Conservative Values

The Liberal Retreat

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Pity the poor Liberal, my friends: they are in a bad place right now. Let’s take a quick look over there – we have two types of Liberals:

  1. Absolute lunatics. These are the people who are out there setting Tesla’s on fire and trying to tackle Trumpsters on the train (did you see that video? Hilarious when the Liberal face-plants).
  2. The intellectual Liberal who sounds oh, so reasonable and just wants peace, love and freedom.

The trouble for both types is that Liberalism cannot exist in anything like a free society. This paradox stems from the underlying error of Liberalism which is the assertion that human Reason, uncorrected by Authority, is sufficient. Back there in the 18th century when the so-called “Enlightenment” was creating the first Liberals the phrasing went along the lines of “I will follow Reason wherever it leads”. This sounds like a good idea and maybe it even was a good idea to some extent…but while the assertion was made by people who asserted they would always come to the correct thing via Reason, the facts of history show us that Robespierre, Lenin and Hitler were able to follow their Reason to some rather surprising results.

I bring this up because one of the second types – goes by the handle Carl @HistoryBoomer – has a post on X who is trying to explain to us benighted MAGA/Conservative types why Liberals are fleeing to Bluesky – he says, in part:

“Leftists are leaving Twitter because they can’t take criticism.”

Imagine you have a favorite diner, but the new owner is a Trump fan. Trump posters, Trump statues, Trump menu items.

Eventually you tire of waiters saying “Hail Trump” and leave.

Many of you underrate the effect of Elon being 100% behind Trump and daily spewing pro-Trump propaganda (often pure lies). This isn’t just a pro-Trump guy buying a diner. This is a guy who spends 20 hours a day tweeting his love of Trump and his hatred of “corrupt” Democrats.

He’s then got this chart showing that Musk’s account is popular, as are other Trump and pro-Trump accounts. So, you see, its just too much Trump all the time! It isn’t healthy. And, darn it, he’s going to have to leave if it doesn’t stop…presumably to retreat to Bluesky.

Have you been to Bluesky? I opened an account when it became a thing right after the election and I maintain it – because by checking it once very few days I can quickly discern the talking points of the Liberals. It is all there is over there – nothing but the most mindless Liberal propaganda. And it is just like Twitter was prior to Musk purchasing it. No real dissent…just endless repetition of the talking points. It is depressing. Mind-numbing. But it is the only place Liberalism can exist.

For the most part, Liberals don’t even engage in debate. We see it here when our resident Liberals show up from time to time – they just want to come here and put out the talking points and get furious when we don’t respond to their talking points in a way which allows them to just keep repeating the talking points. Forcing them to think and defend their position is something most Liberals hate. But even those who want to take a stab at an intellectual argument always fall back on departure if they can’t censor, and censorship if they’ve got the power. This is because they can’t defend their positions.

Don’t get me wrong, they think they can. They think they’re both smart and well-informed. Very sure of themselves. And so, for instance, a Liberal who is in love with the idea of high speed rail might come around to point out how awesome high speed rail is and how Europe and China are pressing ahead with this wonderful, Green tech which makes travel fantastic because they once took the bullet train from Paris to Brussels and we’d better get moving on this or we’ll be left behind by the world!

To which we respond: a high speed train from Los Angeles to New York would take nineteen and a half hours…if it was non-stop and there were no problems. And has anyone ever built a high speed rail crossing something like the Rocky Mountains?

Whammo – argument is over. The Liberal will not address the practical difficulty of building a high speed rail and that ends it…the Liberal might keep repeating the talking points for a while but is totally incapable of actually defending the position…because it is indefensible. Because there is no need for a nationwide high speed rail system in the USA. We like our cars. We like flying. You might be able to successfully build high speed rail for a few well-traveled corridors (Los Angeles to San Diego, DC to NYC, eg) but there’s just never gonna be a guy who wants to get on a train in LA and arrive nearly a full day later in NYC – he can be there is six hours by plane.

And it does go back to Liberalism’s initial error: that Reason alone is sufficient. Never has been, never will be. There must be an Authority which is outside of our control – something which tells us that certain things are always right, certain other things are always wrong and we are to simply conform ourselves to this. The seeming oddity of this is that it is liberating – once you know the rules, then you can do all sorts of fun and interesting things….like have a really cool give-and-take-argument over an issue where at the end of the day the best idea emerges victorious and everyone with any sense bows before it. My example about high speed rail was just to take a rather low-key issue…but it is like that on every issue.

Abortion is good. People are born in the wrong body. Migrants always improve the community. Muslims are never the bad guys. Black people can never be racists. Women are paid less than men. Funding a program means you get your desired result. Lack of funding means you will never get your desired result. Roads are Socialism. All of us have seen this – these assertions and many others, all made with vigor and not one of them defensible on the merits. The least push back on them and the Liberal has to censor you or retreat if censorship isn’t possible.

And that is why they hate Musk – sure, the DOGE stuff is a huge thing and supporting the Bad Orange Man is an outrage…but the very worst thing Musk did was allow criticism of Liberalism on X. It is intolerable…because Liberalism is indefensible. Trust me, if they could win an argument with us, they’d be having arguments with us day in and day out. They can’t so they don’t. Vast contrast to us on the Right who are arguing amongst ourselves all the time and we really do have diversity…we don’t agree on everything. We’d be bored to tears if we all did.

So, the Liberals are retreating – to their intellectual ghettos like Bluesky and MSNBC. This is good – we’ve got them on the run. Any of them worth anything will stay and eventually abandon Liberalism. Not necessarily all Liberal views – because some sorts of Liberal views are defensible (even if most of us on the Right still think them mistaken). But anyone of intellect and honesty is going to leave the Left…it is a dead and boring thing. A new dawn comes…the mind is being freed from Liberal bigotry.

An Urban Homestead Act

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We do have to think long-term a bit. Our immediate need is to gain control of the government, de-fund the Left and set the stage where freedom and logic have a shot at winning. But the bottom line is that political success in a democratic Republic requires that the people feel like they’re getting advantage out of you being in power. This mostly translates into how are they doing economically.

