Democracy, Limit Thyself

Mark Noonan27 Comments

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. – G K Chesterton

This is why I sometimes say I’m the last democrat on Earth – because I understand that if God did create us (and He did) then a democratic system is a necessity. Someone will now object here: but, Mark, you also have said that you are essentially a Monarchist! This is true. I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that the test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold to two contradictory opinions in mind and not go insane. So, maybe I’m just first rate?

Probably not! But there is no real contradiction here. And a huge part of the problem is that people think there is. That is, both Monarchists and democrats have fought each other quite bloodily on the assertion that there is a contradiction between Monarchy and Democracy when there really isn’t. But then you ponder it a bit and you understand that they weren’t really fighting against each other…they were fighting to hold all power. And neither a Democracy nor a Monarchy may reasonably hold all power. Only God can hold all of it.

The UK was supposed to be a model for sane government: a synthesis of Monarchy and Democracy – and for a while, it was. So sane that it managed with minimal effort to conquer one fourth of the world’s landmass and totally dominated the seas. There was a King and there was voting and there was hereditary nobility and big business and the Church and an independent judiciary and a free press and while there were problems there are always problems and the darned contraption worked. And it was the Reform Act of 1832 which set the UK on the path to self destruction.

Don’t get me wrong, there was need for serious reform – especially in getting rid of what were called the “Rotten Boroughs” where a handful of Electors would send a man to Parliament, often via straight up purchase. Meanwhile, huge communities in the UK had little or no representation at all. Needed to be fixed. The problem wasn’t what was fixed, but what was broken in the fixing…the franchise was extended to renters. Now, to be sure, you had to pay what was at the time a pretty hefty rent…which means you simply had to be a well off, middle class person. But the key was the law finally saying that non-landowners get the franchise. Once that was done, no way that everyone else wasn’t going to eventually get the vote. How can you possibly say ‘no’? Once the cat is out of the bag, it is out of the bag.

And in 1867 was another Reform Act extending the franchise to urban workers – higher paid urban workers, but still lower class. And the 1884 Reform extended it further. And the 1918 Reform yet further…and on and on and on until every Tom, Dick and Harry in Great Britain who is breathing at the time of an election gets to vote. And now with everyone voting all fair and square the UK has its largest cities under the control of recent migrants while the laws say you’re under arrest if you make a meme on social media…and you’re also disarmed in the face of a knife-wielding migrant lunatic. From ruling one fourth of the world to hiding at home in silence…all done by voting! They just happened to vote for suicide.

Turns out, having Viscount Twiddle-Dee sitting in the House of Lords by right of inheritance was more conducive to liberty than having Prime Minister Tweedle-Dum elected by universal suffrage. You see, Twiddle-Dee had only limited power while Tweedle-Dum’s power is unlimited. Therein lies the problem…not so much who has the power, but how much power the person has. That some nitwit heir of a noble house is in the Lords is far less a problem to the average Nigel than the police knocking on his door to ask him about a meme posted on X.

The USA is a little different, of course. The USA is different from everyone. Nobody better forget Bismarck’s statement about there being a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America. We are the invented country. A bunch of guys sat down in 1776 and declared it into existence and then returned in 1787 to declare it now had a government with such and such limited powers. Nobody had ever seen anything like this and nobody ever really would again. That is, no class of rulers – even rebel rulers – was ever going to make the Founder’s mistake: limiting the power of government. People who look at government simply can’t stand the thought that there’s something it can’t do…that there is an element of life simply outside the competence of government. But this is why the USA rose to global dominance pretty much in tandem with the decline of British dominance even though from Day One the franchise was fairly extensive in the USA and became more so over time. Why didn’t this kill us as badly as it was killing the UK? Because, as noted, the powers of the US government were limited…you couldn’t, via votes, obtain all power. Even if you controlled all 3 branches of government you didn’t have all power. You had a lot! But not all. And so the thing worked…until people decided to act like they did have all power.

The first person to do this was actually Teddy Roosevelt but his imagination was small…he set his sights on national parks and the Panama Canal. Wilson had a much grander vision on the uses of total power but even he wasn’t completely brazen about it. FDR was. There was simply nothing that FDR would ever say was outside his purview. Once in office he just did whatever he wanted, confident that a Congress controlled by his Party would never stop him and that it would eventually bring the Judiciary to heel (and he was right about this). FDR’s successors just followed along – usurping one power after another that didn’t belong to them, using bribery (ie, taxpayer subsidy) to obtain compliance at the State level (another brake on total power in the USA – the States are sovereign). Mostly it was done by promising at election time that every good thing would come to you if you voted the right way – and people by and large went along with it because they simply couldn’t see, in a broad majority, that the government with the power to give is the government with the power to take away. In short, the overwhelming majority of people – of all political stripes – were simply incapable of determining the best course of action…because they were being asked to decided the entire course of action.

Do understand that – it is totally reasonable for limited people to make decisions about limited things. In fact, this is the way it must be for a rational society. Only I can determine what color to paint my house…just as only I can decide who I want to marry, who I want as friends…on and on. It is when I propose to decide things for you that the limitations must come in…and the higher up we go (person, family, extended family, social group, town, county, State, nation) there must be continually increased limitations on what you can do (ie, “Congress shall make no law”). We’re human beings. Amazingly strong but also pathetically weak. We can’t know enough to make decisions on everything. And the whole failure of the world – what you see all around you in the USA and the entire world – is the logical conclusion of trying to get people to decide on everything.

