostly in the Muslim world but always with footholds in the West. Everything carefully pitched to catch the ignorant and get them to believe. It is rising to a malignant cancer in the West these days because while the Nazis were lying, the West was destroying the West…that is the educational, religious and moral convictions which were always the strongest bulwark against vicious modern anti-Semitism.

And that brings me to the main point: the full purpose of the modern Left is to get people to be degraded. To be ignorant. Envious. Lazy. Greedy. To pretty much embrace all the cardinal sins and consider themselves superior for doing so. What this has done is make people, well, insane. We see it in a video I saw earlier – some woman was attending an 8th grade graduation and because her child wasn’t called up early on, she threw a temper tantrum. The lady probably knows nothing. I’d bet money that she’s only barely literate. To consider if she’d ever read a book of any sort is to be asking far too much. But she’s fat. Monetarily in good shape. And supremely confident that if things don’t work as she wants, she has a right to mess everything up for everyone else – she is also certain that if there is something wrong, it is the result of a shadowy conspiracy to prevent her from being on top. It is of such clay that our modern anti-Semites, BLM activists and Code Pink crazies are made of.

The problem we have isn’t just one particular type of evil. While it would be great if we could wave a magic wand and make all anti-Semitism instantly disappear, it wouldn’t help us long term – it wouldn’t save our civilization. If the people are still ignorant, lazy, greedy and nuts, then if one particular aspect of insanity is removed it doesn’t help. What we – the civilized – must decide is how long we’ll allow the barbarians to afflict us, and what means we’ll choose to convert them to our ways.

Because make no mistake about it, the barbarians – with rare exceptions – will not voluntarily give up their ways. Why should they? They can take and destroy and nobody stops them. The people starting a brawl in a fast food joint because they didn’t get enough nuggets in their order are never punished in any real way. Until they are, they will not change. We’re going to have to disenfranchise them and then let them know they are the social inferiors who must learn the ways of their betters. Or else. Don’t even for a moment think this is race-based. That is just another bit of drivel – in fact, the modern American racism owed a huge amount to Gobineau’s idiotic twaddle…it was seized upon by pro-slavery people in the USA and used as a justification to continue stealing the labor of black Americans. It isn’t about race – it is about being civilized or being barbarian. There are plenty of white Americans just as barbaric as any morons out there – and they, too, must be instructed in right conduct.

Such things as not being a drunkard. Staying employed. Keeping your house clean. Your yard maintained. Never even thinking for a moment that shoplifting is ok. Being respectful of others. Not picking fights with cops. Getting married. Staying married. Learning to read. All of that – and, as I said, they won’t voluntarily go to the wellsprings of decent behavior. They will have to be compelled. And if we do this, then all of the ills of our society will shrink to very manageable proportions…

America Comes Back

Mark Noonan24 Comments

We knew, of course. We’ve watched since 1969 how the Democrat party – and the overall American Left – have wanted America defeated. As soon as Vietnam became “Nixon’s war”, American defeat was the Democrat goal. But for the longest while they managed to hide it, at least a bit. They’d make statements about love for the troops or the desire for peace or some such…but what they’ve wanted is our defeat. The Democrat Party wants America to lose.

Some of this stems from the infiltration of the Democrat party by out and out communist traitors: that is, people ideologically committed to our destruction. But most of it stems from a sick calculus on the part of the Democrats – if America loses, Democrats can justify ever more spending, ever more control and, starting with the “boat people” ever more mass migration (though, of course, they picked wrong on the “boat people”…they are ardently anti-Communist to this day, as are the Cubans…and this is why you never hear of Democrat groups trying to bring more Vietnamese and Cubans in). There is more grift to be made, that is. In other words, the Democrats can steal more from a dying, defeated America than they can from a vibrant, victorious USA.

But now the mask is fully off – since the first moment of our righteous war against the wicked regime in Tehran, Democrats have been issuing flat out Mullah propaganda. Whatever absurd lies are issued, Democrats pick up on them. It is abundantly clear that Democrats are hoping for a high US (and Israeli) casualty rate as precursor to ignominious American defeat with a revived and triumphant Mullah regime. Keep in mind that they’re doing this when by every metric the American-Israeli alliance is winning an astonishing victory. That even as the Mullah regime is pushed to the edge, Democrats are still trying to pull their fat out of the fire.

Why?

Because the Global Establishment is a house of cards – with the central support for it being a weak, blind and blundering USA. That is, the whole system is based upon the requirement that the United States not be the United States.

We won World War Two. Not the Russians. Not the British. Not the United Nations. We did. Without American participation, there was no victory coming over the Axis. Without American support, there was no means whereby the UK and the USSR could remain in the war. We not only equipped twelve million of our own, but millions more around the world. This isn’t to denigrate what the UK, Russia and others did – within their very limited means, they did what they could. We did everything. All at once. With no detriment to any aspect of our national power. The Global Establishment (which, of course, including many Americans) looked at this on September 2nd, 1945 and shuddered in fear…what if these American hicks fully understand how powerful they are? What’s to stop them?

