History

How Do We Get Evil People to Stop?

Mark Noonan15 Comments

This initially started as a very long post on X but I ended up deleting it shortly after posting because I wanted to think about it some more. You’ll understand why as you read: it is a difficult thing to write about and no human being – if they have any wisdom at all – wants to presume too much. I worked into Book X of the Mirrors series (coming out later this year but it might slip to early next year) a bit where Fred is asking for a direct answer to what is going on from someone he’s certain knows: she gives an equivocal answer but rather than getting angry, Fred quotes Job 38:4, Where were you when I founded the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. And Fred, like Job, is comforted by this answer to all true Mysteries, continuing on with part of 2 Corinthians 12:10, for when I am weak, then I am strong. It is important, always, to be humble. To not be too sure and to ultimately rely on God, who’s judgements are true and righteous altogether. That said, I think this is important to say.

I was reading a post from a Catholic priest – a good priest, let it be noted – who was upset over the story that IDF soldiers were deliberately targeting Gazans coming for food aid. I noted that the story is almost certainly a lie – that its primary source is the Gazan health ministry, a known purveyor of fabrications. In jumped a Hamas-nik to deflect away from that indisputable fact to chime in with claims that the IDF routinely commits war crimes. Went back and forth a little bit there until it was certain the man was entirely wooden headed and would never think for a moment. But the whole interaction got me thinking about the concepts of justice and mercy. What, in fact, does love require we do here?

War is, of course, a nasty business. All we can learn of Our Lord tells against going to war. How can we love our neighbor as ourselves if we war upon him? On the other hand, the greatest – St John the Baptist – when asked by soldiers what they must do to enter the Kingdom merely replied – in essence – that they should be good soldiers. He didn’t say desert the army. This is pretty crucial if you ask me. That being in the military and carrying out your duties is pleasing to God. This indicates to me that Fallen Man is not going to stop being Fallen – and, of course, he isn’t. He still needs, every day, a Savior. Once we enter the Kingdom that is different – but until we do, we are prey to all the troubles of the world and war is one of those troubles.

That being said, it all comes down to why and how a person fights if war occurs. Naturally, no Christian may deliberately start a war. We are always to seek a peaceful resolution of differences and only engage in fighting if attacked or if an attack is so obviously pending that prudence dictates we strike the first blow. The only defensible war is a war of defense. Once a war starts, we are to act like Christians. We are not to be needlessly cruel to the enemy. We are to apply the necessary force to bring the conflict to its swiftest resolution, but no more than that. Nothing gratuitous. And these requirements are not just required of Christians – nobody wants as a result of war their own people to be massacred and despoiled. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu what have you, nobody wants that to happen to their side. And as they know they don’t want it to happen to them, so they know they must not do it to others. All human beings are morally obligated to be as decent as possible at all times, even the most difficult. So, in essence, there should be no war as nobody should attack unjustly and there should be no war crimes because everyone who engages in warfare should be as merciful as possible.

But what do we do in the face of the unjust attack? And, furthermore, what do we do in the face of an unjust attack accompanied by monstrous cruelty?

Naturally when attacked unjustly we are permitted to fight back in self defense. And the response must be proportional to the needs. In other words, if peace may be obtained by ten bombs then you shouldn’t drop ten thousand. But now we need to think a little bit. To consider just what we’re dealing with – and what response is proportional to it.

World War One morphed from a fracas in the Balkans into a World War for one reason and one reason, alone: the Germans unjustly attacked Luxembourg, Belgium and France. There was no reason for this German attack. Not the slightest justification can be made for it. The Germans did it because they thought they would win quickly and gain total mastery of Europe in six weeks. And the Germans, when they did it, knew they were doing wrong – because they wouldn’t want another power to invade Germany out of the blue in a bid for European mastery. They would have considered such an attack upon themselves as an outrage against all decency. And yet they went ahead and attacked France. They were in the wrong, totally.

By immense exertions and loss of lives, this German attack was defeated. The German army was forced to withdraw and enter into an Armistice before the German army was totally destroyed in the field. Germany then had a peace treaty imposed upon her designed to prevent a recurrence of the just-defeated attack. Germany’s army was limited in size and her economy was burdened with reparations payments designed to not only repay the offended parties, but to cripple Germany’s economic ability to wage war. This was an entirely just peace treaty given what had happened.

But it turned out that it didn’t punish the Germans enough. It left them intact enough to very swiftly rebuild their military might and try again – which they did a mere twenty five years after the first try. And this time their attack was accompanied by the most monstrous cruelty ever done by the hand of Man. People murdered by the millions. Rapes all over German occupied Europe. Massive looting not just of food and tools, but the very artwork of the conquered peoples. Meanwhile, over on the other side of the world, Japan had launched a totally unjustified war in 1937 – attacking China quite ruthlessly with the Rape of Nanking being a horror that would have made Attila the Hun sick to his stomach…an orgy of rape, murder and looting. And then, later, Japan just continued this in all the lands they occupied as World War Two became global.

War and cruelty go together. After all, even under the most honorable of circumstances, you are still seeking to end the lives of the other side. Who can say what lies and threats got that enemy soldier into uniform? Yet the soldier must kill – swiftly and without remorse. And in the heat of combat – with fear and hatred rising – at times even the most honorable of soldiers can commit acts which, in the cold light of reason, can only be described as barbaric. Of course, when such acts occur decent military organizations do seek redress. If for no other reason than to ensure good order and discipline in the ranks. But, often, because it is just the right thing to do. We understand why our boys might go too far at times and we want to be merciful to the man who may have been pushed too far…but right is right and sometimes we have to punish our own. But what the Germans and Japanese did in World War Two went far beyond this.

It is one thing for a soldier, or a few soldiers, or even a whole company of soldiers to go off their heads. At the Siege of Badajoz in 1812, Wellington’s army had to carry out an exceptionally difficult assault against an alert and entrenched enemy and the fighting was quite ferocious with no quarter asked or given. Those men were brave and disciplined British soldiers…but the cost of the assault seems to have set those men off their heads…once they had won they disregarded their officers from Wellington on down and went on a rampage of looting, rape and murder in the town. It was totally unjustified. A horrific blot on the honor of the British army. It took days for Wellington and his officers to regain control and turn their mob back into an army. It was horrible but not ordered by the command, nor sanctioned by the government, nor justified in any way by any British patriot. What the Germans and Japanese did was different from this.

What was done at Nanking and Babi Yar was the considered policy of the respective governments. The soldiers were ordered to carry it out. And they carried it out. As time went on and the monstrous cruelties increased in scope whole support systems were put into place so that Germans and Japanese could kill ever more people…and with ever more attendant cruelty, including torture and looting. Japanese soldiers didn’t go berserk at Nanking. No more than German soldiers went berserk at Oradour-sur-Glane. They carried out orders. And orders they knew were wrong as they carried them out because not one German or Japanese soldier wanted those events to happen in their home towns to their own people. Basic human decency required them to refuse to obey…but they obeyed. It doesn’t, in the end, matter why. Cowardice or cruelty or any combination of human failings – they were still responsible adults who knew better. And the sheer scale of the atrocities of Germany and Japan required that the whole populations of each country become intimately involved in them. After all, the guy who drove the train full of Jews to Auschwitz couldn’t pretend he didn’t know what he carried…nor that he never carried people away from the place. He knew. And so did his wife and children. Did they approve? It doesn’t matter: they went along with it when they knew they shouldn’t have.

