Open Thread

Mark Noonan14 Comments

It appears that Comey was prepared to let Hillary off the hook before the investigation was completed. Of course, we all knew that, already – but it is nice to have some confirmation on it. Why do we have Trump? Well, lots of reasons – but one of them is that those who are powerful get special deals.

What this ultimately means to me is that it is past time for President Trump to shut down Mueller…essentially, the whole Trump/Russia thing came out of the Obama Administration and this revelation about Comey indicates that the FBI and Justice were corrupted by political influence under the Obama Administration (but, once again, you already knew that). Given that Obama Administration fingerprints are all over the Trump/Russia issue, there is no way that any investigation based upon anything that happened prior to 1/20/17 will be seen as legitimate. So, end it. If someone comes up with some solid information which was never seen or heard by anyone in the Obama Administration, then we can start it up again. But, for now, we should have done with it – especially as Mueller is trying to get the New York AG to go after Trump people…because he’s got nothing he can charge in federal court (likely) and, additionally, Trump can’t pardon on State crimes. End it. It is a farce.

Rumor is that Trump will end – or severely curtail – DACA tomorrow. We’ll see. It would set liberal heads exploding across the fruited plain. But it is also the right thing to do. As I’ve said, I’m in favor of amnesty – but not via Executive fiat. I do understand the problem of kids brought in illegally by their parents…but what we are ultimately to do about them has to be done according to law, not Presidential whim.

A Memphis theater is cancelling a showing of Gone With the Wind. They are cancelling it because Progressive snowflakes are complaining. I’d rather they cancelled it because it is just a silly movie with an entirely un-historical plot. Personally, I can’t watch the movie – it is too degrading a mindset, in my view.

Hollywood: stuck in the past – V the K at Gay Patriot:

…here we are, 44 years later, and Hollywood is still churning out overpopulation movies. Even though current demographic trends in the Western world point to population decline, not overpopulation. And if we could get Africans to use birth control, then we pretty much would have global population decline.

So, why is Hollywood still beating this old drum? Well, for one thing, liberal (in the leftist, not classical sense) culture has ossified around the concerns of the hippie baby-boomers who defined the modern left. If it was a big deal in 1972, then to them it’s a big deal in 2017; which is why we’re stuck with all this ridiculous race obsession, and why Hollywood makes stupid movies about overpopulation. But I think another part of it is that overpopulation provides a rationale for abortion, and we all know how much Hollywood loves abortion.

The most common charge leveled against witches in the Middle Ages was that they prevented the birth of children. Oddly enough, have found out that one of the social leaders of the Progressive set is, in fact, into witchcraft and such.

Rhambo says Chicago will tackle climate change – which is actually easier than tackling a skyrocketing murder rate, I guess.

Allegedly violent leftist looking at a long prison sentence claims he’s the victim.

Balancing the Political Sides

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Kurt Schlichter has a new bit up at Townhall – it hits a point I’ve made recently on Twitter:

So, my finger-wagging True Con friends, what’s your plan? How do we go from liberals abandoning the Rule of Law, and such ancillary and associated components of a society based on liberty like free speech and free enterprise, to a liberty-based society operating under the Rule of Law? “Elect more True Cons!” isn’t a plan; it’s an aspiration, and not much of one. I don’t need another cliché, or another citation to general principles, or some variant of my new favorite, all-purpose get-out-of-having-an-actual-plan-free card, the old “We’re better than this” line.

He goes on to note his personal plan: pain. Causing as much pain to liberals as can be achieved in the hope that it will eventually get them to back off. It is certainly a better plan than the idea of doing nothing and trying to pretend that all is well and we just need to get rid of Trump and figure out some way to get Jeb! or Kasich in there. Trump goes down and we all go down with him. There is no separating ourselves from Trump save by agreeing with the left – and agreeing with the left, especially right now, is fraught with the gravest peril for all people who believe in freedom.

Right now, the left is making the demand of “no enemies of the left”. This is an old, Bolshevik tactic. They used it to prevent anyone on the left from opposing them…and then picked off each non-Bolshevik part of the left in turn: starting with the farthest “right” of the left and eventually eating their own who couldn’t stomach the worst aspects of Leninism. When you say “no enemies on the left”, you essentially allow the farthest left tail to wag the political dog. “No enemies on the left means” that no matter how completely radical the far left gets, you can’t say anything against them lest you be classed as a fascist enemy of the people. Until at least part of the left says, “we have enemies on the left”, then they stand foursquare in opposition to all we believe and must be battled on each issue without letup. You think you can make a deal with the left to get rid of Trump and all you’ll find is that you’ve dropped Trump in favor of Lenin.

And, so, everything left is currently our enemy. Even the most decent and reasonable leftist you know is, for now, simply part of antifa. Until such decent leftists turn against the far left and help us to push them completely out of political influence, it will have to be that way. I don’t want it to be this way. I don’t like it to be like this. But it is what it is. Any weakness at this point just helps the left – even if you are just trying to be nice to that swell Progressive friend of yours (I’ve got some, myself), all you’re doing is helping the people who smash windows and beat up people who have a “Nazi haircut”.

