War

Mark Noonan34 Comments

With Ukraine in the news I’ve been pondering a lot about our general view of the world. One thing that has been striking a jarring note for me is the assumption that we bear some sort of responsibility for Ukraine. That Ukraine as an independent nation is something that we must secure.

Why?

To be sure, some say that in Ukraine’s deal to give up nuclear weapons, we pledged ourselves to Ukraine’s defense. But, we really didn’t: we pledged to rush right off to the UN if Ukraine was attacked – a UN which, of course, has a Russian veto and so the whole thing was quite toothless from the get-go. But even supposing we had an agreement to come to Ukraine’s defense, does this then relieve Ukraine from the obligation to defend herself?

Seems to me that if I were a Ukrainian patriot with a neighbor like Russia, I’d put a high priority on national defense. I realize that Ukraine is poor, but the Israelis were dirt poor in the 1950’s and their first priority was a military second to none because they had hostile neighbors who could attack at any moment. A Ukraine filled with people committed to the Ukrainian national ideal would have a very powerful army, thickly layered defenses and a reserve force made up of the entire adult population in arms. You know – be so well armed that even a successful foreign invasion would drown in blood. Do that, and the chances of that foreign attack diminish remarkably.

Ukraine’s active military is a little more than 200,000. Reserves about 250,000. To defend 230,000 square miles and 41 million people. That’s not a lot. That’s not nearly what you need. It isn’t nearly what you’d have if the Ukranian people really gave a damn. To give you a comparison, when Israel was attacked in 1973, out of an Israeli population of about 3 million, the Israelis mobilized about 400,000. That’s 13 percent. That can’t be sustained for long (your civil economy starts to collapse), but when your life is on the line, you do it. You’d think that 41 million Ukrainians could have 4 million ready to mobilize in a life-and-death emergency. And they would, if Ukrainians really cared – because Russia is right next door and the President of Russia believes that Ukraine is an integral part of Russia.

And if the Ukrainians won’t do it – won’t even show willing to do it – why in heck does anyone else have to care? Because wars of aggression are wrong? Well, yes they are – nobody ever has a moral case for starting a war, or setting things up so that the only way out is for someone to start shooting. But lots of things are wrong – the way some Arab countries treat women is wrong. What China is doing o the Uyghurs is wrong. The slave trade in Africa is wrong. The drug lords running rampant in Mexico and Central America are wrong. Lots of things are wrong which war, successfully prosecuted by good guys, could set right. But do you want to?

Who wants kids from Ohio and Alabama to head off to the Donbas to keep the Russians out of lands largely populated by ethnic Russians? Or send them off to Xinjiang to liberate the Uyghurs from China? Or even clear out the drug lords from Ciudad Juarez? If anything, I’d rather help the Mexicans dispose of the cartels – but before I hazard American blood on anything, I’d like to know for certain why we’re doing it and what we get out of it.

The first thing to keep in mind about the world is that it isn’t neat and tidy. There isn’t a completely right answer in purely human affairs. Often, there’s just a least-bad answer. The unification of Italy and Germany into nation-States was an utter disaster for the world and, most especially, Italy and Germany. The freeing of the peoples of the Austrian Empire was a disaster for the peoples of the Austrian Empire. I mean, I dig that Poles didn’t like officious Austrian overlords (who would?) but the officious Austrians kept a cavalry barracks at Oświęcim, not a death camp at Auschwitz. I guess what I’m saying here is think carefully about what you want before you act.

What I want, first and foremost, is a free and independent United States. If I’ve got that, then I am very satisfied with the world. Naturally, I understand that the United States cannot live in isolation from the world. People and trade flow around and ambitious people with wicked minds are here, there and everywhere. I do have to keep an eye on things. I will, at times, be forced to fight. But when I fight and how I fight must refer back to my first principle: a free and independent United States.

Now, as I consider Ukraine I note that it was firmly under Russian rule from 1776 until 1917 and then, again, from 1921 until 1991. At no time during those periods was Russian rule in Ukraine a threat to American freedom and independence. It just wasn’t. Sure, from a geopolitical standpoint it would have been advantageous to the US to have an independent Ukraine all through the Cold War…but it wasn’t a necessity as proved by the fact that all through the Cold War we didn’t have an independent Ukraine. If Russian rule is reimposed in Ukraine, what ill effect will this have on American freedom and independence? I can’t see any.

“But Russia might go on and attack more!”

They might. Baltic States, Poland. On and On. I note that Poland was under Russian rule from 1791 to 1918 with no ill effect on American freedom and independence. I’m very sympathetic to the Poles as they have put up with a lot. But does my sympathy for Poland extend to sending American kids to die there? Make your case, if you’ve got one. I can’t. I could not look an American kid in the eye and tell him that his death along the Bug River will keep America free and independent. I couldn’t say it because it wouldn’t be true.

Don’t get me wrong, there can be existential, global threats. Communism was such, as was Nazism. They both proposed the whole world as their jurisdiction. Fantastic as it sounds, the USSR considered the American Communist Party as the legitimate American government and Hitler had named Goebbles to be Gauleiter of America. Fighting such things anywhere is what you have to do because if they win anywhere, they are step closer to overthrowing American independence and freedom. But Putin is no Hitler or Stalin. He does not represent a global ideology at permanent war with all dissenters. He may be a bastard twenty different ways, but he’s not an existential threat.

I agree there are non-existential threats which still must be confronted. Radical Islam. Chinese imperialism. And even a bit of Russia’s aggression are causes of concern, sometimes grave concern, which could make fighting them necessary. While I don’t think Ukraine rises to such a level, I do hold that Russian meddling in the United States is a problem. But far more than Russian meddling I find the threat in Chinese and Islamist meddling to be a huge threat – especially given how much money Islamists and Chinese have to bribe Americans to betray their own.

In wanting to contend with such threats, I can agree to enter into mutual defense pacts with other nations. I can agree to military action and even full scale war. I do believe that if China attacked Taiwan, that is worth us going to war over – because of China’s meddling in the United States such a conflict, successfully concluded by China, would simply put us in a worse position vis a vis China and so allow them to interfere in our internal affairs even more.