To get back to the Reform Act of 1832, the fatal flaw in it was not limiting the power of government. Britain, famously, has no actual written Constitution. It is just the unrepealed acts of Parliament plus judicial precedent. It would take far too long a time to explain why it was like this but the bottom line is that the whole fight was between Parliament and King and it all worked out until the King was made a political cipher. Now it wasn’t a fight between King and Parliament but between Parliament and itself. There was no practical limitation on the power of Parliament except for the fact that the franchise was limited and so only people with a substantial stake in the community could direct the government. By extending the franchise without limiting the power the British set up the nightmare they have now. They really needed a First and Second amendment…and these should have been inserted in the Reform Act along with some provision making it nearly impossible to repeal. But, they didn’t see it. Because the people involved weren’t interested in sanity, but in how to get more power (essentially, the Reform people felt that they’d be rewarded with power for extending the franchise…and they were right).

We all know that unlimited government power is bad. We need to limit government; it must be kept in close constraints and strictly limited powers lest it get large enough to destroy us, the people it was created to serve (remember that: we institute government to secure our rights…not give us a welfare check!). But we can’t have limited government unless we limit the people, too. As per usual in human affairs, its not 100% one way or the other. It is a little bit of both. Human affairs requiring striking a balance, film at 11.

We must balance the need for responsible government with the need for limited government. Some years back a friend of mine bought a house he was going to rent out but, naturally, it needed cleaning and painting before that happened. For a variety of reasons he couldn’t get to the cleaning in a timely manner and asked if I’d help him out. Sure: that’s what friends are for. Plus, as he was going to paint it was really just a matter of cleaning sinks and bathtubs and so forth. I decided to start in the master bath and as I walked in, I noticed that the shower enclosure seemed an odd color…it was kind of a brownish grey and not at all nice looking. But, hey: who am I to judge? Someone wants a nasty color on their bathroom, not my concern. But when I go close and examined it I found that it wasn’t brownish grey…it was a white shower.

The house was about twenty five years old at the time and had one owner prior to my friend purchasing it. I scraped my fingernail along the brownish grey and it peeled off and I realized that the prior owner had never, not even once, cleaned their shower. They had used it year after year after year with it getting increasingly coated with soap and oil and dead skin particles and it never occurred to them that it might be time to hit the thing with a bit of a cleanser. Just absolutely nauseating. And it took me the better part of an hour to get all that gunk off.

But here’s why I’m telling you about this: that person who used that filthy, disgusting, unsanitary shower gets to vote. Just like I do. Just as much power as I have…and, like me, he’s voting for a government which has – or at least wants to have – total power over everyone. The guy who is so lazy he won’t even clean his darned shower gets to decide if I get to live, ultimately. Because that is what government power ultimately is, guys: the power to kill. We’re deciding who gets to kill and under what circumstances. Might not seem like that, but that is what it is. Filthy shower guy/Me = same/same. No, sorry; it ain’t. Filthy shower guy shouldn’t be deciding anything…for heaven’s sake, he can’t even decide to clean his shower.

We’re going to have to limit things, my friends. The only path to a limited government which secures our rights is a government which is under the control of people with some sense and responsibility. Unlimited voting just means unlimited power and power corrupts. Always.

We need a series of laws which restrict the franchise. Everyone can come up with their preferences here and we can debate and then enact, but some limitation on what the people can do is necessary if we are to have a government limited in what it can do. I would start with a basic literacy and civics test – to register to vote you have to write out the preamble to the Constitution and then answer some pretty simple questions about the government: name 3 Justices of the Supreme Court, name the current Speaker of the House, how many States are there…I’m not talking genius level stuff here, guys. Just something that lets us know you’re literate and have some concept of the government you are voting to empower. After that, I’d also remove the franchise for all fit, adult persons between the ages of 18 and 67 who receive 50% or more of their income from government (active duty military would be excluded from this restriction). Basically, if you live off government – even (and especially) by working for government – you have a vested interest in government power and thus a conflict of interest in your vote…so you don’t get to vote. And by “living off government” I do mean even if you work for a State-supported school, NGO, etc. And anyone can restore their voting rights by getting off the government dime. It is a matter of personal choice – because remember that I said “fit”…if you can work and choose to be on welfare well, that is your choice…and you’ve chosen disenfranchised dependency.

It will have to be. Civilization cannot survive without this. It is only a matter of time before this happens – and it would be better if we controlled it rather than waiting for someone else, perhaps hostile to us, to make it happen.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

So, Ukraine managed to whack Russia pretty hard. Gotta say, I’m impressed…big, deep strikes right at the heart of Russia’s strategic power. They claim they did it all on their lonesome but I just have to figure they had US intel help…and probably some tech support on it, too. Trump probably does want to send a message to Putin that it is time to bring this adventure to a close…and with Putin digging in his heels, this is a necessary push.

Naturally, Putin will feel that he has to strike back, hard. That will come before any peace deal is made. It is a matter of prestige for Putin and the Russians that they make Ukraine pay for this. So, get ready for that. I do hope the Ukrainians are because if they can thwart or even just significantly blunt the Russian response then that will be just more pressure on Putin to throw in the towel.

This whole mess could have been avoided if we had a good deal maker in DC when it started with the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2012. The bottom line, as I’ve said all along, is that the Crimea and the Donbas were added to Ukraine by Stalin for domestic, Soviet political purposes. Never in the past had that territory been considered Ukrainian even in theory. The whole purpose of US and Western diplomacy should have been figuring out how to un-draw the lines drawn by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin probably after a few too many vodkas. I’m hopeful this will end with that recognition of reality.

The nut who threw firebombs at mostly elderly Jews in Boulder is in the country illegally. Because of course. We now have two iconic photos from the past 12 months – and together they define the political divide.

MAGA world:

Democrat world:

It is so beautiful, isn’t it? The shirtless, raving lunatic holding a Molotov cocktail and that Pride flag in the background…about to set fire to Jews in a liberal city where refugees are welcome.

Someone linked today on X to a video of Jasmine Crockett (D-Looney Bin) – and along with her cosplaying as ghetto (she’s actually the product of elite, private education and has perfect diction), she was asserting that once the Democrats retake the House, they will impeach Trump. Of course we all know this – because of course they will.

