History

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.

Smart and Dumb

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Lots of discussion of late about smart and dumb – mostly Progs and Never Trumpers saying they are smart while Trump and we Deplorables are dumb. Let’s examine that a bit.

Real genius is rare. So rare, in fact, that it hardly ever shows up. Plenty of people are given the title these days, but that is merely a reflection of our Participation Trophy society. For instance, various pop stars have been called geniuses…which is absurd when you compare them to Mozart, who really was a genius (he started composing at five years old, guys). Now, this isn’t to say that some people aren’t very talented – many are. Some of them even approach genius…but genius has this thing about it: it isn’t bound by what has come before. That is the mark of it – when you see someone striking off in a new direction that no one suspected was there before, there’s your genius.

You can’t force genius to be – it seems to be innate in some people. They just have a mental ability (probably a combination of genetics and environment) which simply moved their mind into a new groove which we non-geniuses can’t see (but the most perceptive of us can perceive..and thus allow genius to go its way, only occasionally tapping on the breaks so the genius, in exuberance, doesn’t drive us mere mortals off a cliff). This doesn’t stop people from trying – “gifted” courses in school are a symptom of this; a genius doesn’t need a gifted course. The genius is going to go someplace new long before you even know where he’s going. Quite often, a genius is going to be a flop in school, as it turns out…not for lack of understanding, but because they understand it too well almost intuitively and are bored with it and want to move on to whatever it is that is interesting them.

How many geniuses have we had? Well, in Western Civilization (which I am most familiar with) I count maybe seven or eight in the last 300 years. Mozart, already mentioned…but also MacArthur, Einstein, Lincoln, Bismarck, Napoleon, Churchill, Van Gogh…maybe a few others. And it is a debatable subject. One man’s genius might be another man’s merely talented person. You’ll note that I didn’t include Edison…because I view him as a product of his time who took a systematic view of how to get things done; but there wasn’t a lot of “flash of genius” in his work…just a lot of hard work and persistence (which is invaluable, by the way). The bottom line is that even if you add a few more to my list (and take a few away from it), you’re not talking a lot of people. Three political geniuses in 300 years: Bismarck, Churchill and Lincoln (all three charted a course no one could see; all three were despised not merely by their opponents, but by most of their allies, most of the time). And keep in mind that Bismarck, for all his genius, was the ruin of a civilization. We’re on our 45th President, and we’ve only had one genius (as an aside, I think the only other President who might be considered a genius is Teddy Roosevelt…nearly as much of a disaster as Bismarck, but clearly a man of gigantic intellect and talent).

Most of us are not geniuses, of course. And even geniuses can be quite stupid at times. A story I once read said that Newton got himself a pet cat and cut a hole through his door so the cat could go in and out at will. In the fullness of time, this cat had three kittens. The great genius pondered this event and after profound reflection, cut three, smaller holes in the door. Most of us are average, or at least our intellect clusters around the human average (which is why its called the average). Some few are very stupid, and some equally few are very smart. We can’t rely on either supreme stupidity or supreme intelligence: it is too rare to take into account in our day to day actions. Most of the time, we just have to go forward as best we can and assume that everyone else is pretty much just like us – smart, but not that smart and thus capable of astonishing error.

The problem we have with our Progressives and Never Trumpers is that they really do believe that they are all extra smart. In the quiet of their hearts, they probably (most of them) account themselves geniuses. They assume their superior intellect and thus expect us to obey – after all, if we were smart like they are, we’d be just like them. It is nonsense – most of them are no smarter than any of us. It is almost certain that none of them are geniuses, just as it is almost certain that none of us are. That there might be a genius on their side (just as there might be one on ours) is a chance so small as to not be worth considering. And, main thing, if there is a genius, then that person (whatever side he or she might be on) is likely despised by everyone else…that is another problem geniuses have; being so intelligent and able to see things that others can’t, most people mistrust them and think they are doing something wrong (as in morally wrong). And if there is a genius on either side, that person is going to take (drag, really) there side in a direction they never wanted to go and award them astonishing victory they kicked furiously against.

Last thing on this: another thing about genius is you can’t always tell its there until after it has completed it’s task. So many people are carping and complaining, and public doubts are so stirred up, that the sheer brilliance of the course isn’t recognized until the destination is reached and everyone starts going, “wow; this is cool!” after the fact.