You can excuse it and try to explain it away but the bottom line is that death is preferable to participation in such crimes…even the death of you and all you love. It just isn’t worth it if life requires you to participate, even second hand, in massacres. You think about the endless number of German families who just quietly went along – and then the Ulma family of Poland which harbored eight Jews and, when caught, was massacred down to Mrs. Ulma’s unborn child. The Ulma’s knew the risks – and think of Mr. Ulma, dedicated to the safety and happiness of his family. He could easily have said, “I hate the Nazis and I want to help the Jews, but I have my wife and children to think of” and done nothing. But he truly thought of his wife and children – and did what had to be done. It is when things are worst that we are supposed to do our best. The Germans and Japanese, in the whole, did not do this (and all honor to the few in each country who did do the right thing).

Now on to the really difficult thing to consider and I pray to God I don’t get this wrong – I do not wish to lead myself or anyone else astray!

As the children of Poland, China, Philippines, France, Norway, Burma, Russia, Greece and so many other nations were martyred by German and Japanese cruelty, did not their cries for justice rise up to heaven? They spoke in a multitude of languages and they had often very different ideas about God, but all of them were human beings and all of them were caught in a welter of cruel slaughter they in no way deserved. Surely out of their mouths and hearts went up the cry: my God, save me!

Of course it did. And I can’t imagine God not listening. Not seeing their tears. And while God gives us the free will to do as we wish God is also just and merciful and His will is always accomplished. The fact that the Germans and Japanese were utterly defeated is an obvious example of God’s justice operating in the world. That people so depraved were not able to win is just and merciful. And how were they not able to win? By being subjected to such ferocious punishment that total destruction resulted.

Much is said these days about the strategic bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan. From right after the end of the war, it has been derided as a failure. The advocates of strategic bombing swore up and down that it, alone, would destroy the enemy and compel peace. Clearly, it did not and so it must have failed. This, I think, was based upon a faulty understanding of just what happened in the strategic bombing campaigns.

The first thing to keep in mind is that the Germans and Japanese were forced to expend enormous resources fighting against the bombings. Every plane, every soldier, every bullet and shell shot up into the sky at Allied bombers was that much less they had on the battlefield against Allied armies. Each bomb that dropped in some manner hampered both nations in the conduct of the war…even the fact that craters had to be filled in to get the roads open took time and manpower and so there was less power to apply on the battlefields. In short, without the bombings the fighting on the ground would have been far more intense, lengthy and bloody. Maybe so much so that the Germans and Japanese could have prevented the total defeat of their nations.

In addition to that, Allied bombing power was still growing in 1945. It was only in 1944 that the Allied air forces could really be certain that a bombing raid would seriously degrade the selected target. It was all a matter of getting sufficient planes, sufficiently skilled crews and learning the difficult task of hitting a relatively small target from a great height. By 1944 the Allied air forces were nailing this down – and the destruction went from bad to absolutely horrific. We’ve all seen the pictures of the ruined cities taken post-War but they don’t really capture what it was like – meaning for the Germans and Japanese on the ground. To be absolutely helpless as a thousand enemy planes leisurely pass overhead dropping tons of bombs was likely one of the worst sensation any human being has endured. Small wonder that very often downed Allied pilots in both Germany and Japan were lynched on the spot by outraged people. Had the Germans and Japanese been able to keep us away – prevent Allied invasions of their own territory – then the bombings would just have gotten worse. Even absent the atomic bomb! Just worse and worse and worse. By 1945 Allied planes were ranging at will over Germany and Japan and Allied factories were turning out planes, bombs and aircrews at an increasing pace…suppose, for instance, that the Battle of the Bulge pushed us back to Paris and that the Germans had defeated the Russians January, 1945 offensive in Poland…so much the worse for Germany as the number of bombs dropping would have simply increased – perhaps to the point where it was simply impossible for the Germans to live (seriously: by 1945 even ox carts were being strafed).

And here’s the interesting thing I want to say: is it at all possible that Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay were instruments of God’s justice? That with all the cries to heaven for justice, it was those two men – and their intrepid air crews – who delivered the redress? I don’t know. But I can suspect. And I can definitely say that given what the Germans and Japanese were doing – as peoples – the bombings weren’t unjust even if not an expression of God’s justice.

What can we say? For the Germans this was round two. They had started a totally unjust war in 1914 and were totally defeated…but didn’t accept their defeat and so tried again in 1939 and this time were unbelievably cruel. So, too, the Japanese all over Asia and the Pacific…just simply mean and cruel…killing, raping, looting…both people lording it over the conquered even in the smallest ways. Simple military defeat in the manner of 1918 didn’t work…and so there was absolute crushing defeat on every level in 1945. And that did work. Nobody fears that the Germans or Japanese will ever try it again. So, just maybe the result of 1945 was totally just? Could be. This doesn’t excuse anything the Allies did which was actually wrong (like the behavior of Russian soldiers regarding German women), but the basic operation was just – it burned out of the Japanese and German populations any desire to carry on with their imperial and racist ambitions. And then we have God’s mercy working even for the Germans and Japanese: because of this massive application of power against them, the war ended before they were all killed and everything was totally destroyed. They, too, cried out to God for an end to it…and their prayer was granted.

And now lets go forward to today – the aftermath of 10/7. First and foremost, nothing can justify 10/7. Suppose Israel is guilty of every crime charged to her, there is no way to justify what was done on 10/7. First off, it was an unjust attack – there was no attack happening or pending on the people of Gaza. That they didn’t like the political and economic situation they were in doesn’t constitute a justification for war. To justify war you must be attacked or an attack is so imminent that you must attack to thwart it. Nothing like that was going on in Gaza on 10/7.

And then what the Gazans did: they didn’t enter Israel for a stand-up fight with the IDF: they came to rape and murder. Their primary method of warfare was to attack the helpless and treat them with inhuman cruelty. Even if someone did that to your people, you are not justified in doing it to theirs. Once again, as you do not want it to happen to you so you must not do it to others. And, of course, Israel has never sent in IDF units to rape and murder the helpless. What the Gazans did was a monstrous crime – something which hadn’t happened since the Germans and Japanese were doing it in WWII. And when the rapist/murderers returned to Gaza – often dragging their victims (living and dead) in their wake – the overwhelming mass of the people of Gaza cheered.

Cheered.

They cheered rapists and murderers bringing home the victims of their crimes.

They knew precisely what those men had done and they were happy about it.

Now, did every last person in Gaza approve? Almost certainly not. But the number disapproving is very small. It took years to develop the rape/murder squads. To get people to think that it is good to do these things is not something you just whistle up in a weekend. You have to mentally condition people to do it and approve of it. The Germans were all “oh, Hitler went mad in 1943!”…as if it wasn’t insane to deny Jewish humanity with the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. Sure, a basic Gazan on the street might not have known ten years ago that it was specifically leading to 10/7, but that Gazan knew – knows and always has known – that propaganda denying the basic humanity of Jews is wrong. They know it because they would be aghast at propaganda which held that Muslims aren’t human. Bottom line, given what Hamas was doing in Gaza from the get-go, nobody could have the slightest illusion that very bad things were going to happen. The Gazans just hoped they’d only happen to Jews.

So, what is the best thing to do here? A ceasefire? You mean a pause until the next round? How is that good? What does that accomplish? Indeed, wouldn’t a ceasefire seem in the minds of the Gazans a victory? That they stood up to the IDF and forced them to quit? And what of the mindset of the Gazans – the mindset that approves the rape and murder of helpless people? Which, by the way, doesn’t just happen in Israel…you can see it happening all over Syria right now, as well as in Sudan and other places in the Muslim world where violence is becoming endemic. There is a mindset at work here – a belief system – which sustains such cruelty. Ceasefire with it? To what purpose? Negotiate a peace? What’s the half way point between rape and no rape? What’s the compromise position? A little murder?

Or is it time to emulate Arthur Harris and Curtis LeMay? That is, apply such ferocious force on these people that they fully understand what they’ve done is wrong and they’ll never do it again.

