The Left’s War on Memory

Mark Noonan21 Comments

I’ve always felt sympathy for people – it isn’t any skill of mine: I’ve always had it. Though I can, at times, be cross with people, for the most part I am sympathetic to their plight. Perhaps this is partially an outgrowth of my own melancholy nature, but I can always see things from the other guy’s point of view, especially if they have suffered.

Soldiers suffer, a lot – and, so, have always been an object of my pity. This goes for all soldiers in all times. Doesn’t matter who they fought for: the average man at arms, as it were, always deserves respect simply for the fact that he did his duty, and suffered for it. Commanders get a more subtle judgement. One thing I’ve learned by long study of history is that most people placed in command are simply unfit for it. This is especially true of military command – and the dangers are varied for such people. They can love their men too much, and so waste opportunities for victory. They can also be too contemptuous of their men, and so lead them to unnecessary slaughter. But love them too much, or too little, there still stands the fact that they were the one’s forced to decide life and death issues, and everyone should have something in their heart that goes out to people landed in that. And for those few in command who actually have any business being there, the heart really goes out to them – because they not only have immense responsibility, but they are also, no matter how good they are, going to make some horrific mistakes which will send men to needless death.

I bring this up because we’ve revived the whole Confederate Statue issue via Trump’s recent comments about the Charlottesville incident. All around social media, I’ve seen our liberals really rip on Robert E. Lee: to listen to them, the Waffen SS was morally his superior. Of course, that is just how the left is: when they decide to pour out filth on someone, they go all in. To be sure, there is much to complain about in Lee. He did betray his oath to the Constitution, which was superior to any loyalty he felt for Virginia. While a tactician of genius, he had no strategic sense and so all of his bloody campaigns were fought, as it were, in void, with no real object other than the negative one of getting the Army of the Potomac out of Virginia. He also refused to quit when the game was up, and so prolonged the agony by at least a year. After the war, he more lent his immense prestige to the absurd “Lost Cause” ideology rather than using it to heal the divide (as, for instance, Confederate General James Longstreet did). But, with all that, he still stands as a sympathetic figure to anyone with an ounce of human decency.

There is a grandeur about the man which cannot be denied. It must have been astonishing when he was alive, because if we can be a bit awed by him at this remove, imagine what it must have been like for those around him when he was alive? His troops would have followed him anywhere. I figure every man in Pickett’s Charge knew it was a false position to be in – it was obvious before it happened that it would be a massacre. But, they went anyway – because Lee asked them to. Not many people can command that sort of love and devotion. And he failed, which adds to the pity one feels for him: people who strive at great cost and still come up short always earn at least that: pity.

Additionally, he’s also very long since dead. You can’t do anything to him. Whatever sins you want to lay at his feet, it is all over and done with. He’s dead and God has rendered perfect judgement on him. Wherever he is in the hereafter, it is precisely where he should be. It profits no one to try to attack a corpse – the corpse doesn’t feel it and the attacker gains nothing. This is why, I think, we have the old saying about not speaking ill of the dead: there’s simply no point to it. Only in the matter of general historical study should a dead person be examined for both good and bad, and then not in order to condemn the dead, but the enlighten the living. To take the most evil person you can study: if you are setting out to write a biography of Hitler to show what a rat bastard he was, then you are wasting your time. Possibly even harming yourself by drinking from that cup of bitterness. The only fit thing to talk about regarding Hitler is the object lessons: how did he come to be? Why did he do what he did? This sort of thing allows us to learn and, perhaps, prevent a repeat in the future. But to, as it were, piss on his grave, endlessly, is a pointless exercise.

But pissing on graves is pretty much what the left wants us to do these days – and I perceive it not so much as an attack on flawed historical figures (there’s no other sort, after all), but as an attack on history. On memory, when you get down to it. I’ve no particular concern about the fate of a statue of some long-dead Confederate, but I am intensely concerned that we retain our national memory. As a Conservative, I can view it no other way. After all, the more deeply you dive into Conservatism, the more crucial historical memory becomes. We must know, as best we can, how we came to be – good and bad – or we won’t even know why things are as they are. The left wants us to have no memory of what truly happened. They want a cartoonish view of the world where everything was bad until the left came along and fixed it all up. History began yesterday, when a leftist showed up to help you – don’t even think about digging back further than that! After all, the only reason you’d want to is because you’re hankering for the evil of the past, right? That, at least, is where I think the left is heading with this. Give them enough time and power, and they will topple Washington’s monument and rename our Capitol City…they will wash out everything we ever did, so that they can better rule an ignorant people.