To which the hicks would have answered – if they had ever been asked – nothing, but we aren’t going to do anything like that because we’re Americans. The good guys. As long as everyone lives and works in peace, we don’t otherwise care what they’re up to.But the Establishment couldn’t see that…all they could see was Americans from obscure places like Kansas and Alabama ruling over the ruins of their world. They became determined to tie down this leviathan…to drug it. Put it to sleep. Make it doubt itself. Weaken it in every manner possible. Such an America provided two things for the Establishment – cannon fodder to keep the Establishment in power and a ready source of money to steal. And they were determined to keep on going to the end of time…just keep America down.

And my goodness they almost succeeded! At least forty percent of Americans are in favor of American defeat right now (though I’ll be bound that of Americans descended from those alive in 1945, the number is down around twenty percent – the newcomers and their immediate progeny weren’t imported just for the heck of it, after all). We are drugged – literally and figuratively. We are – or at least, were – very much asleep.

But all through this time – right from the start in the late 1940s – there was a restive element in the United States. The people again and again showed they didn’t like what the Establishment was doing. They didn’t want us in the UN. Didn’t really want is in NATO, either. Didn’t want a gigantic military-industrial complex (we hadn’t one in 1941 and it proved entirely unnecessary that we should). Didn’t want mass immigration. Didn’t want welfare bums (differentiated from helping people out through a temporary rough patch). We wanted criminals smacked down. Didn’t want endless wars with no victory. But no matter how we registered our displeasure at the polls – no matter how many times we revolved the doors between Democrats and Republicans – nothing changed…except for the worse as the Establishment just gave us ever more of what we never wanted.

Until Trump.

Is he a genius? We can’t judge: too close to the event. Is he some sort of force of nature? Also can’t know as its too soon. But he’s clearly seen something…he has a vision. He might put it in almost slapstick terms, but underlying it all is the America which launched dozens of fleet carriers over a four year period. That is, an America which only had to envision the goal and then set to work. Roosevelt called for 50,000 planes and everyone in the Establishment scoffed at him…but over the following four years the USA built more airframes than the rest of the world, combined. Something like nearly 500,000 of them. Americans did it. Because they could. Because Americans can do anything. Moonshot in eight years from the word “go”. If they are allowed to be Americans. If they aren’t…well, then, maybe we’ll get there in ten or twelve years…but it’ll be a diverse crew! Trump wants that America back…the America that even in the depths of the Great Depression was still outproducing everyone, was richer than everyone and was still building such impressive monuments as Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Empire State Building. All of which, I’ll bet, cost less than even one Learing Center.

This is why the Establishments wants him dead. Vance, too. Why it has fever dreams of sending MAGA to reeducation camps: if Trump wins – if America wins – then it is all over for them. All Americans will want to do is win some more…and keep on winning and winning and winning. Getting richer and more powerful and more advanced and just enjoying the heck out of being free and happy. While the rest of the world stews in mediocrity…maybe pointing to an ancient monument…which I’ll bet if we can work out the genetics were built by people who’s descendants emigrated to America as soon as they could.

And, hey, don’t get me wrong – as people, person for person, we’re no better than anyone else. But as Americans, we simply are better than everyone. It stems from our attitude towards life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is wound around with our Declaration of Independence…it is sustained by our Constitution, the only one in the world which actually seeks to secure the rights of individuals (even great nations like Israel and Argentina still have those aspects in their laws which allow the government to suspend any and all rights if the government thinks it should – only our laws have the phrase “Congress shall make no law”). Until the rest of the world becomes like us, they can’t compete – and if they become like us then, well, they’re like us and so no problem. Can’t help it if it was our Founders who found the magic talisman or were specially blessed by God with wisdom…I can only see things as they are and realize that my Americans went from subsistence farming to global dominance in well under a century. That’s kinda amazing. That’s proof of our supremacy. And that supremacy is now coming back.

Yeah, Lies Are Still the Problem

Mark Noonan49 Comments

I’ve talked endlessly about lies but I want to talk about it again – because now more and more people are picking up on it. But not all. I still see all too many on the Right still saying things like “why would you say that?” or “do you not realize what you’re saying?” when they confront a Leftist or Never Trumper over a lie. That is, they aren’t just calling them what they are: liars.

