Conservative Values

Autonomy and Responsibility

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Been seeing some discussions lately regarding that Supreme Court ruling saying, essentially, that you don’t have to bake the cake. The complaints – mostly from the Left but a lot of Righties have problems with it – revolve around a belief that a civil society cannot have people refusing to serve except for the most narrow (on the Left, none, really) exceptions. But I find it curious that none of the people saying we must bake the cake insist that we must carry our weight. It is rather a one way street – I have to bake the cake, but the lazy a** collecting bogus disability payments doesn’t have to get a job.

Chesterton pointed out that learning philosophy is important even though it can be a bit of a bore. The reason for this is because we’re either going to live by thought that has been thought out, or thought that hasn’t been thought out. For at least the past century, its been living by un-thought-out thought. How’s that been working for us?

The dichotomy of Bake the Cake/Sit on Your Butt is the result of simply not thinking about it. It seems like it is unfair to not bake the cake, just like it seems like it is unfair to force the lazy to work. But once you sit down and think about it for a bit, the opposite becomes clearly true.

The problem with slavery isn’t that you have to work. Heck, it doesn’t even require any great cruelty…and some of the largest slave owners of the past treated their slaves pretty well; so well that at times people were able to unfavorably contrast the treatment of free labor in the North with slave labor in the South. No; even if the slave is well treated and given every comfort that free labor would provide, it would still be wrong – and it is wrong because it is compelling someone to do for another. It is the refusal to acknowledge that the slave is a person who can choose to do or not do that is the problem with slavery. The fields do have to get plowed. The house does have to be cleaned. If anyone agrees to plow those fields and clean that house, great; but the moment you can tell a person they must plow your fields and clean your house, you have done evil no matter how nicely you otherwise treat the person. And, of course, treating them with brutality merely multiplies the basic evil of compulsion.

So, too, with any action where someone is doing something for another. You can plow your field. You can hire someone to plow your field. But you must not be able to force someone to plow your field. Or bake you a cake. Or so much as pass the salt. That a person may in some situations even have a moral obligation to do for you – such as sees you drowning and being fully capable of assisting, refuses – this does not entail any legal obligation to do. It must never involve a legal obligation to act.

We got this wrong because in our very understandable and morally correct desire to end and correct the injustices of racism, we fell into the trap of saying that discrimination is wrong rather than correctly identifying the problem as unjust discrimination. Words really do matter a lot! We ridicule the notion of our ancestors fighting whole wars over the definition of a word but they fought because it is important: what words mean and how you use them determine what sort of people you’re going to be. Because we’re lazy and rather ignorant – and don’t think out our thoughts – we fell into a trap: Discrimination is wrong! And so we went out to slay the dragon called Discrimination. Except we didn’t. And we can’t. But we did create a new tyranny to replace the old.

You see, we can’t end Discrimination. It would be impossible to live without Discrimination. For instance, we very much discriminate against blind people who want to be airline pilots. We also discriminate against 5’2″ men who want to play center for the Lakers. When you make out your Thanksgiving guest list and don’t include the wino who lives behind 7/11, you just discriminated. To discriminate is just to choose – and wisdom dictates that your choices be based in reality.

But we still gave it the old try, now didn’t we? And so, unable to end what is necessary for living, we got into the absurdity of saying that to end Discrimination, you must bake the cake. The person demanding the cake discriminates all day but the moment someone denies the cake: Bigot!!!! Off to court we go you homophobe! This is just wrong. Just as a person can decide who to have over for Thanksgiving, so they can decide who to do something for. It must be this way. To be free at the end of the day is the freedom to refuse. To say, “no” without let or hindrance. Doesn’t matter why – good reason, bad reason, no reason: if a person doesn’t want to do it then that’s the end of it: they don’t want to do it. No power on Earth should be able to compel a person to do anything for another.

But what about that bum, Mark? You said early on that we can’t allow people to sit on their butts: aren’t you saying that we can’t compel action? Huh? Explain that!

I will: here goes.

We do have our autonomy. Our ability to choose and our bedrock right to refuse. But we also do live in a society and doing so places certain obligations upon us. First is that we do no harm to the society. Obviously don’t break, steal or kill. We have no right to destroy or take what belongs to others – or to society collectively, like a bridge or a nature park – and we must not kill other people. But beyond these rather bare-bones requirements, we also have an obligation to not unduly burden our fellows. The difference can be illustrated by your neighbor asking you for a ride because his car broke down and your neighbor demanding you chauffeur him around. We, as a people, do carry a price of civilization around with us, and that price is to be reasonable. Someone needs a little help and you can provide it, it is morally incumbent upon you to do so. Not a legal obligation, but if you coldly refuse aid you could render at no significant cost to yourself, you have busted the societal deal. But it is all of us carrying the price of civilization. A man who does demand you chauffeur him around is breaking the deal as badly – maybe more badly – than the person refusing aid.

The pragmatic facts of life are that anyone who is physically fit refusing to work is breaking the deal. Anyone who is begging for money so they can get high or drunk is breaking the deal. Anyone working the system for unearned money (and this from welfare cheats to people using personal injury attorneys for bogus claims) is breaking the deal. Without getting into forcing these people to do for others, we are within our rights to force them to stop being a burden. That is, we can use compulsion to get the bum to go to work, to get the druggy to quit, to get the grifter to pay back what he’s stolen. I can’t order the bum to get a job, but I can set up a situation where he’s either going to get sober and get a job, or be sent some place where in return for being housed and fed – rather than living on the streets high – he will work. Of course even in such a place he can refuse to work…but we will adhered to the Biblical command of if a man will not work, let him not eat. We can and must enforce the deal – you can’t be a bum, you can’t be a drug addict, you can’t be a thief. We will give you every opportunity to become a responsible member of society but when push comes to shove you are either going to do your duty or you will find yourself without the means to live.

Now, this might seem a bit like a paradox but that is only because it is. You see, human life isn’t something that fits into neat, little boxes. Humanity isn’t a series of blocks of wood to be shaped and kept in line. The same society which diligently protects the right to refuse will refuse to allow people to take advantage of others in the name of a right to refuse. You don’t have to remain sober. You don’t have to work. But if you are a lazy drunk we won’t feed you after you spent a night sleeping on the streets in a puddle of your own urine. We will strike a balance, which is how all human society exists; the general rule and then one or more exceptions to it; applied with such wisdom as we can muster, but never allowing ourselves to be suckers.

It is All About Power

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Mao (in)famously once said that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Do note how he phrased it: he’s not saying that guns equal power but, rather, that using guns equals power. It grows out of the barrel of the gun and, of course, what comes out of barrel from the smallest pistol to the heaviest artillery is a lethal projectile. He’s advising his followers to ruthlessly shoot their way into power.