Honestly, I am not certain. But I can’t see the use of going on like we have. As if, perhaps, we are the bad guys – that there is some justification for what the enemy is doing, or maybe we should feel guilty about Dresden and so we’d better hold back going forward. All I know is that the only bad thing here is a continuation – letting this go on and on and on. It is time to end this – and unless we want to end this via our surrender, we’re going to have to get very stern in action. And true justice might require us to act sternly. After all, what would we say of the cop who let a murderer go, only to have that man kill again? We’d be pretty furious – and justly so. If we go soft on Hamas and Hezbollah and the other fanatic groups of killers, then all we’re ultimately doing is ensuring that some poor innocent at a later date gets killed. And innocents on both sides, it should be noted; some poor kid in Gaza who is killed by a bomb or a stray bullet didn’t deserve to die…and I’d prevent that if I can.

To get back to the genesis of this post, suppose the story of IDF soldiers taking pot shots at Gazans lining up for food is true. Well, I have some bad news for you: the only way to ensure it doesn’t happen is the total defeat of the Gazan people. If you take the position that the way to stop it is to punish the IDF soldiers and impose a ceasefire, then all you’re doing is making sure other innocent people are killed later. And I mean its as definite as Euclidean geometry: you are definitely, consciously deciding that some poor sap will die next week, next month or next year…and you’re doing it because you just want people to think you’re the good guy, today. The problem isn’t the IDF soldier taking the shot – the problem is that the IDF soldier is there in response to the 10/7 massacre. Had 10/7 not happened then no need for Gazans to line up for aid and thus no possibility of an IDF soldier going off his head and taking a shot at the Gazans. Get to the crux of the matter, people. The problem is an anti-human ideology which holds that Jews aren’t people and may be raped and murdered at will.

If we want an end to this then what must end is the ideology which generates the actions. An ideology of peace and brotherhood is very unlikely to start a war. An ideology domination is highly likely to start a war. Hamas’ ideology – like similar ideologies – is one of domination. Rule. Masters and slaves. It has to go. If you can think of a way to talk them out of it, I’m all ears. But I believe that its going to be necessary to burn it out of them. To let them know they’re just plain and simple wrong. That God has not decreed they be Masters.

The Past Was Just Like Today, Just no Wal Mart

Mark Noonan1 Comment

The Commies over at Pamphlets posted this on X:

I noted that the thing about pre-history is that it is prehistoric – nobody really knows. But by the time human beings started writing things down, we had government, laws, property and trade. But it is far more fun – and politically useful – for people to stick with what isn’t known and make it how you prefer. I think it was H G Wells in his histories where we get an assertion that primitive society was the law of the club. That is, the biggest, meanest guy would just beat down everyone until they accepted his rule. This leaves off the fact that the second and third biggest, meanest guys could take down the biggest, meanest guy with ease. It should be noted that Wells also thought our ancestors rather stupid – he acknowledged that the “cave man” could create art, but Wells still just put him down as a brute savage. But, here’s the thing: the “cave man” was, well, a man. Human. Just as inherently smart as anyone alive today. That is the real problem with the people who cast their current views on the deep past: they somehow forget that the prehistoric people were people.

Wells is just as silly in his assertion of brute savagery as our Commies are of people living in Communist bliss. First and foremost: we don’t know. But, additionally, they were human beings…so you kinda have to put yourself in their shoes if you want to get any sensible thought about them. That is, pretend you were suddenly set down with twenty of your fellows in a howling wilderness with no tools whatsoever. What would you do? Perhaps any one of a thousand things – but the people who are going to survive are first going to start gathering food, making tools and building shelters. There will be cooperation – and there will be property. Share and share alike, sure: but the lazy butt is being left out in the cold. And the guy who finds a jackpot of wild vegetables is going to trade his surplus to the guy who figured out how to make a rabbit trap. Who will then trade some of the veggies to the person who actually worked out how to turn a flint rock into a knife. And suppose someone tries to take over by strength and fear and start ordering everyone about? If the guy is useful – that is he can envision the ends as well as will the means – then his rule might be ratified…but if he’s just a crazy guy lording it over physically weaker people then the flint knife will be inserted into his rib cage when he’s asleep.

And this, more than likely, was how primitive human societies operated. There were rules, and there were the means of bending or breaking the rules at need. There were leaders…and there were councils of some type which could check the leaders. There was cooperation because human beings can’t live without it – and there was property because people like to hold their own. In fact, one of my pet theories is that it was women who created agriculture and, eventually, civilization. Think about it: in those olden days pregnancy was regular and children were numerous. And while women will cooperate a great deal with each other, a woman’s children will always come first in her heart and mind. And the primary concern of a mother back then was having a secure supply of food. The men may or may not be able to kill the mastodon…but those berries always grow on that slope of the hill at this time of year.

And that sort of knowledge does both stick in the brain and get you thinking: if they grow well on this hillside at this time of year, why not on that other hillside at the same time of year? Maybe we should plant some of the seeds in places similar to where we find them? And maybe pull up plants that are near them so that they can grow bigger and faster? And, hey, this is my hillside and those are my berries (or primitive wheat, or corn, or tomatoes or what have you) so, clear off you interloper and find your own hillside. So, now this is property – and it is my husband’s property because he’s the only man I can be sure of protecting me…and if he dies it becomes my son’s property because, once again, he’s the only man I can be sure of protecting me. And the gods honor the men who protect the property…and plow the fields and isn’t it time you put up that fence so that we don’t get interlopers wandering across our lands?

That, in my view, is probably how it worked. Humans learning how to do things and then wanting to make sure that their efforts were rewarded. Once again, no problem providing a little charity…but it begins at home and only after me and mine are secure can we spare something for you…and, hey, why don’t you work as hard as we do? Perhaps if you’re in a bad way and need help, you should spend some time in my fields? And that is probably how slavery began. And with property of various types came a need to adjudicate disputes about property other than by physically fighting over it…so government would develop from primitive chieftains and tribal councils to Kings and Senates. Oral law gives way to written laws. Barter gives way to trade and contracts…and before you know if you need a lawyer. Which is a strike against civilization but human beings found that the more they went forward into the whole property and law thing, the better life got for them.

Main thing, there almost certainly wasn’t a Communist past – which is a central tenet of Marxism: that we had Communism, got it wrecked by Capitalism and now we’ll return to Communism. The primitives owned as much property as they could – might have started with a spear, knife and a leather bag to hold stuff…but it was as much property as a hundred acre farm, and as jealously guarded by the owner. The only reason the “cave man” didn’t have land he owned was because he hadn’t learned how to do agriculture yet. He was finding fruits and vegetables but it took a little while to put two and two together on the whole seed to plant thing. As soon as people figured that out, the concept of landed property emerged…simply because the one who sows wants to be the one who reaps.

Another thing to consider about the deep past is that most of it is lost and gone forever. That is, what bits and pieces of prehistoric humanity we have found represent only a fraction of a fraction of what once was. For all we know highly complex civilizations existed in parts of the world that are now drowned under rising sea levels since the last glacial maximum. We know that most of what is today the North Sea was Doggerland until just 7,000 years ago. This land was tundra and we now know it had huge amounts of wildlife on it with the Thames and the Rhine flowing together into one river which seems to have flowed down what is now known as the English Channel. Humans loved themselves some mammoth meat (human beings probably hunted them to extinction) and we also love to live near fresh water rivers. So, whatever our primitive ancestors were doing in that area is now underwater…we just don’t know about it. So, too, all around the world: sea levels have risen hundreds of feet since the last glacial maximum…most of our past is drowned (and probably laid the basis for the Atlantis legend). You think about the megaliths we’ve found – some of them dating back eleven or twelve thousand years…how many more were there that are now under water? What symbols and such might have been carved on them to form the earliest basis of writing? All gone. Never to be known. So, trying to impose our own fancies on the past is really rather silly…the ancients might have got much further along than we suspect before disasters overcame them.