You might remember the World Famous Expert, Tom Nichols: he was allegedly on the Right until the advent of Trump in 2015 and he’s now gone full Leftist Never Trump kook – he had a post on X saying, and I quote, “the people cheering the submarine attack on the IRIS Dena seem to forget that the US Navy has surface vessels that could have captured the ship, and held the crew (or allowed them to defect). But apparently, it was important to prove that the Navy can still torpedo a frigate”. Nichols’ claim to fame – his claim to be an Expert, that is – stems from his tenure at the Naval War College. In other words, he knows. He’s not some person with limited knowledge of naval affairs. You don’t seek to capture an enemy on the high seas. The capture of enemy vessels went out when ships went from sail to steam – you sight an enemy and you sink her, that is what modern naval warfare is about. When the Brits put down the Bismarck – and we put down the Yamato – the attack was merciless. The British fired 2,800 rounds at Bismarck scoring at least 400 hits…when her guns were silent, her decks awash and the crew trying to abandon ship, they fired one last torpedo at the hulk. For Yamato, we sent wave after wave of planes in to bomb, torpedo and strafe her…the only reason it was three waves is because by the time the fourth wave got there she had rolled over and exploded…more than 3,000 of her 3,300 man crew dying with her.

Keep in mind that both ships were pretty much helpless from the start – the Bismarck’s steering gear was jammed and so she could only steam in a slow circle: a complete sitting duck. Yamato had no air cover and our strafing massacred her AA gunners in their unarmored positions, allowing later waves to just come in, line her up in the sights and blow her all to hell and gone. That is modern naval warfare. The men on both sides didn’t ask for quarter and didn’t complain if they came in second. Guarantee you not one German or Japanese sailor who survived those actions had any rancor towards the British and American seamen. War at sea is a hard calling.

Nichols knows this. So, why did he say what he said? Because he’s a liar. Nothing more. And a paid liar, into the bargain. Perhaps even being paid – directly or roundabout – by foreign enemies to lie. And he is, of course, just one of thousands. People like him just pumping out lie after lie after lie. All designed to sap American unity and American will. To sow doubts. To get Americans fighting among themselves. To do anything but support America – and especially American victory. In Iran we have scored the most astonishing, lopsided victory America has had since Manila Bay in 1898. For very minimal losses, we have completely destroyed the enemy’s ability to impact the course of the war. How did we Americans view that? Like this:

Heroic. Resolute. Right into the fight without hesitation. You know: like Americans. Right now, we have the like of these men in battle…soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Of course, some women, too. But they are our heroes…we should be getting stories of their deeds…thrilling tales of how they took the fight to the heart of the enemy. What we get is lies…lies about bombed schools. Lies about closed straights. Lies about how wrong it is to torpedo an enemy.

And, my friends, it really has to stop. We’re robbing ourselves of our future by being nice to liars. The kids growing up today deserve to know their nation is great and is the home of heroes…and that we are the good guys, fighting for decency in a world gone mad.

I still do not know exactly how we do it…but until we find a way to make a liar pay – and I mean with the literal skin off his back – then I don’t know how we will survive.

The State of the Union.

Mark Noonan22 Comments

Now that we’ve had most of 24 hours to sort of absorb it all and think it over, gotta say I think Trump’s SOTU was an unqualified triumph. He’s really getting very good at this – he even managed a bit of Reaganesque rhetoric in there, especially at the end.

He laid out a vision of a powerful, growing America…finally ditching Jimmy Carter’s “era of limits” which, to one degree or another, had been adopted by everyone, Right and Left, in the United States. The idea that we’ve peaked and all we can do is manage the decline and, hey, enjoy the time you’re in because the successor generations will have it worse. It doesn’t have to be like that. Never has to be for any nation.

People choose to decline – as Will Durant put it, no nation is destroyed from without: it is only from within that a nation can die. You think about the Poles and the Irish…for centuries under hostile, foreign rule. With their national identity often made illegal. But they endured and waited and worked and fought, and once the hostile foreign power withdrew, there was the nation. To be sure, Ireland over the past twenty years has opted for national suicide, but that is the choice of the people now…the people of the past felt the nation was worth preserving. The peoples we see today entering national degradation have chosen it as the easier course of action. No longer having to fight for their daily bread, they are ok with their nations dying as long as there’s free food in the fridge and something mindless to watch on TV or the internet. It is sad, but it is a choice – and they can choose at any time to reverse course.

What we did when we voted Trump in 2024 was reverse the course. 2016 was more of a last effort to just stop the decline – we’d allow things to be as they were as long as they didn’t get any worse. We found out that our Rulers insisted on things getting worse…and we also found that we can’t stand still. It is either advance, or retreat. In 2024 we chose to advance. The Left often asks us “is this what you voted for?” as they show us something that is supposed to make us feel bad. But we’re over here going, “I didn’t vote for that, exactly, but some months back Team Trump stopped doing what I voted for and started on things I wish I had voted for.”

The Democrats were walked to the chopping block by Trump in his SOTU and they eagerly did exactly what he had scripted for them. They could have easily taken the wind out of his sails had they just stood up and applauded when Trump said the primary purpose of our government is to serve the American people, not the illegal aliens. They didn’t. They couldn’t – or, at least, they felt they couldn’t. Everything they have done in their lives – all the lies, the insanity, the theft – compelled them to sit on their hands…or even shout their disapproval over this sentiment, which is probably a 90/10 issue among the American people. It was their chance to actually fight back against Trump…but it would also be good for Trump, so they refused: and set themselves up for defeat here in 2026 and 2028.