This is cruel and ruthless but it is recommended by one of the primary tests of human experience: it works. Mao and his people killed anyone who got in their way and so obtained power. Chiang and his people – who were capable of killing quite a lot of people – lacked that last bit of supreme ruthless cruelty to impose their will on China. The Nationalists viewed the people on the other side as Chinese. As people they could, in the end, work with. They did not or would not see them for what they were and are: people entirely alienated from God who will do anything to win.

Couple of things crossed my TL over the past 24 hours or so and that is what got me thinking about power and how it is used. The first was a story in the AP:

Mass shootings broke out at festivals, block parties and other gatherings in a handful of cities this week as the U.S. celebrated July Fourth.

Gun violence left more than a dozen dead and almost 60 wounded, including children as young as 2 years old.

The second came my way via a link from @varadmehta on Twitter (who is a genuine must-follow if you have an account: you will not always agree with him, but you’ll learn stuff all the time) to this story:

After previously pledging to support school choice, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announces that he will cave to the teachers union bought and paid for Democrat majority in the PA House and line item veto the full $100M appropriation for voucher programs and scholarships that provide educational opportunity to low-income children.

Shapiro surprised a lot of people by his support for school choice – something which Democrats denounce as a Nazi White Supremacist homo-/transphobic blah blah blah totes evil thing that no decent person can support. We know why: breaking up the public school monopoly is a body blow to the Democrats. But Shapiro said he’d buck the party and back it…but now he’s flipped. We don’t know what pressure the unions and other Democrat interest groups brought, but they brought it. Likely threats of political and personal pain of a high order. The proposal, itself, is quite popular among Pennsylvania voters (as it is everywhere). Shapiro would almost certainly not lose a general election by supporting it…but he could have faced a primary challenger and if he’s got even the slightest skeleton in the closet, that could be brought up against him in the worst possible way with all elements of the MSM hounding him. So, he caved; lacked courage. But, that is nothing new in politics. But notice what the Democrats did here: in order to protect something hideous – the public schools and the teacher’s unions – they went to the mat. It doesn’t matter that the proposal was popular…what mattered was who had the power and the willingness to use it. The Democrats told Shapiro, one way or another, that they would use power against him if he didn’t repent.

Now, over to my first link: all those shootings. They are all in deep Blue areas and are the direct result of the collapse of police authority combined with now several generations of teaching people that barbarism is ok. Think about this: the same people who are calling a minor riot in DC an “insurrection” and sentencing people to years in jail for what amounts to trespassing set up the situation in the Blue cities where heavily armed savages would have the means of going on a rampage at the drop of a hat. This is no coincidence. This is intentional. Both are exercises of power.

It is very easy to establish and maintain public order. People have been doing it for a long time. And in America, it is in our national heritage. The stories of people like Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok are the stories of order being imposed on chaos. The hell-roaring mining towns were filled with young, aggressive men with lots of booze available. People like Earp, sometimes very roughly, brought order to such places. People were instructed by the ruthless application of power that drunken brawling and gunfights weren’t allowed. And, so, they stopped. We could easily do it again. Sure, some people would have to die, but not most – just some. Enough to get the message across; movies tell us that Billy the Kid and his friends all went down fighting. Truth is that while Billy was killed, most of the rest died of old age…the killing of Billy getting the message across. But nobody sends the law into these areas, now do they? And these days even less than before (the cops are likely unwilling to make arrests in certain minority-heavy zip codes for fear of losing their job and/or being send to jail on trumped up charges). This means that the chaos – the barbarism – is wanted. It is a desired end. As I’ve said before, the end here is the Left’s very Leninist view that all crime is actually the result of private property and a Capitalist system. When one of these thugs robs or kills, it isn’t the thug’s fault…it is yours. And you’re being justly punished. And to stop it you’ll have to give up your guns! See how that goes?

What we see in both instances – Shapiro caving and barbarians murdering – is the ruthless exercise of power by people who are determined to rule no matter what. By any means necessary, as they say. They have no sense of decency. They have utterly rejected God. What is moral is what gives them power. What is immoral is anything that denies them power. And everyone who is not of them is on the chopping block. No, not everyone today, but everyone eventually…and they systemically use power to divide and confuse us so that we can be easily picked off. We can hope that God speaks to them and they repent – but as long as they are as they are, they can only be stopped.

And it will take the quite ruthless use of power to stop them. I’ve talked about this before; confiscations of wealth. Expulsion from institutions public and private. Jailing for some. The absolute insistence upon public order and decency. Armored against the false tears of the Left; unconcerned with what they call us. Just getting it done because if we don’t, we’re doomed. And I’m not talking about doomed to lose an election – I’m talking about doomed as in done to death. The Left never takes prisoners. It always keeps going. The punishments always grow more severe and applied to ever more people. What is unimaginable today is going to be commonplace in a few years. Just think of how they’ve moved the ball in the last ten years. They will not stop; so, we have to stop them.

Trouble is, I don’t think one in a hundred on the Right realize what is needed. A very few voices are now being raised stating the bleak truth…but not many. Still far too many looking at someone saying “ACAB” and thinking, “there’s a fellow citizen I can cooperate with!”. It isn’t like that. You may not hate them and wish them dead – but they hate you and wish you dead. The only question is which one of you will emerge triumphant?

It isn’t a matter, by the way, of becoming cruel and dishonest like the Left. We’ve no need to become inhuman. But we do have to be strong and allow no compromise. There is no mid-point between us; no way for each to be content with half a loaf. They left off that more than a century ago – they want it all and they will never stop until they get it all…or we take all from them and leave them incapable of further effort.

Our choice. We’ll see what we choose.

The Left is at War Against Humanity

Mark Noonan20 Comments

Saw this report which says that the Chinese government is hiring 87,000 special cops to destroy family farms. Highlighted there is the destruction of a small pig farm – the Chinese government prefers the workings of large agri-business concerns. You might think that what they’re after here is economies of scale or, perhaps, greater safety…and that will be the justification used. But what is really happening is an assault on small holding. Private wealth, you see? You might be thinking, “then why don’t they go after the Chinese billionaires?”. Because, by and large, the rich of the world are in favor of this – either from conviction or from a “I’ve got mine so to heck with everyone else” attitude. Plus, if the super rich ever decided to go truly independent, the government can squash them like bugs…when you have that much money you are immediately vulnerable to a host of civil and criminal penalties any time the government decides to turn its wrath on you. There are so many laws on so many books in so many countries that it is impossible to be fully law-abiding. And if in addition to this the rich guy in question has cut corners from time to time, then the jeopardy is even greater. You might also recall the recent conflicts in the Netherlands where the government is forcing the sale of huge numbers of farms…with the explanation being that farms cause global warming.

