Conservative Values

The Failure of the Modern World

Mark Noonan40 Comments

That is Thomas Lister, 4th Baron Ribbesdale. He lived from 1854 to 1925. The painting was by John Singer Sargent and it is – or at least, was – very famous as it captured perfectly the 19th century British aristocracy. Just look at it – the man is serene. He knows he’s in the master class of the world’s master nation.

As a person, he didn’t cut a great swath in the world – a Liberal member of the House of Lords back when it was entirely hereditary and actually had some power, he was just a solid member of society. He had several children but his Barony died with him as both of his sons died as soldiers – one in a colonial campaign in 1904, the other at Gallipoli in 1915. Essentially, all that he was is gone, now. His line became extinct because of its devotion to duty and now the world looks upon him and his like with hatred and contempt. Why bring him up?

Because yesterday X was afire for a while with an allegation that the Pope had decreed it a moral obligation for us to accept migrants. As per usual with statements by Pope Francis, he didn’t actually say that. He merely reiterated long-standing Catholic teaching that migrants can’t be abused. No duh. But it caused quite a bit of heartache and the tail end of it had a video of a Spanish coast guard vessel apparently running over a small boat filled with migrants trying to break into Spain. The horror and all that – we were supposed to say, “I am in favor of border security, but this can’t happen.” Which is kinda dumb because if it doesn’t happen then you’ll just get more and more of them.

But that got me thinking and the vision of Ribbesdale’s picture came to mind. Here in 2024, we’re supposed to hate the man and all he represented. Imperialism. Colonialism. White Supremacy. Yadda, yadda, yadda. But it should be noted with great care that the descendants of those who were ruled by the likes of Ribbesdale are desperate to get into Ribbesdale’s country…while his descendants (and there are such) aren’t noted for their desire to break into Zimbabwe. It would seem to me that we have the world rather backwards. Or upside down. Or, perhaps, both.

One thinks about Zimbabwe. Known as Rhodesia in days of yore – names after Cecil Rhodes who as an ardent British Imperialist. We are all supposed to abhor Rhodesia. It was a white-minority government! Racist! It had stolen all the farm land from the Africans! It had to go. And it was destroyed. Because of course it had to be. But here’s something to think about – through most of Rhodesia’s existence, the majority of the Rhodesian army was black. Weird, huh? Sorta like the French war in Algeria where far more Algerians fought for France than for Algerian independence. Nobody asks these days why black Rhodesians would fight for a white government. Not allowed to ask. Probably should be asked, though. They had a reason! It wasn’t conscription: all volunteers. Men fully capable and free to choose…who chose to fight for the government that was officially oppressing them because they were black.

Without a deep study it would be impossible to really know the reasons but my guess is that they felt they had a stake in the system. Rhodesia was an island of civilization in a very barbarous area of the world. It was famously called “more English than England”. The government of Rhodesia – colonial and independent – was very selective in immigration. Only the best were allowed to come – and the best came. Certainly, they were taking land which in theory had been black-owned (in the sense that at one point all land in Sub-Saharan Africa was by nature black-owned) but which hadn’t been used for much – or in a lot of cases, used for anything – by anyone since the dawn of time. These people worked hard and built a society of prosperous, sober farmers. They didn’t see themselves as being the white minority rulers of anyone – they saw themselves as an English society ruling itself according to English law…and they did not want this society turned over to non-English people who, when not overtly hostile to English society, simply had no idea how to make it work. My bet is that the black men who joined Rhodesia’s army did so because they had fused themselves to the English society of Rhodesia and feared dispossession if the government fell. Maybe they didn’t like some aspects of white rule, but they liked the overall affect of it and probably bet that if they fought for it, they’d eventually gain full entrance into it.

But, none of that: if whites are in charge, then whites are wrong and gotta go. Off they went. And Rhodesia changed to Zimbabwe. Naturally the new government had to kill tens of thousands of fellow blacks who didn’t understand that the end of white rule didn’t mean the start of all black rule. Just some blacks. Those most juiced in with the new rulers. The white farmers had their land confiscated – and black farmers were given the land (based on political reliability, of course) but they didn’t know how to farm all that well so the breadbasket of southern Africa became a land of poverty and periodic famine. Disease ran rampant. Did you know that 128,000 Zimbabweans live in Britain? 65,000 in Australia? Heck, 50,000 or so in the USA? Kinda funny, huh? Fight to end white rule…only to move to places where…whites rule. Almost as if the whole concept of white rule being bad was…you know, drivel.