We’ll have to see how the vote goes, but I just can’t imagine a world where the American people vote into power those who clearly show they hate the United States. There is no offer of a better tomorrow from the Democrats…just a return to the past, but made worse. They promise us more illegals. More fraud. More freakish sociological experiments. More hatred. More death – all accompanied by spreading poverty as they sell the last of our capacity to China. The Democrats lack the physical capacity to cheat their way to victory…they have already secured all the power they can with voter fraud. If they don’t have a message that resonates, they’ve got nothing.

Having shrieking, hate filled aliens who are clearly on the take as the face of the Democrat party also doesn’t help them. The United States is not that – we don’t care about your homeland’s stone age barbarism and the complaints they make about being treated like barbarians. We see you up there, clearly hating our country and we know: you aren’t legitimate. You didn’t secure power by merit or by the vote…you were engineered into office by a corrupt political system which feels it must reserve a certain number of seats to your like. The broad majority is repulsed…and will punish the party which thinks it is good to have anti-Americans in Congress.

This still won’t be easy – the Democrats are still hoping their rhetoric will set off so many lunatics that one will be able to do the deed…both to Trump and Vance. The Democrats will still use their bogus federal judges to defy the law. They will still have the MSM lying for them 24/7. But I do believe we will win – that we ripped the bandage off in 2024 and we’re now healing, with the true America gaining strength and confidence by the day. We now know that we don’t have to just put up with it…we can actually stop it, reverse it, replace it with something better. And I believe the American people will just want more of this as time goes on.

Mexico and the World of Make Believe

Mark Noonan45 Comments

When Zachary Taylor marched his army into Mexico in 1846 along with finding Mexicans to fight, he also found Mexicans who wanted nothing to do with Mexico. That is, plenty of people in northern Mexico were desperate to be annexed to the USA – anything to get out of Mexico’s clutches. And even among the Mexicans who fought, it wasn’t particularly well. At Buena Vista, Taylor was outnumbered about four to one and he totally crushed the Mexican army – don’t get me wrong, Mexicans are as brave as any and there were some attacks pressed home with determination…but at the end of the day, the Mexican army at Buena Vista – fighting deep inside Mexican territory – was fought to a standstill and then had to be withdrawn because its commanders sensed that the men were about to desert en masse. In other words, it wasn’t a national army of patriots…but a conscript force of peasants who simply would not grit it out in defense of a country – and Ruling Class – they cared nothing about.

I believe this was because Mexico was a mistake. How did Mexico become independent? Well, Augustin de Iturbide – the commander of the Spanish army in Mexico – switched sides. It would be akin to us winning independence by putting Cornwallis in command of the Continental Army. In other words, pure farce. Why did Iturbide switch sides? Because he had been dismissed from command for cruelty and corruption. He got past that via influential friends but once reappointed to command, he looked for his first chance to betray Spain. After independence, he tried to set himself up as Emperor of Mexico but was swiftly overthrown and forced into exile. Returning a few years later, he was arrested by some of his opponents and shot after a bogus trial. But this doesn’t really get down to the nitty gritty – the fact that Mexico wasn’t fighting for independence in the manner the thirteen colonies had.

It wasn’t a matter that not everyone was on board (like here in the USA), but that people were fighting for completely different things…and it boiled down to various factions fighting for personal advantage. It was all just one very big mess and it was a ghastly tragi-comedy which persisted in Mexico until Diaz put down everyone and installed himself as President from 1876 to 1911. And in that period of stability he sort of crafted a story of Mexico and imposed it on the people – nothing like a couple generations of power to convince people that your justification for remaining in power is the actual story of your people. And then even that all fell apart and Mexico was consumed by ten years of civil war until the people who eventually created the PRI won control and set up a system to perpetuate themselves indefinitely in power under the guise of Democracy but with the elections fake and the outcomes predetermined. When the PRI started to fall apart in the late 1990’s there was a brief glimmer of hope that Mexico would finally get a government of consent…but then the rise of the Cartels in the early part of the 21st century nixed that.

And here we are – now there’s apparent Cartel war in Puerto Vallarta with the backdrop of a Mexican “government” which says it won’t use the army to fight the Cartels because that might violate human rights. In other words, the “government” of Mexico is no such thing – just a facade for the various Cartels who now battle it out to control territory and income…with the problem being the massive reduction in Cartel income following Trump’s closure of the border. My bet is that the Cartels, feeling the pinch, are now fighting over domestic income streams – and Puerto Vallarta with its huge influx of tourist dollars is a plum worth plucking…if you have the power to oust the current Cartel owners (don’t worry too much over stories that it was the Mexican military that zapped the Cartel boss…think of the Mexican military as yet another Cartel…it is certainly controlled by Cartels).