But here’s the really important thing: suppose a person from 15,000 years ago suddenly showed up – traveled through some wormhole in time and appeared at your local Wal Mart. He’d be in shock (you would, too, at his sudden appearance) and would stare in wonder at the things we’ve got on the shelves. But he would be human, just like you. Just as smart as you. Once the first shock is past and you both settle down you’d start to communicate. That person can speak – not English, of course and probably not with as varied a vocabulary as we have today, but speak. The two of you could eventually start to sort out some basic words and mental concepts for each other…to start to tell each other your stories. And that person is going to figure out things – like what a lighter is, what a metal knife can be used for…and so on and on. With a bit of patience, that “cave man” in five years has learned to live in our society and is regularly on the talk show circuit telling us what life was like back in the Ice Age. He’d joke about the high skill he has in tracking down a mastodon but how much easier it is to just buy some chicken nuggets.

False History

Mark Noonan70 Comments

Aside from the jokes, one of the things I like about X is its ability to bring random stuff together. First off: how about a picture?

Look closely at it. There is a rather glaring issue and, once you see it, you’ll know the veracity of the text.

What you will notice after a little bit of study is that there are no keyholes on the cuffs. Just a little lever which allows anyone, including the cuffed person, to open them. Not very useful, huh? I mean, not even for dragging away poor, little Native kids.

This is because these aren’t the handcuffs used to drag Native Kids away to school – they are antique toy cuffs. Used by kids back the day to play Cops and Robbers. But even if that aspect of it had been blurred out, another moment of thought would have revealed the lie: suppose you did want to drag poor, little Native kids off to school…why in heck would you cuff them? What is the fear? A six year old grabbing your gun? The whole concept is drivel.

But as was pointed out on X when this picture floated by, a whole rigamarole went into it – including having a Native medicine man exorcise (as it were) the cuffs to remove evil spirits…you know, all the evil of kids being cuffed and dragged away to school…which did not, in the event, happen. But think about that: senior people of Native tribes in modern times fell for the con. Why is that? Because there’s a big problem with Native history: nobody Native wrote it down until decades after the Native way of life ended. Essentially, what we know of, say, the ways of the Plains Indians is whatever some white guy wrote down as he interacted with them for good or ill.

It may or may not be totally accurate, but it is all there is: for the Natives, themselves, it was whatever great-grandpa told them long after the fact. Was it true? Maybe. Who knows? One thing we do know about peoples who don’t have writing is that the oral tradition is altered from time to time by the elders. You know: some dispute in the village and so they go ask the oldest people what was done in the past and the geezers get together and work up a story that solves the problem and solemnly announce this was the way it was done in olden times. Who could dispute it? All the oldsters agree and there’s no document to contradict them. This is the basis for most Native claims about how their old ways were – whatever someone said and there’s no way to check.

I’d have to look it up to be sure but I believe it was an ancient, Sumerian saying which went like this:

“What is the tongue?”

“That which whips the air.”

“What is writing?”

“The guardian of history.”

Which is true – as everyone with any sense knows, the only sure things we know about past events are things which were written down at the time, or shortly thereafter. Even then, of course, we’re at the mercy of the author; if the author missed a detail or misrepresented the facts, we’re rather doomed unless there is something else out there in the record to set it straight. But in all of the 100,000 years (or so) of human history, the only events we know about are those which are written down. I know that some may want to object that pre-writing we do know of some things that went on – yes; like when we find the dwelling of cavemen we can tell a lot about them…that they were humans, what sorts of animals they hunted, plants they ate and so forth…but we can’t tell anything about what their lives were like other than some very basic things. We know that by the time we were writing we already had domestic animals, beer and slaves: all of these things had to be developed over time but we have no idea how because they were all created pre-writing and the first writers took them as a given. Even the art left on cave walls is a mystery to us – gorgeous, vivid pictures obviously of great importance to those people…but we haven’t the foggiest notion as to why they left the drawings. We can guess all the live, long day but as the people who drew didn’t leave us a decipherable script, we’ll never know the story. In fact, whole populations of humans might have risen and fallen over the tens of thousands of years and we don’t know even one thing about them – not even that they existed – because they left nothing on stone for us to find. So, pretty important, that whole writing thing.

But what if someone writes a lie? You know: like calling a child’s toy an implement of White Supremacist Settler-Colonialist torture of Natives who never robbed, murdered or raped until Evil White Men (who weren’t gay) arrived. What do we do with that?

Because that was the other thing that came across the X time line at roughly the same moment: a question. “Just how much of our history is simply made up?”

The answer, of course, is “a heck of a lot more than before”. As I noted before, a book of history isn’t necessarily definitive. A contemporary document isn’t certain to be accurate. This is why the really good historians of the past have carefully sifted the data and were unafraid to acknowledge that different conclusions can be drawn. But even with the best of intentions and copious documentation, it still will never be perfect. It can’t be; humans can’t produce perfection. But allowing for the normal run of human error and bias, what we have today is an avalanche of flat out lies masquerading as history. Mostly, of course, lies designed to undermine the West in general and the USA in particular. Like that absurd 1619 Project which asserted that the original colonists came here simply so they could set up a racist, slave holding society. That has now entered the national mind: millions accept it as a proven fact when not a single historical document or event supports it.

But it isn’t just Progressive garbage like that. We also have other sorts of fake history being made up to suit Narratives. All of it does hook itself on some fact, never complete and always out of context. Like Candace Owens breathlessly relating to the world a little while back that we had been lied to: you see, after WWII, millions of Germans had been expelled from central and eastern Europe accompanied with great brutality! Now we know – and it was those damned Jews who orchestrated this and then suppressed it so we wouldn’t find out what rat bastards they are! Sure…except everyone who has more than cursory knowledge of WWII already knew that and it was done very deliberately by the Allied Powers. Sure, they put in the agreement that it was supposed to be done humanely but nobody gave a damn about that in 1945 because of what the Germans had just put the world through. But to someone as ignorant as Owens – and with our population increasingly uneducated – it seemed like something big and it caused a stir…and it goes on still with many people believing the false Narrative built up around it and using it as justification for not believing other things.

But even beyond wicked people pushing false Narratives, I think we also have a problem in the lack of thought of the modern world. People don’t think. They just accept. This is why in all the years since 1945 there has been no real assessment made of WWII; how it was conducted, why it was fought, how did the aftermath work out? We just accept that there’s a certain story line and never question it: to nutshell it, because the Allies were mean at Versailles Hitler was able to gain office and then Appeasers let him get powerful until the Great and Powerful Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt mobilized the world to defeat the monster after which, via the UN, we created a Rules-Based International Order which has kept the peace. There is a certain amount of truth to all of this – but not all truth. We really haven’t considered the whole matter and so we have not identified the true problem and thus our best course forward.

I’ve discussed some of these issues before: for instance, that far from being too mean to the Germans in 1919, the Allies were far too nice. Germany attacked France, Belgium and Luxembourg with absolutely no justification at all, forcing untold death and destruction on all three nations. Germany owed France for one million deaths which simply would not have happened if Germany hadn’t invaded. Think about that – the potential lost, alone, is incalculable. Who knows how many first rate doctors, scientists and artists perished in the mud of the trenches. How many French children were never born because their fathers mouldered into the ground around Verdun? How could Germany possibly repay that? What possible price extracted would be “too much”? A much harsher, truly punitive peace in 1919 and there simply would not have been a WWII because the Germans would never have been able to mount an attack.