Trump economic policy, carried through, will go a long way on this – we might be in for a rough year but the cessation of inflationary spending, the tax cuts and the regulatory easements will lead to rapid economic expansion. That’s good and if it comes soon enough it might even allow us to win – or at least hold our own – in the 2026 midterms. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that last November 75 million people voted for a talentless, ignorant person of zero accomplishments. A good number of those voters are just hate-filled, Democrat bigots – not reachable by us no matter what we do. But the fear is that a flip of just 1.5 million Trump voters means we lose. Think of the catastrophe we’d be stuck in right now if Harris was in office. We dodged a bullet – and we need to think of ways to ensure we dodge it going forward.

And the seeds of what we need to do are right there in the election results – Trump did better than any GOPer ever among traditionally Democrat constituencies. These people voted for hope: a hope that Trump would revive the economy and give them a shot. If we don’t deliver on that hope we’re doomed – but if we can deliver even better than expected, those voters might start to come over to us in droves, leaving the Democrats in the position of the GOP 1932-1952. Think of all the Democrats accomplished in that 20 year period we were out: total transformation of the USA. We can do that, too; if we have the power.

Lots of people will have lots of ideas on this and here is mine: an Urban Homestead Act.

All through the big cities we see swaths of totally abandoned residential and commercial land. You’ve seen the videos – just totally blighted buildings (when they’re still standing). Testament to a different America 60+ years ago when our urban cores were places of work and hope, not death and despair. I know what you’re thinking: not another urban redevelopment plan! It isn’t! Promise! Those old liberal urban plans were merely giveaways to cronies…if anything concrete was accomplished it was either useless or merely catered to upper class urban liberals (you know – building an arts center…places to display garbage liberal art and it is all staffed by well-paid liberal foot soldiers). I have something else in mind: to turn decayed neighborhoods back into thriving communities. Turning abandoned factories and stores back into thriving businesses. Here’s the nutshell of it:

The federal government does a survey in a city (let’s say min population has to be 100,000) and if they determine a certain percentage is blighted (I’d go with something like a figure equal to 25% of the blighted land in Detroit), it is seized under eminent domain and becomes federal land (not exactly what was intended with this provision but after Kelo totally reasonable, and what we’re doing is actually good). We don’t overly interfere with local zoning ordinances (except in such cases where they are just liberal NIMBY urban planning trash) – if it is zoned residential, it remains that. So, too, with commercial and industrial zoning. The government clears away the completely useless buildings, cleans up those buildings which are still usable (even if they need work). The resultant properties go into a pool and at fixed times and places, American citizens (only citizens, and never corporations) can stake a claim to the properties…just like the old Homestead Act, if you stay on it for five years and develop it (you know, build or repair the house; open a factory up in that industrial property, etc) then title is transferred to you.

First thing: this will cost. Probably a lot. Not in obtaining the property – under eminent domain the full market value has to be paid but we’re talking here about de-facto abandoned property. We’d have to draw up some rules on that but a rule of thumb would be if the city hasn’t collected property taxes on it for, say, five years before it is seized in eminent domain, then that is abandoned property – it has no legal owner. Sure, there would be lawsuits on it…we’d win them. But the real expense comes in clearing/cleaning the property. But that, my friends, is the first step in giving benefit to the people…this would open up a huge number of low skilled jobs in areas of highest economic blight. Anyone can haul away trash. We just created some jobs – sure, government funded, but still private sector (various contractors would obviously be employed here) and just in cleaning up the mess, that will start to improve the areas we’re working in.

Second thing: making sure we’re not screwing ourselves. One thing is to make sure that the corrupt city governments don’t get their greedy little fingers in here. That’s part of the reason to federalize the property…but it can’t stay federal forever and I don’t want, say, the mayor of Chicago licking his chops at how much property taxes he’s going to be able to collect in five years. So, such property after transfer of title remains federal land for twenty years – federal land, no local or State taxes on it. The provision against corporations getting the land is because I don’t want corrupt political machines in the cities setting up fake corporations to stake a claim and then in five years just selling it off at whatever price after Uncle Sam picked up the tab for cleaning the land. This act is for people, not for governments or corporations. After the title is transferred then what will happen will happen…but the connected are not taking this thing over.

Some incentives:

Aside from being property-tax free for a total of twenty five years, I would also make the labor and material costs of fixing/building on the properties tax deductible. Full ride on it – whatever you spent to get that house or factory into working order, write it off your taxes…and you can allocate those costs over a twenty year period (you don’t have to take the write off in one year…you spent, say, $100,000 on it, go ahead and spread that tax deduction over five, ten or twenty years as seems best to you.

For contractors actually doing the work (as most of it will be) profits from such work are taxed at half whatever federal rate you pay on profits. Massive incentive for contractors to get into this…and pass at least part of the savings on to the customer. So, too, with materials sold to people building on the Homestead properties – you sell lumber then the lumber you sell for this is taxed less. The key here is to kickstart the thing – to make everyone want to jump in. And, of course, the goal was two-fold from the start: to revive these blighted areas, and to provide an increased market for goods and services. Because then the final step here: all materials used in these properties must be American made. We’re not doing this so China can sell us more drywall (some care will have to be taken here – if there is some aspect of this that is genuinely not available in the USA or not available in sufficient amount then we can grant some easements on this requirement…but just think about what is needed to build any structure and you know that 90%+ of it is easily obtainable in the USA). Think of the ripple effects in the economy as more lumber, nails, drywall, ducting, glass, wiring and on and on and on have to be made in the USA to rebuild America.

Anyways, that is the basics of my idea. Sure it would actually need refinement and there would be lots of nuance based on local conditions but the basic concept is to get Americans to rebuild America using American materials for the benefit of Americans. And I’m sure other people will come up with other ideas or improvements to this one. But we need the ideas. We need to talk about them. Send them along to those in charge or who have influence. Even if its just a tiny bit…that is how things are supposed to be done in the USA. Bottom up – the people are the prime movers, the government just clears the decks. And if we do this – and a hundred other good ideas as well – we’ll leave the Left out in the cold. They can’t come up with positive, helpful ideas – because they hate the USA and Americans. They don’t want us doing well – they want us punished for our sins, real and imagined. But as long as they can talk a game about helping, their message will resonate…if, however, we show the people that we’re helping, all the talk in the world won’t change the result.