They Hate America

Mark Noonan24 Comments

I wasn’t going to write about politics on Easter, but this came up in my Twitter feed today:

No other city has taken down a monument to a president for his misdeeds. But Arcata is poised to do just that. The target is an 8½-foot bronze likeness of William McKinley, who was president at the turn of the last century and stands accused of directing the slaughter of Native peoples in the U.S. and abroad.

“Put a rope around its neck and pull it down,” Chris Peters shouted at a recent rally held at the statue, which has adorned the central square for more than a century.

Peters, who heads the Arcata-based Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous People, called McKinley a proponent of “settler colonialism” that “savaged, raped and killed.”…

These people don’t hate America’s sins, they hate America. It is really just as simple as that. Was McKinley perfect? No. Why does he have a statue in Arcata, CA? Because his death was such a complete shock that a mediocre President was elevated in the public mind to incredible heights in spite of a lackluster record (sort of like what happened to JFK after he was killed). Today, McKinley is mostly forgotten – so I could definitely see a city deciding to take down his statue for that reason…but to take it down like you’re removing the statue of a criminal is just absurd. And indicates a great deal of hatred not for McKinley (who probably not 1 in a 100 citizens of the city are even aware of), but for the nation he lead.

The left has always been at war with the very idea of the United States. They can’t stand our persistent religious faith; our desire to make it on our own; our unwillingness to see ourselves as mere blocks of wood for social experimentation. The left also knows that they can’t triumph in the world if the United States continues to exist as the United States. And so they attack everything that went to make up the United States. Nothing we have done has been good in their view – everything we’ve done must be condemned and renounced and we, the people just fit ourselves (or be fitted) into a new way of thinking.

As for me, I’m heartily sick of it. I’m supposed to feel bad that my ancestors came to a mostly empty land and made it something more than a game preserve for nomads. Sorry, but I’m not sorry that it happened, at all. I’m sorry there was murder and rapine and I wish that hadn’t happened…but it happened on both sides (my father, as a young boy, knew an old man who had been scalped and left for dead in a raid back in the day; the rest of his family was killed or taken…why did it happen? For no other reason than they were there, and could be taken and killed; the man, by the way, held no bitterness about it…it was just the way things went at times, in those days). And the Natives here when exposed to advanced, Western civilization immediately wanted the goods of that civilization…beaver weren’t nearly hunted to extinction east of the Mississippi by white guys, but by Natives who wanted to trade the pelts for iron tools, cotton clothing and other things. For crying out loud, does anyone think that a human being really wants to spend 50 hours of labor making a stone knife which will be dull after a few uses when you can get an iron knife that will be keen for a lifetime? What the heck are these Native activists saying? In the end, that their ancestors weren’t stupid enough to reject all contact with Western civilization.

I’m glad Nebraska and Kansas are there – filled with cities and with farms which produce food for millions upon millions of people. It would be a crime against humanity if it had remained the abode of a few million buffalo and a few score thousand nomads living off them. The whole process of settlement could have been better done and the Natives certainly deserved better treatment than was meted out, but that the settlement had to happen is obvious, and obviously good that it happened.

The end result of all this is that we have to fight tooth and nail – we have to defend every last inch of everything we have. Because we’ve now learned that it isn’t just that this or that person was bad and thus his statue has to come down, but that the left is trying to destroy the entirety of the United States and erect some new, anti-American nation in its place.

Winning and Losing Wars

Mark Noonan15 Comments

Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. – Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Got into a little bit of a Twitter scrape with Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom). I’m afraid he took exception to a comment I made. The start of it was Nichols condemning Trump for his “we’ve lost our wars” comment. I put in that as a matter of fact, we haven’t won a war since World War Two.