If they get back the House. That is the fly in the Democrat ointment: they have to win. Winning requires building a coalition around some set of actions. We’ve all wondered why the Democrats aren’t toning down the lunatic Leftist rhetoric and we can now see why: they don’t think they have to. Crockett and her like think that because they are being insanely Left they will win the House in 2026. There are older and wiser heads in the Democrat party (Schumer knows this garbage is political suicide but as an elderly Jew he’s got to walk soft in Democrat councils these days) but they can’t call the shots – they can’t get people like Crockett to shut up, that is.

We can’t know what will happen. Mid-terms are notoriously difficult for the party holding the White House. But with voter registration trends still favoring the GOP, with Trump having already raised $600 million for the 2026 effort and with the economy starting to perk up….I’ve got to start thinking that this against Democrat insanity might give us a favorable 2026.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

One of the problems with the Third World is that infrastructure is deliberately destroyed when not merely allowed to decay. Copper theft from power lines and such is a massive problem. So, let’s see how the Third World is doing on that:

Oh, sorry, I’m being told this is not the Third World but Minneapolis, MN…

Import the Third World, get the Third World. The bottom line here is that the people stealing this didn’t build it – didn’t build anything that exists. They just were willy-nilly shipped in and they’ve brought their habits from home with them. Things exist in order for them to be stolen – and you don’t care if things don’t work because never in your whole life have things ever worked.

I’m kinda tired of being told that my nation – my people – are bad. That the settlers who built Minneapolis are inferior to the “migrants” who are now stealing the copper wire of Minneapolis. Only an idiot destroys infrastructure…but here it is, being destroyed. It is sort of like pictures I’ve seen of South African hospitals…filthy, garbage literally sitting on the floor. Everyone knows that a hospital isn’t supposed to be like that but its like that…because nobody gives a damn. They didn’t build it. It is just something to be stolen, and vandalized if it can’t be carted off.

No people are better than any other people. We are all human beings, children of God. But some people behave a heck of a lot better than others…and the problem of the Third World isn’t the legacy of colonialism or any other excuse being offered up. The problem is the people of the Third World who seem content to live badly. That’s fine. Their life. Their country. Do whatever you want to do. But I’m done with thinking we should continue to import these people – anyone coming in gets vetted and they should be 18 to 30, unmarried, no kids, fluent in English and have $10,000 in cash on them. That way I know they’re people who can reasonably integrate into my society rather than stealing copper wire.

There’s some TV show out there which decided to open up this season where a nun played by Rosie O’Donnell gets it on with another female character.

And the entertainment industry wonders why they’re losing audience. I mean, just in practical terms, if you want to have something vulgar, at least have the vulgarity portrayed by good looking people. Nobody wants to see a 60-something getting it on.

It is just insults, of course. Not even avant-garde. It is boring. To be truly transgressive these days you’d have to respectfully portray a nuclear family having a good life, or a man who works hard and plays by the rules. A distinctly feminine woman who likes and gets along with men. Heck, even just two gay guys who run a bait shop. Something like that. What entertainment does is insult us…not just our morals, but our intelligence. There is a place for the risque in entertainment…but if you’re doing to do it, it is supposed to be subtle and interesting…not a sledgehammer like using Rosie as a lesbian nun.

Thomas Massie seems determine to burn all bridges on the right – his latest effort being a demand we cut off military aid to Israel because “Nothing can justify the number of civilian casualties (tens of thousands of women and children) inflicted by Israel in Gaza in the last two years.” Just absurd.

First off, nobody knows how many people have died in Gaza. The only reports we get are from Hamas or Hamas-allied organizations and we know they lie with wild abandon. Secondly, if there were tens of thousands, there would be pictures of that. You can’t individually bury huge numbers of bodies – once you get past a few hundred, you have to get them into the ground – or burn them – quickly because of health risks. We would have video of mass graves and piles of corpses if even hundreds were being killed at a time, let alone tens of thousands. My bet is that once this is over, we’ll find that the total number of dead in Gaza is no more than a few thousands, almost all of which will be armed fighters with only incidental killings of civilians due to Hamas’ tactic of using civilians as human shields.

As I’ve said before, I think Israel has already lost this war – lost it within 90 days of the start. I could see how this would go: any length of time and public opinion would turn against Israel as the global Establishment geared up to make Israel’s response the problem rather than the Palestinians rapes and murders on 10/7. So it has happened – and I can’t see this ending without Hamas remaining in charge of Gaza. In other words, total Israeli defeat. Israel should have imposed a regular siege – after a legal declaration of war – and compelled the Gazans to surrender unconditionally. They would have. Sure, Hamas would have kept all the food for themselves and let the people starve…but eventually even in that system the food runs out and no human being can resist hunger pangs. After a while, almost everyone will do just about anything just to get a bite to eat. They would have stacked arms and come out with their hands above their heads.

But Israel did not go that route – for fear of offending global opinion, they decided to go slow and soft. Hasn’t worked, of course; the world already hated Israel. There was no upside for Israel to go soft. But softly they went…carefully and methodically targeting only confirmed armed opponents. They have had some major coups in this – the exploding pagers the most notable – but they haven’t had victory. But for our purposes here, the main thing is that Israel is not indiscriminately killing. It isn’t that bad in Gaza. Lot of stuff blown up, but not a lot of death…and nobody is starving or lacking medical care. For Massie to mindlessly repeat the Hamas lies about Israel is astonishing and disgusting. I don’t know what brain disease is affecting some people but it might be that some have just been waiting for their excuse to hate Jews…just as some wait for their excuse to hate Christians. Could be that when you alienate yourself from God, you feel compelled to hate Jews? Don’t know – but it seems that way.