But leave that aside, the primary cause of the First World War was unprovoked attack – and the fundamental reason for the Allies to fight – especially for Britain and the United States – was to enforce the principle that you can’t shoot your way into power and wealth. That no matter how much you disliked the state of the world, resort to arms to alter the position was forbidden. It was the primary cause and reason for World War Two as well. These days, in hindsight, it was all about stopping Nazis from being Nazis. And that, indeed, was a worthy object – but until we got into Germany in 1945 we really didn’t know the magnitude of the Nazi disease. Rumors were rife from 1942 on about the horrors the Nazis were perpetrating but they were just that – rumors. Not much solid, verified fact. It was when the Russians got into Auschwitz and we got into Buchenwald that the full truth came out and turned a just war into a holy crusade. But even with that horror, the real reason for fighting was the same as at the start, and the start of WWI: you can’t shoot your way into power. If the Nazis never harmed a Jew, they still would have been in the wrong because they attacked.

But nowhere in the writings about the war nor about how things were set up afterwards was this principle – the whole point of the fight – made central. Sure, the UN charter forbids aggression, but that was a dead letter the moment it was adopted. Almost immediately after the guns of WWII fell silent, people all around the world were resorting to arms to try to force a settlement in their favor – to grab things they could not win by peaceful means. It was as if the war had been fought for nothing except to create well paid sinecures for diplomats at the UN. Again and again since 1945 the nations of the world have used every means imaginable to justify or explain away someone’s aggression. Sure, the UN managed to plug the gap in Korea, but that is the exception which proves the rule…and even in that, the aggressors (North Korea and China) weren’t punished for their crimes. They remained in place after the war. They are still in place more than seven decades later…and because they were unpunished, they remain a standing threat to the peace of the world. Why shouldn’t they? Their own history books tell how they provoked a war costing millions of lives and nobody ever did a thing about it.

And this all stems, once again, from our fundamental failure to think about what happened and how it applies to current events. We’re stumbling around a world on fire today in 2024 because for nearly 80 years we’ve never really analyzed from a historic perspective the Second World War. We’ve talked endlessly but in circles about it. Never once breaking free from a pre-set Narrative designed, first and foremost, to excuse the Western Ruling Class institutions which failed to prevent it and then let it drag out years longer than it needed and then horribly screwed up the outcome. And now we’ve got people “discovering” that maybe the Nazis weren’t the bad guys – maybe it was the USA. And the Jews. Didn’t you hear what those mean, old Allies did to the Krauts of Silesia after the war?

This is why we have people in the USA blocking traffic for Hamas. These kids almost certainly couldn’t point Palestine out on a map if given three tries. They know nothing of the history of the area. They haven’t been taught to think – they just receive the word and act upon it. Not remotely a class of people who can be considered citizens in any real sense of the word. They were told the Israelis were bad and resistance to bad is always justified. Presto: we’ve got American college girls wearing the flag of people who would rape them to death in a minute when given the chance. Nothing thought out. Had it been thought out – and taught in schools – then everyone would be, “Hamas attacked unprovoked; regardless of their complaints about Israel – some of which may be fully justified – our principle is that you can’t start shooting about it: they are therefor in the wrong and must be stopped”. The fact that they raped and murdered just adds to the justification for wiping them out. Instead, pretty much the entire Western Ruling Class is trying to save Hamas – to keep alive an organization which attacks unprovoked, commits unspeakable brutalities and is pledged to the massacre of every Jew in Israel. Just amazing. But it is what comes from not thinking.

So, Mark, what is our way out? The only way out: punishing liars. I’ve mentioned this before as well. I can’t emphasize enough how utterly impossible it is to have a functioning, rational society if we allow liars to get away with it. We’ve allowed people to lie to us for so long on so many issues that I think most are infected with the disease of lies. Heck, even I am – though to a far less degree than most, or even than I was ten years ago. But the lies are so pervasive that even the strongest mind is influenced by them. The only way to stop it is via force – and the longer we wait, the more brutal the force we’ll have to apply.

Think About What You Know

Mark Noonan21 Comments

The thing about history and biography is that what is in any particular book about them is whatever the historian or biographer thought important and then their interpretation of the subject. A really good historian/biographer does, of course, try to stick to provable fact; additionally, if there is speculation, then it is clearly identified as such. But even the best have their biases and in addition to that, those who publish history and biography have theirs, and what you write better not be too far outside the publisher’s ideas. This does lead to a measure of conformity across the Narrative.

I bring this up because it is important to remember that what we “know” about the past is just what someone told us. Not too many of us have the time or inclination to go to original sources, after all. The Left is, these days, going “Aha!” about this – as if it were a new thing – and claiming that history has been falsified. It wasn’t that a historian had particular interests or ideas, the history was nefarious! Deliberately hiding crucial facts…usually because its all Racism and Patriarchy and such. And then the Left proceeds to produce its own histories and biographies…as if these don’t have their own biases. And given that the modern Narrative must denigrate the white/Christian/European, what we’re often getting in modern Leftist histories isn’t just the product of biases, but the product of ideological commitment…this is why you’ll seek books and articles essentially claiming that all European discoveries and inventions were actually made by some non-European ages before…what is left unexplained is why Invention X merely gathered dust until some wily European sneaked in, stole it and then presented it to the world as a New Thing.

What I advise is to take everything with a grain of salt; that is, think about it. And not just modern histories/biographies (which would be taken with a couple pounds of salt); everything coming out of the past. Take nothing at face value. I have retained my father’s books and so I go have a great deal of history and biography written before the modern Left took control of the culture, and I’m grateful for them. But even these I now question. Just to take one for-instance: in most histories of WWII, Patton is lauded as the aggressive commander pushing forward to victory while Montgomery is derided as a plodding soldier who only fought when sure of victory. And there is some truth in this – Patton did rush ahead while Montgomery very famously liked to prepare carefully before engaging in battle. But a couple things come out when you see the sequence of events and think about it.

First off all, Patton never faced defeat. This isn’t Patton’s fault, of course, but it is in defeat and retreat where a general’s qualities – if he has any – really shine. Montgomery commanded the British 3rd division in Belgium in 1940 and he had that outfit completely squared away. They moved with precision wherever high command sent them, fought very well and returned to England out of the confusion of Dunkirk intact and ready to go back into the fight. That is generalship of the highest order. To give an American comparison – in the Philippines, MacArthur’s first idea was to defend the whole country. This was wrong – indeed, downright foolish – but when it became clear that MacArthur had picked the wrong strategy, he quickly organized a double-retrograde maneuver of his forces from north and south Luzon into the Bataan peninsula, thus ensuring a prolonged Fil-American resistance there, gravely upsetting Japan’s timetable of conquest. MacArthur had many brilliant military actions before and after, but most people who really know consider this MacArthur’s shining moment.

After retreat, attack. And most histories laud the grand attack, if successful. This is because it is dramatic and often has a large effect on subsequent events. And what people like is the dramatic breakthrough; the sudden route of the foe. This is why the German invasion of France in 1940 captures the imagination – it just amazes people to think about it. But was it good generalship? I don’t think it was. Sure, the Germans got lucky – and most lucky in the lethargy of the French high command – but the bloody thing should have fallen flat on its face. The least bit of energy and enterprise on the part of the French and instead of a dramatic drive to the sea, what the Germans would have had was the catastrophic destruction of their best armored forces. Luck in war is important. Napoleon allegedly asked men newly being appointed to general, “are you lucky?”. But you also can’t count on luck…and so the more famous Napoleonic statement is, “God is on the side of the biggest battalions”. In other words, if you’ve got your act together, things are going to mostly go your way.

Montgomery was a general who always made sure he had his act together – he was prepared. Ready for anything, good or bad. This has a drawback in that it takes more time and thus allows the enemy to react…but it has the plus in that even if the damned thing doesn’t work, you’re so well prepared you can do something else (and so Montgomery’s failed Operation Goodwood on July 20th, 1944 made his Operation Cobra just five days later – which was where he always thought he’d end up beating the Germans in Normandy – as near-certain a thing as war can get). Patton does get the credit for the breakout after Operation Cobra. Hard charging his way across France…and this eclipses the fact that Patton was simply following Montgomery’s plan. And even there he sent major units west into Brittany when the only place he needed to go was east. And at the end of it Patton got hung up around Nancy when he was supposed to still be moving east up to the Rhine.