It would, naturally, be to Taiwan’s advantage to accept our aid against China. If we win, they win. But even in such a clear cut case of fighting for American interests, I still want a clear goal and a clear payoff for our expenditure of treasure and blood. We can’t go out to bleed and die just to help – we have to be compensated for our efforts.

Suppose we had to go to war with China. Fine. It would be a years long and very expensive war in blood and treasure. I believe that even as ruined as we are right now, we would prevail in the war (China isn’t nearly as powerful as advertised). And that would be good. But we can’t do it like we did after WWII. That was a horrendous mistake: we helped our defeated enemies return to the world of competition with us. No. No, no, NO!. They had to pay. Heck, that war cost so much they should still be paying. We go to war with China and win, then for a century China should be paying us.

I’m deadly seriously here – after a war with China, I’d want every bit of gold and silver and art turned over to us and a 10% tax on China’s GDP for a century paid to us. Maybe even take some land from them: move the Chinese out and Americans in. The main thing is that they pay us for putting us through the trouble. We do not want to own the world. We do not want the world to do what we say. Yeah, maybe from mid-century on we’ve had some jerks who dreamed of such, but that wasn’t the American people. We just wanted to be left alone to hold our own. My view is that if you do things to us which force us to go fight you, then you’re going to pay. You’re not just going to lose the war, you’re going to be humiliated and then forced to work very hard to send money to us for a very long time.

It is time we got out of the dream world. All this UN, NATO, treaties and arms limitation garbage since WWII has been the answer provided by dimwits who never understood the world. The world is a real place. People do things in it. Good and bad. We can’t cure all bad and we don’t have the right to, anyway. Our primary duty is to look after ourselves – to make only temporary alliances at need, to make sure they are reciprocal (our blood to defend them, their blood to defend us) and when we defeat an enemy we don’t occupy and rebuild them…but we do make them pay. Through the nose. With usury. In blood and treasure.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

The provincial government of Alberta is dropping the Covid restrictions. Seems like pressure works. Though, have a care: the announcement was rather surly and you can bet that if they think they can reimpose the restrictions, they will. And this doesn’t do anything to stop federal mandates in Canada.

The Army is working on Climate Change. We’re doomed.

Ron DeSantis has this to say about Rogan – he shouldn’t have apologized. Looks like someone combed through old Rogan podcasts and found that he said The Bad Words. Rogan apologized and that had the normal result: renewed calls to cancel his show. Never give in to the mob.

There’s a restaurant in NYC which is Castro-Che themed. I know you’re not surprised about that. Here’s the surprising bit: the owners decided to expand to new territory. Specifically, they decided to open a place up in Miami.

New Yorkers just don’t get out much, do they?:

I have a semi-viral Tweet. As of this moment about 2,900 retweets and more than 12,000 likes. This is many orders of magnitude more reaction than I normally get. Seems that the Washington Post printed an article with the title – and I’m not kidding – ACLU Challenges Youngkin Order Mandating Choice on School Masks. Emphsis added. My only comment was that it belonged in a museum…some weird, Orwellian museum. I just couldn’t imagine that someone could write that. These people are tying themselves into pretzels trying to keep up the Narrative. Later I found an article claiming that we on the right are weaponizing freedom to destroy Democracy. Are they stupid, or do they think we are?

ACAB

Mark Noonan16 Comments

You’ve seen that. Especially in 2020 you saw it scrawled everywhere when a BLM/Antifa riot took place. If by some chance you still don’t know what it means:

All Cops Are Bastards.

This is not true and grossly unfair. But we do have a problem, folks.

Those of you of a certain age remember The World at War: A BBC series about WWII and they devoted one episode specifically to the Holocaust. I recall that one of the people interviewed was a former camp guard who described how horrified he was when he first witnessed the gassing of Jews. What the story doesn’t go on to do is tell you that the man fled his post and started an anti-Nazi resistance. That story isn’t told because it didn’t happen. As the man was told by a more experienced hand, eventually you just get used to it. Very likely, the horrified young man got used to it. Maybe later he came to regret it. Maybe he regretted it all along. But the most important thing for the Nazi regime is that he went ahead and did it.

Now, why that particular Fritz became a camp guard, we don’t know. I suspect a lot of them joined the SS-Totenkopfverbande because it kept them out of the Army or the Waffen SS (though the Nazis did cull a division of soldiers out of the camp guards). And, once in, there were various pressures on them – especially anyone who didn’t immediately get enthusiastic about the work (some did: being such a guard drawing out latent sadistic streaks). You could, of course, get in simple trouble is you disobeyed. You could lose your job. Lose your pension. Find it hard to obtain other employment. So, almost all of them just went along with it. There are only few tales of concentration camp guards being at all kindly (hardly any tales of Soviet camp guards, either, and for the exact same reasons). But the main thing to keep in mind is that they weren’t drawn from the pool of wicked Germans – they were drawn from Germans, as such. They were just regular folks. People you wouldn’t look twice at.

I bring this up because a little before I sat down, word came out that the Canadian police are starting to crack down on the truck protestors. We don’t know how it will come out – maybe the truckers will still prevail. I have my doubts: they have no guns. There is nothing, that is, to scare the Canadian government with. The officials of government won’t go short of anything – they can wait out the truckers who will eventually have to go back to work to feed their families. And if the truckers do break, you can rely on it that they’ll be slandered and hounded by government.

But the real problem is the police. If there is a crackdown, the cops have to do it…and early reports indicate that the police are obeying orders. I’m sure all of them took some oath somewhere along the line where they pledged to defend the rights of Canadians. But what is that compared to the possibility of getting in trouble? Of losing your job or pension? Sure, maybe you’re horrified at it all – and maybe you even hold back and don’t make any arrests yourself…but you don’t stop it. Just like the Germans of yore, they’ll just go along with it, which works out to de-facto approval and assistance to oppression.