The Last Chance

Mark Noonan19 Comments

In poll after poll and in vote after vote what is happening all across the West is that youth is turning away from the Establishment. It is most marked among young Western men but it is also happening with women. Meanwhile, it is getting to be that the older the voter, the more likely to be Left…including among older voters who used to vote for ostensible Right parties in the past. None of this is too shocking – the youngsters see a dying world and don’t like it – and young white people especially don’t like the part they are being assigned in it: the evil ones who must be punished for the alleged sins of their elders and ancestors. For the older folks (call it 60 and up), it also makes sense they are going Left – the Left is defending the system the old folks grew up in and in which they became well off. They still watch TV news, of course, and sincerely believe the drivel put out there. But it is to youth that we look – because the future belongs to whoever is there. That ain’t you and me, fellow old folks!

Today I saw a video clip where King Charles III of Great Britain, visiting Canada, issued a “land acknowledgement” before his speech before the Canadian parliament. Basically, this was the King asserting that Britain and all her works were a crime. If he had an ounce of courage he would have abdicated before making such a hateful statement. But, he’s old and this is what the Ruling Class told him he has to say and that its an evil statement is neither here nor there…it is how he gets to remain King. Nothing quite so typifies the Boomer, does it? But one thinks about the heroic people of Britain’s past and you almost weep over it all – whatever one might wish to say about Sir Garnet Wolseley, when he burned Kumasi it was to clear out a nest of slave-traders. Today Charles would probably go there and apologize for that.

Another thing I saw today was a news report that 80% of Britain’s Down Syndrome babies are being aborted. One of the great achievements of Christianity was to end the practice of killing “unfit” children…but with the destruction of the Christian character of the West the barbarism has returned. Putting these two things together made be rather disgusted with quite a lot of things. I don’t want to be allied, for instance, with people who kill their children or insult their own past. And I don’t want the domestic versions of these people to have a say in how we’re governed. You see, I quite like living in a world where I have rights and I carry out my responsibilities and my property is protected, criminals are punished and weirdos aren’t allow to destroy the public square. Basically, I’ll see how Trump does: if he’s able to push through the necessary reforms, then I’ll be ok. But if the Establishment manages to stop him, then I’m seriously looking for a Sulla or Caesar.

And in that, I’ll be siding with youth – because youth has very little patience with or respect for the “norms” or the Establishment. They see through the scam. They are also, though, badly educated so they do, from time to time, fall for other cons as long as they are anti-Establishment cons. This is a problem and I’ll see my goal – if it comes to it – to guide youth away from these aberrations. And they can be guided it: I know it because I’ve already done it. They do listen to reason. You’d better have it all down pat! Answer for every objection! But if you do have knowledge and some patience you can reach this discontented youth…which is filled with a desire for freedom and is generous to a fault. But I won’t fight them on things I view as non-critical. They are youth and it is their world they are building. I offer my advice and my encouragement, but I do not offer myself as a leader. They’ll have to find their own.

I do see this as a time future historians will view as the breaking point – the end of one era and the start of another.

Ancient: European and Near-Eastern civilization to the Muslim conquest of Syria (638).

Medieval: Muslim conquest of Syria to the Treaty of Westphalia (1648).

Modern: Treaty of Westphalia until today.

But the Modern Era is rather done. Nobody believes in the basic assumptions any longer. Too many lies and too many crimes…and, in the end, it didn’t even work. We see outrages against basic human decency and civil rights and we joke that the Constitution (the highest human expression of the Modern Era) will break out of its case any minute now and save us…but those charged with applying the Constitution are too stupid and corrupt to defend it. So youth sees it as useless and seeks something else…just as they seek for something else regarding all major issues and events. I don’t envy them their task if we do ultimately fail – and let us hope that this last, desperate hope we elected last November turns the tide.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

The judicial orders against Trump are getting ever more absurd – to the point now there Judges are maliciously ignoring the written law and Supreme Court orders. Why are they doing this? Are they just insane?

No.

Well, ok, fine; they are insane. But there is also a plan here. It seems pretty obvious to me that they are now hoping they make rulings so absurd that Trump is force to openly defy them. Their theory then goes that the American people will reject this defiance and turn against Trump, thus ensuring he’s hamstrung for the next two years as Democrats hope to take back the House in 2026 whereupon the Trump agenda dies. Could they be right? That is, would the American people choose the judges over Trump? It is a possibility. I don’t think it would come out that way, but it is something that might happen. It is basically a hail Mary move – there is absolutely nothing else in the Democrats’ arsenal to stop or even slow down Trump. And Trump II is a much graver threat than Trump I…the new Trump is determined to fix the problems. Trouble for Democrats is that they made the problems on purpose to sustain their power and wealth. Fixing them means the effective end of the Democrat party.

So, there’s this long shot – and the longer shot of, well, a shot. Trump’s people better keep their heads on a swivel.

The latest effort to keep the immigration spigot open has been pushed by the Libertarians: their objections are that we can’t allow the government to decide who a college admits or an employer hires. Also, Trump is deporting Albert Einstein when he kicks a Palestinian activist out. Hey, they are Libertarians: they are by nature pretty dumb. Keeping in mind that most Libertarians are just Leftists who want low taxes and gun rights.

But, nobody is buying it. We know who’s being kicked out – totally useless people when not actually wicked. And here’s my challenge – if these people are so great then ten years from now they’ll have made their homelands a paradise for Americans to envy. So I say to the Libertarians, let this happen so you can tell me “I told you so”. So far, none have taken me up on my offer…almost like they know we’re not deporting great people.