Don’t get me wrong here: it is absolutely wrong to exclude people from the political and economic system based on race. Just can’t do that. We are all children of God and have the same certain, unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But how any Republic is to be organized is a matter of prudential judgement and any changes proposed must be studied both for their short and long term effects and provision made against the possibility that a proposed cure will be worse than the disease. The bottom line is that while white minority rule had to come to an end in Rhodesia (just as it did in South Africa) this doesn’t mean it was necessary or wise to do it willy-nilly – to just all at once remove the people who ran things and replace them with people who had never run anything like it. For both Rhodesia and South Africa, change from white to majority rule should have been a process of decades, not an instant. After all, the disaster wasn’t just in Rhodesia-turned-Zimbabwe. There are nearly a million South Africans who have bailed out of South Africa – this diaspora, just like that in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, coming only after the end of white rule and with the overwhelming majority of immigrants being black…moving to white majority nations.

You’ll find, if you care to check, that in all lands formerly ruled by Europeans absolutely gigantic numbers of the natives have bailed out – and continue to bail out. Its why we have a migrant crisis. The former colonies are being drained of people as fast as transport to Europe and the Americas can be arranged. All of these black and brown people fleeing their black and brown lands…to move in with the crackers. Why? I’ll tell you why: because the end of colonial rule was wrong. The end of so-called white rule was wrong. It has killed and ruined far more than colonialism or white rule ever did. Of course, it wasn’t really “white rule”…it was Civilized Rule. It just turned out that the civilized people were white – men like our Lord Ribbesdale who was a kind, decent sort of man who wanted what was best for people as far as could be made in an imperfect world run by Fallen Man. And people like him by and large succeeded. Where there once had been slavery, now there was freedom. Where there once had been pagan ignorance, now there was Christianity and education. Roads and railways replaced dirt tracks. Water was brought to parched cities and farms. New crops were introduced. The cross polonization of cultures led to the improvement of everyone’s lives. It might have been a huge mistake for Europe to go out into the world to conquer – but the bigger mistake was ending that rule over a period of a mere 20 years, long before the ruled were capable running a modern society.

So, what do we do now? How to we cure this failure of the modern world…this asinine idea that the West which everyone is desperate to get into, is wrong? First and foremost, we must control our borders. It wasn’t just our failure – plenty of people of Africa and Asia fell for it, too. They really thought that the only problem was the paleface in charge…get rid of him and paradise will ensue. Now as they live in their tin shacks watching the new ruling class drive by in their Mercedes, they just want to get out…but they had a hand in setting this up and they can’t just evacuate. Nope: it is their bed, and they have to sleep in it. Back they go.

And if they do want our help? Then it comes with our rule. Not going to continue to hold that I have to work a deal with a tribal chief or local strongman. Our aid comes with our laws or it doesn’t come at all. Not talking emergency aid – but things like long term development assistance. More than happy to help…but we’ll be telling them what to do. Think of how much money we’ve tossed into the foreign aid rat hole over the past 75 years and what has it brought to the people of the world? Nearly half the world’s population lacks secure access to clean water and/or sanitation. This is basic stuff. This is something Romans figured out 2,000 years ago…why in heck does anyone lack access to clean water/sanitation? Because having clean water and sanitation comes with civilization. Western civilization. It is the only civilization which has consistently been able to do the whole water/sanitation thing over long periods of time. Westerners aren’t smarter than anyone else…but their overall cultural development built this mindset. You go with what you’ve got and if you want clean water and sanitation, you’ve got to have Western values…even if those values have to be imposed.

We must insist that our civilization is a good thing. We have to stop hating ourselves because some Marxist pinhead says so. If we want to survive – and if we want to help the world – we have to recapture the belief and self confidence of our ancestors.

The Evil Know They’re Evil

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Candace Owens rose to fame via being a black woman on the right: certainly a rare bird. But it appears that she did so to become famous: that is, her views weren’t informed by knowledge and thought, but by what needed to be said to get Conservatives slobbering all over her. It did help that she’s a very pretty young lady. But now she’s going full bore into the very worst parts of the swamp of anti-Semitism. She is rightly being condemned for this but I think that the condemnations are going about it wrong – they mostly accuse her of being stupid or venal or some such. She may well be all sorts of things, but the primary thing she’s being is evil.