I’ve long had my doubts about our own police – especially the blue city police. Ever since Eric Garner was killed by the cops for selling “loosies” my understanding of the police has altered. I used to be Back the Blue. But am I supposed to back a blue which allows itself to be turned into tax collectors for upper class NYC busybodies who don’t want the poors to smoke? “The law says”. Sure it does. But you’re not supposed to care what an unjust law says. In the Uniform Code of Military Justice is it spelled out: no member of the armed forces is obligated to obey an unlawful order. This was inserted into US military law after WWII precisely to remove “I was only obeying orders” as an excuse for crime. Any cop who can’t or won’t see that putting a choke hold on a guy for selling untaxed cigarettes is an unlawful order isn’t worthy of being in any police force. Seriously: at most they should have ticketed the guy and moved on. But even that is ridiculous – real police who take an oath to defend the people would have told their superiors to get stuffed. They simply would not have enforced a stupid tax law about cigarettes.

But then you might lose your promotion, your job, your pension. You might get into legal trouble yourself. See the problem?

Any official organization has this fundamental weakness: those employed by it are at the mercy of those running the government. And we know what sort of people gravitate to government: the power mad and the corrupt. This is not to say that everyone in elective office is a psychopath, but a huge number of them are and all of them sat down one day and said to themselves, “you know who would be best to lead? Me!!!”: that right there is proof of at least a partially unbalanced mind. No fully sane person would ever think themselves fit to lead. So, what you’ve got in government agencies – all of them – are people who’s livelihood is dependent upon pleasing people who have a high propensity to lunacy. This is not a good thing.

And, really, its been in front of us all along. Think about how many police scandals you’ve heard of in your life. Military scandals. Bureaucratic scandals. People taking and giving bribes. Committing and covering up crimes. Giving special deals to political cronies. On and on it goes: because the people who actually work the levers of power are beholden to people who are often insane and just as often corrupt to the bone. And, of course, to rise to the top of the bureaucratic structure, you proved ages before that you play ball – that you know who is to be allowed to skate, what corrupt deals you are to turn a blind eye to.

Our problem is that these sorts of people – weak willed subordinates with police power, corrupted senior officials and lunatic/thief elected officials – have at their disposal local law enforcement, State law enforcement, the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, Homeland Security…on and on and on like that. They have the power to snoop, harass, arrest. To not use these powers against regular folks who question them they’d have to be positively holy. How many Saints do you think work for our government at any given time? The temptation to abuse power is enormous, the fear of crossing it immense.

Think about what they are doing to the 1/6 detainees. Think about that poor SOB they arrested after Benghazi. Think about the number of innocent people who have been sentenced even to death by corrupt law enforcement officials. And then add to this an MSM which is a mere propaganda arm of this class of people – in other words, no matter how wicked they are, they can rely on the MSM to cover it up, at least as long as possible, and then downplay it if it happens to come out. You start thinking of yourself as brilliant and bulletproof in that situation.

And, so: ACAB.

An unfair accusation in the specific sense, but all too apt in the general. If we were confident that even 60 percent of the police wouldn’t obey an unlawful order, we’d be ok. But how many of us have that level of confidence? Remember we used to think the FBI was made up of stalwart patriots who were ruled over by corrupt political fools…but, if so, where are the FBI agents resigning over the corruption at the top? Coming forward to spill the beans not against the latest target of Ruling Class ire, but spilling it about those inside the FBI who are corrupt? It doesn’t happen. And, sure, I’ll bet when a fresh-faced FBI agent first comes across the garbage he’s horrified…but, you can get used to anything after a while. If you don’t join in the corruption then you ignore it, take on protective coloring, fade into the background and simply don’t look at the dirt.

Our Progressive friend’s battle cry was “Defund the Police”. What they really meant by that – most police being controlled by Progressives – was “move cop money to this or that grift I’ve got going”. Our cry must be “Abolish the Police.” We need to entirely rethink how laws get enforced and how public safety is maintained. One thing certain is that we know we can’t afford a large, professional, permanent law enforcement bureaucracy. It is incompatible with morality and liberty.

I’m not entirely sure how we do this, but my preliminary thought is to place primary law enforcement on elected Sheriffs and city Marshals. Elected, never appointed. Term limited. With only a small professional staff. Oregon is one of the least policed States with approximately 1.6 copes per thousand residents. I think we’re going to have to reduce that by a factor of about ten. So, instead of New York State having a total of 62,000 copes, make it 6,200 full time, paid professional police. The people who will be charged with investigating crimes more than preventing crime – the preventing, I think, is going to have to be something we, the people do. Some sort of volunteer or part-time citizens militia which patrols its own local communities (seriously: me and a few other guys from my development here in Las Vegas take it in turn to patrol nightly): it is the patrols which keeps crime at bay, anyways. The thought of a cop a phone call and five miles away doesn’t deter a burglar nearly as much as shotgun-armed Joe Blow passing by that house every few minutes while he patrols his neighborhood. And you’d still have a small, professional police force to provide backup…so if Joe Blow sees a guy breaking in and feels he can’t take them, he’d call for police backup.

Whatever we do, we can’t continue as we have. Our lives and liberties are at too high a risk under the current system. New times call for new thinking – and Back the Blue is fully obsolete.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

One of the sure signs of an impending political disaster for a political party is a series of articles explaining why in spite of everything going to heck in a hand basket, this time everything will be different. Getting a lot of these articles about the Democrats. The best so far was one which asserted that even in an R+1 environment, the Democrats can hold the House. Its like they’re ignoring that the GOP only needs a net gain of 6 to take the House. If it was D+4 this GOP takeover is likely to happen…but with Pudding Brain sitting at around 42% in the polling aggregates, the best outcome for the Democrats right now is a net loss of about 30.

And the really curious thing is that the Democrats don’t seem to fully realize what’s coming for them – I mean the stalwarts and the pundits. The Democrat leadership does, its why we’re up to something like 28 or 29 House Democrats calling it quits: who wants to fight a hard battle only to wind up in a very powerless House minority in 2023? And that minority gets more powerless all the time – both parties guilty (though Democrats far more guilty) of reducing the minority’s ability to affect legislation. And now in 2023 will come the tit for tat removal of Democrats from committees. I really can’t explain the Democrats on this – with a razor thin majority, the time was to try to co-opt at least some GOPers…nothing doing: it has been all hard left. Could be, of course, that with the narrow majority the far Left Democrats are insisting and Nancy really can’t do anything else.

We’ll see how it comes out – but I don’t think Democrats can talk their way out of bare shelves and high gas prices.