Actually useful polling shows Trump about where he was on Election Day. Anecdotal evidence – that is, me talking to people in real life – indicates that his support is growing. Non-anecdotal is that the GOP continues to win the voter registration battle. Been a little blip of late in PA as the Democrats have a hotly contested primary but even that wasn’t much…and the overall trend still favors the GOP. Even in deep Blue bastions like California the GOP is winning the registration battle (though CA is so Blue that it’ll take a decade or more to make the State competitive). People are, by and large, liking what they see. And, guys, the Democrats know this. Nobody told Harris but her own pollsters showed her a sure loser from Day One to Election Day (rumor has it that until about 11pm Eastern on Election Day she thought she was going to win…this is why the calls on the Battlegrounds came in so slow…once again, the MSM will not call a race until the Democrats give them permission to do so…had Harris been told she was a sure loser, they would have called the race as soon as California closed). Democrats have their own polls and they are likely showing Trump as popular…and this once again gets us back to their desperate judicial attempts to slow it down.

Lies Kill Two…and Millions

Mark Noonan7 Comments

Vice President Vance posted this picture of the two kids who were murdered yesterday by a radical Leftist from Chicago:

I do hope this picture gets spread as far as possible. Really look at it. Study their faces. Burn it into your memory. Look at them!

They’re just kids. Starting out in life. They’re not even all-Jewish as I understand the young man, Yaron Lischinsky, was Christian. As Sarah Milgrim was Jewish, that shows the actual cultural diversity of Israel. People of different backgrounds coming together in love – for one another, for their families, for their nation.

They were killed for two reasons:

  1. The shooter knew they were Israeli and thus assumed both were Jews.
  2. Lies.

For decades now, but on overdrive since 10/7, the world has been flooded with lies about Israel. The shooter believes he was taking a stand against “the genocide in Gaza”. One problem with that, there is no such thing. In fact, recent reports indicate that since 10/7, the population of Gaza has actually increased. I’ve long stated my views on the matter: I do believe that Israel has lost the war in Gaza because they didn’t do what was necessary after 10/7: total siege. Nobody and nothing in or out. Endless artillery bombardment with aerial attacks on precise military targets. The Palestinians are to surrender unconditionally, come out with their hands in the air and then be exiled to some other place outside of missile range of Israel (I have suggested Socotra). The Israelis have not done this out of a foolish concern about global opinion (as if that matters or as if anything Israel does will meet with global approval) – they have gone extremely soft on the Gaza population. This has not only resulted in what amounts to Israeli defeat, but it has cost Israeli lives. But that was all Israel’s call – they are the people who determine their fate, not me. But the bottom line here is that there is no cause for any reasonable person to have the least complaint about Israel in the matter. Yet “stop the genocide” is a regular Leftwing statement all around the globe.

Last night, a radical Leftist who believes the lies acted upon them. After all, if you sincerely believe that Israel is engaged in genocide, you strike against them wherever you can. If you were suddenly sent back in time to 1940, what measures would you refuse to take in stopping Hitler’s regime? Perhaps you’d stop at cannibalism, but not much else – just about any action is justified if it is to stop genocide.

Yaron and Sarah are two of millions. Untold millions. Dead here and there and all around the world because we have been told – and most of us firmly believe – that if we don’t allow liars to lie then we won’t be able to speak the truth. There’s some demonic perversion if you ask me! I am told and I used to even believe that if I don’t allow some ignorant Leftist halfwit shout “stop the genocide” then I won’t be able to say there is no genocide.

No.

Just no.

It doesn’t work that way. If liars are allowed to lie then things will be done based on those lies. Like the man who murdered two completely innocent people last night. They are dead. They aren’t coming back. Everything they might have had in life is gone. Taken away by a man who will now be afforded legal counsel and a fair trial and might even see the outside of a jail cell before he dies. And who will likely become a folk hero among the radical Islamists and the global Left. Because of lies. Had we stopped the first liar in his tracks, then the millionth liar wouldn’t have got two kids killed last night.

Lies must be punished. Severely. If you’re worried about how you might end up punished for lying then I suggest you keep your trap shut unless you’re sure its true. It isn’t a big ask. Not lying, that is. Nobody has a right to lie and nobody ever fought a war to secure a right to lie.

We must make lies illegal.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan5 Comments

Over in the UK a mother of a 12 year old was sentence to 31 months for a social media post. Meanwhile, the government is starting a new campaign called “Let’s be blunt”…lauding the use of blunt-tipped knives.

Just what the heck are we allied with Britain for? They don’t share our values. They aren’t a free people. They are cowardly in the face of foreign invasion. What are we defending Over There these days? Because what is happening in Britain is pretty much what’s happening all over Europe…more controls of speech, more and more disarming the population, more and more sheep-like acceptance of tyranny by the people. A Russian conquest of Europe at this point would make it freer (Putin doesn’t care if you’ve got a pointy knife or put up a harsh post on X – as long as its not about him, of course).

I mean, we know why the British and other European governments are doing this – they see what happened over here with actual free speech among an armed population: Trump. All over Europe there are parties committed to saving their respective countries and the European Ruling Class is determined to stamp them out. I believe they will be successful at this – the being disarmed thing is the worst position for European patriots to be in. They all agreed to give up their arms because lunatics might use some other weapons to kill…the very stupidest thing a person can do, but they did it. Now that they’re facing tyranny and invasion they’ve got nothing…all the complaints in the world won’t change a thing. The European Ruling Class has the guns and so no ultimate fear. But the question remains: what are we doing allied with such people?

To be fair, the only free nation in the world is the United States. Since 1787 this has been so because only our governing document secures our arms and our speech while also saying “Congress shall make no law”. As I’ve mentioned before, no other nation has this – every enumerated right, every restriction on government power has a “but” in it somewhere. Every right can be suspended and every power exercised and on the say-so of the mere parliamentary majority leader. Its not even a King robed in history making the call…just some half-wit politician who managed to climb to the top of the greased pole. But at least in times past Europe made a play at being free…there was a time when you could say what you wanted, you could be armed (even with restrictions) and the Europeans had some guts. Those days are long past and I’ve no interest in defending Europe. A foreign conqueror is welcome to the place as far as I’m concerned.