We dare not let them get away with it – or, more accurately, get away with it any longer. Plenty of youngsters these days, after a decade or two in leftist propaganda mills, already have no knowledge of the past (oddly enough, I think this is why so many youngsters fall for various neo-Nazi ideologies: not knowing anything about either the Nazis or those who fought them, they fall easily for clever neo-Nazi lies about the past). The place to start is to draw the line: for a bit of shorthand, I’m insisting that no historical marker of any type, if it has been in place for 50 or more years, should be moved or modified in any way. You can add stuff around it, if you like, but you can’t change it and you can’t take it away. There for 50 years, there forever. The best part about such a program is that it would spark the fight we need to have here – a fight between those who want informed people who remember, and those who want ignorant people swayed by the latest lie. I think we’d win that fight.

Its Hard to Write on One Topic Open Thread

Mark Noonan17 Comments

I honestly keep trying to find a subject to write at length about, but I usually find ten. So, lots of open threads. And today is no different:

A judge cut loose an illegal immigrant, preventing that illegal from being arrested by ICE. The judge has now been indicted:

This is huge — a lunatic hack state judge is indicted and charged with cutting loose a twice-deported Dominican illegal immigrant arrested with drugs after throwing an ICE agent out of her courtroom so that the criminal could escape.

For what appears to be the first time, someone in a “sanctuary” jurisdiction has to answer for the coddling of these illegal immigrants who are perpetrating a massive tidal wave of crime on the law-abiding, taxpaying citizens of the United States

We need more of this – if the Democrats want to go all neo-Confederate about federal laws, then we’ll have to become increasingly Shermanesque in dealing with them.

Joe Biden announced for President – third time will not be the charm. Naturally, he started out by repeating the “fine people on both sides” lie the Democrats have peddled about the Charlottsville incident. Don’t think any liberal will complain about the lie: they believe it. I’ve got a friend who is convinced he heard Trump, live, say that the “fine people” included the neo-Nazis. A cursory reading of the transcript shows he didn’t…but once the Democrats decide on a lie, they’ll never move away from it. In the end, Trump won’t beat Biden because there’s no way the Democrats will permit an old, straight white man to be their nominee in 2020.

We found Biden’s campaign song.

A German parenting magazine opines that blonde, happy families are evil incarnate. You know, I’ve run across the “blood and soil” neo-Nazi nitwits on a regular basis on social media: this is exactly the red meat they need to convince people to join them. If you want to convince such people that there isn’t a war on white people then just maybe you shouldn’t have a war on white people. Just spitballin’ here.

We’re used to this – but here’s how the MSM took the Trump Administration’s efforts to protect women in war zones and turned it into a “Trump wants women raped” story. They do this all the time – take a story and simply make up an anti-Trump angle, no matter how divorced from reality. This is why I say that any story in the MSM about politics must be presumed to be a lie until confirmed by a non-MSM source. (HT: Ace)

From RSM: Guy gets arrested for assaulting his wife. SJW do-gooder group bails guy out. Guy goes home and murders his wife. To be fair, I do understand the desire to be merciful: it is crucial to a functioning society that we have a gigantic amount of mercy towards those who transgress. Partially because mercy, as such, is good but, also, because the authorities do make mistakes. But, everyone makes mistakes. And if a guy is in jail under serious charges, its probably not wise to rush in and spring him from jail. The job of criminal justice reformers is not to get people out of jail, but to ensure that the accused receive justice – if we are doing justice, then there’s no reason for anyone to complain.

Powerline on how the left is using teaching history to, well, ensure that the kids learn no history, at all.