And this is where the so-called True Conservatives simply have rocks in their heads right now – so consumed with hatred of Trump (who dared to annul their expertise by winning what they said he couldn’t win), that they have set themselves into a position where they are assisting the most far-left radical elements in the United States. Forget their soft-voiced condemnations of antifa violence – look more to the way they’ve gone ballistic over the pardon of Joe Arpaio. That shows you where their heads are, and how dangerous they are to the side of Conservatism. Everyone with any sense at all knows that the conviction of Arpaio was set in train in a spirit of political vindictiveness. Arpaio was doing things the left didn’t want, so they got a judge to say he was doing it wrong, and then another judge to “convict” him of not doing what the other judge said to do. There is no merit to the case against Arpaio – what he did was a political act to be decided by the political process (and, as it turns out, he was booted from office by the voters at the last election). But the left isn’t having any of that – Arpaio violated not the law, but the demands of the left and so he had to be punished. And for many decades, we on the right have sat still for things like that..Trump just said, “no more”.

It is good that the left has now been informed that using the courts to punish political actions is over. This is one of the most important things Trump has done as President and it benefits every single Conservative official and office holder in the land. To hold Trump’s action wrong because you think that Arpaio was wrong is asinine – political suicide of the most stupid sort. It doesn’t matter if Arpaio was wrong – more wrong was the left trying to send him to jail for what he did. So-called Conservatives are saying that Trump’s action violates the rule of law – perhaps it does, but so does trying to send a man to jail for doing things in the course of his official business. Unless Arpaio was taking bribes or some such, no judicial actions should have been launched against him, at all. And the only way we’ll get back to an America where political differences are solved entirely by the political process is to make using non-political means painful to the left.

You can have two types of government: Royal or Republican. A dictatorship or a democracy. There is something to be said for Royalism/Dictatorship…it allows for a bit of flexibility and tact in the performance of government actions. The downside, of course, is if you have an evil king or dictator. Better, of course, not to have any king or dictator because you can never tell who will be the bad one (or which one might turn bad over time – Nero’s first five years as Emperor were actually a model of excellent Royalist government…and then he went nuts). Better to have a Republic – but a Republic only works when it has rules and they are strictly enforced on everyone. You will have Rules, or you will have Rulers: take your pick. I prefer Rules. Right now, however, we have no Rules because the left has arrogated to itself the power to impose new Rules or set aside old Rules at will, as they determine whether or not they help or hinder the left. Each leftist out there is a supreme Autocrat, able to instantly decree whatever comes into his or her head at the moment and insist that we all toe the line. We are to just tremble and obey. I don’t like it like that – and I want my Rules back. The only way I can see to get them back is to demonstrate to the non-insane portion of the left that, on the whole, they would prefer Rules, themselves. And if this takes my agreement to pardoning Joe Arpaio in an irregular manner, then so be it. It is a lot less outrageous than someone getting beaten to the ground by an antifa mob because he wasn’t antifa.

Unless we are to live under a system of brute force, we must have a political balance. Indeed, it must be an artificial balance. Even if one side is 10 people and the other side is 1,000, the system must be set so that the two sides have the ability to thwart the other. Eventually the tiny minority must knuckle under to the prevailing notions of the broad majority – but not easily, and not before that tiny minority secures at least some of it’s demands. Our system is messed up right now because there is no balance – the left has set it up so that whomever has the power can just steamroll over everyone else. The left has gotten away with this because each time our side has gained power, we have refrained from exercising it as the left does. We have to be a lot more flexible about such things if we are to teach the left that they want the losers to still have a say in what goes on.

Yes, we are better than that – we won’t, say, send people to jail like the left does over mere policy disagreements. But even refraining from such egregiously tyrannical actions, there is still much we can do to demonstrate to the left the sweet reason of, well, being reasonable. The pardon was one thing. Making a move to deny federal funds to colleges which suppress free speech is another. Regulating tech giants who use their dominance to suppress free expression is another. Lots of things – and we’ll have to do them. Eventually, enough pain will be inflicted that the sane portion of the left will jettison the antifa types. Probably with a feeling of relief, I should add – do you think anyone really wants to be politically chained to people who wear masks and beat up people? But they’ll only unchain themselves from antifa if we essentially force them to…to give them a choice between going down to permanent defeat with antifa, or getting rid of antifa and making themselves acceptable to a broad electoral majority. Only this time, when they get back in, they’ll hopefully remember how bad it can be when you’re run over roughshod by the winners in the next round.

There can once again be general political balance in the United States – where the policy differences are relatively small and everyone can look at the other side and see reasonable people who merely disagree on the best way to shared goals. But that can’t be while one side is lawless, and is ever more enthralled to the far left radicals who simply hate the United States and all it stands for. Trump, consciously or not, is doing what we on the right should have done 40 years ago – and it is time for all of us who want a just, free and reasonable society to get on board.

CNN: ALL White People are Supremacists

Leo Pusateri18 Comments

OK, CNN–so we’re all ‘white supremacists’ now, are we?  Yep– according to CNN, all ‘ordinary’ white people share the original sin not just of slavery, but we are just born white supremacists.  We just can’t help it.

Well, then, let’s take a closer look at the concept of ‘white supremacy,’ shall we?
Contrary to the conservative mindset, which is set in the belief that all people are inherently good and capable of self-determination, regardless of race, it has long been the white liberal/progressive mindset that minorities are hapless and incompetent, and would barely have the pleasure of existence save for the oversight of their progressive intellectual betters.

In the mind of the progressive, minorities cannot independently rise above their station in life without progressive policies and the government programs that stem from them. Hell, in the mind of the progressive, minorities can’t even be counted on to be resourceful enough to do something simple, such as to obtain a driver’s license or an identification card to vote (unless a progressive government program were in place to assist them).

In other words, progressive policies have at their very core the premise that minorities are unable to fend for themselves, save for the good graces and ‘caring’ of those on the White Limousine Liberal plantation.