As we’ve noted many times, polls are a weak reed but yesterday a fairly respectable pollster came out with a Trump 55% approval poll. A lot of people discounted it and it is the outlier…on the other hand, the polls showing him at 42% are clearly bogus. So, backing them out and keeping the polls which actually got 2024 reasonably correct and Trump’s approval sits around 50%…so, while 55% is still an outlier, it ain’t much of one. And what I’ve found talking to people is that they are warming up to Trump fast. They see what he’s trying to do – and they can see his opposition is merely upset that their game is being messed with. Shouts of “he’s killing kids in Africa!” are a mask for “I’m not getting my kickback from USAID!”; nobody doubts this. And it is how it was.

There is also the sheer fun of it all. A judge, mayor and Congresscritter getting arrested is a delight. It is funny. And about time. Arrest more of them! Including a lot of Republicans! Trump being able to off-the-cuff spend an hour in front of the MSM – and making them look like fools – is another fun thing to watch. And we can see the prices of food and gasoline coming down. There is a real chance that 55% is correct.

Cancer-gate is going to have more legs than some suspect. Especially now after Trump posted yesterday that he’s not blaming Joe for what happened…stating that Joe would never have gone along with open borders and such and so it was traitors taking advantage of a senile man. That is a shot across the bow – and the entry point right now for exposing the whole thing is the alleged cancer. Is it real? Was Biden really not checked for it at Walter Reed? And in all this, what was his cognitive ability? Do remember that a couple months ago Trump posted that he considered the pardons null and void. Not much happened after that but by that time Trump had listened to the Hur tapes I’m sure…plus had conversations with the White House staff (I’m talking maids and butlers and such – these are rock-solid American patriots and the most discrete people in the world…but Trump is a guy who can talk to such people and get them to open up about things). He knows now as well as anyone outside of it can what was going on during Biden’s term…and he’s laying the groundwork for basically annulling the last part of Biden’s actions.

The Biden Problem

Mark Noonan9 Comments

The Biden family is asserting that Joe has an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Yes, asserting. We don’t know if they’re telling the truth. They are such egregious liars that nothing they say – even about something like this – can be taken at face value. I have said a prayer for Joe over it because that is what God commands us to do. Though at 82 our thoughts should be more towards a holy death rather than recovery. But that will be as it will. But even with all that, I just don’t know. I can’t know – I can’t rely on Bidens, I can’t rely on the MSM.

Truth or not, the issuing of this news – which none of us would need to know if the Bidens were normal – if it was designed to knock the Hur tapes out of the News Cycle isn’t working. To be sure, Democrats, MSMers and the Usual Suspects on the Never Trump Right are saying we’re all rat bastards if we don’t lay off Biden at this point…but that kinda shows the whole point of the exercise: getting us to shut up about Biden’s cognitive decline. In my view, the Hur tapes show conclusively that Biden was mentally incompetent no later than October of 2023 (my bet is that he was mentally incompetent prior to the 2020 election, but figuring and proving are two different things) – and that means that Harris should have exercised her authority under the 25th Amendment no later than then…that she didn’t and the entire apparatus of the Executive Branch and the complicit media tried to cover up Biden’s condition is the biggest scandal in political history.

Nothing compares to it. We did not have a functioning Executive under our Constitution. Nobody knows who was issuing the orders. And every order issued after October of 2023 is obviously legally invalid – just like you can’t get a senile person to sign a new will transferring all their stuff to you, so you can’t get a senile Executive to, say, issue you a pardon. The political and legal ramifications of what happened are going to be a huge problem – the whole thing needs to be thoroughly investigated and legislation enacted to retroactively deal with what happened (we can’t actually dispense with all Executive actions taken under dubious authority: some things are water under the bridge and just have to be accepted…but we need to make sure that, legally, they stand up to the future). And the people who covered it up in the Executive branch need to go to jail. You think about the huge number of people who had reasonable access to Biden and none of them ever came forth – as was their legal and patriotic duty – to say the man was gaga. And this means they were essentially participating in a fiction…a conspiracy to defraud.

And we have also learned that the 25th Amendment isn’t enough. If we have an Executive branch willing to lie in cooperation with friendly media, then the Executive can be zombie. Keep in mind that if they kept Biden together long enough to get re-elected, they’d still be hiding his condition. But our Constitutional order requires that the person elected to hold Executive power be mentally and physically capable of doing the job. Executive power is vested in the President…not the President’s family, cronies and senior White House aides. We need an amendment whereby Congress can force a cognitive test on the President. Some sort of majority vote in both houses and a third party does a full medical check on the President. The purpose of this isn’t to get the President to a physical…but to let the Executive branch know that if they try to pull another Biden, it will be exposed…if the guy is gaga, get him out of there.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Leo XIV reaffirmed that marriage is between one man and one woman and that the unborn are humans with rights.

This is going to make a lot of Lefties and Progressive Catholics upset.

But, fret not! I’m sure he’ll also deplore the continuing war in Gaza before too long … OTOH he also spoke up for the persecuted Christian minority in the Arab world so maybe even that won’t be forthcoming in a manner pleasing to the Left.

Oh, well: Catholics gonna Catholic. And the Pope is Catholic.

The Trump Administration, by highlighting the increasing racism of the South African government, is clearly trying to force that government to climb down. I hope it works; because only death and poverty result on the current trajectory.