We did some sort of raid into Syria. Supposedly to kill some terrorist mastermind – they say we got him, and also got some kids. I think the bad guys are making sure they’re always around kids and other non-combatants. Seems to me that we should pay a hitman to take these guys out – less expensive and less chance of killing kids when we do it. It is probably illegal for us to do that – but Congress has the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal (though some treaties we’ve engaged in limit that), and I think we should go that route – even if it means denouncing some treaties. Let our intel agencies name the guys we want dead, put a price on it and then grant a Letter of Marque to anyone who wants to give it a shot – bring us proof the target is dead, collect the money. You’re on your own – get caught or killed, nothing will be done for you. Plenty of people would take us up on the offer.

Facebook is losing users. It is the most irritating social media platform I’m on. I only retain my account because it allows me to keep track of family and friends. But I have been suspended for the most mild political jokes posted. And my account is small, which means some narc who knows me – or knows someone who knows me – is monitoring my posts and reporting me. Others are even more irritated than I am. Facebook has a choice: be a platform which allows people to talk, or die. Personally, I think they’re going to die: like the MSM, their cultural imperatives are such that they can’t change.

Think of Joe Rogan: he gets 11 million views for his podcast (I’ve never listened to it, myself). This is more than the top three cable news programs combined (all of which are on Fox). Listening to people who talk about him, he seems a left-of-center guy who just invites people on who he thinks have something interesting to say – you know, keep the show topical and interesting to draw and retain an audience. The rather “no duh” media model. All the MSM has to do to restore its viewership is do the same thing – stop being DNC lapdogs and just talk openly about things people might want to hear. Presto: eyeballs on screens. But they can’t seem to do it – they’ve gone with their usual method: trying to get Rogan banned. They managed to snooker (very easily, because they’re stupid) some aged, has-been recording artists to pull their music from Spotify (which carries Rogan) with a demand that Rogan goes, or they go. The funniest bit about this is David Crosby who made a fuss after Neil Young did…but it seems that neither Crosby nor Young own their music rights, having sold them in the past (presumptively after blowing all their money). But even if they could get their stuff off, Spotify is telling them to take a leap – Rogan is getting 11 million hits a show…Crosby is probably getting a few thousand hits a month.

Canadians have had it with Trudeau’s Covid restrictions and massive protests by Truckers are causing all sorts of trouble for the Canadian Ruling Class. With the workers uniting to resist oppression, the Socialists know what to do: take down the Truckers Go Fun Me account.

Meanwhile, Team Pudding Brain put out its latest Covid plan and it says…to pretty much keep on doing what we’re doing: useless mask and vaccine mandates. These mandates will only be followed by the Democrat governors already following them…GOP governors will continue to ignore them. The math here is very strange: to be sure, a segment of the population is still terrified of Covid. This is the Democrat base – especially white, upper class college educated females. You’ll still find them talking about being triple vaxxed and never stirring from home except at great need. But, seriously, how big a political constituency is this? It can’t be more than 15% of the population, tops. Everyone else is really getting rather done with it: as has been pointed out, if masks worked, then they would have worked a long time ago. After two years of wearing a face diaper everywhere if we still have Covid, then we ain’t getting rid of it. All the mandates do is please the cowardly and piss everyone else off.

And that is before you add in the hypocrisy – mask mandated California is about to host a maskless Super Bowl. You know, we can all see this – and see the politicians not wearing a mask (the LA Mayor was caught without one and seriously tried to sell us “I held my breath as I took the picture”). We know its all BS. We can’t imagine why some people are still living in a world where we have to “fight Covid”…and my bet is that when vote-counting time comes around, the number of people who will punish mandates will vastly exceed those thankful for them.

Freedom Must Destroy Tyranny

Mark Noonan39 Comments

The word anti-fascist was coined by Soviet propaganda in the 1930’s. The idea behind it was to convince everyone to join with the Communists against the Fascists. It was a clever bit of phrasing. What decent person, after all, would refuse to be anti-fascist? It started suckering people immediately and continues to do so to the present moment. But whenever anyone on the Left says something, you always have to look very carefully at it – what they really mean by it. What is most emphatically not meant by anti-fascist is “pro-freedom” or “pro-democracy”. Wouldn’t really work, now would it? No sane person could look at the Soviet Union and say that was the home of freedom and democracy. But they were anti-fascist! Very much so. Much like one criminal gang is opposed to another criminal gang.

To me, it was this phrase – along with the various “popular front” movements in Europe at the same time (which was no more than anti-fascism put into practice) – that was the start of the real Marxist infiltration of Western society. To be sure, the Marxists had been around and both the Labour Party in Britain and the Social Democrat Party in Germany paid lip service to Marxist ideology but there was no real purchase in the social organism for Marxist ideology. It was outside; alien. Your basic Marxist in the West prior to the mid-1930’s was a political crank fighting tedious internal battles over Party orthodoxy and producing books and magazines hardly anyone ever read. But anti-fascism allowed entry: the Marxists could now get together with all the other anti-fascists and start to turn any group joining the anti-fascist movement towards Marxism. It was a gigantic mistake.

It is never good enough to merely state what you are against. Stating you are against a Fascist or Nazi government is actually fairly meaningless unless you then state what you are for. The Marxists got around this issue by asserting the threat of Fascism and Nazism was so dire that nobody should bother with anything other than opposing them. They were taken at their word – naturally enough, the Marxists didn’t limit their efforts to fighting fascism: they took the opportunity to expand their own power and influence. You can understand why people fell for this. But, the 1930’s were a long time ago: it is time to reassess.

What we are for is freedom. But even in this we have to be specific. The Left has moved so far into the fabric of our society that the meaning of the word “freedom” has become unclear. Deliberately so, of course. So, too, with words like “justice” and “democracy”. You and I of the Right know what we mean but at lot of regular folks are unclear on the words – because the waters have been muddied. A person of the Left holds that freedom means freedom from lack. That justice means the oppressed get their pound of flesh. That democracy means only the Left can win. We have to state it clearly: we are for the freedom of the individual to live life as they see fit; that justice means a person gets the benefit or punishment they have earned; that democracy means the people ruling themselves.