On balance after thinking it over, Montgomery was the better general. If I had to set up an army to fight an enemy I would want Patton…but only as a subordinate to Monty.

And you can do this endlessly – not looking for new information, just thinking about what you already know. And I do believe this will become increasingly important for us – for our side – over the next few years. Most of what is going on is trapped in a framework developed in the decades after WWII and now congealed into dogma. We’re not supposed to go outside the accepted Narrative. Outside the Party Line, that is. But we have to. As long as we remain trapped in the Narrative, we can’t win because that Narrative is designed to support the Ruling Class’ claim to legitimacy. My example here was to pick something politically non-controversial as an example (though I’m sure WWII buffs would have a fun and furious argument about it). But everything we know needs to be reconsidered. Was it really like that? In my view, most of what happened was very different from the Narrative.

Pull that lose thread and see what unravels.

You Can’t be Half Bad

Mark Noonan1 Comment

Someone tweeted out “what President would you make a movie about?” and this in relation to the excellent Lincoln which covered a short span of time where Lincoln ushered the 13th Amendment through the House. My pick was for a movie about Eisenhower dealing with the period of time covered by the Suez Crisis.

I’ve talked about this before but the more I think about it, the more crucial this event becomes in my mind. It set in motion so many disastrous effects.

First off, it essentially terminated the idea of a treaty as binding on all contracting parties. The genesis of the crisis was Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal which abrogated several treaties – and was also unnecessary because when Nasser nationalized it was only 12 years before the treaty which allowed the construction of the canal in the first place was set to expire. You might think, then, that it was rather trivial and in a certain sense it was – but it was still a violation of a treaty and nobody is allowed to do that. Or, at least, nobody is supposed to do that. If treaties can be broken at will, then what is the point of them?

Well, since then the point of a treaty has been to merely paper over a problem of the moment – something which allows people to say a problem is solved when it isn’t and nobody really has any intention of solving it. The best example of this sort of mindset post-Suez was the Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam war. We entered into them without getting South Vietnamese agreement and it was clear from the get-go (and became clearer as time went on) that the purpose wasn’t to end the war but give us time to get out with a “decent interval” before South Vietnam fell to North Vietnamese aggression. It would have been more honorable if we had just pulled out without so much as a word of explanation.

But it wasn’t just in the practical sense that it is wrong – it is also in the moral sphere. If your word isn’t your bond then you have deliberately made yourself a bad person. And as has been pointed out, you can’t maintain a level of bad…if you start down that slope you’ll just go from bad to worse. Now we don’t even make treaties – we sign a memo and we’ll honor it, or not, depending on whatever political and economic calculus seems best at the moment. This is how we got into Ukraine – we don’t have a treaty. But there is a memo! The memo doesn’t call for us to render aid…but the Biden Administration needed to make out that Russia was this huge enemy and so when Russia attacked Ukraine is dovetailed perfectly into Administration needs…and so we’ve got a proxy war. We also had agreements with the Afghan government but it was time to leave, so you see how that came out. Why go above and beyond with Ukraine while abandoning Afghanistan? Morality has nothing to do with it – it is all expedience.

But we didn’t have to come here – that is, Eisenhower didn’t have to take Nasser’s side in the Suez Crisis. Britain and France were perfectly within their treaty rights to intervene while Israel was within her rights to assist the Anglo-French because the Egyptians’ were illegally blockading Israel’s access to the sea. We took Nasser’s side ostensibly because we feared a Muslim-world backlash if we didn’t. We should have stood by the law. We didn’t. Now we’re here.

And that is the main point: you can’t go halves. It is all or nothing. You’ll either tell the whole truth, or you will lie. You will either uphold all laws, or you will be lawless. You will either be brave at all times or a complete coward. You can’t be half bad. We tried to be, and now we’re all bad.

And that extended to one thing after another. If our government and institutions are shot through with corruption – and they are – then it all stems from a desire in the past to have it both ways. To have honor while lying. But once you start being bad in one area, you won’t remain good in other areas. After all, you abandoned honor…what’s left to hold on to? To be sure, we don’t have to blame Ike – we can go back to Truman allowing us to fight a war without a desire for victory. We can go back to FDR and his serial mendacity. Wilson implementing anti-American policy to “make the world safe for Democracy”. But I’ll still lay it as Ike’s feet. He was an old school West Point graduate – back when they really did impart, “Duty, Honor, Country” as ideals. He knew the deal, and yet went along with an attempt to reward lying and treaty-breaking. And if someone like Eisenhower could play that sordid game, who wouldn’t going forward?

Everyone would, of course; and they all did. Increasing as time went on and infecting more and more institutions and ever more deeply…until we get what we have today: any person of wisdom assumes the government is lying. All other institutions, as well. Our operational thesis is that whatever they’re saying it is a deflection from what they are doing. And the country is disintegrating because of it.

How Did We Get Black Nazis?

Mark Noonan15 Comments

Kanye West pretty much ended his career today by speaking up for Hitler. Pro tip: not a good idea. But we shouldn’t just condemn Kanye and move on. This needs to be thought about.

Why would any person – especially a black person – in 2022 have the least kind thing to say about Hitler?

Ignorance.

But not just like we might think of it – for a long while, we all figured that it was just ignorant fools who kept the Nazi flame alive. But I’ve been looking into it and pondering it for a while now and it isn’t just that simple.

The origins of this particular problem – pro-Nazi attitudes – stems from the immediate aftermath of World War Two. Hitler was dead and his movement banned and most Germans, having the utter shock of the exceptionally violent (and cruel, on the part of the Russians and French) invasion of Germany in mind, dropped Nazism like a bad habit. This is why almost every Kraut you talked to in 1945 would say he wasn’t a Nazi. Of course, most of them were – from worker to nobleman, most of them had signed on for the ride, especially by the summer of 1940 when Hitler reached his pinnacle. It was, as I have noted before, a pagan carnival – as long as you obeyed, things were great for you…and even as the war ground on and defeat loomed, most retained their faith until an American or Russian boot kicked the door in. But even in that spring of ruin in 1945, there were those who kept the faith.

People like the Belgian Leon Degrelle, Luftwaffe pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Waffen-SS General Paul Hausser never stopped being Nazis. Of course, law and public opinion kept them from overtly being Nazi. What they did was far more subtle: playing on popular sympathy for combat veterans, they first latched themselves on to Wehrmacht generals trying to get pensions for German soldiers and with this sympathy, they started to whitewash the Waffen-SS. It was just a multinational military force against Communism! The War Crimes either didn’t happen, or where it was incontrovertible, that was carried out by Himmler’s people, not the Waffen-SS! And it was all BS from start to finish – the Waffen-SS were beasts in human skin who carried out massacres all over German-occupied Europe. But, it worked – especially as the Cold War came in and we felt we had to make nice with the Krauts, this drivel about the Waffen-SS being somehow apart from the SS gained purchase. This effort, along with later developing efforts to first downplay and then deny the Holocaust suckered lots of people in – the Germans in WWII weren’t that bad and the Holocaust was exaggerated if not false.

This, in turn, was seized upon by various Muslim organizations which had an interest in delegitimizing Israel. They broadcast these concepts far and wide – and also attached them to anti-Imperialism…the Germans fought France and Britain, after all: the colonial overlords of most of the Muslim world prior to WWII. And now this is where it gets interesting.