Keep in mind what happened in South Africa: after the end of Apartheid and the assumption of black majority rule, it was supposed to operate like magic in making everything peachy for the black population. Not kidding: the only thing that made life bad for blacks was Apartheid. This is what was asserted and firmly believed…especially in the larger West. Of course it didn’t work that way. It couldn’t work that way. While white South Africans were much better off than black South Africans, their per capita income would work out to pretty impoverished for Americans. Around the time Apartheid ended, South Africa’s per capita GDP was less than four grand a year. Sure, whites got more than that…but we’re still talking sub-Alabama money. There wasn’t enough money for everyone in South Africa to even be working class, let alone middle or upper. The only way South Africa was going to get rich – under any system – was via decades of hard work and frugal living. Apartheid actually held back South African wealth creation…once it was gone, if everyone got to work – especially given the massive foreign investment which would eagerly jump into a free and rule-of-law South Africa – then within 40 to 50 years, South Africa could easily have been on par with Europe in income.

But what happened was that the magic didn’t happen, nobody insisted that everyone get to work and it all became an increasingly strident blaming of white people while what money there was got looted and transferred to the bank accounts of the new, politically-connected black elite (and some of the old white elites who ran apartheid…don’t forget that; they cut their deal with the new leadership to keep rich and privileged…and do note that it is “kill the Boer, kill the farmer ” the race-baiters shout…not “kill the rich, white jerks who work with the ANC”). There have been increasing attacks on whites with little or no police response, political rhetoric designed to incite violence (and, man, I bet they want whites to respond; it would be all the excuse they need) while poverty and disease spread and South Africa’s infrastructure collapses towards Third World status. There would have been eventual massacres of whites. There still might be. Trump is trying to nip that in the bud.

All of this ties into the basic assumption that white people are inherently evil. We’re not native to any land. We are nothing but thieves and oppressors. Our lives mean nothing and nobody is to be upset if a white person is robbed, beaten, raped or murdered. This isn’t something we can allow to continue – not in any nation. A whole series of lies has been ingrained into the Western mind and we must cut it out – racism is wrong no matter how its done. Whites are not to blame for non-white poverty. The only way out and forward is for everyone to obey the laws and get to work. Together. As one humanity. Whatever happened in the past can’t be fixed and so it should just be moved on from.

Nothing Fails Like the Appearance of Success

Mark Noonan35 Comments

The primarily don’t like Trump because he’s calling them idiots. Sometimes, because he’s Trump, directly, but even when he’s on his best behavior, his every action exposes them for the idiots they are. And it is infuriating to them.

You have to think about their world for a minute: they grew up in the system and the system taught them certain things as unquestionable dogma. This is how the world works and thus it ever shall be. Things like NATO, the UN, foreign aid, mass immigration, free trade…all dogmas defended as stoutly as any Christian will defend the Trinity…but with the difference that the Christian is defending a Mystery while the secular Establishmentarian is defending…merest opinion.

That is the thing, of course: what these people hold to be established fact which no educated person may question are just opinions. Often opinions which weren’t supported by the facts at their creation. But all rigidly enforced. William Manchester, liberal to the core, recognized what was happening in the 1970’s – that the age was becoming one of Liberal Bigotry…no thought, no questioning…just endless repetitions of received dogmas with the only change allowed being carrying it to the conclusion: that is, the bad idea morphs into the insane idea so lets have a 200 pound man compete against a 120 pound woman.

And the reason Liberal Bigotry has been sustained for so long is that for a very long time, it seemed to work. Heck, almost all of us on the Right were taken in by it. I used to defend NATO! I thought the FBI was a first-rate crime fighting outfit. I thought the schools were trying to educate. I figured our senior military officers were apolitical patriots only concerned with the defense of the nation. On and on like that…and it was all based, ultimately, on the fact that the Liberal order had won World War Two. Can’t emphasize enough how much that built up credibility for Liberalism. That plus the apparent cure of the Great Depression. Essentially, the Liberal order has been cruising on that since 1945.

But it never was what it seemed. As I’ve explained before, the Great Depression was the inevitable result of things that happened ten years previously: the massive destruction of global markets represented by the twin events of the First World War and the Spanish flu. Every economy was living on borrowed time starting in 1919…and the British economy slumped into de-facto depression by 1926: it was so bad by then that the British working class – especially the coal miners (then Britain’s basic industry) – called a general strike. The global economic contraction was ongoing…it hit America’s agricultural sector as early as 1921. The crash of the Stock Market in 1929 was merely a belated exposure of the underlying weakness…but even that wasn’t all of it. For instance, France didn’t tumble into Depression until 1931. But it was going to hit everywhere eventually. Nothing anyone did would either stop it or lessen its effects. The only thing anyone could do is make it worse – which is precisely what the governments of the world, including ours, started to do.

And it wasn’t the tariffs! In fact, what Britain should have done when their economy slumped in the mid-20’s was impose tariffs. As noted, their basic industry back then was coal…but the British Empire was being overrun by cheap coal from Germany, Poland and the United States. Think about it: the British controlled 1/4th of the world’s land mass and population. Coal was the basic motivator of industry at the time. If you wanted something to be done mechanically, coal had to be used – even if merely to generate the electricity you need for electrical machines. How could Britain’s coal industry slump when 1/4 of the world was their market? Because they were free traders! They allowed their basic industry – their working class – to be squeezed into poverty on the theory that India and Canada should be able to buy their coal from Germany. Insane! And Britain, like the rest of the world, opted to use government spending to cure the economic malaise.

Think about this for a moment: you’ve got an economy that has crashed. Poverty is spreading. The money is all gone. So, your solution is to take money from this crashed, impoverished economy and give it to the government. And call the resultant government spending “growth”. This is what deepened and extended the Depression. Not tariffs. The money which was supposed to be used by the people to rebuild their economic lives was spent by government…sure, some of it useful spending (like the Brits subsidizing their shipbuilding industry which was to prove crucial for British victory in WWII) but the main thing is that it couldn’t be “growth” … it was just moving money around. Some bright guy out there might have had some new product or innovation ready to go but he couldn’t get financing because the money had been taxed or borrowed away to build a CCC camp in Nevada.