This sort of thing was also seen during Covid (which was massively revealing!) where they allowed the big retail chains to remain open while shutting down all the mom and pops. Wal Mart and Amazon Prime uber alles! I remember during the worst part of it that people here in Vegas has to buy their vape juice on the street corner like a drug deal because the Powers That Be had decreed that the little tobacco stores (all operating on incredibly thin profit margins) had to close.

But it is all about destroying any source of wealth or independence among the citizenry. The phrase, “you will own nothing, and you will be happy” may or may not have been uttered by Schwab…but it is the intent all the same. With the caveat that they don’t care if you’re happy. In fact, they’d probably prefer you to be unhappy because you need to be punished for all those centuries when cretins like you thought that you had a right to your own property. You were wrong, you see? And now you’ve got to pay the piper.

But what, really, is property? It is the human thing – we’ll once again refer to G K Chesterton on this:

Now if we take this house or home as a test, we may very generally lay the simple spiritual foundations of the idea. God is that which can make something out of nothing. Man (it may truly be said) is that which can make something out of anything. In other words, while the joy of God be unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited creation, the combination of creation with limits. Man’s pleasure, therefore, is to possess conditions, but also to be partly possessed by them; to be half-controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs. The excitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions; the conditions will stretch, but not indefinitely. A man can write an immortal sonnet on an old envelope, or hack a hero out of a lump of rock. But hacking a sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious business, and making a hero out of an envelope is almost out of the sphere of practical politics. This fruitful strife with limitations, when it concerns some airy entertainment of an educated class, goes by the name of Art. But the mass of men have neither time nor aptitude for the invention of invisible or abstract beauty. For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions—the idea of property. The average man cannot cut clay into the shape of a man; but he can cut earth into the shape of a garden; and though he arranges it with red geraniums and blue potatoes in alternate straight lines, he is still an artist; because he has chosen. The average man cannot paint the sunset whose colors be admires; but he can paint his own house with what color he chooses, and though he paints it pea green with pink spots, he is still an artist; because that is his choice. Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small.

The most natural and human manner of living is for each person (family, really) to have a bit of the Earth to call their own and do with as they will for their own support. In our modern world, of course, it isn’t possible or even practical that we should all become small farmers…but we should still be striving for personal or family control over the primary means of wealth creation which sustain us. This is the ideal. At least it is the ideal for me, and so I’m a Distributist.

But the ideal of the Global Elite is to eliminate property (except the Elite’s, of course; though they may, as in the old USSR, just change the title of their private property to their “personally assigned” property). They do want us to have nothing. And that means, grasp this!, that they want us to cease being human.

We are human when we hold what we own – what we acquired by our labor and/or fair trade. That it is ours to do as we wish recognizes the inherent dignity of humanity and makes us all equals under law though we clearly are not equal in fact. The war on this concept began in the Reformation when the Lords temporal stole the Commons (to be clear, I don’t blame the Protestants, as such, for this: but the primary reason the British upper class went Protestant was so they could steal: the common lands used by all, the monasteries which were the hospitals and schools of the poor, etc, etc.). It went on and on with things like property and inheritance taxes and rules and regulations and fees and licensing…all patiently explained to us at the time as something only to affect the rich and merely to facilitate the improvement of society…but now we arrive at a time when if I don’t pay a tax I can’t keep my house and when I pass it on to my granddaughter the government will have its hand out; and I am plagued by a host of costs and requirements just to “own” my house, my car…and now they propose to place further restrictions on my ownership of my home and to force me to buy a sort of car I don’t want and probably can’t afford…with their noxious bus waiting for me when I can’t keep up with their demands.

How free am I, really? A serf on a 12th century farm would lose his farm if he didn’t pay his Lord on time. If I don’t pay the government on time, away goes my house (I’ve read some horror stories of late where some poor folks have lost their houses due to trivial tax arrears…and when the houses were sold at auction, the government kept 100% of the proceeds even though the tax bill might have been mere hundreds of dollars…and this is happening most often in Deep Blue jurisdictions). And how free can I ever be if I cannot stand on my small corner of Earth and set everyone at defiance? If you can usurp my property, then I am your slave.

And then you think about what they are also doing with telling us that men can get pregnant and children should be able to get abortions and medical transitions in defiance of parents…and our nation is being invaded by aliens with the active assistance of our own Ruling Class. What is all of this but a program to completely remove all that makes us human? To make us alone, alienated, dependent…as well as cruel and greedy as we grasp for any small advantage at the trough with the other slaves.

Live in your Life Pod, east your bug paste…

No, thanks. I prefer to remain human. And this is why I say we must utterly destroy the Left. It must be pushed out of power. It must have all of its money confiscated. It must be prosecuted for its crimes. It has to go; the poison pill invented by Rousseau and perfected by Marx must become no more, as if it had never been. We have to do this, just to remain human.

Trump and MAGA Won’t Go Away

Mark Noonan60 Comments

I didn’t watch the Trump town hall on CNN because, well, it was on CNN and I’ll be dead and in the cold, cold ground before I give them any ratings. But I did monitor the reactions on Twitter.

The MAGA folks were, of course, entirely thrilled with Trump’s performance. Discount that: that could easily be just partisan confirmation bias.

Never Trump: from the first minute were calling it an unmitigated disaster. Discount that: just as easily confirmation bias. But I did notice something…as the night wore on, the later Never Trump comments about it were “well, he talked too much about the 2020 election and nobody cares about that” and “Trump is doomed because everyone cares about January 6th.”

That was all extreme wish-casting. I don’t know how many people actually care about the 2020 vote…but even those who don’t care, if they aren’t committed anti-Trumpers, all pretty much agree that there was quite a lot of illegality and impropriety in the vote. People believe this because it was obvious. As I’ve asked people (and never get a response on), “they covered up the windows in the counting rooms because ____?”. They can’t answer it. They never will answer it. Because the only answer to “why did you hide the count?” is “because we were stuffing the ballot boxes”.

Nobody cares about January 6th. The Democrats and their MSM lapdogs (seconded by the chihuahua-like yapping of Never Trump types) tried to make the J6 hearings into another Watergate and nobody cared. Mostly nobody cares because nothing really happened that day save for the unfortunate shooting of an unarmed and peaceful demonstrator (which, of course, the J6 boosters never talk about). At the end of the day, with a little bit of rowdiness early on, the Establishment got what they wanted on J6: Pudding Brain certified as the winner. You’re not allowed to complain about things going your way: and the complaints they make about J6 merely seem like pathetic whining.