No, You Can’t Use my Morals to Kill Me

Mark Noonan37 Comments

The latest effort to derail DOGE has been to have moderate Right (not specifically Never Trump) people write despairing pieces about the failure of Conservatives to deplore Elon Musk’s serial adultery. He has 12 confirmed children, a social media influencer claiming number 13. They tie this into Trump’s sexual past and throw up their hands (a little dramatically) wondering just how we can do anything when those in charge of the movement are sinners? This effort is clearly orchestrated by the Left – which doesn’t care at all about morality but they will wipe their butt with their own flag if it helps them.

Rely on it, if we made an effort to codify morality into law, these same Right voices would rise in opposition to us on Libertarian grounds. The only people morality applies to, in their minds, is us: we have to be perfect and if we ain’t, then we don’t deserve to have power…or, indeed, anything.

To make it clear: adultery is a sin. Fornication is a sin. Horrible, bad sins which can destroy a human soul and condemn it to everlasting damnation.

But so, too, divorce and birth control. Working on the Sabbath. Not going to Mass on Sunday. Do you get what I’m saying? If we are to base our politics upon what is considered a sin in Christian theology, then we’re going to have a very different political organization. And one that won’t win anything. To be sure, winning in politics is not usually the most crucial consideration. We Christians are in the world but we are not supposed to be of it and we are supposed to, as far as possible, meekly live within the political structure trusting to God that things will work out. And for the most part, that is what Christians have done – it has been a long time since anyone really insisted upon any distinctly Christian policy in American politics. But things are different now. We’re not fighting for mere political power. We are fighting for our very lives.

We Christians are to accept martyrdom if it is thrust upon us. We aren’t to seek it out but if we are placed into the position where we can only live by denying God, then it is time for us to die – and joyfully so. But our prime duty here is escape if possible. Just as we are to avoid near occasions of sin, so we should avoid, if we can, situations where the choice becomes apostasy or death. That is what we’re trying to do here. I know it sounds perhaps a bit melodramatic, but it is win in politics right now, or die. If we lose and have to die, so be it – we trust in God. But let’s try not to lose.

We have to fully grasp what we’re up against. Remember, when the Palestinians sent in rape/murder squads to Israel, the global Left supported the Palestinians. They still do. Even today they are still out in the streets waving Hamas flags and calling Israel the bad guy. Think about that. They also sincerely believe that a human being can be born in the wrong body – and that anyone denying this is malevolent. They believe that punishing criminals is wrong. Not kidding about that: they are all in for “alternatives to punishment”…because they have internalized the idea that crime only happens because of injustice. We joke about saying “society made me do it”, but they really believe this to be the case…and so “society” needs to be punished. These are not reasoned, logical positions. They are not just false, but obviously false…and yet tens of millions of people in these United States of America believe it all and given that they further believe the world will die if they don’t get their way, we have the recipe for massacre.

Keep in mind that the whole basis of Nazism was stupidly wrong – ultimately based upon the belief that the Jews were an organized, malevolent force in the world deliberately out to destroy the civilized people – ie, the Aryans. This is no different from the modern Left believing that we are an organized, malevolent force deliberately out to destroy the planet. The Germans bought the Nazi argument and at least 40% of the American people have bought the Left argument. It won’t take much for a solid majority to get behind “born in the wrong body” and “that hamburger is killing the Earth!”. And people who think that the world will end if they don’t prevail are not noted for holding back…once you get that idea fixed in your head that only total destruction of the enemy allows you to survive, you’ll do anything to get your way.

I am not here in this year of 2025 trying to preserve Christian morality – we lost that fight decades ago when we didn’t oppose the completely insane idea of no-fault divorce…when we seriously went along with the idea that a promise made to God and Man can be annulled by a judge. At that point, the slide down into Elon Musk having 12 or 13 children from a large number of women was kinda baked in. And, on the whole, this is actually far more human than the Left which wants to trans kids they don’t abort…and suicide them if they wind up depressed teenagers. At least Musk is making babies and wanting them to get on a path towards a useful life. Better if he wasn’t nailing everything that will sit still for five minutes…but if I’ve got a choice between a world where people are bumping uglies with wild abandon and having buckets of children and another world where they lop off healthy body parts and then suicide the result…I know what I’m choosing. And I did just mention the suicide thing, didn’t I? Really think about that – the Left thinks it is good if people can have taxpayer funded “doctors” kill them if they’re feeling out of sorts. They don’t even call it a necessary evil any more – they call it good. Positive. A great outcome. Yay death!

For my own safety’s sake, I must defeat these people. Because I am not like them, I don’t want them jailed or killed. I will allow them to remain in their personal delusions…but I must do everything I can to remove them from all power and influence in the world. I will go pretty far here, including to eventual disenfranchisement and confiscation of their wealth if that proves necessary to stop these insane people. But for right now, I think that if we can de-fund them that will solve most of the problem…my conviction is that these insane beliefs are only given credence because subscription to them ensures well-paid sinecures for those willing to push the lunacy. Don’t ever downplay the power of a dollar sign in front of a morally and intellectually weak person. Much is written in the history books about how the German generals went along with Hitler even when it was clear his military commands were leading to disaster…much less is written about how Hitler secured and retained that compliance: money. He simply bribed his senior leaders to go along…and go along they did, only concerned about keeping their place at the trough. So, too, the modern American Left. And if we take away the money…if nobody is paying them to be insane, then there’s a strong chance they’ll stop being insane. And Musk is leading the charge in taking away their money.

Do I trust Musk? No. The default position on anyone with a great deal of money and/or power is mistrust. Trump gets trust now because he’s proven himself in the face of terrible odds to be on my side. Musk? Well, he’s doing some good things but so far the chips haven’t really been down…he hasn’t had to choose between his own happiness and the good of the people. The Left is pushing that way and he’s probably going to be forced to make that choice. We’ll see how that goes. But, meanwhile, he’s doing what I want – except too slowly and being far too nice to the Left. I want what he’s doing put on overdrive. Musk is a tool. He’s useful right now. If he remains useful then I’ll keep backing him – but the minute the tool is broken or proves ineffective, I’ll drop him like used chewing gum.