Given her youth, my expectation is that her education is lacking. It has been a long time since any Western system of education provided an actual education. Some private schools do, but the general run (even in most private schools) is pretty deplorable. Even the smartest kids don’t really know all that much. And one of the subjects where things are worst is in history – it is either not taught at all, or it is a sort of kindergarten-Marxist view of history which leaves out much fact and all context while pushing some pretty transparent lies. And that, I think, is why so many youngsters are feeling the pull of anti-Semitism…when you’re told in school a pack of lies and then discover this, you start to doubt everything…and latching on to those doubts are the anti-Semites. Mostly Muslim in origin these days, but the more traditional Nazi types are also active here. This is why Owens not too long ago rather breathlessly reported to us that the Germans were treated harshly in the aftermath of WWII. The over 50 were all, “of course they were: they deserved it. And more”, but the younger were shocked about it. This has led Owens, and many others, into the fever swamps.

But that still doesn’t excuse. No matter how ignorant Owens is. No matter how many lies have been fed to her, she still knows that her views about the Jews are wrong. She knows it because she knows that she, as a black woman, would reject with fury any attempt to paint all black people as malevolent. The human heart can be corrupted and, per the Bible, it is sometimes permitted to become hardened at the choice of the person…but that still doesn’t excuse:

Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. or by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. We know that the judgment of God on those who do such things is true. Do you suppose, then, you who judge those who engage in such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? – Romans 2:1-3

Owens and those like her are now judged – if they don’t repent, then what they have meted out in judgement against the Jews will be repaid to them. They have falsely accused the Jews of a conspiracy to destroy, can they escape judgement for this? They know they shouldn’t. They know all Jews are not bad and cannot be judged as a group. But they do it anyway…for a bit of fame or money or power. They accuse the Jews of trying to destroy and thus reveal themselves as people trying to destroy. It is a very dangerous ground to go on…and God does permit hearts to be hardened. None of us know precisely what happened to Hitler after that bullet passed through his head – but given how hardened his heart had become, we have a strong belief about where he likely is today. The people like Owens are risking everything they have…for nothing.

It is very important for us to resume calling evil what it is – and calling out those who practice it. We do have to be careful: there is a line where a person is mistaken rather than evil. Like the person who wishes abortion to be legal for fear that banning it is worse than keeping it. That isn’t an evil view. It gets into evil when we start having people “shouting their abortion”, as if killing at kid, even if incidental to saving a mother’s life, can in any way be something to be proud of. It is a tragedy at best…murder at worst. And everyone knows this because everyone knows they don’t want to be killed at the convenience of another. The judgement they meted out will come back to them. That we leave to God, but what we have to do is close it off. We can’t end evil, but we must place it aside, condemned and controlled…as far as practical in a pluralist, human society.

It is my view that once we stopped calling evil what it is, we essentially gave permission for it to flourish. We were told that calling birth out of wedlock disgraceful was wrong…and so we stopped, and now 40% of all births in the USA are out of wedlock. There was a reason we called out of wedlock births bad…not to be mean, but to discourage people from doing it – instinctively knowing that the best chance a child has is with two parents committed to each other and to the child. Any other arrangement would be bad and could prove fatal. But we were told to stop. Too mean.

Tell that to the 100 or so kids under 18 who will OD on drugs next month because they come from not broken homes, but homes that were never built to begin with…some pathetic, ill-educated woman cohabitated with an equally pathetic, ill-educated man…for a night, or a week, or a month…and a child emerged 9 months later lacking family and structure and the sense of belonging this creates…and so he dies at 16 on a dare after taking some drugs because he had no ambition or hope. That is what happens when we stop calling evil what it is. That and all the other monstrous social pathologies we see every day in our sad, dying society.

Time to stand up and start calling evil what it is. Tell the wicked. Tell them again. When everyone shouts at you, tell them again. They aren’t wrong. You can call the wrong, wrong. You can educate the mistaken. The only thing you can do with evil is stop it. And we’d better get doing that fast before we’re overwhelmed.

Trump and the People vs Them

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Still out! On a bit of a vacation. I’m probably on the beach. So, can’t be topical on this one! Though I’m confident that the Democrats are still doing badly and Trump/GOP is doing well. But as I can’t be topical, I thought I’d point out that the Uniparty isn’t a new innovation.

In his What’s Wrong With the World?, Chesterton wrote The History of Hudge and Gudge to illustrate the way arguments between Right and Left go – and this was written in 1910 – but towards the end of the book he has this further to say about Hudge and Gudge:

And now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the reader’s ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the suspicion that Hudge and Gudge are secretly in partnership. That the quarrel they keep up in public is very much of a put-up job, and that the way in which they perpetually play into each other’s hands is not an everlasting coincidence. Gudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic industrialism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. Gudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls the woman’s work “freedom to live her own life.” Gudge wants steady and obedient workmen, Hudge preaches teetotalism—to workmen, not to Gudge—Gudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take arms against anything. Gudge is naturally a healthy and well-washed gentleman; Hudge earnestly preaches the perfection of Gudge’s washing to people who can’t practice it. Above all, Gudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy it; therefore Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a prophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall soon gloriously outgrow.