In summary, CNN, let me respond to your assertions by saying that IF there are any ‘natural’ supremacist sentiments and tendencies, it resides not in so-called ‘ordinary people.’ Rather, from Woodrow Wilson, to Margaret Sanger, to William Fulbright, history has demonstrated time and again that white supremacist tendencies lie squarely in the heart of the white limousine liberal progressive.

This latest accusation is nothing more than another stellar example of white liberal projection.

(h/t PJ Media)

Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

We really do need criminal justice reform. Robert Stinson spent 23 years in jail for a crime he did not commit: the evidence against him was some allegedly doctored-up bite mark evidence. Marcellus Williams has spent the last 16 years on death row: his scheduled execution the other day was stayed because new DNA evidence indicates he wasn’t the criminal…and his conviction seems to have been based mostly upon the testimony of his ex-girlfriend and a former cellmate, both of whom got cash rewards for their testimony.

Now, to be sure, I’m betting that the overwhelming majority of those in jail are in there for a good reason – but we’re getting more and more of these cases where it is clear there are at least serious questions as to guilt, and some which work out to a gigantic miscarriage of justice. We are supposed to be small-government Conservatives…and we simply must stop trusting the government when it sends someone up for life, or to death row. The problem lies in two things in my view:

1. We have far too many laws and thus it is possible to nail just about anyone with a crime, if you really want to.
2. Prosecutors who do convict an innocent person don’t pay any personal price for their actions.

We need a year or two of just repealing laws at the federal, State and local level. And then we need to find a mechanism to make sure that the prosecutors have skin in the game: that if they are saying, for sure, they know someone is guilty, they are putting their own financial resources, at the end of the day, where their assertions are. Fine a couple prosecutors half a million bucks for false conviction a couple times and the message will get out there. It is better that a guilty man go free than ten innocents wind up in jail, after all. Always err on the side of innocence and mercy.

A foreigner attends an American university for a year:

…During my ‘Welcome Week’, for example, I was presented with a choice of badges indicating my preferred gender pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘ze’?

The student in front of me, an Australian, found this hilarious: ‘Last time I checked, I was a girl.’ Her joke was met with stony silence…

Unless a kid wants to become a doctor or scientist, I highly recommend against sending them to college. Heck, I’m pretty certain if I had young kids, I wouldn’t even send them to middle or high school. Better they learn a trade than have to navigate the increasingly Orwellian world of higher education.

In the Great Statue Frenzy of 2017, the lunatics have vandalized a statue of St. Junipero Serra. Serra was one of them dirty, mean Catholics who went about converting the Natives to Christianity…so, he’s bad. They are also going after Columbus because, well, he got here…and, so, he’s bad, too.

A lunatic started shooting in Charleston today and Progressives were highly disappointed the shooter wasn’t a white guy.

A poll – which is probably an absurdity, given that it is, you know, a poll – shows that a plurality of Americans would be ok with banning Nazi speech in their local communities. For 1st Amendment purists, this is horrible…and, naturally, we should be wary of any attempt to limit speech. Except for one thing: I’m a Distributist. This means I am absolutely certain that Subsidiarity is the way to go…meaning the decisions on major issues should, as far as practical, be taken by the local communities. Ultimately, my view would be that the local community should decide – but not just on Nazi speech but what, broadly, goes on in the local community. The problem with San Francisco, after all, isn’t that it’s San Francisco…it is that the people who run the place want every other place to toe San Francisco’s line. I don’t give a darn, for the most part, what they do there: I just want them to not give a darn what we do here.

A federal law restricting something is one thing – a local law restricting it is quite another. The ultimate way forward for the United States – the way we keep ourselves a united, happy people – is to not just return to federalism, but to put federalism on steroids. An appeal to the federal power over a local law should be a rarity, and only taken up if the local action is an egregious violation of federal Constitutional provision. Federal cases deciding whether a local football team can have a team prayer before the game, for instance, are an absurdity. There is no real federal Constitutional issue which arises…no more than does a federal Constitutional issue arise when a more Progressive area of the country enacts a law providing for free birth control. It is just no one outside the local area’s business what happens in such a matter.

As it turns out, I don’t think that Mein Kampf should be available in my local libraries. But I also think that Das Kapital is not worthy of anyone’s consideration. And if I could convince, by free and fair argument, my fellow local citizens to enact a law removing said works from the library, it would be of no concern to anyone outside our local area. As long as people feel in their local communities that their ultimate destinies are in their own hands, they will feel largely content.

Trump and Afghanistan

Mark Noonan17 Comments

Just watched the speech and, really, it will take some time for everyone to figure out all the details, but I’ll say this: in war, there is no substitute for victory. Trump has set himself a stern test: Victory.

Now, can he get that? Yes, if you understand:

1. A victory doesn’t mean a liberal democracy in Afghanistan. It will be an authortarian regime with a thin veneer of democratic process. It will still be very Islamic and they’ll do a lot of things we don’t like.

2. A victory does mean an Afghan government in control of more than 90% of Afghan territory and able to defend itself without US ground forces.

3. A victory does mean that the Afghan government which emerges includes some elements currently aligned with the Taliban – in other words, people brought over to our side by the stick of massive military force and the carrot of being able to sit high on the hog if they come over in a timely manner.

4. In the geo-political game of that area, if the Afghan government is broadly aligned with us rather than, say, Iran or Pakistan, then that is victory.