Because while these lies were gaining purchase around the world the teaching of history ceased in any meaningful sense. Sure, the kiddies these days probably have a lesson plan where they are told Nazis were bad people but I highly doubt they fully explain why the Nazis were bad or who did the most to stop them. A recent poll showed that only about one in five British youth have a favorable opinion of Churchill, the prime scourge of Nazis from the moment they rose out of the gutter. Churchill, you see?, was just a racist imperialist. But you can’t teach that Churchill was a racist imperialist unless you downplay or ignore Nazism. There is no real upside for the modern Left to talk about the Nazis in detail – because if you do, you eventually have to get around to pointing out that a bunch of straight, white, male Christians played the primary role in putting them down. Talking about them in general – calling them White Supremacists, for instance – is very useful because that fits with the Narrative. If you started pointing out that they were German-supremacists it starts to get complicated and doesn’t fit the Narrative.

But what this boils down to is that you have a couple generations by now rising to adulthood with no real knowledge of the Nazis but who can easily access on line the white-wash drivel about the Nazis. This is how a black man, just as well as anyone else, can be suckered in.

I’m sure West in his wanderings came across various sites where all or part of the Nazi whitewash is available. And more often than not, probably also tied to anti-Israel websites which will hold to the seemingly reasonable “we just want to stop the Israeli occupation” position…without, unless you deep dive, telling you that they consider all of Israel to be “occupied territory” and that the dream is to push the Jews into the sea. But at places where you can learn about how horrible the Israeli “occupation” is you’re going to be exposed to people who will downplay the Holocaust, assert that while there are good Jews, look at how many of them are in banking and entertainment…and doesn’t it seem funny that we give money to Israel? Laced with a bit of “hey, I’m no anti-Semite, but I am anti-Zionist”.

Additionally, West and his generation likely were never taught much about the Abolition movement. Nor given any instruction on just what Madison and Jefferson were up to besides being slave owners. What they have been given is a two-dimensional, cartoonish view of America where white Christians are always wrong and anything worthwhile was done by non-whites/non-Christians in spite of oppression. They are primed for drivel – it just so happens that the particular drivel that West latched on to was pro-Nazi. But other kids are out there banging the Maoist drum as if the Cultural Revolution never happened – which, for them, it never did because they were never told about it.

It is a huge problem. It is fixable – and in just a few years if we gain control of school boards and force them to so much as teach some basics. But regardless of what we do going forward, we’re going to have some millions of people who will always be open to lies beause they were never told anything true. People like West are navigating through lies traveling at warp speed with no underlying knowledge to bounce against those lies. So look for more people to come out and earnestly assert bizarre falsehoods.

America the Uniquely Free

Mark Noonan66 Comments

Just at the moment we don’t, perhaps, feel as patriotic as we might like. We probably feel that things have gone very wrong and we wonder about the long term survival of our Republic.

It is, after all, simply true that many Americans – and probably most of our current Ruling Class – despise the men in this picture. They also despise what they accomplished – in both making a nation and then, to the everlasting fury of our Ruling Class, setting up a system where the law restrains the government, not the people. And that is why as down as we might feel at the moment, we can’t give in to such feelings.

Never in human history has a government been established which held that the government can only do certain, enumerated things. This past couple weeks, for the first time in nearly a century, the Supreme Court of our land made rulings in accordance with this American dogma – that which isn’t granted to the government, is reserved to the people. The nutshell of the four main rulings is that the nobody stuttered 1775 to 1787. The Founders were men of many backgrounds and divergent – in some cases, hostile – interests. What bound them all together, what made success in War and Peace possible, was their unified conviction that the individual is the measure of things. It was, in a very real sense, a secular version of Our Lord’s command that the Sabbath was made for Man, not the other way around. And, so, the Government is made for Man.

Everywhere around the world today, you find that even is allegedly free nations, everyone still waits for permission. When they vote, all they’re doing is decide who will decide for them – and not just on major issues: the mania for regulation in America is very bad these days, but even our bloated bureaucracy hasn’t reached the suffocating levels of bureaucracy seen in all advanced societies in the world. And there is also this difference, in foreign lands the people grumble but they submit. In America, the Spirit of ’76 still exists. Perhaps a bit attenuated, but it is still there – there still remains the concept, and the desire, that government will do as the people command, not the other way around.

The overturn of Roe is the strongest symbol of this continuing spirit. It took 49 years. it took the electing of four different GOP Presidents. The appointment of 10 Supreme Court Justices. Innumerable legal and legislative battles at the local, State and federal levels before it was achieved. And while the primary motivator was life, itself, we must not discount that the reason the movement started and maintained itself in growing confidence and strength was because in Roe the violation was not just of the laws of God, but of the reason for the United States’ existence. And this was crucial, because while religious believers were the mainstay of the movement, it could not have succeeded absent the crucial leavening of non-religious people who yet saw that Roe was an outrage. And the outrage was some judges telling us what to do. They had no warrant for such action! That was the key: whether or not abortion should be legal is a matter for a free people to debate and decide…not to have it handed down from on high, with only a few lawyers getting a say.

The spirit is also vibrant in the 2A movement which scored a signal victory, as well as the anti-regulation people and, of course, those who care most about free exercise of religion. All did very well, though in these last three, the victory is not yet complete (Roe’s overturn ends the abortion matter, by and large, at the federal level – the Pro-Life movement will now have to work State by State to continue to advance their cause). The main thing here is that people are still pressing the issue – demanding that even now, in 2022 when the State has become a monster out of control that it obey the rules. That the laws mean what they say and even the government must obey. And they’ll keep pressing – in 2A, the forces of reaction in New York went to work immediately, essentially making almost all of New York a gun-free zone. This will be challenged, and the tyrants will be defeated – and just like the Left screwing up by taking Alabama to court, so the Left may have really screwed up in New York…because you can almost see the Justices ruling that “shall not be infringed” really means what it says. We’ll see how that goes, but I feel confident in the long term.

And this kind of freedom – the freedom which demands not just a vote on who is in charge, but control over what is done – is a very American freedom. It, in fact, only exists in the United States. I’ve seen plenty of foreign comments where they seem to sincerely not understand why we even fight over things like abortion and guns. To them, their government decided that guns don’t belong in civil hands and that abortion is a good thing…and that’s the end of it. They can’t conceptualize telling their government “no, you can’t do that”. At most they can only see their way to voting for someone who will tell them what to do more efficiently than the other guys.

We must keep this – we must win the battle with our own who hate our country. And as we do this, we must also expand it around the world. I’m not talking about nation-building…I’m talking about disabling access to America for nations which don’t have a Bill of Rights like we do…and a real Bill of Rights; some definite “Congress shall make no law” and “shall not be infringed” stuff in there. We are, as Reagan said, a shining city on a hill. Even in our current, pathetic state, people still flood in. Sure, some for base motives, but most because the story has spread around the world…in the USA is real freedom and you can make it. It has been, perhaps, the true impulse for humanity all along: a desire to live without permission. To simply do what we want when we want to do it. To make our own way, to pay our own price.

And we must keep it because if we lose, it will never come back. Never again will any government set up a system which limits government. This is a once-in-history experiment. Our unique concept of liberty is the best – in fact, it is the only liberty to be found in the world. Fight for it. Keep it. Pass it on. The people of 1776 look down upon us, right now, and wonder if we have the heart and stomach for it?

The Anti-War Poison

Mark Noonan3 Comments

I had never seen Journey’s End before last night, when I watched the most recent version of it. It is considered the archetype of the anti-war play – the way it is supposed to be presented. And I have to say, what I saw was excellent movie making; it is well worth your time to watch it. But it also left me cold.