I do not know whether the partnership of Hudge and Gudge is conscious or unconscious. I only know that between them they still keep the common man homeless. I only know I still meet Jones walking the streets in the gray twilight, looking sadly at the poles and barriers and low red goblin lanterns which still guard the house which is none the less his because he has never been in it.

Politics has been called a game and it does have some game-like aspects, but for far too long – more than a century – those engaged in politics have treated it as just a game. They almost admire the other side for scoring a goal on them. But the thing is that politics is supposed to provide a government which secures the rights of the people. That is all its for. But our Ruling Class sees it differently. In the end, we find that neither Hudge nor Gudge really believe in anything but their own power and wealth. This is why Obama produced Obamacare which has made medical care more expensive and less accessible – and why McCain, after campaigning specifically on getting rid of Obamacare, voted to keep it. McCain has gone to his reward – but his family is still rich and prominent. It is dead certain that Obama, relaxing with the rich and powerful in carefully guarded enclaves, never even thinks about the poor SOB trying to find a doctor in network.

This is why Trump – and I think that now more than ever, Trump understands what he’s for. He is going to DC for us. To give us a voice at the councils of the powerful. To remind them that there are real people out there…and they’ve had enough.

A Coward’s World

Mark Noonan11 Comments

It is very bizarre how the world is viewing the Israel-Hamas War. You have to think about what was done and then realize that Western men and women are looking at it and considering it either not a problem, or not sufficiently bad to warrant a vigorous response.

Let us look at a different world. It is similar to ours, but very different. This is the world of 1876.

In that year, pressed by ages of Turkish brutality and corruption, the peasants of Bulgaria rose in rebellion against their overlords. They fought bravely but they were at last overmatched. After the rebellion was pretty much defeated, the Turkish government unleashed Bashi-bazouks upon the Bulgarian populace. These were part of the Turkish army but they were irregular and unpaid; their pay was what they could extract from a subject population. The Turks turned them loose into what became an orgy or rape, murder and looting. Nobody to this day knows how many died; probably tens of thousands. It was quite horrific and when word of it got out the whole of the West arose in anger. There were demands for punishment and reform; it touched off a war between Russia and Turkey and, in the end, lead to an independent Bulgaria because nobody in the West could allow a Turk to rule a Bulgar after that. You know: they had proved themselves inhuman savages.

This shows us that events like 10/7 are, sadly, not all that uncommon. Men, being what they are, can at times descend into the worst savagery. Nobody can really know what makes a man decide it is a good idea to rape, murder and pillage, but it does happen. The difference between then and now is the supine cowardice of the West in the face of it. What the Palestinians did on 10/7 was a horror beyond horror. If it had just been killing, that would have been bad enough – but it was torture, it was rape, it was humiliation (with some kids forced to watch while their mother was raped and/or their father murdered). The perpetrators of such acts are not covered under law – and this regardless of whatever paper says. They are to be killed by whatever means come to hand. Nothing is to be allowed to spare such beasts. Caught; killed. That’s it. That is how you treat such people – to teach them a lesson…and a lesson to the next batch that the hours of rape and pillage come with a price, so better think again.

This just illustrates how very messed up our world is right now. Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the problem of the 20th century was that it had forgot about God…well, we’re now a century into forgetting about God and we’ve now lost sight of the last shreds of human decency. We excuse. We explain away. We try to find something, anything that gets us off the hook from being human. And do keep in mind that the Israelis are not asking anyone to do it for them; they just want to get it done. There is no effort here. No sacrifice. Just let men do what men have to do.

But that, too, can’t be allowed. If the men of the IDF are allowed to chastise the wrongdoers of Hamas, that would be an indictment of every Western person – every person who allows unvetted savages into his country. Every person who turns a blind eye to the level of crime in some areas of the USA. Every abused child and dishonored woman would then rise up, in a sense, and damn us all for not acting. For not killing those who do that sort of thing. It isn’t that we care about the accused, it is that we’re afraid to do what is necessary. Getting our hands dirty, even if second hand.

I do not think that courage is dead in the USA or the larger West. I think it is hidden. I think it is almost ashamed to step forth. But it will step forth. It will have to. And it will have to kill when it does; in order to provide justice for the oppressed, it can do no other.