I think this can be done – the gloves are off our military and they’ll have the ability to hit hard at the enemy. And if we do it convincingly enough, then the Afghans, themselves, will cease their whining about US military actions…they’ve only done that over the past years because they were worried we’d leave them in the lurch and at the tender mercies of the Taliban. Convince them that we’re the toughest guys and we will win, and all of a sudden everyone who wants to live will be on our side.

This is a harsh business – and there’s no solution which is 100% in line with what our American preferences would be. But we can get a victory – and then get out. We’ll see, now, if Trump can deliver.

Understanding the Progressive View

Mark Noonan33 Comments

You might recall I mentioned I am part of a Facebook group which discusses race, religion and politics and that I had kind of pulled away from it – partially because I’m writing the novel and have less time, but also because I felt there was not much to actually discuss: I was one guy of the off opinion and everyone else was pretty much on the other side. In the aftermath of Charlottesville, I was tagged in a post and so I kind of had to respond – I did, and I gained a great deal of insight, I think, into Progressive thinking on this matter.

When you see Progressives talk about the violence, always remember that in their view the “first punch” was thrown a long time ago – by the KKK, by the Confederacy, by Jim Crow, by the United States of America. In their mind, they are simply defending themselves against people who want them exterminated and they think that everyone who disagrees with their views are in the enemy camp. That is a very key point to remember: if you in any way, shape or form dissent from their Narrative, you are either an open or closet supporter of White Supremacy and thus are the enemy and a legitimate target for violence and intimidation. This is why Trump’s “all sides” comments enraged them so much – as well as his “there were fine people on both sides” comment. To the Progressives, their side was acting in self defense and all on their side are good, all on the other side are evil. To say otherwise means you are of the other side and thus are evil.

This makes it rather pointless to argue further with them. Any attempt to argue them out of their view just makes you, in their mind, a part of the enemy coalition out to destroy them. This is why – though I suspect they don’t fully realize it – people like Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger are engaged in a suicidal action. They are glorying in the plaudits of the left at the moment because they have attacked the prime target of leftwing ire: Donald Trump. But the bottom line is that once Trump is gone – removed or completes 8 years, makes no matter – then these people of the non-left who “stood up” to Trump will find themselves once again cast in the role of enemy unless they completely subscribe to the Progressive viewpoint.

We’re dealing in the Progressives with people who simply do not live in a mental world created by the facts of what has happened – either today, recently or in the distant past. They have created a world view which is a compendium of a few facts out of context and fleshed out with a series of completely false assertions. They can’t surrender even one part of it or the entire edifice will collapse and one thing I know from studying history is that the most difficult thing in the world is to convince a person they are wrong. Most people will simply dig in their heels and get ever more agitated in their defense of falsehood rather than simply admit they got it wrong. A very few can switch over, but even then it usually happens not as a result of argument, but because they, themselves, found out that the world view they held was false. It comes down to what Solzhenitsyn said – “you won’t believe it until they hiss at you, ‘you’re under arrest!'”. In other words, only events happening to a person will really change their minds (it is also that old joke: a Conservative is a Liberal who got mugged).

What our Progressive friends don’t know – but all of them other than those who climb to the top of the heap will eventually know – is that everyone is an enemy. This is because Progressives require an enemy – an enemy to shriek at and get agitated about and fight: there has to be, because if there isn’t, then calm reflection starts to kick in and the Progressive world view dissipates like a sour fog. I saw a comment a couple days ago where some parts of the Progressive movement were wondering if light skinned people of color should defer to dark skinned people of color. This is the logical progression…of course the mixed-race will eventually become the enemy, just as gay people who just want to be gay and mind their own business are now turning into Progressive enemies because they refuse to join in the “bake the cake, bigot” ideology.

The fate of our nation now turns on whether or not the Progressive ideology prevails or is pushed back to the margins. If the people in their majority are stampeded into agreeing with the Progressive world view, then our nation is done. It will turn into a Progressive tyranny where one enemy after another will be pitched on to the bonfire until all is ruined. If the people see through the Progressive con, then they will stand firm and slowly remove Progressives from their positions of power. Time will tell. I don’t know how it will go.

This Is How I See It

Mark Noonan36 Comments

Personally, I’ve figured that the statues honoring Confederates in public squares should be moved for some time now – can’t remember exactly when it occurred to me, but it was nigh to 20 years ago. Here’s why:

At the end of the day, the Confederate leadership decided to break up the nation because an election didn’t go their way – and it signaled that the long-held Southern dominance over the national Executive was coming to an end. Demographics decreed that: the population of the North was not only much larger, but was growing much faster. No matter how you sliced it, eventually the Southern leadership was going to be on the outside looking in. They didn’t want that – so they decided to set up shop for themselves. And that is what started the war – wars always being started by someone desiring something they don’t have title to. The reality is that if the South hadn’t gone out, Lincoln would have led a minority government in DC and probably would have failed for re-election. But the Southern leadership wanted their out so bad that they deliberately engineered the election of Lincoln by splitting the Democrat vote…and then used Lincoln’s election as their excuse for secession. Such people, quite simply, do not deserve places of honor in any American city.

Now, as for the soldiers – that is a bit of a different story. I always honor soldiers who do their duty – and can feel nothing but sympathy for those who stayed true even in a losing cause. But even then, people like Lee broke their sworn oath. You might have heard of the Oathkeepers groups out there…people who (correctly) hold that their oath to defend the Constitution doesn’t end the day they get out of the military. This is true – there was an expiration of my enlistment, but there was no expiration for my oath. I’m bound by it until the day I die. So was Lee – if he felt that he couldn’t fight against the South (as his duty commanded) then his only course of action was to refuse to fight, at all. He choose to break his oath and fight against that which he had sworn to defend. A statue honoring him is, in my view, just wrong.