Why bring all this up? Well, outside the fact that we might have to intervene in Mexico for our own security needs, I think this needs to be said – and said again and again. That is: stop living in the world of make believe. We’ve maintained this pretense that Mexico has a legitimate government that we can deal with on the square. Never have we had such a thing. Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t be expedient about things, but let us have no illusions about it. We’re dealing with a clique, not a government – there is no legitimacy in it…it was engineered into power via shadowy forces and it will be replaced by the same sort of machinations.

So, too, it goes all around the world. Nigeria isn’t a country – its a colonial leftover encompassing at least five distinct peoples, most of whom hate each other with a passion. It is like jamming together France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Greece and calling it one country. The raids against Christians are carried out by Muslims…with the Muslims and Christians having distinct national identities, neither of which are “Nigerian”…but the fiction is kept alive – mostly by the Muslims – because the Christians hold the most valuable real estate (ie, that which has the oil). South Africa – not a country. Syria – not a country. Algeria – not a country (its borders and national identity are leftovers of French rule). And even some genuine countries – that is real peoples who’s borders roughly coincide with them – don’t have real governments; just like Mexico doesn’t. Iran – not a real government. Zimbabwe – not a real government. Sudan – not a real government. As for the EU – definitely getting deep into “not a real government” there…so much manipulation and fraud that we’re getting to the point where we can’t be certain any government there reflects the will of the people.

The world is not civilized any longer. I’ve seen posts on X from Canadians who went “elbows up” and decided to vacation in Mexico instead of the USA…to teach us Yanks a lesson. Hey, I used to love going to Mexico…but I haven’t been in about twenty years. Why not? Because when they start finding the bodies of dismembered people and nobody is arrested for it, I decide that place isn’t a good vacation destination. You’ve got to think about the people who go to Mexico – they’re betting their lives that the Cartels will keep them safe. To be sure, most of the time it is so…but if the Cartels decide its time for some death, then death is coming and there is no power in Mexico which can protect you from it. So, I’ll just have a taco here at home and keep Mexico as a fond memory of the past. I wouldn’t travel outside the USA these days if you paid me to do so – heck, even here at home barbarism is spreading, but at least here I’m on my own ground…I know the rules and can navigate my way through it. To be a foreigner? Heck no. Not even for a minute. There is no law out there – just power; and if power decides I gotta die, then dead I’ll be.

We need to take a long, hard look at things. These days, only a few foreign nations are in any way reliable – Japan, Argentina, El Salvador, Israel, UAE…maybe a half dozen others among the whole bunch. The rest of the world is a series of corrupt, cruel and increasingly incompetent factions fighting for control over dying societies. We are now faced with a battle to save ourselves – to Make America Great Again – and this will absorb the next twenty years. Our main foreign policy goal is to enforce as much peace as possible – mostly by a mix of force and persuasion. You know: sometimes kidnapping a foreign potentate who got on our nerves, other times offering them a deal which keeps them alive as long as they stop funding Hamas. But the purpose is to keep things as quiet as possible – as cheaply as possible – while we set our house in order and restore civilization here at home.

In light of this, what Trump will do with Mexico must be – and I believe it will be – in line with our needs. We don’t want a chaotic Mexico. But we can’t live with a Cartel Mexico, either. Something has to give…and it can’t be done with worries over offending Mexican national sensibilities which we can’t be sure even exist outside rent-a-mobs waving Mexican flags. So, too, our dealings with all nations comes into focus…and the Trump Doctrine emerges: we want peace. We will make a deal even if you’re just a mafia which took over a country. If you don’t take the deal…things will go badly for you.

Rebels With a Cause

Mark Noonan35 Comments

It is kinda funny how political labels get made but, anyways, the Liberal Democrat Party in Japan won a landslide victory in yesterday’s snap election – picking up 316 out of 465 seats in the Diet, where Japan’s political power resides. This is a supermajority which will allow Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to remake Japan as she sees fit. Back to that label – the Liberal Democrats are the Conservative-Populist/Nationalist Japanese party. Among the Party goals are a restriction on immigration and a build up of Japan’s military – that is, not allowing Japan to be turned into something Not Japan via immigration, and building up a force which make China think twice about disturbing the balance of power in east Asia.

I don’t know if this will mean Japan builds nuclear weapons – probably won’t. But I think Japan should. I’m sure they’ve got the technical know-how to build a credible nuclear deterrent within 10 years of the word “go”. But it is a sensitive issue in Japan, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if Japan wishes to remain a fully independent nation, she’ll have to look after her own defense. I support our continued alliance with Japan and I can’t imagine a set of circumstances where we would refuse Japan aid in case of war…but no nation should place its chips on someone else riding to the rescue. The Europeans did this and look where it landed them.