The Declaration Test

Mark Noonan24 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Atomic Lie

Mark Noonan22 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Some Thoughts on Government

Mark Noonan4 Comments

I’ve always been a Monarchist at heart. Ever since I was a kid and I read things like The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights and The Lord of the Rings, the concept of the Lord’s anointed has appealed to me as the most logical method of human government. Anyone who reads my books can easily tell that there is Monarchism deep at the heart of it all. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, Christ is King, right? Heaven isn’t a Democracy; and Heaven is hierarchical. It is said that there will be greatest and least in Heaven…of course, even the least in Heaven has it better than the greatest on Earth; and given that it is Heaven, there isn’t a matter of jealousy or ambition. The least will be pleased that the greatest in Heaven are the greatest. I can imagine myself – certainly not the greatest – living in one of the very small mansions in my Father’s house, and gladly serving the greatest. I honestly can see in my mind’s eye a heavenly abode for me; it is made of stone and set in a meadow. With eternity, imagine the stories I could eventually tell? My joy would be complete.

There have been many kings and queens, good and bad, in history. Descent does have a bit of the luck of the draw in it. But if you look at the royal lines over time, what you see is that for the most part, most monarchs were trying to do the right thing. Sometimes ably, sometimes less so. Only rarely was a real idiot or criminal raised to the throne. Democracy is far more apt to raise the unfit on the simple fact that anyone who aspires to power is predisposed to be an idiot or criminal. What fool, after all, would really want to be in charge? To seriously have the fate of a nation in your hands? The wise person flees from such a burden, if he can. A good example of this wisdom is a scene in the 1956 movie of War and Peace. Natasha (Audrey Hepburn) tells Pierre (Henry Fonda) that she would give him absolute power over Russia because his heart is pure…Pierre is asked what he’d do and his answer is, “I’d hesitate”. That is wisdom, as such.

To be sure, as I’ve said before, I am also the last democrat left on Earth. Maybe not exactly the last, but certainly there aren’t many like me. That is, people who really do trust the people. But one must keep in mind what “trust the people” means. It isn’t taking a public opinion poll of dependent people who have been relentlessly lied to by an overwhelming popular culture. It is simply accepting the decision of people who are free and as independent as society can make them. A mature man or woman who owes nobody making a decision: I ratify it, even if I think its wrong. I do think that voting is crucial, even in the most venerable of a Monarchy. The king does need to know the desires of the people; and the only way to really assess that is to ask them. But just as Monarchy is highly dependent upon the quality of the Monarch, so Democracy is highly dependent upon the quality of the People. Garbage in, garbage out is ineluctable.

We are, as we all know, in a complete mess right now. I saw a video clip of a young lady wrapped in a Palestine flag saying she was terrified that climate change would kill her. Just think of the amount of lies she had to be fed over years to get to such a pathetic state. And in our current system, she gets a vote. That is, she gets to cancel me out – not that I’m any great person, but I have at least some knowledge and so I’m not supporting the massacre of Jews nor am I afraid of the temperature rising a couple degrees over the next 100 years. The bottom line is that getting out of the current mess is going to be a problem as long as people like that poor girl get a say. She’s simply incapable of making a valid decision – even about her own life (though we will always remain wary of interfering in the personal choices of even the greatest fool). We must find a method to nullify the votes of fools – because if we don’t, then we’ll never be able to get at the liars who make the fools.

Because that is the crux of the matter: the lies. If we didn’t have quite so many liars, we wouldn’t have nearly so many problems. But the liars lie because lies work – and in a system where only voting matters, then the best liar is going to usually prevail. Only rarely will someone even partially moored to truth rise to the top in a Democratic system. Our riddle is how to preserve freedom while making sure fools serving liars can’t destroy freedom.

Angry and Hopeful

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Where are we? Here:

A man was just charged with 20 counts of sex abuse with minors. Teacher at a church school. That is bad, but it does get worse: the man is an illegal immigrant deported multiple times. You know: someone who isn’t supposed to be here but who keeps coming back in because, why not? Why shouldn’t he come back? It is clear we don’t enforce our laws – that deportation is just a bureaucratic checklist which has no baleful affect. Just go, and then come on back…if we get around to it, we’ll deport you again. Maybe; but mostly only if you let us deport you…because if you run off, its not like we’ll chase you down. Heck, you can even get a job – even though everyone who gets a job in the United States has to fill out an I-9 form where they state their citizenship/residency status under penalty of perjury.

Has anyone ever been prosecuted for lying on an I-9?

But it also just get worse than that – with Israel still reeling from the 10/7 attacks and Christians, Jews and homosexuals routinely oppressed/murdered by Muslims, all our Democrats noted that today is something like the international day to fight “Islamophobia”. As if that is a problem. Yeah, the poor, little Muslims out there being phobia’d all day long! Hey, Nigerian, your congregation was massacred by Muslims? Better not get Islamophobic about it! That would be bad.