To be sure, for the Left, this is all just Step One. Step Two is where they demand that statues and memorials to the Founders be torn down. The people causing the ruckus on the left don’t hate particular things about America, they hate the very idea of America. They view our history as nothing but a compendium of evil and they won’t be happy until all that is destroyed and some sort of Progressive Utopia (ie, a totalitarian dictatorship) is imposed on the United States. But just because the Left is lunatic, doesn’t mean we have to defend everything they attack. I think our best course of action, as Conservatives, is to urge that all Confederate memorials be moved to museum-like settings. Obviously, the national cemeteries must remain inviolate, but we also must not destroy the statues and memorials…but they can be moved and placed in a setting where they educate.

That said, I’m not about to be lectured on what is right and wrong by people who hold that abortion is a morally good thing. No Progressive who holds such views has any business telling me what I should or should not do. And I do not have to disavow racists because I am not a racist. I have nothing to do with them; they are not part of any political or social coalition I belong to. Just take a look at the emblems they carry and you know, instantly, that they are not part of any patriotic, Conservative, Christian, American grouping. They are largely pagans; they hate the United States as much as the Progressive lunatics do (you might see a couple American flags at their events, but pride of place is given to Confederate and Nazi symbols) – they, too, despise all that has come before (other than Confederate leaders, of course) and wish to impose upon the United States their own form of totalitarianism. Trump, as I noted before, was right to condemn “all sides”. Odd day in America when the only political leader who gets it right – who has the courage to speak what is obviously true – is President Trump. My estimation of him went up quite a lot with that comment.

I’m also not going to be lectured to by supposed Conservative “leaders” who say that I must do this or must do that or I’m betraying Conservatism. All I can say about modern American Conservatism is that it didn’t even manage to defund NPR – if this is “leadership” then I don’t want it. People who just lose gracefully to Progressives who shout “racist” at the drop of the hat hold none of my respect – I won’t follow them anywhere.

We are slouching towards Civil War, folks. People who know least – antifa and alt-right – are most sure about everything. They are setting up fights (helped by the left, mostly, because they feel it is tactically in their best interest) which, one day, might degenerate into mass violence. Junior-league Leninists (as I called them many years ago) are desperately calling forth a Franco to fight them.

Now, just why is this happening? Because they don’t know – and they don’t know because they weren’t taught anything relevant or true. I pointed out on Twitter today that both the antifa and alt-right people are products of the public schools and pop culture that the left has created and owns outright. We Conservatives had nothing to do with this – other than the negative effect of not really doing anything to stop it (largely because our so-called leaders were afraid of the fight). If kids aren’t taught the glory of America, then they will go for some other form of glory…people want a cause; take away the cause of making a more perfect Union, and some other cause will arise. Did you see the picture of those alt-right nimrods? They were clearly middle class white kids – children who have had it soft their whole lives. They’ve got nothing to really complain about…but, there they are, hating their own nation and their own people…and getting into battle with other middle class kids (who are also, in their large majority, white) who have had it soft, but also hate their own nation and their own people. Into the vacuum of not telling kids about Valley Forge, Shilo and Guadalcanal rushes the twin lunacies of Communism and Nazism. I read that one of the leaders of the white racist groups was, a few years back, a Occupy Wall Street activist…don’t know for sure if it is true, but it doesn’t surprise me in the least. These kids have nothing in their brains of merit, and so they are easy prey for anyone with a con to sell…and I can see them falling for different cons in succession.

As I see it, now, our job as Conservatives is to just push back with all our might against this – and against both sides. Don’t get drawn into the Progressive game of “condemn the racist” because no matter what we say on it, the left will still call us racists. Also don’t fall for twaddle about “don’t punch right” which the alt-right is trying to sell. Punch back (rhetorically, of course) against everyone who hates this nation, the reason for their hatred be damned. This is the greatest nation in human history – we are the good guys. We’ve fought Nazis and Communists before and we must keep doing so. The survival of our nation as a Republic is at stake over these next few years – we either push these fools back into the ash heap of history, or our nation is gone.

A Much Better Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

Legal Insurrection has a run-down on the Alabama special election to replace Jeff Sessions in the Senate. The Outsider Trump-like candidate Roy Moore is polling in the lead while the Establishment guy, Luther Strange, is coming up second. Winning the GOP primary is to win the Seat – but to win it outright, one of the candidates has to get 50%…if no one does, the top two go to a runoff. Oddly, Trump endorsed McConnell’s guy, Strange (who was appointed by the governor to fill Sessions’ seat) – and that endorsement was right before Trump started ripping into McConnell a bit over the Obamacare failure. Very odd – some are holding this as a mere Trump mistake in endorsing the Establishment guy and that we True Conservatives should push back and help the Outsider win…which would help Trump in the long run. I’m not so sure – mostly because I’m not so sure that Trump has it in for McConnell while I’m getting more and more convinced that Trump’s best friend on Capitol Hill might be McConnell.

McConnell is a realist – he knows that for better or worse, the fortunes of the GOP go with Trump. Trump wins, GOP wins – Trump loses, GOP loses. For someone like McConnell, it doesn’t matter what you think about Trump: all that matters is how to work Trump for the benefit of the GOP. And, of course, someone like McConnell has an extremely thick skin – he’s not about to go into a fuss about some bull-in-the-china-shop stuff from Trump. Furthermore, the “battle” between McConnell and Trump might be rather contrived – designed to allow Trump to continue to burnish his anti-Establishment street cred at no real cost while Trump and McConnell quietly lay the groundwork for legislative victory in the future…and in that, both McConnell and Trump won’t need ideologically committed warriors, but “party men” who will do what the leadership wants…and, so, Strange would be their guy. We’ll see how it comes out.