But here’s the problem: how can be propagate our ideas? The Left – the Marxists – have gained control of all the levers of power and nearly the entire public square. The Left controls the media, the schools, the NGOs, the bureaucracy, the corporations. Being that they are of the Left, they use these tools to broadcast their lies endlessly into the minds of the people – and only at times, when really pressed to it, do the people rebel against this. The truckers in Canada are showing that the people can be pushed too far…but while we’ve watched in delight as these protests have developed, it must be noted that for the most part the media isn’t covering it. When they do, it is to downplay the size of the protest and to hint darkly that they are inspired by racists or agents of foreign powers. Eventually, the truckers will have to go home…and when they do, all that will be left in the public square is the lies the Left will say about them. We’re really up against it.

But I also think we can win. But to do so will require us to do some things which many will find distasteful. It will require a major shift in how we think and what policies we pursue. Because we’re not just trying to win an election – we’re trying to win an ideological battle. More accurately, we’re trying to carry out a counter-revolution. We lost: understand that. The USSR fell in 1991 but the battle against Marxist ideology was lost, at the latest, by 1975. We had allowed it to ooze through all our institutions and capture them. They didn’t have total control (they still don’t) but by 1975 they were so firmly entrenched in power they were able to control policy even when officially not in power and they were able to ensure their views were increasingly the only views in the public square. That even when we debated, we argued on their terms. This has to be ripped out, root and branch.

It isn’t enough to be anti-fascist. One has to be pro-freedom. And as Lincoln said ages ago, freedom and anti-freedom cannot coexist. One or the other must triumph. Just as we wouldn’t tolerate an avowed or even secret Nazi in a position of power, so we must become intolerant of an avowed or secret Marxist holding power. They have to go; all of them, from every position and once removed they must never be allowed back into any position of power. We must become pro-freedom. Not just in favor of it in theory, but actively insisting that only freedom is allowed: that people only hear about freedom. That freedom be taught from kindergarten up. That anyone who argues under any pretense that freedom must give way is to be ostracized from society.

To do this, we cannot tolerate the forces of tyranny. People who adhere to Fascist, Nazi or Marxist ideology must not be able to obtain employment in the United States. Certainly not in government, schools or publicly traded corporations. Books and other publications advocating for these poisonous ideologies should not be for sale except to people with a scholarly interest in the subject matter. Any discussion of these ideologies must always start with and continually emphasize the number of people murdered by adherents of these wicked beliefs.

Tall hill to climb, I know. But it must be the end goal. The ideal. If you want to do anything, the first thing you need is a theory: an ideal. A dream, as it were. You must know where you want to go before you start on the road. We want a land of freedom – a place where people live free and only want to live free. You don’t get this merely by asking – and you can’t get it while massively wealthy and powerful interests are allowed to work against your ideal. If freedom is good – and we believe it is good; an inherent good – then anything opposed to freedom must go down.

But, you may ask, doesn’t freedom mean the ability to see all ideas and choose among them? I think we should all have learned our lesson by now: the crackpot spouting anti-freedom nonsense in one age is the precursor to the narrow-minded, ideological bigot in the next telling you that you’d better get your mind right or else.

Freedom is very broad. It is why it is preferable to any other status. But any human thing has its limits. Don’t be so open minded that your brain falls out, right? We went entirely too far in the direction of tolerance of anti-freedom ideology. To get back to freedom, we are going to have to get a bit narrow for a while. Still not nearly as narrow as a Marxist, but a lot more narrow than we have been. We will not, of course, ever load up our opponents in box cars and send them off to death or slavery. We won’t even stop them from believing something as stupid as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. We’re just not going to allow such a person to have a say in what goes on. We’re going to make it difficult to believe such drivel as a Marxist, Nazi or Fascist believes.

Without getting into too much detail, the primary key for us in this effort to wipe out the forces of tyranny is to take away their money. I’ve talked about this before, but it can’t be emphasized enough. Being the dimwit materialists they are, money is what makes their whole world go ’round. Take away their money…and, honestly, they’ll just have to get real jobs. That, right there, is a major death blow against their beliefs. One thing which is common among Nazis, Fascists and Communists is their desire to worm their way into well-paid sinecures where they can advance their twaddle without having to produce anything worthwhile. People who work for a living are only very rarely against freedom: people who earn their own keep wish to keep what they own and do with it as they wish. It is the college professor or high level bureaucrat who has never had to produce anything useful who sees himself as destined to tell everyone how to live.

But taking away their money is going to be a hard pill for many freedom-loving people to swallow. Because it isn’t just about kicking a Marxist professor out of college. Would that it was that easy! No: it is a lot more than that. It is mass terminations of government bureaucrats; it confiscating the assets of NGOs and private colleges; it is forcing corporations to break up into smaller units, it is confiscating most of the wealth of Leftist billionaires. It is arresting people – quite a lot of them – and charging them with criminal negligence over things like that bridge collapse the other day (the money was provided for repairs – tax payer money – and it was diverted to other things…clearly things which just lined the pockets of the well connected politically); we have 10,000 cases we can find before we even start looking hard for such things. It is providing criminal and civil penalties for people who lie in broadcast, print and on line.

Can you do it? I know I can. I see things clearly now. I only remain free if the people who want to destroy freedom lose. Our choice is now. What will we decide?

Open Thread

Mark Noonan29 Comments

Team Pudding Brain has been caught transporting around the USA large numbers of single, fit male illegal immigrants. This is actually against the law – as Rep Dan Crenshaw pointed out, an impeachable offense.

I’m not sure how serious Crenshaw is – he may just be putting out some boilerplate in an election year. And I think a lot of people would say that Biden should be impeached for breaking the law. But, that would be wrong. And our Amazona gonna love this:

Joe Biden should be impeached for failure to see that the laws are faithfully enforced. That is right there in the Constitution. It isn’t ambiguous: the President shall take care that the laws are faithfully enforced. In short, we’d be impeaching him for violating his oath of office. Cool, huh?