I know, I know; I probably took that too far. I must repeat to myself again and again: never get into a Twitter argument as it is impossible to have an argument when you’re limited to 140 characters. And it can get a bit sticky if you say anything which can be construed as other than critical of Trump. Trump = bad. I dig that – and am in favor of that sentiment. I feel bad that I apparently angered Mr. Nichols as I hold him in high regard for his knowledge. But, still, a busted clock is right twice a day. To be fair to those who took exception to my comment, Grenada, Panama, the First Gulf War and Kosovo were victories. And the Iraq campaign until 2009 was also a victory. But Grenada, Panama and Kosovo are not the same scale of actions as, say, a Spanish-American War – even though that war was quite short and the loss of life was mercifully low. The First Gulf War was, in my view, an unfinished war – we did eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait (a worthwhile activity), but as long as Saddam was in power in Baghdad, a resumption of the war either in Kuwait or elsewhere was always in prospect. We could have compelled a complete surrender by Saddam, and we didn’t – we didn’t impose our political will on his regime in a permanent manner. As for the Iraq campaign – well, it was won, but then it was lost…it doesn’t matter that it was Obama who lost what Bush had won, it was still the United States losing.

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May 10th, 1940

Mark Noonan

I’m bringing this up for two reasons. First off, because I saw this – click the link and you’ll see a series of “person in the street” interviews where they ask some basic questions about World War Two and people just don’t know the answers. Secondly, because this date is the 76th anniversary of the German invasion of France and the Low Countries – so, might as well try and help out with this historical ignorance.

This Wikipedia article is actually a pretty good run-down of the event – someone who cares (or some people who care) apparently put a bit of effort in there to get an informative and useful description. Naturally, it doesn’t tell the whole tale, but if you read it you’ll generally understand what happened. Another good source you can get is William Shirer’s The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940. Shirer carries the story back to the birth of the Third Republic in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and describes in good detail the various political cross-currents which contributed greatly to the collapse of 1940. Shirer was an excellent historian, though he was also an old-school Liberal of the mid-Twentieth Century type, and so he emphasizes some things I think less important and glosses over (just a bit – he was immensely fair-minded) the two crucial things in the moral collapse which preceded the military downfall: the relentless anti-Catholic actions of the French government and the gigantic amount of very absurd pacifist propaganda in the State-run schools between World War One and World War Two. If nothing is absolutely true and nothing is worth fighting for, you might find it difficult to get men to fight and, if need be, die for truth in war, you know?

Another thing which played a huge role in the collapse was the astonishing amount of corruption in the France all through the Third Republic. There are always people on the take, but in the Third Republic it became a way of life for French politicians, and by extension French business and French journalists. The Panama Scandal was, perhaps, the worst of them all, but over and over again French leaders were found to be taking bribes and various interests in France were found to be for sale to the highest bidder. The Dreyfus Affair is probably still fairly well known, but in the end the crux of that matter was that the French government and military spent a huge amount of money, time and energy defending what was known to be a lie pretty early in the process…because people were invested in the lie and money was to be had for those who would keep it up.

The bottom line was that by 1940, the French government, business, media and military leaders were all highly compromised and suspect in the eyes of the French people, and the destruction of Christianity and Patriotism in France had robbed the French people of the very desire to fight hard against a foreign aggressor. This is not to say that no French fought – some did. In fact, about 85,000 French soldiers died in the six week campaign. But, for the most part, it was just a general collapse – and it started at the top, especially among France’s military leadership.

Little realized by most casual observers is the fact that the Anglo-French armies in 1940 were very much more powerful in manpower and material than the German army (half the German troop strength was low-grade, untrained, badly armed reserve forces). The Germans did have a tactical advantage in their armored and motorized divisions (which made up only a fraction of the German force), but the French Army had more trucks and tanks than the Germans…and French tanks were better armed and armored than German tanks (though generally slower in speed and, crucially, lacking effective radio communication, thus hampering tactical deployment). Shirer notes in his book that the French Air Force ended the campaign with more planes than it started with – and yet it is seen that the Luftwaffe was always able to provide air cover when it was needed by the advancing German armies.

The French and British also greatly assisted the Germans by putting their best armies into Belgium when they were needed in the Sedan area of France. But, even then, the Germans ran a gigantic risk in their invasion plan. Guderian made his reputation in his breakthrough at Sedan and his race to the Channel, but had the French leadership had just a little more desire to fight, Guderian would be remembered at the fool who stuck his neck out too far, too fast and got crushed by an easy counter-attack by French forces. When he lunged for the Channel after his breakthrough, for a couple days he had a mere regiment or so of motorized troops guarding his flank…the French had in the area two armored divisions (in addition to a substantial amount of infantry) which could easily have crushed that flank guard, cut off Guderian and changed the whole course of the war…but, the French leaders lacked the will (and any sense of how short time was to act) and the French troops also showed a complete lack of desire to get at grips with the enemy (this lack of desire, I think, flowed from the top – when then-Colonel de Gaulle was given command of a scratch force of armored troops, his attack knocked the Germans about quite a bit…it was too late to change things and his small force was insufficient, at any rate, to do much…but he showed what French troops could still do when led in to battle by a warrior).