The movie is set in the last few days before the German’s Spring Offensive in 1918 and centers around the officers of a British infantry company manning the front lines. Key to the plot is Captain Denis Stanhope, a war hero who has been in the trenches for three years and is presented as a man clearly crushed by what he had endured over the years. The action is strictly small scale – no grand war scenes. Just life in the trenches and the terrible anticipation of what everyone knows is coming: a major German offensive which will have a devastating impact on precisely the men manning the front line. The point is to make you sympathetic to the men caught up in the awful trauma of World War One and it drives home, especially at the end, the pointlessness of war.

But, war isn’t pointless, and I think that is what left me cold.

We are not permitted to gainsay the views of the play’s author: Robert Cedric Sherriff. He was an infantry officer in World War One who fought at Vimy Ridge, Loos and Passchendaele; among the hardest fought battles of the war. What he describes about the soldiers life is true. Just as true is that his play reveals he was gravely embittered by what he had suffered. And, who can blame him? Like so many of Britain’s youth, he was swept up into war and then placed into the meat grinder which was the Western Front. He did what he did, suffered what he suffered, and then wrote about it as he thought best.

Still, there are relevant facts which are not even mentioned in the play – notably that the British did win the war, and winning the war was good for Britain and the world. What should also be noted in any discussion of the particular battle the play describes is the incredible courage of the British soldiers in the battle. The British were heavily outnumbered in the sector attacked and the Germans were staking all they had on the offensive – they hit the British with the strongest forces made up of the cream of the German army; and the sector they hit, primarily the British 5th Army, was the least prepared part of the British line. The men performed prodigies of valor blunting the German attack and extracted a huge blood price for the advance. Because they fought so well – units often fighting until exterminated – the British were able to hold the overall line and eventually stop the German offensive well short of success. The Germans would keep battering away through the Spring, but they never came closer to actual victory than that first attack on March 21st and all the while the number and quality of the German attackers deteriorated – and so quickly that not five months later, the British Army launched their counter-attack at the Battle of Amiens, which spelled final defeat for Germany. All of this – all of the context which would make a person fully understand why Captain Stanhope’s company was there and what they would do before destruction – is left out of Journey’s End, and thus gravely distorts the picture of World War One.

And after watching it, I realized just how terrible was this poison that the play injected into all considerations of war and patriotism. Even the really great war movies of late (Saving Private Ryan, eg) are infected with this basic idea that war is just nothing but bad and that the men who fight in war are lambs led to slaughter by unfeeling commanders. It isn’t really like that; lambs led to slaughter don’t stand and fight when cut off and running low on ammunition. That is what lions do. They could have quit, after all; and, in all war, men do quit. The British had a fairly good idea when the attack would come because, among other things, German deserters had told them it was coming – and as these men were part of the assault force, this means that even in the very best units of a good army, there are men who take the measure of the situation and decide that living is the most important thing. I’m sure there were British soldiers who took off to the rear or went hands up at the first sign of the Germans – but they were few and far between. Most gritted their teeth and fought until destroyed or taken because all means of resistance were exhausted.

A play like Journey’s End robs the men who did stand and fight of the glory they had earned at the highest possible price – and it robs their fellow citizens of the heroes which are needed to sustain the sacrifices necessary for national survival. And, yes, it is heart breaking to think especially of the youngest men who are killed in war – so much of what could have been is lost and that is a terrible human tragedy which must never be downplayed. But to make it the only thing you talk about is wrong; just as it is wrong to merely dwell on the errors of the high command without assessing whether or not, at the end of the day, they secured victory.

One may think that a world without war can be made. That by some mechanism of talk, fight can be prevented. If you believe that, then I’ve nothing to say to you other than the whole course of human history is against you – and the number of wars currently going on indicates that if there is some way to bring about peace on Earth (absent the action of God) then it certainly isn’t going to happen any time soon. In short, there will be wars – and while war is bad, losing a war is the very worst thing that can happen to your nation. If people would not be slaves to a foreign conqueror, then they need to study the arts of war…and this includes understanding the value of bravery and sacrifice. And you can’t value what you think is garbage – which is what Journey’s End, and it’s long line of successors, says war is: nothing but garbage.

We need, I think, some correctives to this, and it needs to be done where the damage was done: in popular culture. Plays, movies and books need to be created which celebrate bravery and sacrifice…that after the war, the men who stood to it did, indeed, lead long lives and useful ones. That what they fought for endured, because they fought for it. That the pitiful young man killed shortly after arriving on the line did provide, in his numbers, the sinews for victory; that his death wasn’t pointless.

Defending Colonialism

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Which is actually a defense of civilization. Interesting article at The Political Hat which links to a video talk about colonialism. You only need know that the left wanted the talk banned – and the professor fired – to understand that it was someone speaking the truth.

I’ve pointed out before that Hernan Cortez was decisively the good guy vis a vis the Aztecs. The left is still trying to offer defense of the Aztecs because what the Aztecs really were doesn’t fit in with the Narrative: everyone was great until those filthy, white, Christian Europeans showed up. But, the more we learn of the Aztecs, the more we understand why Cortez and his men felt an urge to destroy them. So, too, with others.

Another man along these lines many haven’t heard of these days was Charles Gordon – he had a colorful career as a British army officer (one of his nicknames was “Chinese Gordon” due to his command of a Chinese army at one point – think about that: a British officer in command of a Chinese army…he simply must have been an impressive figure of a man), but he’s most famed for how he died: fighting slave-trading Islamists in the Sudan. These days, we’re supposed to hate Gordon and have sympathy for those who killed him – and I’m sure in the Muslim parts of Sudan, they tell horror stories about Gordon. But, the bottom line, is there was one side defending chattel slavery and there was a side fighting against chattel slavery – and the side fighting against it is always and forever the good side. Gordon was on the good side.

So were a host of other men and women who trekked into the barbarian areas of the world over a thousand years to bring civilization to the pagan savages. Not a single person on Earth wants to return to pagan savage ways of life. Not even the people who claim descent from pagan savages and who assert their pagan savage ancestors were better want to live like pagan savages. Everyone wants the blessings of civilization. I am merely asserting that you might as well give a tip of of the hat and a bit of honor to those who brought forth the blessings of civilization.

9/11 Plus 17 Years

Mark Noonan14 Comments

It doesn’t seem that long ago, does it? On the other hand, one of the youngsters I work with is 23…and, so, was 6 when it happened. At most, there is some vague memories in there, but no real remembrance of what it was.

Such is the course of human life – most things are forgotten. Simply overtaken by later events. And think of all that has gone on since then. It has been a crowded bunch of years.

What is sad is how the patriotism and determination of 9/12 is now gone, completely. That was rather cynically destroyed by the Democrats starting in 2003 when they realized that their only chance of beating Bush in 2004 was to make the post-9/11 fight politically unpopular. They managed the trick, but not in time to prevent Bush’s re-election. But make no mistake about it, the reason we got Obama is because of years of relentless hatred directed against Bush until he, and the whole GOP, seemed odious. Democrats are trying this trick, again, and this time from a higher pitch of toxicity than the post-9/11 baseline. But there is one, gigantic difference: Trump is punching back. Hard.

But, that aside, there is still the unfinished business of 9/11 – namely, how to make certain that no Islamists will ever want to attack us like that, again? We’ve hit the Islamist enemy very hard in the past 17 years. Make no mistake about it: openly and in secret, US forces have made life rather a living hell for the Jihadists. But as long as they aren’t destroyed – and their prime sponsors remain relatively untouched – this war will go on, and, eventually, they’ll try something even more spectacular than 9/11. As I said way back then, unless we go to the source of the problem (you know, like in Iran and such), we’ll never finish the fight. It is the old story written again and again: if you give your enemy a sanctuary which you won’t attack, then you are handing him eventual victory.

Still, say a prayer for those who died, and for those who still hurt from the loss – and, of course, for our military members who still have to fight the war. It is good to remember, for as long as we can, after all.