Serena Williams opined that she was excited about the prospect of being a mother as it would make her feel like “a real woman”. The left reacted to this as you would expect. I’ll have to defer to mothers out there about just how being a mother makes one feel – but I suspect that a gigantic amount of biology hangs upon the fact of being a mother. The basic characteristic of feminism is to deny what is distinctly feminine – as I noted in a very long quote from Chesterton the other day. There is a gigantic level of absurdity out there in feminism which holds that women can only be happy if they do things that men do…as if being a wife, mother and homemaker is somehow less than being a rent-seeking politician, or some such. Hate to break it to everyone, but being a mother is the absolute most important thing anyone can be – because if we don’t have mothers, we don’t have people.

Hillary was recently videotaped being normal- V the K comments:

…I get that except for a few embarrassingly deranged and obsessed dead-enders like Peter Daou and Lena Dunham, most people recognize that Hillary is over. It’s not about sticking another fork in the old bag, it’s… what … psychologically speaking… is her deal? First it was the ‘spontaneous meeting’ in the woods with a ‘neighbor’ who turned out to be a Hillary 2016 campaign worker. And now, it’s this ‘casual stroll’ in New York City carefully documented by a professional videographer.

First of all, what is the source of this psychological need to present herself as a normal person? Real, normal people don’t obsess over being perceived as real normal people. Second, why is the vehicle for her portraying herself as a normal person… carefully choreographed and stage-managed ‘spontaneous events?’ that are professionally documented and provided to the press…

My guess: she’s laying the groundwork for another run in 2020…yet another re-invention of her persona: in this case, the wise Elder Stateswoman who took her loss with grace and will now bless us with the opportunity of correcting our deplorable error in 2016.

The Nation says that the DNC hack was actually an inside job. One crucial bit of information – which does need to be checked, I don’t have anything like the knowledge to opine on it’s validity – is that the amount of data taken was too much to be done via a remote hack: that it would have to have been done by plugging into the computer in question. Anyone savvy on tech issues is free to advise. But I’ve long suspected it was an inside job – perhaps by some disgruntled Bernie supporters. What I’m really looking for is a way to tie all this together – the hack, the absurd Russia collusion story, that bogus dossier used to smear Trump (and perhaps as justification for a FISA warrant on his team), and Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ bizarre IT guy. We could be sitting on a scandal the likes of which DC has never seen – seriously: make Watergate pale in comparison.

Don Surber notes that last year’s election was the 9/11 of our Progressives – they’ll never get over it. And probably never cease to be rather insane about it.

Just a Quick Open Thread

Mark Noonan8 Comments

Had the grand-kids over for the week – so, too busy to post. Completely exhausted, now. Lots of fun!

Anyways…

Google is providing more proof that large corporations are inimical to everything the United States is supposed to stand for. If we Conservatives really want a Conservative America, we’re going to have to wrap our heads around the fact that large corporations are just as baleful (at least) as large government bureaucracies. Of course, large corporations are merely large bureaucracies. You think anyone is really in charge? That there is a fixed plan? No – its all ad hoc. Just a bunch of people rent-seeking and time-serving. The path of least resistance in a large corporate body (government or private) is to just go along with whomever is whining the loudest. As Progressives are professional whiners, all large bureaucracies will eventually become home and haven to Progressives. The worst of it is that, once captured, said bureaucracy becomes a means of enforcing Progressive ideas – regardless of how insane they are in terms of government policy or corporate profitability. All large corporations have to be broken up: make them smaller and make them compete to stay alive: that, right there, will lower the ability of Progressives to rule the roost. I’m not mad at Google – I’m mad there aren’t several other “Googles” out there to take immediate advantage of folly.

The crisis in North Korea is just endless proof of MacArthur’s statement – in war, there is no substitute for victory. This mess isn’t Trump’s – it is a mess 60 years in the making and entirely produced by the political cowardice of American leadership. I don’t know how this comes out, save that absurd fears of a nuclear exchange are just stupid. North Korea’s regime doesn’t want to commit suicide. They just want to saber rattle so they can get some bribes. We’ll see what comes out – but if Trump holds firm, you will see North Korea backing down at some point.

The official word is that Trump is losing his base. If so, then Trump is done for. I don’t see it – haven’t seen Trumpsters jumping ship, that is. We’ll see how things come out in the coming elections – that will be the only way we’ll know. But Trump is, by and large, doing what he said he’d do, or at least trying to…and the fact that the GOPe and the overall Establishment are trying to stop it is far more likely to cement Trump’s base of support than dissipate it.

That’s all for now – how you guys been doing?

Senator Flake’s Defense of the Establishment

Mark Noonan12 Comments

I want to dig rather deep into Senator Flake’s anti-Trump op-ed, because it perfectly encapsulates what I think is wrong with a certain species of Conservatism. His bits are in block quotes:

Who could blame the people who felt abandoned and ignored by the major parties for reaching in despair for a candidate who offered oversimplified answers to infinitely complex questions and managed to entertain them in the process? With hindsight, it is clear that we all but ensured the rise of Donald Trump.