Do I sound a little bitter here? There’s a reason: our Ruling Class hates us. Wants us gone. Is trying to replace us with illegal immigrants. Is kowtowing to our enemies. There’s just no other way to put it – Pudding Brain’s social media intern put out a lying statement in support of a “non-binary” kid who killed herself but still no mention of Lanken Riley, murdered by an illegal immigrant deliberately and maliciously allowed into our country. Oh, and let’s not forget that as cannibal gangs are allegedly roaming Haiti, Biden’s people are flying in thousands of Haitians…one of whom just raped a 15 year old girl. Can’t wait for the cannibals to get here!

The good news – and there is some good news – is that voter registration trends are still favoring the GOP. Even with the previous weak RNC leadership and a Congressional GOP knifing the base at every turn, people are turning to the GOP. Not because of love, but because it is the only way to stop the Democrats who are determined to destroy the nation they hate the most, the United States of America. Now with Trump people in charge, I expect this to continue – they’ve hired Scott Presler who has spent years, unpaid, registering GOP voters. They’ve pledged to legal ballot harvesting. They killed the old phony minority outreach team and they’ll replace it with some people who actually go and talk to minorities.

Then there are the polls; no matter how you slice it, if the election were held today, Trump would get 312 electoral votes. That’s low end; could be higher if a couple of light blue States flip his way. People are starting to look back on the Trump years as a good time…mostly because they were. Until the CCP and the DNC manufactured the Covid drivel, everything was going very well. People want that; peace and prosperity, that is. Someone said that Trump was first elected to make sure Hillary didn’t get it and then Biden was elected to make sure Trump got out. Maybe – but Biden’s people went on a radical left bender…and the more they do that the more people realize that some mean Tweets aren’t all that bad.

But, also, I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that the “chaos” of the Trump years was manufactured – by Trump’s enemies. With the supposedly non-partisan federal bureaucracy leading the way. That is, people are understanding that Trump got a raw deal. That the current charges are nothing more than political theater. It is now doubtful that any of Trump’s trials will take place before November…and even if they do, any guilty verdict is likely to boomerang. Probably most sensible Democrats are hoping the trials just go away…but the Resist nitwits aren’t having it. So, Democrats are stuck on this ride they’d rather get off.

So, I am angry. I think that came through here. But I’m also hopeful. Just maybe we can save our nation; not that Trump is the answer, but if we can get him back in, it’ll break the system for good. There will be no more cobbling it back together. And with people like Fetterman, we might even see the Democrats start to wake up to the fact that the people don’t want unlimited illegal immigration and medical mutilation of minors. We might become sane again.

Let’s hope.

The Divided States of America

Mark Noonan46 Comments

It was pointed out on X today that if you take the Democrat-governed urban areas of Missouri out of the mix, the murder rate in six times less than in those cities. Do you realize what a remarkable thing that is? In fact, there are counties in Missouri which go years without a homicide. And this is why the gun rights people get angry about the whole debate – another person used words to the effect of “a couple black kids shot at a bunch of brown kids and this means me, a white man who doesn’t live there, has to have his rights violated?”. That was a very crucial observation to make. It illustrates the dual nature of America in 2024. A house divided.

Keep in mind that the murder rate is high in Democrat-run cities on purpose. I refuse to concede that anyone is that stupid: you know what will happen if you let criminals go or let them off lightly. They’ll just go and commit more crimes. I don’t care how many studies you have or supposed arguments that this will lower crime, you know it won’t. It can’t. The person who commits a robbery, rape or murder isn’t a petty criminal just starting out on the life of crime – but the time you’re sticking a gun in a store clerk’s face, dragging a girl into an alley or ending a human life, you are a hardened criminal. And it doesn’t really matter how young the criminal is. You can become a hardened brute very young. Heck, Hitler did it with his people in just a few years with his Hitler Youth savages committing heinous war crimes at the age of 16 in some cases. However the person got to the store clerk, girl or person about to die, by the time they got there the only way to stop them is with force – and with lengthy incarceration if caught.

And everyone knows this.

But they let them out – if they even bother going after them. One of the dirty secrets of American policing is how badly policed most minority neighborhoods are. Huge amounts of crime in such areas go entirely unreported and only the worst aspects of it show up in the records. And as I said, it is desired. All of those who run Democrat cities are infused with Marxist-Leninist thought. It started to come here in the 1930s with German commie refugees (ie, cowards who wouldn’t stand up to Hitler) and it has just entrenched itself ever more deeply. By now, most of them don’t even know they are just aping Lenin’s “who, whom?” and “loot the looters”. But it is what they are doing; their belief is that crime is the result of the system and those who benefit from the system must be punished by crime until they abandon the system.