But it was the Left comments which were most telling: they were ballistic over it. I mean completely unhinged. It was like their world was coming to an end…because Trump, to all appearances, was calm, cool, collected, funny and made some really telling points in response to the gotcha questions of the host.

Pay attention to that: if the Left is pissed off about it, then it worked out well for Trump.

I’ve said for a while now – and it remains true – and plenty of Trump voters are willing to move on. DeSantis is the obvious first choice with Vivek Ramaswamy being the surprising second choice. There is a rational case to make for dropping Trump in favor of some other tool we think may be better suited to break down the Establishment and restore America. But as I’ve also been saying – and I’ve said it since 2015 when I was opposing Trump for the nomination – that the only way to beat Trump is to out-Trump him.

One very particular thing came up in that town hall which is getting little play is Trump’s proposal to pardon most J6 detainees. This has caused monkey-screeches from the Left, of course, while the DeSantis people are (very reasonably) pointing out that Trump could have done that January 7th. But the really crucial thing about it is Trump rising to the defense of the J6 detainees. If DeSantis really wants to break down Trump’s core support – and DeSantis will have to do this to beat Trump – then it should have been DeSantis calling for this first. And that, in my view, is the breakdown in the DeSantis effort: for all the good things he’s doing (and they are fantastic, with the education reforms holding the most long-term potential for us), he’s yet to show to the Trumpsters that he will go to war with the Establishment. Going after Disney: Great. Going after Drag Queen Story Time: Wonderful. But these are fairly run-of-the-mill GOP positions now (being anti-Corporate has actually been taking hold on the right for about ten years). DeSantis needs to pick out a position which is so Trump-y that Trump hasn’t got there yet. The J6 people were the easiest. Now he’ll have to find something else.

What can DeSantis do? That will be up to him but if I were in his position, I’d announce that if elected, every person who illegally crossed the border after January 20th, 2021 will be deported regardless of circumstances. No refugees, no Dreamers: no nothing. I’d announce it as the only means to tell these people that they can’t take advantage of an Administration too corrupt to control the border. That no matter how well they try to blend in before January 20th, 2025, they will be deported. Alternately, DeSantis can call for a suspension of American aid to Ukraine by X Date unless Ukraine agrees to peace talks with Russia. The main thing here is to take something that the Establishment wants very badly (open borders, endless war, etc) and propose to take it away. That demonstrates a willingness to fight: and that is what DeSantis must do if he wants to transfer the love the Trumpsters feel over to himself.

Because that is the key to it all and so far nobody gets it. They call the Trumpsters “MAGAts” or “Trump Cultists” or what have you. They don’t realize that for these people, supporting Trump is an act of love. A pledge to America and to future greatness. You’ll only get them over to you if you give them a reason to love you more. And, hey, maybe they are misguided. Maybe they’re not seeing some crucial things. But anyone who has ever experienced love knows that you can’t talk someone out of it…you bend with it. But it is also important to understand that love – real love – is a matter of loving the beloved before they are lovable. The anti-Trump people keep trying to make Trump seem hateful when all that does is make those who love him love him even more. They see the flaws. They are not blind. But that doesn’t deter the lover. In fact, it makes the true lover even more devoted. You can’t break that by shouting insults. You can only break it by loving even more than they do.

This is why I pointed out to various people who have recently been calling for Trump to back out over his legal troubles that they are making a huge mistake. They aren’t helping their cause, at all. They are, in fact, shooting themselves in the foot. And in two ways:

  1. First off, they are essentially going along with a Democrat op. A “get Trump” effort which has entirely divorced itself from law or any sense of decency as it seeks to destroy Trump by any means necessary. Calling for Trump to back out is merely to play along with a smear. And if it actually worked, then that smear would then be turned on the next guy and the next and the next and the next.
  2. It is alienating Trump supporters. Every time a Never Trump Conservative calls for Trump to back out or be pushed out, it simply tightens up Trump’s support. It makes his supporters ever more willing to stick with him. The proper tactic to take here is to relentlessly attack the Democrat effort as the illegal, unjust and cruel effort it is. That way when you talk to Trumpsters, they’ll listen.

I don’t know how this will come out. I’m still very certain that we’re going to lose next year. But this is primarily because I see the divisions in the Right. They are fostered by the Left and they are setting MAGA and anti-Trump at each other’s throats and convincing them to take Only Trump or Never Trump positions, respectively. Blood is getting up and heads are getting down and whomever emerges with the GOP nomination will find a fractured GOP going up against a united Democrat Party with endless supplies of money, the MSM and a paid army of influencers at every level. I think it will still end up a close race (Pudding Brain is monumentally unpopular), but I do believe that they shove him over the finish line…even if it once again takes some manufactured votes in key States (there will be less of this in 2024 than in 2020 because no Covid and some law changes…but there’s still just enough wiggle room in just enough States to allow some last-minute vote creation to tip the scales).

But however it comes out, the key to victory in 2024 or any future race will have to be the anti-Trump people making their peace with MAGA. This means ditching entirely all MSM talking points about Trump (after all, what the Trump haters hate about Trump is all stuff the MSM told them without having a shred of evidence to back it up). It means talking positively about MAGA. It means acknowledging – without any hedging – the good things Trump accomplished while at the same time agreeing with the obvious: he would have been able to do to a lot more if the GOP leadership and pundit classes had backed him up, as they were morally obligated to do.

Trump isn’t going away. His supporters aren’t going way. You can’t win without Trump and MAGA. It is just the plain facts of life. You can’t “move on” from Trump in the sense of ditching him and pretending he didn’t happen and that his voters will get back into the Neo-Con, Globalist loser fold. You have to show MAGA that you love them; that you want them; that you care about them and will do your best for them. This will require the adoption by everyone in the GOP of large aspects of Trumpist policy and attitudes. Or you can cope and seethe about it as you lose.

The Empire of Lies

Mark Noonan49 Comments

I’ve talked about this before but it is really getting into my mind: just how long we’ve been under a dictatorship of lies. My latest round of thinking about this was a Tweet where the “without the USSR, we couldn’t have won WWII” assertion was made – and not by a Leftist and not by someone unfamiliar with history. It was a highly educated Right person making the statement. It is just an accepted thing: it is the way it was, no doubt about it.

400,000 jeeps and trucks

11,400 aircraft

7,000 tanks

4.4 million tons of food

2.6 million tons of oil

That’s just us, and only a very partial list of what we sent to the USSR. The Brits provided the Red Army’s boots and at least a quarter of their medium tanks (it wasn’t a Soviet miracle of producing the T-34 which got the job done…it was British and American workers: the Soviet films show the T-34’s rolling into Germany…but this is simply because they didn’t film the Sherman’s and Valentine’s which probably made up nearly half their medium tank strength – and on film, especially if moving and a bit out of focus, easy to mistake a Valentine for a T-34). But when you think of all we sent to the USSR keep in mind that at the same time we were raising and splendidly equipping 12 million US service members…and building for ourselves thousands of planes, tanks and ships.