And here’s the kicker: once I defeat these insane people and restore a world where truth is the basis of action, then I can start to revive Christian morality – or, indeed, any moral code. People who think that abortion is good are not going to be converted to Christianity with ease. Heck, just getting them to stop being raving lunatics is a herculean task. But if they are no longer paid to believe that abortion is good then they might stop actually believing that abortion is good…and that will open them up to the prospect of understanding that being a good person requires a strict moral code enforced by law and custom. But this is all for after: after the Left is defeated. I can’t get there from here – I must first get rid of the lunatics. Then I can talk.

Defending Law

Mark Noonan34 Comments

This is going to cause some controversy:

The quote is attributed to Napoleon and it is very much in line with his thinking. True enough even if he never uttered the exact phrase. But, what does it mean? That a leader should go off and be lawless and claim as justification that he’s saving the country? Well, we get that on the regular right now. The world has always been filled with such de-facto assertions. But Napoleon wasn’t asserting a national policy for his government – he of the Code Napoleon knew that law was crucial – but simply making an observation. Keeping in mind that he had turned out the Directory in a coup…to the immense joy of most French as they were, by 1799, sick to death of endless Revolution. I believe that this is the sense in which Trump is working.

The law, from the Constitution on down to the lowest county ordinance isn’t a suicide pact. We cannot, of course, have a civilized society if we don’t have laws. But the law can become destructive of its own ends – like, for instance, when we have people asserting that the 14th Amendment secured a right for foreigners to illegally enter our country and give birth to citizens. If the law explicitly said that, then only an insane person would abide by it – and everyone who violated it would be saving the country, and thus violating no law.

Another example – the law clearly states that Hunter Biden is pardoned for all violations of federal law from January 1st, 2014 until December 31st, 2024. And that, by law, ends that. But it isn’t at all just. It isn’t what the law is for – the power of pardon isn’t intended to get your drug-addicted son off from his serial violations of laws. And, so, while it would be a technical violation of the law to now rake over every action of Hunter’s starting on January 1st, 2025 (he will break the law again; there is no doubt about that) and then throwing the book at him, it would be just. You see how this works?

Personally, I think what Trump has done here is fire a shot across the bow of those in the country who are willing to go along with Democrat efforts to hamstring the Executive. We know what the Democrats are doing and why – and that is fine. But nobody else should be helping them at all. If, for instance, the Supreme Court decides not to intervene in these ridiculous lawfare cases against Trump’s Executive actions (or just delays action based on some absurd adherence to established judicial procedure), then Trump will wait a while…but then act. The laws we have on the books that are supposed to protect us from unjust government actions are not there to allow well-funded Leftwing activists to stymie via lawsuits actions by the duly elected Executive. You are not being oppressed if your federal meal ticket is taken away and no host of Leftwing judges can make it so.

And, in the end, if Trump does act against a court order after giving fair time for it to be worked out, then he will be saving Law. Keep in mind that if the Lawfare actually worked – if it actually prevented Trump from doing the legal things he was elected to do – then it would go into the public mind that the law is useless. Even downright evil. If working within the system and winning fair and square by the book gets you nothing, then you will seek other means of getting what you want. Trump won the election. The Republican Party won the election. The MAGA voters won. And when you win you get what you want. That is the rule. And they’d better darn well get it – or things will start to happen that nobody likes.

The Stupid Failure of Foreign Aid

Mark Noonan34 Comments

In an attempt to make us all feel bad about MAGA, a Democrat operative pointed out that a 71 year old Burmese refugee in Thailand died the other day because the NGO providing her oxygen ceased service because Trump shut off the USAID funds. There were a couple problems with this:

  1. @Oilfield_Rando pointed out that the CEO of the NGO makes $2.2 million per year. You’d think he could have kicked in for an oxygen tank or two.
  2. An American lady in North Carolina died of hypothermia on January 6th, 2025, after FEMA failed to help her. No Democrat rose to condemn Biden over this. Bottom line: they don’t care about people dying. They only care about political power and the dead lady in Thailand, they think, helps them gain power. Think of how hard they had to look to even find this out?
  3. The conflict in Burma (called Myanmar by the current pack of thugs running the place) has been ongoing since 1948. It is an entirely senseless ethnic conflict that no civilized people would tolerate – and we note, with great care, that under British rule these conflicts were suppressed because killing someone on account of their ethnicity is barbaric and stupid.

As we are now closely reviewing all the foreign aid, we must also address the underlying reason for foreign aid. Why, at the end of the day, do we do it? After all, outside sporadic international help in response to natural disasters, until the mid-20th century foreign aid just wasn’t a thing. A couple reasons are given for it:

  1. Humanitarian. Can’t let people die. This, of course, is true. If we can in any way prevent an unnecessary death, we should do so.
  2. Global power. If we don’t provide the aid, then someone else will and we’ll lose influence over crucial areas of the globe, placing ourselves at a disadvantage.

We’ll start with number 2 here: global power. If we don’t, someone else will, to our detriment. Ok. Between 2012 and 2022 the United States provided about $2.8 billion per year in aid to Tanzania. That’s equal to 3.4% of Tanzania’s annual GDP. They should love us, right? I mean, if someone handed us a sum equal to 3.4% of our GDP every year, we’d probably like that guy. I know if someone handed me a figure equal to 3.4% of my annual income, I’d be grateful. So, how has this love worked out?

Tanzania has signed a $2.2bn deal with two Chinese firms to build a standard gauge rail link between the port of Dar es Salaam and a nickel mine in Burundi, Business Insider Africa reports.

Looked into who owns that nickel mine in Burundi and it appears to be a company called East African Region Group which is headed up by some sheik from the United Arab Emirates. We gave Burundi $69.7 million in 2024.