What I am confident it will mean is the low-key rebuilding of Japan’s fleet air arm will be turbocharged…as well Japan’s development of first rank attack subs (and Japan is also helping Taiwan build first-rate submarines). Basically, Japan is going to back to being a Great Power. And in my view, we should mostly leave east Asia in Japan’s hands. There is strategic risk in this because maybe a future Japanese government decides it is time for Round II. This is a low-risk possibility and so worth it for us. An alliance of Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Vietnam and Australia ultimately backed by us is vastly strong enough to curb Chinese ambitions. But I would like to ultimately see the US 8th Army out of Korea as well as withdrawing American ships from permanent basing in Japan. Our main Pacific base remains Hawaii and our forward base is Saipan (I have come to loath having bases on foreign soil – just too much diplomatic friction…I’d only agree to it if the base is ceded to the US either permanently or on a century-long lease). Long term, this starts to restore a normal world where powers and regional groupings look after themselves rather than to a globalist UN paid for by tax dollars extracted from Americans. Maybe one day we will have a one world government…but it can only happen in a sane way if the peoples of the world chose it. Not have it chosen for them by elites who then lie to the people to get it done.

Meanwhile, over in Aragon, Spain, the socialist government coalition got whacked in the regional elections. Supposedly Aragon is the bellweather for Spain…as it goes, so will the nation in the next national election. Don’t know enough about Spanish politics to judge that…but here’s the thing about both Spain and Japan: it was the youth vote in both places which propelled the Right to victory. The youth of the civilized world have had enough of it…enough of their future being stolen by an aging, dying Ruling Class. And think about this: the kids have been subjected to relentless Ruling Class propaganda since they were born. In schools, in media, in pop culture…everything has told them that their own countries are bad, their own people second rate, that they have to stop being what they are if they want to be good people…and this is now being rejected. Probably on instinct. It is also what happened here in 2024 and is happening in country after country…the youth is rebelling.

The Ruling Class will not go without a fight. In Spain, for instance, faced with its increasing unpopularity, the socialist government is going to legalize 500,000 foreigners living in Spain and allow them to vote in the next election. France is set to do this as well – and the reason why there’s a Labour government in the UK is because they did this years ago. The Ruling Class is electing a new people as the old people reject the Ruling Class. I don’t have much hope for Europe because of this – the demographics have been changed too much for there to be a non-violent way back and as all European peoples have been disarmed, there’s no way to fight the Ruling Class. But the rebellion is still there – and in nations where the demographics have not been fatally altered, the rebellion is winning.

It is ok to be what you are. I would never dream of going to a foreign land and telling them to be something they’re not. And this goes even for rather despicable peoples with really lousy cultures. Hey, I used to think differently – I used to believe that most people wanted to live in peace and freedom under law with everyone minding their own business. Found out in the War on Terrorism that some peoples appear to enjoy being rat bastards and will put up with poverty, disease and oppression as long as there’s someone lower than themselves to s*** on. Hey, more power to ya. Live as you want to live. And I, an American, will live as I want to live. Just as I expect a Japanese to live as a Japanese wants to live. And Argentine like Argentine. So on and so forth. I do believe my American civilization is the best – at least, it is the best for me. I want to keep it. Because of the peculiarity of American development, I don’t completely oppose immigration…but I refuse utterly the immigrant who doesn’t want to be American. I don’t want to see people wandering around my streets dressed in bizarre, foreign garb and speaking foreign languages with all the local signage unreadable…melting pot, not balkanization. Become American. Ditch all that Old Country nonsense that doesn’t fit in…and if you’ve got something on the Old Country’s menu that tastes good, lets have at it. In English. Wearing common American clothes. With it cooked up to food safety codes and served with forks and knives. Yeah, and we don’t just dump our trash on the streets or in the local river…we’re not like that here in America.

I do think our youth rebellion will work. That they will sort this out – and with just a touch of guidance from use geezers, they’ll be able to restore America over the next couple decades. I guess there really is a limit to what people will put up with…and we’ve at last reached it.

Our Indecent Modern World

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Saw a story out of Pakistan and it is similar to many stories I’ve read over the past years – teenage Christian girl (13 in this case) is kidnapped by a Muslim man, sexually assaulted, forced to convert to Islam and then “marry” the man. In a rather sad, last echo of British rule there was a court case about it: going through the motions, as it were. The court ruled for the Muslim. These cases are usually decided by a few things:

  1. How intimidated the court is (the man brought something like 150 male friends to let the court know how it would go if it ruled incorrectly).
  2. Statements allegedly from the victim claiming she’s happy with it (this is coerced and the girl can’t actually testify in a Muslim court).
  3. Because this is what you can do if you’re a Muslim male when dealing with non-Muslims in a Muslim-majority country.