The reality is that the USSR could not have survived without American and other allied aid – and that the USA and Britain vastly outnumbered and outproduced the AXIS powers. And this is even if you take away the fact that we got the Atomic Bomb in 1945 – supposing that didn’t work and the USSR was, say, knocked out in 1943, the Anglo-American alliance would still have rolled into Germany. Might have been 1947 before they did, but it would happen. Germany (Japan, the whole AXIS) has no business going to war with us. It was stupid. Suicidal. And while the USSR killed more Krauts than we did, those Krauts were doomed to die…if not in the snows of Russia, then in the fields of France.

Once you think about it for even just a few minutes and access some readily available information, you can see that it is a lie to say the USSR was vital to Allied victory. It wasn’t. For heaven’s sake, while we were invading Africa, Italy and France and bombing German cities to smithereens and sending massive supplies to the USSR, we were also fighting the Japanese! And while the Japanese never had a command structure like that of the Germans and while on the assault they were often tactically mishandled, we found that one the defense and dug in, the Japanese were harder to fight than the Germans…the Germans would eventually quit. The Japanese kept at it until exterminated. It is like people ignore the Pacific Theater – as if in some way it wasn’t happening at the same time. But once you put Europe and Pacific together and see what the USA did, it is obvious that the USA needed nobody’s help. It was nice to have the help. It ended the war a lot faster and so saved lives…but we never needed a single Russian bayonet on the line.

And when you start to think about it, you just go on: what other bull have we been fed? After a while, you then arrive at your final destination: is anything we’ve been told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

I don’t think so. I believe that our government – our institutions overall – got into the habit of lying to us so long ago that it became entirely ingrained. They lie not as a last resort to deflect blame, but as a first resort to make certain the Narrative supports them no matter what happens. In other words, when they get ready to tell us something, they’ve already thought it out a few steps ahead and so figure out which lie to tell now which will best deflect blame a few steps down the road. Like after 9/11 when we were all told early on that there was no way to prevent it. Well, turns out it could have been easily prevented and the government was presented with chance after chance to prevent it. They knew, of course, that eventually the truth would come out…but they also knew that if they just bald-faced lied about it from the get-go, then by the time the truth emerged it would all be too late. Those responsible would be retired or transferred and “why dig up the past?” would make certain nothing happened.

I mean, for goodness sake, for years we were told that USSR GDP was just a tad behind USA GDP and that they were a serious, first world nation which we had to coexist with. After the USSR fell, we saw what a complete mess the whole thing was with there being a real chance that per-capita Russia wealth was lower in 1991 than it had been in 1913. Right now, Russia’s GDP is on par with South Korea’s…you know, that tiny half-country with no resources and 1/3 Russia’s population.

Fifty former intel people signed a letter stating they were certain Hunter’s laptop was disinformation. You think that was the first time they lied? And, once again, they knew it was a lie when they said it. They didn’t care. It got Team Pudding Brain over the hump and now that Biden’s people are in charge of Justice, nothing will actually happen…and by the time a GOPer gets in, it’ll likely be dropped for statute of limitations reasons and/or “it is time to move on”.

I guess all I can say here is trust nothing. Oh, you can find some facts – they are available. But don’t let anyone interpret those facts for you. And find out which facts they didn’t include. Think about it. Who went to the Moon 8 years after “go”? So how close, really, was that Space Race? Why didn’t we use the USSR’s desperate need to import American grain to force concessions from them? How in heck does a zillion tons of drugs cross our border? Once you start thinking, it really becomes a lot clearer of what has happened – a cabal of the corrupt and stupid have been running a self-perpetuating Oligarchy designed to bind the American people hand and foot. To make us scared. Unsure of ourselves. Unwilling to flex our real power…and all the while allowing the cabal to steal and abuse to their heart’s content.

Wake up. Think. Learn.

And then destroy them all.

True Conservatism Has Never Been Tried

Mark Noonan41 Comments

A Twitter friend (@KenGardner11) asserts that “traditional conservatism” has been largely abandoned by the GOP – especially by the MAGA crowd. And what is traditional conservatism? Here’s how Ken describes it:

Traditional conservatism — limited constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, free markets, free trade, a strong military, a proactive force for freedom in the world — might today be the minority position even within the GOP, much less the country at large.

I think that most of us here are ok with that sort of definition. It is what we by and large considered Conservatism to be. But were we correct? That is, for those of us, say, 45 and older, is what we called Conservatism for our adult lives really Conservatism?

Limited constitutional government is a great ideal. Love it! But is it something we can have while we also have a strong military and are being a proactive force for freedom in the world? If we have that strong military and we are being proactive out there, that means we’re under permanent threat of counter-attack from the pro-active forces of tyranny. This means we need a national security apparatus to protect ourselves from a Pearl Harbor. A national security apparatus will necessarily have to spy to some extent on Americans because we can’t be sure if any of us won’t turn traitor. And so our rights are curtailed by the government in order to maintain the strong military so we can be a proactive force for freedom in the world. See how it goes?

I’m pretty sure readers here know my opinions on free markets and free trade (so called): it is a blind. A false ideal. You can’t have a totally free market and you can’t engage in free trade. Human nature prohibits either thing. Because some people will try to cheat and grind the faces of the poor, there must be some controls on the market. Because some nations will cheat and seek to destroy economic competitors, you must have some controls on trade. But in addition to these concerns, there is the fact that free markets and free trade are not Conservative. They are Liberal. Traditional, 19th century Manchester School Liberalism. Even if an argument can be made that they are, on balance, better ideas than their alternatives, the fact remains they are Liberal ideals…if we Conserve them, then all we’ve done is Conserve Liberalism.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we’ve never tried Conservatism. Even someone like the great Ronald Reagan wasn’t so much trying to Conserve Conservative things but was, instead, trying to restore a Liberal status quo from, say, 1925. No fault to Reagan! He did great things and we can never repay the debt we owe him. But if we want to be Conservatives Conserving things, I think we’re going to have to rethink things a bit.

In my view, what needs to be done is to first define our ideal and then go about obtaining it. And while this ideal is Conservative, we will have to accept the fact that given what we live under now – a Liberal oligarchy – some revolution may be necessary to achieve the ideal. My ideal is a society of faith, family and property. I believe that such a society meets an actual definition of Conservatism because all experience shows that only a society of faith, family and property is sane, stable and free. In other words, whatever you might say you have, you have nothing good if the primary purpose of your society isn’t the fostering of faith, family and property.