To nutshell, in return for $28 billion to Tanzania over the past ten years and nearly $70 million to Burundi just in 2024 we got…nothing. China gets to build the railroad and the Emirates get to mine the nickel. Oh, I mean, sure: there are more healthy workers in Tanzania and Burundi than there would have been without US aid and that’s nice…helps the Chinese and Emiratis a lot. I’m sure they’re grateful.

But at least we did provide the humanitarian aid, right? We can feel good about that!

Well, maybe not.

Not trying to pick on Tanzania here – in fact, I literally picked the country at random for the example here, figuring in advance that any African nation would have the same basic arc over the past 60+ years – but the bottom line is that it became independent in 1961 and in 2024, 63 years later, got $2.8 billion in aid from us. And a lot more from elsewhere (though I suspect that a lot of the non-US aid is actually just more US aid funneled through non-US NGO’s). Just what the heck have the people of Tanzania been up to all this time? In 63 years of American post-colonial development we went from an agricultural backwater to a significant industrial power (that would be 1776 to 1839) about to break out into major power level. And we didn’t get a dime in foreign aid.

Oh, wait. Perhaps that is it?

Americans are no smarter than Africans – people is people. Genius is rare and the average run of us are…average. Americans are not harder working than Africans. Americans are not morally superior to Africans. On the grand scale of things, a space alien examining an African and an American wouldn’t find a dime’s worth of difference between them. So, what gives?

The basic African story: independence granted by an exhausted Imperial power which just didn’t want to bother any longer (though people pump up the leaders of independence movements in Africa into some sort of super-human heroes); a colonially-educated, socialist-minded strong-man takes over and rules for ages (Tanzania was run by Julius Nyerere from 1960 to 1985) suppressing political dissent and trying to graft Marxist twaddle onto a subsistence-agriculture, tribal society. Debt, inflation and general misery results (in the best cases – the worst go Rwanda and genocidal murder)…along with buckets of foreign aid money. And don’t get me wrong here, as far as post-colonial strong-men went, Nyerere was pretty good…at least he doesn’t appear to have looted his treasury and he did (eventually) give up power (though basically to the one-party State he created and which persists today via bogus elections). It should be noted that Nyerere the anti-colonialist firebrand who is hailed to this day as one of the Liberators of Africa…died in a London hospital. All that time in power all that money spent…couldn’t even build one first-rate hospital in his homeland.

All we can really say here is that the aid is the problem – that it actually props up what is wrong in the recipient countries. Think about it: Nyerere’s policies were basket-case bad right out the gate…what kept his people fed sufficient to prevent bloody revolution was the foreign aid. The gifts of the First World. And so it goes in one Third World nation after another – a lousy, stupid and usually corrupt post-colonial Ruling Class makes a mess of things and then begs for aid to put a band aid over the failure. And we give and give and give and nothing really ever improves and on top of all that, we here in the USA don’t even get to exploit the material resources and cheap labor…the Chinese get to do that. How is this good? How is this considered moral?

I don’t want us to leave people to just die – but if people are just dying then we can’t just pass out the cash. We have to address the underlying problem…and that problem is going to invariably be the Ruling Class of the country where people will die if they don’t get aid. They’re either too corrupt or too stupid (or a combination of same) to run their country. I don’t care about offended patriotic sensibilities…if you will starve without my food, then when I send the food, I send my control over you. Because I can’t trust you’ll fix the problem. If we send aid, it comes with strict instructions not just on how the aid is used, but how the recipient country will organize itself going forward. And, hey, they can refuse the conditions…and the food. Their choice. Let the local strong-man rant and rave about American imperialists…I don’t care. But if he wants food rather than his people rising up to kill him, then he’ll do as he’s told.

As I’ve said on many occasions of late, it is time for us to enter the real world. To take things as they actually are, not as we might wish them to be. It is the only way anything is going to get fixed.

It is Like the Sun After the Storm

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Things are changing so fast we can’t keep up with them all. On the matter of South Africa, my go-to has been an account on X, @ConCaracal. He’s a South African who has been grinding away trying to reform the increasingly racist South African government. Over the past few years, especially, the South African government has become increasingly strident in its hatred of whites. There are now more race-based laws on the books than under Apartheid. This shows that the primary complaint the ANC really had with Apartheid is that they didn’t have that power for themselves. It has been a fairly bleak battle for white South Africans and, indeed, South Africa recently enacted an entirely unconstitutional law to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation. This is the path Zimbabwe went down and so we all knew where it was going. And then, Trump.

Did you ever imagine you’d see the day that the American Secretary of State would call out Third World racism? We’re not supposed to mention this, guys. Remember, we’re the bad guys and we have to allow tin pot Third World tyrants do whatever they want. This was a gigantic earthquake in foreign affairs…and while it has caused little notice in the USA, it has been noticed in South Africa – as Conscious Caracal said:

The key take away here is the same for everything – we didn’t have to do what we were doing. All this time we’ve been bending the knee to Third World tyrant-thieves and we could have just called them out on it. Now, this doesn’t solve South Africa’s problem – the country is in horrid shape and the ANC does need it’s enemy (white people) to justify continued power. Its not like they can stop stealing from the Treasury, right? Keep in mind that the whole farm confiscation thing is absurd – the government of South Africa is the largest landowner in South Africa…if they want to pass out land to black farmers, they’ve got millions of acres to spare. But that doesn’t generate race-hatred. But pressure from the Trump Administration will be crucial in the fight to turn South Africa into a rule of law nation.

And on and on and on like that. We’ve been essentially destroying ourselves for decades, internally and externally, in service of some mythic belief that the US is the bad guy. That white people are the bad guy. That Christians (and, recently, Jews) are the bad guy. That the very creation of our nation is an unforgivable sin. And now it just stops…because we’ve got a President who doesn’t want to play that game. And it is glorious.