Your first clue is “oversimplified”. You see, you might think that the problem of lax enforcement of our laws is, well, lax enforcement of our laws – but you’re wrong! It’s complex. Sure, all complexities tend to work in favor of letting Progressives get their way and/or get away with it, but it’s complex! Trust us!

I will let the liberals answer for their own sins in this regard. (There are many.) But we conservatives mocked Barack Obama’s failure to deliver on his pledge to change the tone in Washington even as we worked to assist with that failure. It was we conservatives who, upon Obama’s election, stated that our No. 1 priority was not advancing a conservative policy agenda but making Obama a one-term president—the corollary to this binary thinking being that his failure would be our success and the fortunes of the citizenry would presumably be sorted out in the meantime.

How dare we Republicans make it a goal that Obama be a one-term President! Oh, what’s that you say? The Democrats have pledged to try and make Trump a less-than-one-term-President? And have dreamed of doing a “Watergate” on every GOP President since Nixon? Who cares about that! That is one of their own sins in this regard! We GOPers are better than that – so, let’s not have any of this nonsense about trying to make a Democrat a one-term President.

It was we conservatives who were largely silent when the most egregious and sustained attacks on Obama’s legitimacy were leveled by marginal figures who would later be embraced and legitimized by far too many of us. It was we conservatives who rightly and robustly asserted our constitutional prerogatives as a co-equal branch of government when a Democrat was in the White House but who, despite solemn vows to do the same in the event of a Trump presidency, have maintained an unnerving silence as instability has ensued. To carry on in the spring of 2017 as if what was happening was anything approaching normalcy required a determined suspension of critical faculties. And tremendous powers of denial.

I’ve been sympathetic to this impulse to denial, as one doesn’t ever want to believe that the government of the United States has been made dysfunctional at the highest levels, especially by the actions of one’s own party. Michael Gerson, a con­servative columnist and former senior adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote, four months into the new presidency, “The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased,” and conservative institutions “with the blessings of a president … have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion.”

Just ignore all that bit about W being “selected, not elected”. Also, for goodness sake, please don’t remember all that “Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler” stuff. Pretty sure we need you to forget all that violent fantasies that Progressives entertained about President Bush, as well. And, if you really want to be cool, forget all those times you’ve been called a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot.

More important that we fear that “instability” – you see, when things aren’t going along just as they have, it is bad. Don’t ask why it’s bad: it just is. You are supposed to be shaking in your boots that Trump isn’t doing things like everyone else! Please be frighted. Pretty please? With sugar on top? If you won’t be frightened, then how am I to convince you to give power back to those you rejected last year?

For a conservative, that’s an awfully bitter pill to swallow. So as I layered in my defense mechanisms, I even found myself saying things like, “If I took the time to respond to every presiden­tial tweet, there would be little time for anything else.” Given the volume and velocity of tweets from both the Trump campaign and then the White House, this was certainly true. But it was also a monumental dodge. It would be like Noah saying, “If I spent all my time obsessing about the coming flood, there would be little time for anything else.” At a certain point, if one is being honest, the flood becomes the thing that is most worthy of attention. At a certain point, it might be time to build an ark.

This is far more revealing than Flake meant, I’m sure. They hate that Trump tweets. They say they hate it because it is vulgar and chaotic – but what they really hate is that Trump is able to speak directly to the people. This bothers them because they know it signals and end on the Establishment monopoly on forming the American mind. It doubly bothers them that they know their Progressive buddies who run Twitter can’t afford to shut Trump down.

Under our Constitution, there simply are not that many people who are in a position to do something about an executive branch in chaos. As the first branch of government (Article I), the Congress was designed expressly to assert itself at just such moments. It is what we talk about when we talk about “checks and balances.” Too often, we observe the unfolding drama along with the rest of the country, passively, all but saying, “Someone should do something!” without seeming to realize that that someone is us. And so, that unnerving silence in the face of an erratic executive branch is an abdication, and those in positions of leadership bear particular responsibility.

Apparently, being erratic is a crisis? You see how he’s doing this? He’s piggy-backing the idea of impeachment on to the notion that, somehow, Trump is just bad. He hasn’t broken any laws; he hasn’t done any un-Constitutional acts (you know, like using the IRS to attack his opponents – say, Senator Flake, did you urge the impeachment of President Obama over that “erratic” action?); but he’s got to go! Once again: please be afraid!

There was a time when the leadership of the Congress from both parties felt an institutional loyalty that would frequently create bonds across party lines in defense of congressional prerogatives in a unified front against the White House, regardless of the president’s party. We do not have to go very far back to identify these exemplars—the Bob Doles and Howard Bakers and Richard Lugars of the Senate. Vigorous partisans, yes, but even more important, principled constitutional conservatives whose primary interest was in governing and making America truly great.

Funny how that time of institutional loyalty always worked out to a Republican President being done in or at least harmed by his fellow Republicans. Where were the Democrats who went out to advise President Clinton that his perjury had forfeited his ability to be President? A Democrat who even made a peep about Obama’s pen-and-phone actions? The whole concept of institutional loyalty is bull – and Senator Flake knows it. There should be institutional loyalty, but there isn’t; and never really has been. We have partisan elections to determine which partisan policies we’ll pursue – and if the Congress and the White House are of the same party, they are just going to go on with it. The only difference is that there are always Republicans who are willing to undermine the evident will of the American people in creating either a Republican Congress and/or a Republican White House. Thanks, Senator! We definitely gave you our votes and campaign cash so that you could cut us off at the knees!