And then World War Two happened. Kinda interesting aspect of this has not been explored. Probably because exploring it would expose some weaknesses in the Liberal Narrative. German rearmament started before the ink was dry on the Treaty of Versailles. First covertly and ad-hoc, it was eventually taken over by the government and as early as 1927 the Germans had a plan to create a large, modern army. But they also knew it would take time. Years and years. The program was put into overdrive when Hitler came to power in 1933 and all sorts of financial trickery were used to provide the money for the buildup. But it was still going to take time. The German Navy – the Kriegsmarine – put their program under the title of Plan Z which envisioned a Germany Navy strong enough to fight the UK by 1948. In a pinch, they felt they could at least fight it out by 1942. The Army also felt that they could present Hitler with a reliable military instrument in a pinch by 1942, though they more envisioned 1945 as the time when the German army would be ready. But as we all know, the war started in 1939. What gives?

The German staffs – Army and Navy – were among the best in the world. Arguably for the Army the very best in the world and maybe in all time. They knew what Germany needed to have a fair shot at winning. These were deeply educated, highly intelligent men. The official Narrative is that Hitler was just too impatient and so flew off the handle, as it were, and invaded Poland in 1939 before Germany was ready but then the slight quality edge the Germans had in 1939 and 1940 allowed to stupendous success. There is some truth in that but the firing of Hjalmar Schacht as President of the Reichsbank was more imporant – Schacht had been sacked because he kept on telling Hitler that he had to stop the arms buildup as it was bankrupting Germany. To outsiders, Germany in the 1930’s looked like an economic miracle…pretty much full employment, everyone prosperous and great public works being done at the same time Germany’s military grew more imposing by the year. It looked as though State planning and spending were the magic talisman. But it was all a false front: the money was fake (MEFO bills – enormously funny thing which I’m sure our current Rulers would love to have – forcing businesses to take promissory notes which will be redeemed when the government says so and don’t appear on the government books as debts), the truth concealed by economic sleight of hand…and it was all about to come crashing down into renewed Depression once the world figured out just how much debt the German government was carrying. There were two ways out for Hitler’s regime: allow a Depression or start a war. Guess which option was taken?

The main thing here is that the Nazi regime, aside from its other sins, shows that State planning and spending don’t actually do anything. They don’t create growth. They might give you a hot house and very temporary prosperity, but they are all on borrowed time and something has to give. This is why, I believe, this aspect hasn’t been looked into. Nor has the real effect of the New Deal been looked into. There’s been some criticism around the edges of it, but nobody points out that it didn’t do anything positive – and very likely made things worse in the long term. The industrial power which armed the world against Nazism wasn’t made by the New Deal. And while the Hoover Dam is quite impressive and useful, it wasn’t as useful as the ability to make aluminum and steel. In fact, we rather lucked out on aluminum which was to be crucial for aircraft production…totally outside government, a new facility was built in the late 1930’s for aluminum production for the Japanese market. Outside that stroke of luck, building those 50,000 planes FDR ordered would have been tricky. You’d think if our Ruling Class was super smart and figuring things out that the things we needed the most would have got priority in government spending. But, it wasn’t like that at all. In fact, some particularly needful things – like food production – were hobbled in the 1930’s in an attempt to keep food prices artificially high.

But it all seemed to work on that glad day in September of 1945 when the Japanese affixed their signature to the surrender document. The war was won. The Depression was over (though it is forgotten that right after the war there was a recession and a spike in inflation as the economy readjusted itself). The Smarty Pants Experts had fixed everything! And since then, their successors have continued to run things all based on the assumption that Smarty Pants Experts know what they’re doing. Don’t you know that General Massive Decorations is the successor of such geniuses as George Marshall!??!? How dare you question! And Professor Gimme A. Sinecure is the successor of Rexford Tugwell of FDR’s Brain Trust! How can you know more than him?!?!?!

Guys, they have no clue what they’re doing. Heck, even old Rexford didn’t know. He was a Columbia University economics graduate who figured he knew better than the farmers how agriculture should work. Because who better than an upper class academic to tell you how to plow a field? They’re just people who happen to be in positions of power when things happen…and if good things coincide with their tenure, they get awards and reputations for being geniuses. For the Liberal order, being in charge while American industry (they did nothing to create) arms a military (they also did nothing to create) which then goes on to win a global war was the grandest stroke of luck in history. And, my friends, the people in charge actually made even winning worse than it should have been. You think about the bone headed strategic decisions taken which prolonged the war unnecessarily, the diplomacy which awarded half of Europe to Stalin and China to Mao…the post war Cold War and fruitless wars in Vietnam and Korea…the slow destruction of the American industrial and agricultural sectors which had awarded them victory in the first place…the importation of millions of foreigners, the destruction of all public decency…on and on and on they went just totally lousing everything up but keeping in power on the after glow of a document signing on the USS Missouri.

And here we are. It is 2025. Eighty years later and its all come apart at the seams and Trump is trying to sew it back together again. It is simple logic that the illegals have to go home. That we use tariff pressure to force acceptable trade deals. That we revive American manufacturing as much as we can. That we prosecute violent criminals. That we let girls compete with girls. And they hate Trump for doing it – because it shows them up as the totally clueless buffoons they’ve always been. The mask it off. The Emperor not only has no clothes but he’s fat, bald, covered in pimples and he’s swinging something a chipmunk would be ashamed to carry.

And I do believe it is going to work – mostly because sensible things do work. It won’t be the appearance of success, but actual success. Not a higher mythical GDP number, but an increase in actual wealth. Not a higher defense budget, but an actually effective military force. On and on like that…and that will put an end to the Liberal Order.