Learning about this campaign is very important for any citizen of a democratic republic – it shows, definitely, Napoleon’s dictum that “the morale is to the material as three is to one”. To be sure, someone with absolutely overwhelming force can crush an enemy no matter how spirited they are (as was seen in Stalin’s attack on Finland in 1939)…but in forces roughly equal (and Anglo-French superiority in manpower and material made up for German superiority in tactical doctrine – provided that leadership was available to react properly to events), who has the fighting spirit is probably going to carry the day. The French State was rotten to the core – both in government and military. Corruption, immorality, nihilist philosophy of varied stripes, various conspiracy-theory-mongering (often centering on Jews as a scapegoat) all led to a France which lacked the desire to defend itself. Only a few clear-eyed patriots saw that no matter what was wrong with France, fighting the Germans was the first duty of all French.

And if all that sounds familiar to American ears, then that should be a bit of a wake-up call. We, too, are buried under corruption, immorality, nihilist philosophy…and, of course, anti-Semitism is also gaining purchase in the United States as various conspiracy theories are tried out (by people on both left and right – but, actually, more on the left than on the right in this area), and all of them tend to gravitate towards Jews as the scapegoat. We still have an immensely powerful armed force at our disposal – but is there still the overall spirit, especially in our leadership, to actually fight a war? Meaning – to fight it with the ruthlessness necessary to secure victory in spite of all problems? That is an unknown – and unknowable – thing right now. Sure, there are plenty of patriots in America…and plenty of hard-working, decent people, as well. But who rules the roost? The patriots and hard-working people, or people who have lost all sense of morality and honor? Remember, we recently found out that a carefully orchestrated series of lies was used to advance government policy…and we know that corruption is endemic in our nation. We can see it in the fact that the leading contender for the Democrat nomination not only hasn’t been indicted, but almost certainly will never be indicted.

It is to be hoped that we aren’t too far gone – but the lessons of France, 1940, are valuable for us to learn if we want to make sure we aren’t too far gone.

Best of Enemies

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Nearly 50 years ago William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal squared off in a series of debates that cemented the divide between conservatives and progressives, a divide that continues today. There is a very interesting documentary on Netflix called Best of Enemies that covers those 10 very contentious debates and the political environment of the time. Here is an excerpt of one of those debates:

Ironically, many of the issues covered in these debates are many of the same issues the left continues to fight over to this day – equality, the police state, and American Imperialism abroad. One would think that the intellectual might of the left would have resolved these pressing issues by now had they have been of paramount concern, but much like today, I believe these are issues the left needs to promulgate throughout the generations in order to create the societal divide their electoral victories depend on.

In one debate Buckley had a brilliant line on equality that invoked dismay and outrage from the progressive Vidal. Buckley stated that “freedom breeds inequality”, a simple truth about human nature that the left cannot comprehend, or simply does not want to admit. In fact there is much about human nature that the left does not want to admit, and unfortunately spends an inordinate amount of legislative time trying to deny. The ACA is a good example. What could possibly lead one to believe that a perfectly healthy 20 year old would purchase health insurance with high deductibles in order to off set the health care expenses of their less healthy and older citizens? Granted it would be noble of them but it defies their financial self-interests and the reality is that they are not complying, and Buckley defined this ideological disconnect dynamic very well in the video above.

In re: to the police state, is this not reminiscent of the black lives matter movement? Are the accusations leveled at the police then, the same accusations we hear today? And re: American imperialism, Vidal laid down the progressive foundation of moral equivalency that continues today by equating American military interactions with that of the Soviets, a paradigm the left uses at every opportunity to this day. Gore Vidal is unquestionably the father of today’s progressive movement, while Buckley is unquestionably the standard bearer for today’s conservative movement. Many of these debates are found on YouTube and the documentary on Netflix is a must see. I found these debates to be extremely interesting and look forward to reading others opinions.