But then the period of collapse and dysfunction set in, amplified by the internet and our growing sense of alienation from each other, and we lost our way and began to rationalize away our principles in the process. But where does such capitulation take us? If by 2017 the conservative bargain was to go along for the very bumpy ride because with congressional hegemony and the White House we had the numbers to achieve some long-held policy goals—even as we put at risk our institutions and our values—then it was a very real question whether any such policy victories wouldn’t be Pyrrhic ones. If this was our Faustian bargain, then it was not worth it. If ultimately our principles were so malleable as to no longer be principles, then what was the point of political victories in the first place?

The “period of collapse” started on January 20th – that is when some of us on the right decided, “you know, if the Democrats are going to play by certain rules which unfairly advantage Democrats, so will we”. We hear much of Conservative “principles”, but I’d like to know what set of Conservative principles has kept Planned Parenthood at the public trough for decades, even though we’ve often had the power to de-fund it? What got our higher education system to become a bastion of leftist tyranny against Conservatism without Senator Flake doing anything about it? You know, a Congressional majority has many way of applying pressure, Senator – why is no pressure ever put against Progressives advancing their cause? Why do your vaunted Conservative principles always work towards hamstringing our side, not theirs?

Meanwhile, the strange specter of an American president’s seeming affection for strongmen and authoritarians created such a cognitive dissonance among my generation of conservatives—who had come of age under existential threat from the Soviet Union—that it was almost impossible to believe. Even as our own government was documenting a con­certed attack against our democratic processes by an enemy foreign power, our own White House was rejecting the authority of its own intelligence agencies, disclaiming their findings as a Democratic ruse and a hoax. Conduct that would have had conservatives up in arms had it been exhibited by our political opponents now had us dumbstruck.

It was then that I was compelled back to Senator Goldwater’s book, to a chapter entitled “The Soviet Menace.” Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, this part of Goldwater’s critique had seemed particularly anachronistic. The lesson here is that nothing is gone forever, especially when it comes to the devouring ambition of despotic men. As Goldwater wrote in that chapter:

Our forebears knew that “keeping a Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors; they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with independence.

The election was hacked! I had no idea that any Republican Senator was subscribing to the Russia Collusion twaddle, but here it is. I don’t know if Flake believed this and thus became anti-Trump or if he was anti-Trump and thus believed it out of a general desire that Trump be terrible. It doesn’t matter. It’s a hoax; a myth; something that doesn’t exist. But the anti-Trump people are, seemingly, going to run with it. As for having affection for strongmen…an argument can be made to not have relations with dictatorial regimes. That does include Russia – but it also includes China. Funny how I never seem to hear one of these “principled” Conservatives demanding we break it off with China…even though China is vastly more powerful than Russia and is clearly preparing a military force designed to fight us. And you know why they won’t go after China: Corporate America is making too much money in China.

So, where should Republicans go from here? First, we shouldn’t hesitate to speak out if the president “plays to the base” in ways that damage the Republican Party’s ability to grow and speak to a larger audience. Second, Republicans need to take the long view when it comes to issues like free trade: Populist and protectionist policies might play well in the short term, but they handicap the country in the long term. Third, Republicans need to stand up for institutions and prerogatives, like the Senate filibuster, that have served us well for more than two centuries.

We have taken our “institutions conducive to freedom,” as Goldwater put it, for granted as we have engaged in one of the more reckless periods of politics in our history. In 2017, we seem to have lost our appreciation for just how hard won and vulnerable those institutions are.

“Plays to the base” is Establishment-speak for “talks about issues the yokels care about”. “Grow and speak to a larger audience” means, “make pathetic gestures in favor of Progressive policies in the hope that it’ll get me a good mention in the MSM”.

And, of course, he’s in favor of retaining the filibuster – because it helps Democrats to hamstring the GOP. That he knows full well Democrats will dispense with it at the first opportunity is just of no matter to people like Senator Flake. He doesn’t care about things like that – far more important to a “Conservative” like Flake is that things remain as they are…with Progressive policies ruling the roost; with corporate taxes kept low; with plenty of cheap labor for the Chamber of Commerce donors…and with a docile GOP base worked up to vote GOP every couple years, but never angry that the GOP fails to deliver.

I really have done with all that. Trump isn’t a threat to the United States – Senator Flake is. Flake is far more polite than Trump, but Flake’s politeness is masking the utter destruction of the United States of America. If we Conservatives/Republicans abandon Trump and go along with the likes of Senator Flake, all we’ll see is the slow imposition of a totally Progressive ideology – in other words, the end of our Republic because Progressives aren’t actually in favor of freedom (they have a different concept of freedom from us – to them, freedom is about not having want; for us, it is about not having masters).

I’ve got no hostility towards Flake. He is who he is – he is a product of the Establishment, defending the Establishment. The fact that he’s Republican rather than Democrat is really no more than a reflection of the GOP’s electoral advantage in Arizona. Had Flake been from, say, Oregon then he’d pretty much be the same…but he’d be a Democrat Senator from Oregon and in spite of this or that particular view, would mostly be wedded to the idea of keeping things as they are. We voted for Trump to end that – whether the prime motivation was outright support or just a desire to keep Hillary out, the thing about it all was a rejection of things as they are. We still don’t know if Trump can deliver, but rely on it that if he fails, we’re still not going back to Senator Flake, hat in hand, to ask him to return us to business as usual. For fifty years we waited for Senator Flake’s sort to take the power we gave them and do something we wanted – they couldn’t even de-fund NPR. Forget it, Senator: we’re done with you. Your op-ed will impress your fellow Never Trump people and get you a pat on the head from the MSM. Congratulations. Hope you like it.