Living in the Insane World

Mark Noonan36 Comments

In 1877, President Grant, just out of office, embarked on a world tour. He had been pretty much at the helm of great events since 1861 and he and his wife and long talked of a day when they would just travel the world…this was the fulfillment of what must, at times, have seemed an idle hope. They were in no hurry and stopped at many places along the way so the tour went on into 1879 (and, of course, travel by steamship and train is much slower than modern methods). In the course of this tour they visited the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey (including the Holy Land then under Turkish rule), Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, India, Burma, Siam, Indochina and Japan. Aside from his wife, he was accompanied by his son, Jesse, a journalist to document the trip and one aide. He was never under any threat of harm, was greeted warmly wherever he went and generally had a splendid time.

This, my friends, was the real world. A sane world. Of course, there were dangers – Lincoln had been assassinated in 1865. The Empress of Austria would be assassinated in 1898. But the world was sane. Safe. Murder was a rare and shocking thing (my grand-uncle Eddie Diggins was murdered in a speakeasy in 1927 and it made the New York Times – back pages, sure; but a murder in LA of someone of no real prominence made the papers in New York; that is how odd murder was). Now, why bring this up?

Because Trump has removed Secret Service protection for a lot of people of late – most notably John Bolton. This is causing quite a lot of outrage in the Ruling Class as these people are allegedly under threat of assassination, especially by agents of Iran. This might well be true – and I respond to this worry by saying that John Bolton and the rest of these people who had a hand in making this insane world should suffer the consequences of their actions. We’re not supposed to be in a world where a former official of the US government is at risk of assassination. We’re supposed to be so powerful and respected that nobody but a sheer madman would dream of killing one of our people. The solution to a threat by the Mullahs in 2025 was to have removed the Mullahs from power in 1979 when they took our Embassy. Our Ruling Class didn’t. And the replacements which have moved in since then never made any real response to the 1979 outrage. Indeed, some of the Ruling Class replacements who have come and gone positively encouraged the Mullahs to remain in power.

So, if a Mullah tries to kill you, I’ve got no sympathy.

We’re not supposed to live in a world of terrorist bombs, assassins, bums sleeping in tents, illegals pouring across borders, grooming gangs in England, sex tourism in Thailand, gangsters running Haiti, Hamas sending in rape/murder squads, 300,000 Americans overdosing on drugs, bridges that can’t be repaired for years, wildfires burning out of control for lack of water…you getting the picture? This world has gone mad and I don’t propose to protect the people who made this world from harm. They should have thought about it while they were destroying everything…I’m not going to hide a guy behind walls and guns where he’s safe from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps this will concentrate some minds going forward? Make some decisions go different ways?

We can only hope – meanwhile, let those who made the mess live in it.

UPDATE: Right around the time I wrote this, Trump ordered the declassification of the JFK, MLK and RFK files. I’m not expecting much – everyone has had plenty of time to carefully sanitize them. OTOH, our Ruling Class has a lot of very stupid people in it so maybe they didn’t? In these cases, I always recall that the Brits are keeping part of their Himmler death documents secret until 2045. I’ve always thought this weird – the “conspiracy theory” about it is that the Brits offed Himmler and faked his suicide because they didn’t want him to spill it about contacts between the UK (especially, perhaps, Royal Family) and Himmler during the war. But, if so, why not just destroy the documents? But, if the documents have been destroyed, why keep them secret until 2045? It is just weird…and maybe someone sifting through, say, the JFK files can shed some light on the sequence of events…like why the FBI didn’t have Oswald under surveillance given he was a known Commie kook and the President was coming to town?

Now What?

Mark Noonan5 Comments

I will have a January 20th post up, of course. Liberation Day is nearly here! But before we get into Trump 2.0, I want to take some time to sort of review where I am, politically, and where I think we need to go to really get out of this mess.

As has been seen over the past dozen years or so, there has been a fairly significant shift in how I view things – not really so much a change in ideological perspective, but more an understanding of just how wrong things have gone. This, I think, is a journey all thinking people have been on – even some on the Left have taken it, while remaining Left overall. The bottom line is that if you are a person of moderate intelligence, a bit of goodwill and some patriotism, you can’t possibly believe the same exact things you did in, say, 2005. The trouble with our Democrats, the overall Left and the diehard Never Trumpers is that it is forever 2005…the only wrinkle they’ve added to it is the trans issue (which has proved very destructive to these people and they don’t realize it yet).

It has been a journey! Someone a little earlier on X referenced the McMartin Preschool Trial and that blast from the past got me realizing that it was then and there the first doubts crept in…that the Media is simply lying. That government institutions don’t have a few bad apples, but are rotten barrels. And that if they’d lie like that – even after it was clear the lies were exposed – then just what else are they lying about? But the beginning always ties into the end…and now we see here of late that again and again senior people in our public and private institutions are sexual degenerates…when not messing with kids, they are just being generally horrifically abusive to anyone they can dominate. And that while they’re doing it, everyone around them knows it and doesn’t talk about it until it is too late.

The archetype of this is Jimmy Savile over in the UK – the man became a major player in 1964 when he started hosting Top of the Pops and remained front and center in the public eye until his death in 2011. And it was only in 2012 that the sexual abuse allegations exploded into the public sphere…but once that happened it came out that as early as 1963, before he rose to the top, people knew what he was doing. And he was allowed to just keep on doing it. You read he was made a member of the exclusive Atheneum Club in London…and was nominated by Cardinal Hume, who appears to have played a role in covering up sexual abuse scandals in the Church…and round and round it goes.

But this isn’t about sex scandals – it is about an Establishment filed with abusers and enablers and its all covered up by the MSM. And then you move on to defense contractors. Other government contractors. People getting grants from the US government for very bizarre-sounding projects. And we can’t stop people from crossing our border and then you find that we’re giving grants to NGO’s that are providing transport to the border and illegals are caught with pre-paid debit cards and just now Speaker Johnson tells us that when he met with Biden like a year ago he knew he was gaga but didn’t bring it up in public.