And to me it is a crucial point of principal: our government is increasingly lawless. Officials of it do whatever it is they think they can get away with. This is destroying the very fabric of our nation and so it is necessary for us to fight it out on the issue of rule of law. Of course, it is usually difficult to do this because most of the time you don’t have a handy case easily understood. We do now. The American people are aware of illegal immigration. They are aware that when Joe came in there was a huge surge in border crossings…what they don’t know is that Team Biden is refusing to enforce the law. That these people are not just being cut lose but are being transported by the government to their illegal release point. The issue is tailor made for us – and it can be made even more dramatic by highlighting what some of these people will end up doing over the next year (you know a percentage of them are mere criminals).

We impeach Biden on the accusation that he didn’t enforce the laws per his oath of office, we’ll win the PR battle – and then watch Democrats immolate themselves asserting that the President doesn’t have to enforce the law. Mark my words on it: they will lash themselves to the mast on this. They are committed to lawlessness. They will die on that hill. So, let’s help them do so.

War for Ukraine? Not interested. Neither, I think, are most people – and here the old line GOP (McConnell, eg) is entirely out of step with the base. This does surprise me as Mitch is usually pretty sensitive to where the political wind is blowing. There is no rally ’round the flag here. We are not in any sense of the word a unified nation: we are at each other’s throats and until we resolve our domestic conflicts we’d better walk small on the world stage…but it seems as if bureaucratic inertia is moving us to a risk of war. Our real hope is that Putin sees it isn’t worth it…that a dying American Ruling Class may end up doing something very stupid and so he’d better give it a rest. Fingers crossed on this one.

Niel Young, whom you are surprised to find still alive, demanded that Spotify remove his music. And most of his fans went, “what the heck is Spotify?”. Young was upset that Spotify carries Rogan’s show, which dares to cast doubt on the official Covid narrative. So, the man who once sung about facing off against Nixon’s soldiers is now an Establishment shill. Pathetic – but hippies always tend to be that, don’t they?

There is probably no liquid water on Mars. They thought they had detected some, but Mars is simply too cold. I really don’t expect us to find much on Mars – certainly no life. It has the materials for us to live, but only if we can resolve the gravity and radiation issues.

An American Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan12 Comments

Bismarck allegedly once said that there is a special providence for fools, drunkards and the United States of America. If he did say it then it was because he could see how very lucky the United State was and is: moated east and west by oceans and with harmless neighbors north and south, the United States could always pick and choose which foreign affairs to take an interest in. Meanwhile, Bismarck’s Prussia-become-Germany had to contend with Russia, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Britain and a host of smaller powers all on German’s doorstep or very close by. It was a nightmare maze to navigate through (made more nightmarish by Bismarck, but he didn’t see it that way). Bismarck died in 1898 – which, as it turns out, was the year the United States decided that being blessed by geography just wasn’t going to cut it.

There was nothing particularly wrong with ejecting the Spanish from Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898. There was also no particular need to do it. But at least it fell in line with the general idea of the Monroe Doctrine and a long-held American ideal that the Americas should no longer be the colonial possession of Europeans. But that wasn’t really why we went into that war: it was merely the excuse. The reason we went into the war was because a segment of American political leaders felt it was vital for America to enter global competition. The concept, boiled down, was that if we didn’t force our way on to the world stage, we’d start to decline as a nation. Cuba was the excuse – but all along what was wanted was Manila and the gateway to China.

And so we did it – and placed ourselves in the position of caring about China and that meant dealing with Japan and Britain and Russia and fussing about who would govern what in the western Pacific and east Asia. I think that most of us were taught that this was fundamentally a good thing – that the USA had to get involved. But now that I think back on those lessons in high school history, they never did get around to telling us why we had to do it. It was just an assertion that as a mature great power, we should be involved and if we didn’t, disaster would follow.

I try to think of what disasters would have been worse than Communist China, the Korean and Vietnam wars (not to mention things like the battles of Okinawa and Saipan) had we stayed home. Remember, Pearl Harbor was struck because it based the American fleet which was set to relieve the American garrison in the Philippines…but if there wasn’t an American garrison there? If the Spanish still ruled Manila or the Filipinos fully ruled themselves at that time? What would be the reason for attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor? Can’t really think of one.

Now, one can argue that Japanese rule of the Philippines and Indonesia would be bad. No real argument there. But China’s rule of Tibet is bad – anyone saying we have to go to war with China to free Tibet? The point I’m making: the supposed need for the USA to expend blood and treasure to save foreigners from oppression seems a little selectively applied. Either it is our policy, or it isn’t. If it is, then it is time to war with China. If it isn’t…then what the heck have we been doing for the last century? Being involved. And that seems to be it.

I bring all this up because now people are telling us we have to confront Russia in Ukraine. Saw a Tweet from a bluecheck Neocon today basically comparing the situation to Hitler’s rise to power. I’m really rather tired of that sort of thing – Hitler was a unique threat which will never arise again. The peculiar circumstances of his rise no longer exist and can’t be replicated. Hitler, of course, stepped into the European power vacuum opened by the overthrow of the Hoehzollern’s of Germany and the dissolution of the Hapsburg Monarchy of Austria-Hungary. That particular situation has now been absorbed into the European equilibrium (mostly by Stalin, as it turns out: he moved whole populations around in 1945 to make the nations of central Europe compact ethnic nations no longer having a biological title deed to lands outside their borders: some times brutality can get things done). It should also be noted that the power vacuum was largely created by us – it was our insistence on the overthrow of the Hohenzollern’s and the dissolution of the Hapsburgs which created the vacuum. Had we stayed out, the Franco-British would have had to engage in a negotiated peace in the middle of 1918.

Anyways – we’re once again being told we must get involved. The safety of the world is at stake!

Really? How so?

How, that is, does Putin absorbing the Donbas really alter the world in some intrinsically negative manner? That plenty of people in the area don’t want to be ruled by Putin I take as a given. But I don’t understand our interest in it. Seems to me that if Putin is trying to re-cobble together the Czarist Empire then Ukraine should be looking to Poland and the Baltic States to form a coalition to stop it. I doubt much that Putin wants a general war. He’d like to detach the Donbas with minimal fighting. But Poland and Ukraine with 80 million people against Russia’s 146 million is probably far more than Putin wants to tangle with. Ukraine can probably get at least some interest – if not direct help – from Turkey, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Germany, France and Britain; all of whom have a varying interest in keeping Russia curbed (the closer they are to Russia, the greater the interest). A bit of firm diplomacy by Ukraine should easily be able to get Russia to back off.