Faith because while we can all argue endlessly about the nature of God and what our duties to Him are, we Conservatives know from human experience that a moral code which is not handed down from God cannot work. We also know that without hope of ultimate justice and peace the human species loses sanity and becomes narcissistic, greedy and slothful.

Family because the primary unit of society is the family. We know from human experience that the purpose of the family is the creation and rearing of children and that if this task is not properly carried out absolute disaster results. Such as we have now when we can see videos showing packs of feral young people looting stores and engaging in street brawls over nothing.

Property because, call it what you will, humanity only works to benefit itself. All of us wish others well, but our primary concern is that we and our families are taken care of. I very much want that family down the block to prosper in love and peace…but my main concern in life is to ensure my granddaughter prospers in love and peace. My best means of doing this is to build up sufficient property to ensure that she can have her material needs met…that she can strive and thrive without having to work for someone else just to obtain her daily bread.

All three of my ideals have been ruthlessly and maliciously destroyed by the Liberal oligarchy which has come to govern the whole planet to one degree or another. This oligarchy hates faith because it believes it can create heaven on Earth. It hates family because it believes that the primary human loyalty must be given to the group, led by the oligarchs. It hates property because property makes people independent of the ministrations of the oligarchy. To get them back – to even start to get my ideals back – I must overthrow the Liberal oligarchy. I cannot content myself with just trying to stop the Latest Thing…I must proactively overthrow what has been imposed.

Do keep in mind that such an effort does not preclude working within the current American system. Our Founders did create a very clever system which even now gives me leverage. I pray earnestly that I can effect the necessary changes by using the system. But at the end of the day, if I want what I believe in to survive, I must accept that I’ll have to do it by any means necessary. And if this means I’ll have to abolish corporations on one hand and confiscate oligarchic wealth on the other, then that is what will have to happen…and by so doing I will not be doing other than Conservatism.

It is time, the first time, to try Conservatism. To actually honor our knowledge and traditions by seeking to implement them on society. In my view, it is this way, or death. If all we ever try to do is support what Liberals imposed 40, 80 or 100 years ago, then we’re just helping cement a social order which we can see is leading us to total destruction. Perhaps most on the Right cannot see the line going from, say, Wilsonian Progressives and San Francisco Maoists…but I see it. The latter is the direct descendant of the former. And if we’re still trying to make the world safe for Democracy, I think we’ll find that all we’ve done is make the world safe for more Maoists. I’ll go back to Wilson and discard it; I’ll pick up the mantle of McKinley and Cleveland and reject the Liberal project. I’ll be Conservative…even if I’m burning the system to the ground.

Lies Must be Punished

Mark Noonan44 Comments

We found out a while ago that the 50 intel people who signed the “Hunter’s laptop is Russian disinfo” letter were lying when they signed the letter – but what we’re finding out now is what we’ve suspected all along…the “Russian disinfo” story was concocted by Team Pudding Brain as a deliberate and malicious lie to protect Joe’s electoral prospects. The current Secretary of State was a lead person in this effort to deceive the American people. To, as our Democrats like to put it, interfere with Democracy.

It needs to be understood that the laptop was a career-ending event if the people found out about it. To this day, most Americans are still not familiar with the contents of the laptop. The normal course of events – in a sane society – when something like that laptop appears would be the 24/7 coverage which would reveal the info and drive it into the public mind. Had that laptop belonged to one of Trump’s children, that is how it would have been covered and by election day Trump would have been lucky to get to 35% of the vote. It is that bad – it details horrific crimes, some of which were clearly known by Joe and some which also implicate him in the criminal activity. The reason Team Biden went into damage control mode was because of the devastating nature of the information. And that action, of course, doesn’t really upset anyone all that much. We do expect politicians to lie when they get caught. We wish they wouldn’t. We wish they would repent, confess and then go away. But we also know that doesn’t happen.

What we do expect to happen – what we demand must happen – is that the MSM and the officials of government not help the politician lie. Team Biden was only able to bury the story because of the active cooperation of the MSM and America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies. What happened in 2020 was a conspiracy between the Democrats, the MSM and the American government to lie their favored candidate into office. This is absent any concerns about voter fraud – even supposing the vote was totally legit, the fact remains that Biden would not have got nearly enough votes had the truth come out. And everyone familiar knows this to be the case.

We have a very serious problem here – not that people lie. People have always lied. The problem is that everyone with power is lying. All the time and about everything. They do this because it works. The other day Biden’s press secretary said that Florida law now bans a gay teacher from placing a photo of their spouse on their desk. This is complete fabrication. A bald-faced and quite shameless lie. But it is said. And it works. Such a lie, by the way, isn’t meant for you and me: it is meant for suburban white women who still get their news from the MSM. It works splendidly to keep such people on side. But here’s the kicker: the lies work because nobody is ever punished for the lies.

A society buried under a morass of lies will die. It can’t be sustained. Eventually everything falls apart. We must develop the means to punish lies. To make those who lie suffer a great deal – perhaps even in the most extreme cases with their lives. But certainly with their money – all of it. It is the only way to make it stop. Lying must come with such grave penalty that they’ll be afraid to lie. In the States we control, we should be seeking means to punish lies. If we gain trifecta power in DC again, we must do it at that level, too. The lies must stop and only force will get them to stop.

We Will Win

Mark Noonan97 Comments

There is a heavy amount of gloom and doom on the Right this day on social media. It is all over. We’re done. Doomed!

Why?

Well, we lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

To be sure, we lost it very badly – absolutely destroyed in a landslide loss. We were especially crushed in the suburbs where white women came out in droves to elect a Commie to the Supreme Court because she is pledged to invent a right to an abortion in the Wisconsin Constitution. Looking at this, the Right now sees nothing but Death and Despair.

But that’s because the Right, by and large, is kinda stupid. Its why the GOP has long been known as the Stupid Party. Stupid in, stupid out, dear people.

It is past time we stop being stupid.

While the loss at the WI SC is bad, less noticed is that we won a special election to the Wisconsin Senate and now have a super majority in it. We’re two shy of a super majority in the WI House but what happened last night means the Wisconsin legislature can pretty much impeach any State official they want and have them removed. Some are already talking of impeaching the Democrat governor but the smarter people are talking about impeaching the lower Court Democrat judges who have been soft on crime…you know, the judges who let Antifa and BLM skate all through 2020. That’s the place to start – get Evers (the Dem governor) if you can but much better to get rid of the lower level officials…the people who make policy happen.