But then, also, today Trump was ruled guilty by a fraud masquerading as a judge. Guilty of what? of nothing. He borrowed money with the consent of the lender and then paid it back on time with interest. They say it was a crime – they say the assets used to back the loans were inflated. Not according to Trump or the banks – not, that is, according to the people involved. But according to a “judge” Trump is guilty of fraud. The same system which lets rapists and murderers walk is throwing the book at Trump. And pro-life protestors. And J6 defendants. And whistle blowers.

Why? Because it is, once again, not about justice or law: it is about punishing political offenders. You are to have rapists wander your streets because you are guilty of the political offenses of being middle class/white/Christian/Republican. Trump is being charged on the political grounds that he threatens the dominance of the Left. The rapist and the murderer does not threaten the political dominance of the Left (and the Ruling Class is confident that private security will keep them safe). This is all very obvious by now. And yet plenty don’t see it.

Also today we learned that some Russian dissident got offed in prison and we’re all supposed to be horrified by it. Honestly, I had never hard of the guy. Some people I know have claimed some knowledge but, lets face it, he’s only news because they want another $60 billion for Ukraine so stoking emotions about his death is politically useful at the moment. But in light of this – and Tucker Carlson having some nice things to say about Russia – we’re being told that to question American moral superiority over Putin’s Russia is tantamount to treason. Really? Yes, I get it that the Moscow metro system is a showpiece in no way reflective of how Russian life is. But the rat, crime and drug addict infested New York metro system is entirely reflective of how American life is in the cities. Maybe Russia does suck, but why can’t we – supposedly free and responsible people – at least have a subway system where people aren’t urinating on the cars? Not having human feces in public places – and people smoking crack on the train – doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask. To me, it is kinda basic decency. The glittering art of the Moscow train station is obvious a front…but there are no human feces there. So, plus one for Russia.

We’re not actually free if there are bums wandering our streets in a drug-induced haze. They’re dangerous…and so we avoid the areas they congregate and we hope they don’t find their way to our immediate neighborhood. We’re not free if the crime rate is high; we have to lock our doors, perhaps arm ourselves, and pray that the criminals will pass us by because even if armed we don’t want to actually shoot someone. Sure, they aren’t free in Russia. In fact, there are hardly any free places left in the world – with rural America being the freest, but even there year by year it is less. And it gets less and less because an overpowering government sticks its nose in more and more…while also allowing criminals to wander freely, and persecuting anyone who steps out of line.

Another person said they are much freer in America than anyone in Russia is. Perhaps. But only marginally. And even with that, it is only because the government hasn’t got around to you yet. Think about it – if you were to be arrested as a white supremacist terrorist tomorrow, how confident are you that you could beat the rap? How long would it take? Think about your friends and family: how many would really stick by you knowing that doing so places them on the radar and at risk of arrest, themselves? The government can instantly ruin the life of any American citizen – and count on the MSM to take the government’s side, as long as the person arrested has been identified as an enemy of the Ruling Class. The Constitution won’t show up to help you – it is just a piece of paper. It only has power as long as people abide by it. That you could, by effort, get out of such an injustice doesn’t really mean anything – in that case, the process was the punishment. But in a nation really obeying the US Constitution, you’d have no fear of it even happening except by some bizarre mistake. Now we all know it can happen – and know that the only reason it hasn’t happened is that the Ruling Class is still a bit afraid of us…and, of course, we are armed. In the UK and Australia they are sending people to jail for trivial offenses…all of this, naturally, occurring after gun confiscation for your own good, dammit.

This is why we must steel ourselves to harsh actions. We don’t need a court ruling in our favor ten years after the violation…we need to start sending Leftist Ruling Class foot soldiers to jail. These corrupt and political judges, police officers, DA’s, NGOs etc all need to start seeing the inside of cells. For a long time. It is the only way we can possibly stop them short of violence.

These people – those who are persecuting people like Trump and pro-lifers – are not Americans. They are aliens. They are enemies. I don’t care if they have Mayflower ancestors…somewhere along the line they broke the mystic chains of memory and became anti-American. Out to destroy America and the Americans. It is either stop them, or they stop us.

The Need to Punish

Mark Noonan11 Comments

So the Epstein list was released – as it turns out, just as it was I started watching The Sound of Freedom, that movie last year which got all the Establishment types upset. Now we know why. Or maybe, now I know why.