That they don’t seem to be able to do this and that they lack sufficient arms to stand up to Russia is a problem. But how is it an American problem? Ukraine has been independent for 30 years: that was plenty of time for them to measure up a possible Russian attack and prepare the means to meet it. I get it that they are wracked by corruption (including corruption where they have paid off Americans – most infamously Hunter Biden – for influence) and have rather floundered around with an aging military force…but, once again: how is this an American problem? In fact – given how corrupt Ukraine is, what benefit to the people of the Ukraine in our propping up their corrupt system which didn’t even prepare the military means to defend Ukraine?

America needs an American foreign policy. That is: a policy which locates what the American interests are and then vigorously defends them. Far more worrisome for America than Russia attacking Ukraine is China buying influence throughout Latin America. It is a problem if, say, Panama’s government is purchased by China and closes the Canal to our ships. It is, then, in our interest to see to is that the government of Panama retains sufficient independence to prevent such an occurrence.

I’m completely done with this idea that America must be involved in this, that or the other foreign land. Outside the Americas, our interests are few and mostly relate to seaborne trade…which is menaced only by China’s rising fleet. We should be working on ensuring we can swiftly put China’s fleet at the bottom of the sea…but we’re working on whether or not to send troops to Ukraine, which doesn’t help us in any way against China. It isn’t like Ukraine will send troops to help us against China. Forget about that. We pull Ukraine’s chestnuts out of the fire here and then ten years from now we go to war with China, do not look for a Ukrainian army to help us out – more than likely we’ll see Ukraine selling war materials to China.

After 124 years, it is time to write off America as a global power. It hasn’t worked out for us. It has cost us a fortune in blood and treasure and those who don’t hate us despise us. Our position in the world couldn’t possibly be worse had we, in 1898, decided to not care about who ruled in Cuba. And it probably would be a lot better. At all events, it is time to give it a try. Try an American foreign policy: cross us in our interests and we’ll kill you. Not attacking our interests? Good luck and God bless.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan25 Comments

Time flies when you’re painting the house!

Anyways, Mark Kelly (D-AZ) announced he will vote to kill the filibuster…which means his pollster told him he’s doomed in November and so now is going for the MSNBC gig. So far, Sinema and Manchin are firm in keeping it, but Schumer is going to keep trying. At least some people – but not nearly enough – are openly saying that this whole “voting rights” effort is merely an effort to secure Democrat voter fraud forever. They want to win by cheating. To become what the PRI was to Mexico for 70 years – a Ruling Party which engages in sham elections to lend itself a patina of legitimacy. We’ll see if they are able to do it. Their strategy right now is to call Sinema a white supremacist. Not sure this will work.

Absent this, it looks like the Democrats are in for a blow out loss in November. Think in terms of anything D+10 or less being vulnerable. So far, 28 House Democrats have announced they won’t seek re-election.

NPR reported that Gorsuch and Sotomayor were feuding over mask wearing. Turns out this was Fake News. Because that is all NPR does.

Commies on American campuses are removing statues. You know, just like Chinese commies are doing in Hong Kong. Birds of a feather.

Insane person pushes a woman into the path of an oncoming subway train and everyone is all shocked. How can you be? We decided (well, “we” as in a few lawyers and judges) back in the 70’s that being insane isn’t sufficient cause to place a person into protective custody. That really was the first shot across the bow on where we were heading…that sane people could not, except for a very short period, put restrictions on the insane was a signpost to societal destruction. We’re all sympathetic. We don’t want insane people denied due process, abused or left to rot in filth (as all too often happened in the past) but the answer to poor care at insane asylums was to improve the asylums…not let raving nutters out. People who cannot perform basic life functions such as maintain personal cleanliness and normal social interaction belong under care…not wandering through the streets. It is brutal and inhuman to let these poor people try to take care of themselves when their mental condition is such that they cannot.

UPDATE: Well, they failed – at the end of the day, both Sinema and Manchin stood up and voted very definitely against a rules change. This not only preserves the filibuster for now, it may retain it in our system for quite a long while…but mostly because we’ll probably have 54 GOP Senators come January next and then it is probably 3 or 4 cycles before the Democrats have a realistic shot at a Senate majority.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan57 Comments

Social media can be a bit of a treasure – sometimes what passes through your TL is amazing.

A little earlier today I came across a USA Today thread discussing how we need to differentiate between pedophiles and those who abuse children. No, I’m not kidding. What this is, of course, is an attempt to start normalizing pedophilia. They have to, you see? That is, they have to do this before they all get caught. They are going to “love is love” their way into legalizing the sexual abuse of children.

Then I came across a Financial Times article written by a member of the American Enterprise Institute – you know, the libertarian think tank – which asserted that the government needs to engage in psy-ops against us to protect us from political radicalization. This article, naturally, is because the pys-ops are being exposed and they are now trying to get out in front and claim it was all for our own good.

Then a guy pointed out that at this time in 2008 Obama was saying that marriage is something between a man and a woman while here in 2022 we’ve got people seriously asserting that refusal to date a trans person is bigotry.

We are moving very fast.

They sent Pudding Brain to Georgia to give a voting rights speech – given that the Dawgs won the national championship last night you can rely on it that nobody in Georgia was paying any attention. Doubt that anyone else is, either. And key Georgia Democrats begged off from the event as they have crucial things to do…the most crucial being staying the hell away from the politically toxic Joe Biden.

So far, Manchin and Sinema are standing firm against nuking the filibuster. And Senator Kelly is also saying he has his doubt about it. Amazing what running for re-election in a purple State will do for some Democrats, huh? Some say that Schumer doesn’t even have 44 Democrat votes to kill the filibuster…it is just that they are keeping a low profile and hoping that Manchin’s opposition keeps them from having to take a stand on it. OTOH, Schumer is making noises about forcing a vote on the rules change – which is dumb on two levels. One: without Manchin and Sinema, its pointless. Two: by holding the vote he’ll force purple State Democrats to choose between giving ammo to their GOP opponents or infuriating the base. And the far left base of the Democrats is furious that they haven’t jettisoned the filibuster. My only question here is how many filing deadlines have passed: Schumer pulls the trigger too soon and a half dozen Democrats could end up drawing a far left primary opponent who will be massively funded by Blue State leftists.