We also obtained in North Carolina a super majority in the State legislature via a Democrat party switcher. The GOP Legislature there can now override the Democrat governor at will. That is a pretty cool power, guys. And altogether it means in two battleground States which will play a key role in 2024, the GOP is popular enough to secure legislative super majorities. Perhaps – and I’m just spitballin’ here – the GOP isn’t as toxic as MSM and Never Trump wants us to believe? That they may be – and I know this is shocking to even consider – lying about us because they are so desperate to get rid of Trump and MAGA that they’ll say anything even if 180 from reality?

Don’t get me wrong here: we’re very far away from the days of wine and roses. We’re in a really bad position. We suck at politics and are heavily divided. Democrats are good and politics and are firmly united. I do expect us to lose the White House next year no matter who we nominate. Be pleased as punch if we win, but I’m not expecting it. But what has happened in WI, NC and other State and local campaigns does give us cause for hope. Nobody is really looking into it – because it doesn’t support the Narrative – but my bet is that on the State and local level, the GOP is more powerful than its ever been…even in the aftermath of the Civil War. Last night while Chicago was electing a Commie lunatic as mayor, Springfield’s mayoralty went GOP for the first time since 1967…and the lady who won is pretty darned Trumpy. That is a bit of a watershed, guys. A thing that isn’t supposed to happen. But it did.

We do need some tactical changes. Clearly, middle and upper class white women are fanatics in favor of abortion. This is weird because, overall, such women hardly have abortions. But, it is what it is: you make a campaign about whether abortion should be legal or not, and these ladies will turn out for Democrats in huge numbers. I am, as you know, a raving, pro-life fanatic and I can’t moderate my views on it because I’m not a lunatic who thinks human beings are disposable…but the pragmatic facts of life are that abortion is, right now, a toxic issue for the GOP. It doesn’t do me the least bit of good to lose while insisting on the pro-life maximum position: that just means that the pro-death fanatics of the Democrat party get in. So, we have to carefully re-think our tactics…certainly do not go for any ban after 15 weeks. When we get into the fight, relentlessly point out that the Democrats position is abortion to birth (I’m serious: “so, GOP candidate, what do you think of your opponents tax plan?” “Well, Fred, first I’d like to point out that he wants the taxes to pay for abortion to birth”: like that). We have to start backing big, expensive programs for pre- and post-natal care. We trust in God’s time the American people will come to the Pro-Life position and we’ll be able to ban the hideous, anti-human practice…but, meanwhile, lets take what we can get and at least neutralize the issue against us.

We also need a make-over on how we present ourselves overall. In a sense, it is time to ditch the label “conservative”. We’re not conserving anything: everything we wanted to conserve is gone. What we’re trying to do is reform everything…to take power away from insane, corrupt, anti-human Progressives and rebuild our nation. We’re in a very real sense revolutionaries. And we should start acting like it – but like all revolutionaries, you start at the bottom. Sure, try to win Congress and the White House. Maybe you will. At least you’ll keep your finger in the pie there. But the real action for us is, as I’ve said a lot lately, down at the State and especially the local level. Just 12 years after we take over a school board we have a crop of 18 year olds who are literate, sane, healthy patriots. If, meanwhile, we’ve also taken over high education, then they won’t be turned into Commies on us. These kids will then step out into the larger world, laugh at their illiterate, blue-haired peers from Democrat areas, and proceed to take over the country.

What I’m ultimately saying here is nil desperandum – get a grip! Sure, it sucks. It will probably suck worse. In fact, it probably has a to suck a lot more worse before we have a real shot at national power. So be it. This is the Progressive’s world. It is very stupid, a lot more gay than we expected and it is failing. They don’t know what to do. They are incapable of thinking. They are just bloody-minded pressing forward with their stupid ideas because, being quite mindless, they don’t know what else to do. It will all come crashing down. We will pick up the pieces. It is just a matter of time…and if we’ve laid the groundwork, then when the time comes the Revolution will be quick and complete.

Death by Going Along With It

Mark Noonan34 Comments

I’ve determined that the road to hell is not so much paved with good intentions as paved with a desire to go along to get along.

Earlier today, I saw a headline where a transwoman is upset because at the airport TSA hit “her testicles”. Actually written just like that. In itself, just another ridiculous part of modern life, but it made clear in my mind that our problem is that we’ve decided that going along with things – no matter how bizarre – is superior to holding fast to truth.

We’ve been doing it a long time, after all. Close to 40 years ago after a day at work the staff at the company I worked at, under the leadership of the company owner, broke out a bottle of whiskey and we all started having drinks to decompress from what had been a very long day. After a little while, someone broke out a book entitled something like “1,001 Worst Ethnic Jokes”. We all took turns reading from it, while continuing to drink, and it still stands in my mind as one of the funniest evenings I’ve ever had. Who was there? White people. Black people. Latinos. Jews. In other words: a very mixed ethnicity group and we all howled with laughter at the jokes. Jokes like: What’s the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish wake? One less drunk Also: what do you call a one legged woman? Ilene. What do you call a one legged Japanese woman? Irene.

You can’t do that these days. Can you imagine the outrage? And we got here not all at once, but by a series of surrenders. In my mind, it started with Elton John got all huffy at some award ceremony after Sam Kinison made a joke about homosexuality. Ol’ Elton – who was allegedly a rebel rock star – got all huffy over a joke…and just about right then and there, “PC” entered the cultural mainstream. And it did seem small, didn’t it? I mean, after all, the joke offended that guy…so, just don’t make the joke again. And then the next joke. And the next and the next and the next and here we were in 2023 where people risk social and economic ruin because 20 years previously they might have made an ethnic joke. This cowardice is simply killing civilization as, step by step, mere sanity is becoming socially unacceptable while the most lunatic are awarded the leadership role.

We’ve been so busy worrying about who we might offend that we’ve allowed bullies and liars to dictate our social actions. Whoever shouts gets deference. Whoever lie isn’t called out on them. All so we won’t cause offense. Even though we know they’re not really offended..but mostly just trying to get over on us. Secure some bit of unearned wealth or social credit by browbeating us. And it really has to stop: we have to stop being afraid. And then we have to start punishing them. It shouldn’t be the guy who told the off color joke or who chose his words poorly losing the job – it should be the person complaining about it. As soon as one of these bullies sticks their nose in and starts whining about it, whammo: you’re done. Out. Ridiculed and exiled from society.

It is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, for our own defense. We don’t want to lose our jobs over nothing. But the second reason is most crucial: by punishing the whiners, we’ll make whining unpopular. There will be an immediate increase in social courage if we start beating up the bullies rather than joining the bully in beating up the victim. It will get more people to speak what is really on their minds…and act upon their beliefs. A huge amount of leftwing success over the past 20 years, especially, has been simply because most people have been afraid to openly oppose it. Time to rebalance the books: to make them afraid to speak up while we say whatever we please.