So, you conclude: what has gone on is all nonsense. Its all just a corrupt scam of one type or another…people raking in money, doing payoffs, working deals where in return for burying this bit of scandal that thing will be done. And where are the decent people? Oh, right: there are none. At least, not in the institutions. If they were decent, they’d expose it, even if it cost them their job. And that means that the very best people are…go-along-to-get-along careerists. Guys, this sort of system nearly got Trump killed in Butler, PA. And it doesn’t matter if the slackness was deliberate or just how things are…absent Trump’s miraculous turn of his head, he’d have died right there and we might be locked into bloody civil war right now. All a full review tells us is that the rot has been there a very long time. McMartin happened in 1983. JFK’s assassination in 1963. McCarthy was hounded out of the public square for pointing out the obvious in 1954…just when did the USA become dipped in filth with no chance of logic or common sense coming out on top?

All we can say is that it was a long time ago. Before most of us were born the seeds of the current swamp were planted. Sure, probably as early as Woodrow Wilson. Or even Teddy Roosevelt who got a free ride from the press because they liked him and who first came up with the idea that a President can do whatever he wants unless expressly prohibited by law. But we also know: once you step aside from the rules, everything that comes after is wrong. As I said a while back ago, if you start your equation with one plus one equals three, then everything that comes after is wrong, no matter how desperately you try to make it right. Once you have an error your only way out is to go back to the error and correct it, and then start all over from that point.

And that, ultimately, is what I think we’re doing. Perhaps a bit haphazardly, certainly not totally consciously, but that is it. In a way, finally trying to carry out Warren G Harding’s “return to normalcy”. Keep in mind that he said that in the 1920 Presidential election…this was before FDR and the New Deal. We didn’t have a military-industrial complex at the time. The FBI was just a few guys in the back rooms of the Justice Department. The CIA and NSA were far in the future. Government regulations were still a rarity. But Harding could see – and the American people could feel – that the period of time from McKinley’s assassination to the end of Wilson’s term had gone wrong. That muscular American foreign intervention was just not good for us. That preening “great men” trying to force us down new paths wasn’t wanted. With Return to Normalcy as his slogan, Harding got more than 60% of the vote…and he and Coolidge did try to get us back to normalcy. It was our bad luck that Hoover managed to get himself into the Harding/Coolidge administrations and managed to work himself into the favored spot for the 1928 GOP nomination when Coolidge (who could easily have won it) decided not to seek a second full term. Hoover, who was a Progressive to his core, was merely a mini-FDR in policy…with the unintended catastrophe being this nominal-Republican (we’d call him a RINO today) presiding over the start of the Great Depression and tarring the GOP for 40 years with it. By the time the GOP had recovered, it was too late – the rot (the swamp) had become overwhelming.

Trump is our attempt to return to normalcy. Not for nothing is Trump looking back and back for policy inspiration. Having been at the raw end of the Swamp for ten years now, he’s not in a mind to take their policy recommendations at face value. I have seen statements of his on economics and foreign policy which could have been lifted out of McKinley’s last speech (worth a read; a bit dull, but its like the sun coming out when you consider where we are). Even on immigration, all Trump is trying to do is get us back to the Immigration Act of 1924 – which was itself a huge component in the attempt to return to normalcy…because tens of millions of Third World immigrants wasn’t normal. Keep in mind that Titanic wasn’t built to provide John Jacob Astor swank accommodations across the Atlantic…it was to get steerage immigrants into the American labor market as fast as possible. The luxury of the Titanic was PR…the money was from importing cheap labor. White Star. Cunard. Hamburg-America, North-German Lloyd and many smaller firms…all competing to build the biggest and fastest ships to transport poor people into the American labor market. The Act of 1924 put a stop to it (and put those firms mostly out of business – only Cunard sort of survives as a subsidy of Carnival Cruises). Side note: Titanic was built by White Star, which was owned by International Mercantile Marine which was founded by J P Morgan, who wanted to monopolize the Transatlantic trade in labor which would, of course, benefit the profitability of his industrial interests in the USA. Neat, huh?

Do keep in mind that the Immigration Act of 1924 didn’t stop immigration. It is condemned these days because it excluded Asians and is described as something that simply stopped immigrants from coming in, but that isn’t so. Plenty of immigrants continued to arrive…just not a flood of immigrants, and those that were allowed in were cream of the crop from their home countries. Naturally, these days we won’t exclude based on race or national origin…but it simply makes no sense to allow a flood of unvetted immigrants to pour in. It is abnormal to do that. Stupid. Insane. Directly harmful not just to us, but to the immigrants, themselves…especially the lower end of the immigrants who are bound to be most abused all through the process.

And that gets us to our conclusion here – what are we to do? Simple: find out where we screwed up, go back to that point and fix the mistake. For immigration, the mistake was the 1965 immigration act. Like that, again and again and again. We keep losing wars? Why? Well, because we allow military officers to think of it as a career rather than a calling…they aren’t striving to defend America, but to get that star on their shoulder, and then some more. Pete Hegseth pointed out that we now have 44 four-star officers on the roles…we had 7 in World War two. This is what careerism breeds. Meanwhile, in the pre-WWII army, outside of MacArthur (who was unique in so many ways) the men who lead us to victory were majors and lt. colonels until just before the war started. They weren’t working for promotion, but to make the best military force they could. The mistake, then, is the gigantic military bureaucracy…get rid of it and turn the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines back into warfighters.

One thing I believe is crucial is to jettison certainty – everything needs to be thought about. Certainty does exist. There is absolute truth. But right now we’re in such a fog of swamp-created nonsense that we can’t be sure about anything. We might have to sort of feel our way forward here. Be ok with some potholes and some mistakes along the way. But the goal is to return to a sane, rational, logical and common sense society. A place where normal human beings can live and work. A return to normalcy.

Normal vs Insane

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Their real objection to Hegseth is that he’s a normal man. Good looking guy, too. Incredibly in shape. They hate that. What I mean is that the basic Liberal’s path to getting a girl these days is to be a “male feminist” which means agreeing with every dumb thing feminists say and hoping you get a shot at it…the darker side is, of course, the actually abusive men who declare they are feminists so they can gain access to their victims. Hegseth is…a man. No saint. As someone once said: “soldiers are no angels, nor the gentlest of creatures”.