Sucks to be Schumer.

Long and very good article about the opposition to paleogenetic research. This is research carried out to find DNA markers on ancient remains to see how human beings moved around. A great deal has been learned in this field and, as it turns out, humans have moved around a lot. So, why should anyone be opposed to finding this out? Because the Narrative of native tribes it that the land they were on when the crackers first showed up had always been their land. Their sacred spaces, polluted by the cruel and rapacious white man. Yeah, turns out that is all bull. The Natives moved around as much as anyone else in a fierce competition for resources. Some tribes didn’t arrive in their “ancestral” lands until after the Europeans arrived…as tribes desperately sought contact with the Europeans for trade opportunities. Often, Native tribes would fight each other for access. So, there’s your reason – we’re going to kill off this valuable and interesting science because some people who are financially invested in a garbage story about pre-Columbian North America don’t want their meal ticket taken away. Side note: the author expresses sympathy for the basic concept of respecting Native traditions. For me, I’ll respect the people living by their ancient traditions but this idea that because you have X percent pre-Columbian blood you get veto power over science is drivel. People are people; always have been, always will be. Nobody is all good. Nobody is all bad. And we should find out all about everything, if we can.

Our man Matt lays out the failure of Biden’s Covid policies.

Hollywood is burning itself alive on the altar of political correctness. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving of creeps.

I have no sympathy at all – not for any of them working. I hope they all go bankrupt and have to panhandle on the street. But, that said, there is still a market for movies – we on the right should seriously consider raising some billions of dollars and starting a movie studio. Not in Hollywood! Not in California or any of the traditional entertainment area. Maybe Tulsa or some such place. A complete new start. Now, do we go and make preachy, rightwing movies? No. But we make movies. You know: fantasy entertainment designed to divert people away from their daily lives. I can easily think of a dozen movies which range from fantasy to love story to war movies to western which, well made, would be highly successful and, perhaps, even spawn a few franchises. And I’m not just talking about my books! Though that would be cool. But here’s an example: Ann Bassett. She was an Old West rancher and some time associate of Butch Cassidy. Her basic story was fighting off other cattle barons to protect her late father’s ranch. It just screams “make a movie out of me”. Heck, imagine a top flight female star and then your supporting male role is a guy playing Butch Cassidy. Blockbuster all over it. That’s the kind of movie we should make – what hasn’t been done but which can be made fun and interesting. If it can be done, all that entertainment money stops flowing Left and starts flowing Right. Think of the possibilities.

The Republic of Stupid

Mark Noonan15 Comments

I didn’t actually watch the oral arguments at the Supreme Court over Pudding Brain’s vaccine mandates but quotes of Kagan and Sotomayor demonstrated an amazing ignorance from both of them on Covid and legal issues. They were using made up figures about Covid and Sotomayor revealed she has never read the Constitution when she wondered why if a State has a power, why doesn’t the Federal government have it?

Now, this wasn’t mere ignorance and dishonesty – both Kagan and Sotomayor were put on the Court because they are stupid and are willing to lie to support whatever the Left wants. They are there to place a veneer of legality on Progressive power grabs. But take a look at Sotomayor’s career – editor of the Yale law journal, appointed to the Federal bench by the Elder Bush, confirmed 68-31 for the Supreme Court. She doesn’t know anything and is a liar and she cruised to the heights of the American legal system with bi-partisan support.

This isn’t an accident. It is deliberate. Moronic lies are the desired outcome. Somebody along the line should have noticed that Sotomayor is a stupid liar and deep sixed her career. Nobody did. Which means either that those who advanced her are stupid liars or they knew precisely what they were getting and wanted it.

As for me, I mostly go with her ushers being stupid liars. I think we’ve had a negative feedback loop in leadership which over generations has ensured that those who advance are increasingly stupid and dishonest. This goes for both government and corporate leadership. We have a government of, by and for the stupid – who are also greedy and self assured, as stupid people usually are.

Think about this: Pudding Brain let a contract for making Covid test kits which won’t result in any kits being produced until 2024. I get it – some donor needed to be paid off and this was the selected means. But 2024? That is just stupid. Anyone who sees it knows that it is mere corruption. A clever crook would have put out that it’ll be ready right away and then explain away the delays which make it off line until 2024. Step by step, right? No: they just go on and tell us “we’re stealing money.”

So many things go on which even when you account for Fallen human nature just make no sense. We expect government projects to be shot through with corruption, especially when Democrats are in. But we don’t even get the stated result. Biden shut down the pipeline and said he’d provide green jobs for the laid off workers. How hard would it be to come up with some BS, make-work positions at ten times the cost to the taxpayer? Not hard at all. The old corrupt party bosses would have that rolling in a few weeks. These guys? A year later and nothing. It is, as I’ve said, simply stupid.

It has been going on for a while – once you start putting “stupid” as the reason, the strategy in Vietnam starts to make sense: it was run by morons who were promoted to their positions by other morons, who always worked diligently to keep out of power anyone who wasn’t stupid. And it was all reported on by other morons, so the American people never got anything other than a stupid story about a stupid strategy. And then we, the people, get to make the final say with our votes…but we’re voting on which bit of idiocy gets the green light.

I think that, in part, is what shocked the political system about Trump. Whether or no he’s the very stable genius he claimed to be, he’s not an idiot. We simply have to accept that by now: he’s been investigated top to bottom by local, State and federal agencies who are staffed with dishonest idiots who would charge him with anything, if they could find it. Nothing. He’s smart enough to keep his affairs in order…he’s not, say, Hunter Biden putting all the incriminating evidence on his laptop and then leaving it at the repair shop. He breezed into town and started asking people do to non-idiot things and it simply scared the heck out of them. This is Trump vs his opponents:

But how do we escape? We’re stuck in the asylum and morons are running the show. Our best bet is that alternative media starts to really take off – because once we do have an independent media (Fox does not count) then it really just becomes a matter of pointing out how dumb they all are. Ridicule is a powerful tool, after all. But, meanwhile, we’re stuck in the Republic of Stupid, trying to work our way around the Idiocracy.