Civilization Requires Force

Mark Noonan11 Comments

Some years back, I wrote about Bill Buckley and National Review’s successful efforts to purge the Birchers from the Conservative movement. The problem Buckley and others perceived what the JBS’ penchant for conspiracy theories – the kooky idea that there was a genuine global Communist conspiracy to undermine America and that this conspiracy had agents all through the US government and other institutions. The breaking point came when Welch – the founder of JBS – implied that Eisenhower might be some sort of Communist agent. That was, of course, ridiculous and Welch, himself, later distanced himself from it. But the crucial thing was that the Communists, at the time entirely subservient to Moscow and now just operating on their own, really were trying to undermine the USA any way they could. There really were Communist agents all through the government and other American institutions. And the primary failure of Conservatism was in not rooting these elements out – which, in my mind, was really Welch’s primary complaint about Ike. Part of the reason Truman didn’t seek re-election in 1952 was because the penetration of the US Government by Communists had been exposed and it was a horrible scandal especially as American troops were fighting Communist forces in Korea.

Ike could have cleared out the infiltrators. He didn’t; for normal GOPe reasons, he let them go…some to retire, others to be transferred to some other agency. For all the Progressive talk of a anti-Communist witch hunt in the 1950’s, the reality is that there wasn’t a witch hunt. Had there been one, we’d be a lot better off today. Had we gone on a truly forceful anti-Communist crusade in the USA, purging them from all positions and jailing those who were de-facto Soviet agents (very many of the leaders were), think of all the societal decay which wouldn’t have occurred…a huge amount of our social and economic disintegration over the past 50-60 years was caused by people who hate us being left in positions of power and influence.

So, why bring this up? Water over the dam, right? Can’t undo the past. Nope; we can’t. But we can work on the future. And over at National Review they are informing us that we Conservatives had better not like Nayib Bukele.

I know: your first question is, who the heck is that?

I, too, had never heard of him before NRO told me he’s bad. Turns out, he’s the President of El Salvador and he’s gotten a bit infamous of late for his massive crackdown on the horrifically violent gang MS-13. It had gotten really bad in El Salvador, guys; with some sources claiming the murder rate a few years back was 40 for every 100,000 people (most recent stat for us is 7 per 100,000…which, BTW, is a huge spike from just a few years ago). The gangs pretty much did whatever they wanted in El Salvador (as they do in so many Latin American countries) and, remember, these gangs aren’t like the US Mafia or even things like the Crips and the Bloods…for whatever reasons, Latin American gangs are simply inhuman brutes in their violence. Not just killing (via unbelievably savage means) rivals and witnesses (the normal run of gangland killings) but seeming to go out of their way to cruelly kill people who pose little or no threat, just to keep people terrified of the gangs, as such. Bukele did mass arrests and the murder rate in El Salvador has dropped precipitously.

Naturally, the Ruling Class is upset with this. You know the real reason why: a lot of them are owned by the criminals via bribery. But they are officially upset that, to put it mildly, Bukele didn’t ensure that the legal i’s were dotted and t’s crossed on the arrests…and it looks like arrested gangsters who were defiant…didn’t end so well.

Cry me a river.

Bukele is fighting for his country. He’s a bit of an odd duck having risen out of the Marxist FLMN and then dumping them for a more populist/nationalist ideology (which is another likely reason the Ruling Class hates him: can’t abandon the Commies!). He’s also clearly an opportunist (as a young, ambitious pol often is); there are claims he made some side deals with elements of MS-13 from time to time (which is logical to do; hold off one band while dealing with another of more immediate concern). But the thing is you can’t have a civilized nation if crime is running rampant. Your right to free speech and to vote is worthless if at any time you can be robbed or murdered by criminals acting with near-impunity (especially while your Ruling Class is safe and dry behind well-guarded walls and secret deals with the criminals). Before anything else, we must be secure in our lives and property. It isn’t just the bedrock of civilization, it is the bedrock of any functioning society no matter how primitive or advanced. Bukele is simply reacting to reality – unless his people are safe, they can’t build anything.

In a civilization we have carefully constructed rules, written and unwritten, about how things work. And when everything is functioning, these rules are sufficient. Most of the time, we simply obey the unwritten rules: going to work, paying our bills, keeping our houses tidy, being polite to others. In those rare instances where something slipped, we then refer to the written rules and, being civilized people, we go to court and let lawyers, judges and the law figure out the best possible result. But at the back of it all, the thing which made it and ultimately must sustain it, is force. Brutal force. A force which can kill everyone who won’t obey the written and unwritten rules. Bukele is just demonstrating this – and it is causing some alarm among those who are continuing to live well as the current system globally collapses into lawlessness.

It is coming here, folks. When you see those videos of people looting stores and beating others and such, that shows you the problem – a complete rejection of the unwritten rules and utter contempt for the written. And that contempt is well-earned as those in charge of enforcing the written rules have simply allowed crime to slide almost entirely for ideological reasons. But people can’t live like that. We can’t live forever in a society where people can rob and kill with impunity. The robbers and killers must be stopped by any means necessary.

We may already be past the point where the normal system are capable of handling this – that is, our system may be so weak and corrupted that even if it tried to address the issue, it can’t. If we are past the time of working with the rules, then we will find that the people will turn to an American version of Bukele. Someone who says they’ll get rid of the criminals and then just does so – and law be damned. Just get rid of them will be the cry and nobody is going to care what a Court which couldn’t stop the cime is going to say.

Bukele is further accused of using the emergency to gather power to himself which Constitutionally the President doesn’t have. And that is likely true, at least to some degree. He pretty much feels he has to: his people want to be saved from crime and he’s going to save them from it. This does bear the risk of the end of freedom in El Salvador – strongmen who save nations have historically been unwilling to surrender power after the rescue is complete. They come to see themselves as indispensable. They are fearful if they surrender power, their successors will come after them. Ego! We’ll see how El Salvador works this out – but however it comes out, Bukele is saving civilization. And if we let crime get out of hand here – and we are – then the American people will also turn to someone like Bukele…some who will just bust heads until the criminal element is gone. And then we’ll see if that person gives up the power.

It all stems from the fact that civilization is thin: it is a veneer over the human savage. In just a generation or two it can be lost – and if lost, that is when you’ll start seeing a disintegration among the people. I think we can already see that disintegration. We wait now to see if those committed to civilization will step up and save it…or if they’ll weakly allow the collapse to accelerate until the people forth a Caesar.