Of course I’ve long been familiar with both the trafficking and the vile nature of our Ruling Class, but I guess the juxtaposition of the two events sort of drove it home for me. I considered as I watched it that one of the victims portrayed in the movie is about as old as my granddaughter. And it really exposed, though subtly, just how many powerful people must be involved in it all. One of the scenes shows the kids being transported via a merchant ship – one of those large, modern container vessels. Ships have crews, you know? It isn’t like you can actually have a container filled with people over a days or weeks journey without someone outside the container noticing…if nothing else noticing the smell of human waste which must rather pile up inside the container.

Everyone not directly involved is paid to look the other way, of course. This ends up being lots of people…from average Janes and Joes to quite senior corporate and government people. Anyone not paid to look away is probably kept in line by fear. The people who traffic the kids have a well-deserved reputation for being cruelly violent. But, still, how can you look away? Sure, you’re just some poor slob on the crew of a merchant ship, or driving a bus to the border…but you know what is going to happen to those kids. You know. Maybe in the dark of the night you try to tell yourself that you don’t know, but you do.

Nobody knows how many kids are trafficked each year but its likely in the hundreds of thousands around the world. Maybe into millions if we consider the number of kids who are working in mines and such and I suspect a lot of them not necessarily voluntarily. Just physically moving them around takes a huge logistic system…after all, the traffickers don’t want them dead or even seriously abused in transit. They want the kids looking healthy and fresh when placed on the market, whether that market is sex or labor. This means that at least at points along they way there must be food, medical and housing facilities for the kids.

As I pondered all of this I jumped out at me: why we have this. Why, indeed, we have all sorts of miseries and hideous, anti-human actions. It is simple: we don’t punish.

The movie, as is the way of such things, has a happy ending: the particular kids taken are rescued and the culprits are jailed. Good. But it doesn’t stop anyone. No more than taking down a drug shipment ring takes down a Cartel. Nobody is punished.

Jail is not punishment.

To the criminals, it is just part of life. To be avoided, but not something to be afraid of. Remember, they’re amoral animals…people who can transport drugs or children are not people who have the same sorts of likes and dislikes you and I have. To them, being brutal and in charge is what matters…and sure, they all dream of being another Pablo Escobar lording it over a country (for a time), but if all they can lord it over is their cell block, that’ll suit them just fine. They don’t have higher thoughts. They are the gutter and so only gutter considerations exist. I’ll pause here and note that even the very worst of these people can repent and become saints…but unless and until they do, they are worse than beasts in the jungle. More cruel, absolutely irrational in motives.

To end this cruelty – and all the cruelties we see these days – is going to take something more. As I was thinking this over through the day, I saw a report pass on the time line about two men who had held a woman at knife point and raped her…they had just been released without bail. Another report was about a pack of savages looting a bakery. You think jail is going to stop such people? Knife wielding men breaking into a middle class home to rape are not afraid of jail. In jail they’ll just rape their weaker cellmates and consider that just as good a thing to do. Packs of roaming savages looting stores don’t have the wit to even think about jail. All they are thinking about is how fun it is to steal.

We’re going to have to break these people. And I mean that in the sense that once upon a time, we used to break them at the wheel. If you are not familiar with it, then I’ll ask you to take my word on it: very brutal. And it was used on robbers, not just murderers. We’re conditioned here in modern times to think of such punishments as the unreasonable actions of our cruel and ignorant ancestors. I’ve been drifting away from that over the years and now I completely reject the notion. They knew precisely what they were doing and why.

We’re dealing with people who make sane life impossible. Just what in heck are we really supposed to do with someone who views a child as a way to make money? A store as a place to steal? A woman as someone to be raped? How are we to instruct? And I don’t mean instructing the miscreant – by the time someone is selling a child it is only God who can change that person. I mean instructing everyone else. That is, telling the people that if they decide to do such things, their end will be one of prolonged, agonizing pain. Not jail. Not a plea deal. Not a probation. You’re going to be tied down and then very heavy objects will be used to break your bones and mutilate you – starting with your feet. And our hope is that you survive the breaking so you can live for a couple days without so much as a sip of water before you expire. Quick and painless executions are for decent people, folks. We can hang a politician who takes a bribe or a safe cracker who robs the rich…but the person who steals from the working man’s store or violates the honor of a woman is someone who isn’t worthy of a quick end. Needless to say, anyone who sells a child should endure weeks of pain.

And here’s the thing – and I’ve noted this before – it works. The polite society that existed pretty much universally just 75 years ago was the result of a thousand years of ferocious violence being applied by society against the bad guys. As far as I can tell, there’s no other way we’re going to get out of this. Until we find the iron in our blood to really punish, the savages will just continue to run amok.