Their attempted smears of Hegseth on grounds of drinking and dallying with the ladies is, well, ridiculous and reveals that his critics have spent no real time with a combat unit. People who have signed up to be at the sharp end of a war – even if no war is going on at the moment – do live a little bit on the edge. In wartime, probably a little over that edge. In the World at War TV series, I believe it was an interview with cartoonist Bill Mauldin where he relates the story of when he was in Italy and taking a little break in a bombed out Italian house and in walks a British Tommy with a young Italian girl of…shall we say, questionable moral character…and the pair, taking no apparent notice of Mauldin, proceed to do what boys and girls will do. After they had finished they got up to leave, the Tommy saying, “good day, Yank”, and back off to the battle for him. When you might die soon, questions of morality get a little hazy. And you don’t judge the military by civilian standards. Ever.

The fact that Hegseth is in superb physical condition at age 44 tells us that he’s not a boozer. That he is a good looking man explains why he had plenty of opportunities with the ladies and didn’t refuse them. That he’s now married for five years and there are no recent allegations of him getting off the morality ranch shows that his statement that he underwent religious conversion six years ago is credible. In other words, in his late 30’s, he grew up a bit, as men will do. Sure, would have been much better if he had come to this ten years previously…but life is life and we’re not on a schedule.

They hate Hegseth because he’s a normal man – but they fear him because he’s not one of them. He’s not a career officer who kissed butt to get stars on his shoulders as prep for moving into a defense contractor job as prep for returning to the Pentagon and on and on ad infinitum. He’s not committed to the defense bureaucracy. Not committed to letting today’s brigadier general become a major general just because its his turn. Not committed to “diversity” when what we want is lethality. An old veteran like myself has seen over the past few years our Navy ships covered in rust and I know that its all gone wrong…no sailor would ever allow his ship to look like that. This means that our current sailors, ain’t. I believe that most of them want to be and will be if given leadership to become sailors…and that is what I hope Hegseth will do for the entire military. And the Left hates that, too…to them, the military is a social program for their experiments. For patriots, it is the lifeblood of the nation.

As we watched the lunatic ravings of the Senate Democrats, it became crystal clear that Trump represents a return of sanity to DC…Democrats are in a last-ditch, rearguard defense of insanity. And it is clear they learned nothing from the election…they even engineered some Code Pink crazies to disrupt the start of the hearing (who should now be prosecuted like J6 defendants, IMO). They don’t realize that 2024 was a demand that the craziness end…the clear failure in the California wildfires just putting a nice cherry on top of that…all that money to be spent and they couldn’t even get working fire hydrants. No. We’re done with that. We don’t care about boutique Liberal whines. We want things to work. We want things to be sane again.

Carter and the End of Decency

Mark Noonan12 Comments

We’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead and I really did try – almost made it 24 hours after Jimmy Carter died. But there’s just too much nauseating hagiography out there…including, to much disgust, from some on the Right. So, something that I might have waited a week for comes out today.

First off, let’s remember how Carter rose to political prominence – by running a campaign in Georgia in 1970 which was overtly racist in messaging. Was Carter a racist? Probably not – or, at least, not a vicious sort of racist. But he played directly to white racism in Georgia (which was still strong) in order to get into office. That is the rankest sort of political cynicism. The Establishment likes to play this like he was just being clever…sorry, that was being evil. That was the indication of the sort of person Carter was: nakedly ambitious and willing to sh*t on his own views if it would get him ahead. That this campaign was after he claimed Born Again status puts a question mark on the sincerity of that…

In addition to being ambitious, Carter was always certain he was the smartest man in the room. Now, to be fair, everyone who seeks power is a little bit insane. You wouldn’t do that if you weren’t a little crazy. But given that, wise people still find ways to work with others. Carter didn’t. He just expected everyone to toe his line even if he did periodic 180 degree course alterations. Because of this, his relations with the Democrat-controlled Congress were just terrible. He was just certain he was right about everything and that any opposition was idiocy when not malevolence.

Because of this, he held anyone who did oppose him in contempt. And this wouldn’t have been so bad if he wasn’t so entirely wrong about everything. He got into the White House and obtained pretty much what he wanted (even Congressional opposition did usually fade away as it was still Democrat to Democrat) and everything went to heck in a handbasket. The two biggest things that took him down were inflation and the Hostage Crisis…and his program was big spending and appeasement of anti-American forces around the world. When we gave him a humiliating defeat because of this did he pause to reconsider? Nope. He felt that an idiot (Reagan) had beaten him because the American people were too stupid to understand how great Carter was.

He hated that loss. And he went around for the rest of his life trying to make it go away. The Habitat for Humanity stuff was marketing – “see, he helps the poor!” But the teeth of it was him going around the world – especially when Republicans held the White House – and directly undermining American policy and lending his support to some of the very worst people in the world. He was a big fan of the Castro regime, Chavez’ regime in Venezuela…and when the Communists in Nicaragua lost an election in 1990 Carter was very grudging in admitting it.

In essence, Carter was the final result of 1968 – that is when the anti-Americans started to take control of the Democrat party and Carter was all-in on that…essentially holding that the reason for the world’s problems is American policy. Unless run by a saint like Carter, of course. In the long term, Clinton, Obama and Biden have just pushed this line ever further…if you wonder why there is this bizarre desire in the Defense and Foreign Policy establishments to appease the Iranian regime, look back no further than Carter…who started it and in the time since then Democrat after Democrat has just hired and promoted people who hold to the anti-American view (with the GOPers never getting rid of such people…though we hope this changes come the 20th).

The indecency of the modern world has many sources and goes back a long way…but we must never forget Carter’s role in making it official American policy to foster indecency around the world. If you wonder why its considered acceptable for horrid tyrannies to get seats on UN human rights councils, look no further back than the Carter year where it became official US policy to bow and scrape before foreign savages to atone for our alleged sins. Carter, with his moralizing tone, ushered in the modern era of tribal massacre and systemic looting.

It is my hope that Trump tears this all our root and branch. A systemic housecleaning of all these children and grandchildren of Jimmy Carter who infest and infect our Establishments. True decency in the world comes with the entire legacy of Carter – including the preening self-aggrandizement – is tossed into the trash.