But don’t get too hung up on the Muslim aspect of it. What happened here is the common run of humanity. The strong take what they can, the weak endure what they must. This is what the world is like – except in places where Christianity is the majority worldview. This is what Christianity suppresses when it waxes strong.

You can look up the Amritsar Massacre and you’ll find that it is a very big thing in India. It happened in 1919 in the Punjab, then under British rule. The dislocations caused by World War One had lead to unrest all over India – riots, attacks on Europeans, destruction of property. In Amritsar, an elderly British schoolteacher was manhandled by a mob and the local military commander decided to teach the locals a lesson. With eyes clear, he ordered his troops to open fire on a large crowd of Indians – nobody to this day knows how many were killed. Lowest estimate is 200, highest is 1,000. Times two or three injured. Remember: the British commander wanted a large number of Indians to die. He felt is was the only way to control an increasingly unruly situation and bring peace to the Punjab. Of course, when word got out of what happened, the whole world was shocked and outraged – including the British Establishment…and including Winston Churchill who was an ardent opponent of anything like independence for India. Post-Independence, the massacre has become part of the integral story of India’s rise to independence – they’ve got a huge memorial to the slain and it is ingrained into Indian national consciousness. The justification, as it were, for throwing off the British yoke. And, of course, Dyer – the British commander – is roundly condemned as an insensate brute…a racist imperialist oppressor.

But, here’s the thing, Reginald Dyer was born in the Punjab. He was fluent in many Indian languages. He commanded Indian troops in battle – very successfully on multiple occasions. In short, the man knew India – and Indians. Perhaps not as well as a native, but as well as any outsider can know another people. It was with his deep knowledge of Indians that he gave the orders to fire – and the firing was done by Gurkha and Pathan troops under his command. It is when you actually look at this that you realize that maybe the kindergarten history we’ve been spoon fed about the end of the European Empires is leaving off some crucial details. He wasn’t some monster – he was a highly educated man who lived and worked with the people of India his whole life.

So, why did he open fire?

Because the sort of people he was governing included the very sort of people who here a century later kidnap Christian teenagers, assault them and force them to marry their captors. Whatever brutalities the British Raj visited upon India, it is nothing like the brutalities that Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis visit upon themselves. Dyer wasn’t trying to kill good people…he was trying to make sure that the sort who kidnap little girls – or manhandle elderly British women who devote their lives to educating poor Indians – didn’t get the upper hand. We can dispute whether the action was right or wrong – but we cannot, we dare not, just go for a cartoonish view of the event. There was a reason – and we must know the reason before we render judgement. And we here in 2026 have the luxury of hindsight. We’ve seen what happens when the barbarians are able to take control.

Good to keep in mind that while the British Establishment condemned Dyer, the British people handed him the modern equivalent of about 1.5 million dollars via voluntary subscription. Almost as if even way back then, there was a divide between People and Rulers…and it was the Rulers who were undercutting the People no matter what the People wanted.

Why bring all this up? Because there’s been a lot of talk about decency of late. Most recently sparked by Trump accidentally including in a video post a couple second clip showing the Obama’s looking like apes. From what we can tell, that last bit was entirely inadvertent. Trump – or Team Trump – was posting a video indicating the fraud in the 2020 election and whomever posted it simply slipped up and picked up a couple seconds of the next video in the stream. Poor editing! But we were immediately told by the Left that it was indecent and a host of so-called “Conservative” voices rose to condemn Trump.

Meanwhile, a 13 year old girl in Pakistan was just legally handed over to her abuser.

Armed bandits “kidnapped” 150 Catholic students in Nigeria – I put that in quotes because they weren’t kidnapped…it was a slave raid. Those poor kids are being sold.

An illegal immigrant truck driver killed 4 people in Indiana.

Up in Canada a woman was killed by the national health service against her will – sorry, lady; but two out of the three MAID ghouls agreed it was time for you to go!

Decency, huh?

Meanwhile, these Democrats who say Trump is indecent are in favor of federally funded abortion on demand to the moment of birth. They cheered with Trump was shot. Cheered when Kirk was killed. They are fighting tooth and nail to keep illegal alien criminals in the USA – and are inciting violence in our street to protect Democrat voting and financial fraud.

Spare me the whines about decency. Our world is very indecent right now – and the only way we can get back to decency is to get back to whacking the barbarians. And not fairly. The barbarians must feel more pain than they ever caused us. It is the only way barbarians learn. We have very much lost something – the will to live, as it were. We fuss so much about any perceived error on our part that we have no time to spare for the massive crimes against humanity our opponents commit on a daily basis…with the promise that if they ever get back on top, they’ll jail us for merely disagreeing. There is nothing quite so true as the old phrase that you sleep peacefully in your bed at night because rough men stand watch, ready to do violence on your behalf. Like the Hobbits in The Lord of the Rings, we are sheltered, but have ceased to remember it…we think we’re safe because being safe is the norm. It isn’t. And the areas of “safe” in the world are rapidly shrinking. If we don’t let the rough men get back to work – and soon – we’ll be overrun with savagery.

The Insidious Erosion of Civilization

Mark Noonan18 Comments

If you’re of a certain age, you remember this movie – and it is a good one. You can easily rate it as one of Newman’s best as well as one of the best of the 1960’s. George Kennedy’s Best Supporting Oscar was well earned while Strother Martin completely nailed the role of “the Captain”. But it is also rather horrible and was definitely a piece in the gigantic pysop which essentially talked us into giving up civilization.

What is the story? Well, Luke is a dishonorably discharged WWII veteran who in a drunken haze destroys public property (parking meters) and so gets sentenced to a chain gang. As the story goes on, we find that Luke really doesn’t like rules! He heroically resists the rules! Damn those rules! And, to be fair to Luke, he is treated unjustly – when his mother passes way, the Captain puts him in the box to discourage him from any escape attempt to attend his mother’s funeral. This is wrong. On the other hand, it isn’t exactly the worst thing that can happen to a man.

Step back a moment before that box event and remember that Luke’s mother had come to visit him shortly before her death – and in the scene we find that Luke has a brother who is married, with kids, working the family farm and taking care of his ill mother. We’re supposed to instantly dislike the brother when he hands Luke his guitar and says, “now there’s no reason for you to come home”. Cruelty! But…the brother is taking care of mom and the farm and is supporting a wife and kids and did take time out of his life to make sure his mother could say goodbye to her ne’er do well son in jail. So, maybe not cruelty? Maybe exasperation? A man who could have used some help running the farm and taking care of mom and has just had it with his brother’s pointless antics?

Can’t say – because it isn’t explored in the film, which is a paean to the anti-hero – the man or woman who simply refuses to fit in and live up to the expectations of others. We’re focused in the film on Luke and only get enough of the backstory to understand why he’s in jail…but not why he did a thing which would get him in jail, other than a general sense that he’s a rebel…and a long-time one, too. When mom visits, she talks up about his rebel ways and the one time he almost gave it up to get married to a decent women, but he wrecked that, too. The end of the movie has Luke being unjustly shot and allowed to bleed out but still showing his defiance to the end. Which, was the end of a pointless existence that was very costly to society which not only didn’t receive any benefit from Luke’s existence, but had to pay a lot of extra money simply because he had been alive.

The sum total of the movie is to make people feel that being like Luke is a good thing – that rules are just made up things that the strong impose on the weak. It is, of course, quite the other way around – the rules are to ensure the weak can withstand the strong. End the rules and you get…well, Mexico; where there are no rules in any real sense and the strong take what they want and kill with impunity. But if your goal is to erode Western Civilization – to end Christendom as it used to be called – nothing better than well-written, well-acted movies which subtly but insidiously talk people into thinking that rules are bad…as long as said rules are those of Western Civilization. Bottom line, Luke is the villain. His mother the weak-kneed enabler of the villain. His brother the heroic defender of family. The Captain is the man who has to keep a lid on the villain to prevent bad from becoming outright evil. And there really was a failure to communicate…all through the life of Luke, nobody could ever convince him that being a man requires the courage to subordinate oneself to others.

I’ve written before about how effective advertising is. Propaganda, as it were. The one thing that Hitler really did hit upon – and from Toland’s biography, he hit upon it while he was a down-and-outer in Vienna – was the fact that if you say something with conviction over and over again, people will come to believe it, no matter how absurd it is. The Big Lie works exceptionally well. This is not to say that all advertising is a lie, but that if you advertise a lie often and effectively enough, people will believe it. What movies like Cool Hand Luke were doing – and it just got worse as the decades went on – was telling a society that the sober, the hard working, the honorable were the bad guys…just a bunch of rotten, hypocritical rat bastards preventing freedom. There is a straight line from movies like this to people figuring they can attack cops for merely enforcing the law…the people who jump on cars, set things on fire, loot shoe stores are the descendants of Luke…free to run wild because the Captain is now a career civil servant who figures his pension is more important than decency. And the rest of us pretend it is normal – you see? It didn’t just affect the miscreant…it also affected us. Infected us. We’re not shooting the people who set up roadblocks and set things on fire because…we’re somehow convinced that it’s ok for savages to impose upon us. We don’t want to be seen as the Captain, right? He’s the bad guy! So is the brother! Luke is the hero! Grab those nike’s!

It is going to be a long road back to civilization – and it will take some very tough people making some very hard decisions. I don’t see a completely non-violent way out of this mess. The only debatable point is how much violence there will be…because if the Left wins, they’ll impose violence on us of the most horrific sort, and all we can do is decide how much violence we’ll apply to them to prevent this. We have to stop being so weak – so cowardly. Civilization is a necessary thing for anything above the existence of brutes – and sometimes civilization has to destroy the barbarians…even if they appear dressed nice and speaking sweet words.