Spring Day, Will be in the Pool Open Thread

Mark Noonan19 Comments

Got in the pool yesterday, actually: a little chilly, but not bad. Its going above 90 out here today, so expect and increasingly tan Mark in the coming days.

Cher gets a little red-pilled over the Bernie plan to allow imprisoned felons to vote. Perhaps there is a level of stupid so bad that even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberals will wake up? I think 2020 will test this theory.

Harris was also a bit on board with Bernie’s “Let the Boston Bomber Vote” program, until, I guess, her aides and pollsters went “are you f***ing nuts!”. She’s backing down a bit from it – but, don’t believe her: the liberals really do believe jailed murderers should vote, because they’ll likely all vote Democrat. Harris is just beating a tactical retreat.

The Citizenship Question will go before the Supreme Court and rumors are the Conservative majority will back Trump – which, to me, is a no-brainer: there’s no valid reason not to have such a question on the census. It is a violation of my rights as a citizen of the United States that some States get more House representation based upon people who aren’t even supposed to be in the country. I’d also like to look into the validity of someone who holds a House seat where the number of citizen voters is significantly smaller than the average number of citizen voters per district. To me, such a person cannot hold a House seat as no proper election occurred given our one man, one vote requirement for such things.

Latinos are doing very well under Trump – by some measures, better than they’ve ever done. How will this play in 2020? Don’t know. But if Trump can crack 40% of the Latino vote, it’ll be a blowout for him.

Rep. Omar (D-West Somalia) back in 2017 essentially called the American soldiers of “Black Hawk Down” fame, terrorists. A veteran of that fight responds. You have to think about this: American blood was shed to save Omar’s life and after this and coming to America and now living a life that no Somali could ever dream of in Somalia, she’s calling the men who made it all possible terrorists. I do doubt the validity of her oath of citizenship.

RSM notes a feminist coffee shop in Australia started charging men 18% more than women…and for some bizarre reason, the place is now going out of business.

John Nolte notes 51 deliberate, malicious lies the MSM told you about Trump-Russia.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Senator Romney (R, D; MA, UT…whatever and wherever, as long as I get to be in power) took a dump on President Trump as did famed Never Trumper David French. Oddly, their statements are alike in that they both claim the Mueller Report shows a horrible, lying, corrupt Trump (who didn’t do anything illegal) and who must now be opposed. A lot of people go on like that – which shows that it was clearly coordinated. The plan was clearly that Mueller would find something damaging and people like Romney and French were supposed to be part of a cascade of voices moving Trump towards resignation. It didn’t work out because of that pesky, little detail of Trump not doing anything wrong…but I guess once you’re bought, you stay bought: the people who pay for the Romneys and Frenches want this, so they get it.

Some Christian churches in Sri Lanka were blown to pieces on Easter – and just as you expected, no one who waxed eloquent over the attack on a Mosque in New Zealand is pointing out the specific, anti-Christian aspect of the attack. No one is wearing a crucifix in solidarity; no one offering up a Hail Mary. In fact, most of the people on the left saying anything about it stay away from even mentioning a Christian element. Christians are, by far, the most persecuted people in the world – and we pray for those who do evil to us…but even so, be nice if some of these cowards in the global elite would at least acknowledge what is happening.

Along with vicious attacks, the other thing we Christians expect on Easter is opinion pieces from so-called Christians which deny key aspects of the faith. I ran across one of these – you can read it if you like, but if you’ve ever read one of them, you’ve read them all. Each of them is just mindless, sophomoric drivel. But it occurred to me: why bother? I mean, its ok (in the sense that you are free to do so) to not believe that Christ’s death on the cross redeemed the world. It is ok to deny that we are in need of washing in miraculous waters. It is ok to deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Every Muslim, Jew, Hindu and Atheist in the world does just that…but, they also don’t try to pretend to be Christian while doing it. Why do these nitwits do it? Are they still, every so slightly, open to repentance, or are they mere emissaries of the enemy?

Victor Davis Hanson interviewed regarding the anti-Trump coup attempt.

Don Surber: keep fighting. He’s right. We can be magnanimous in victory once we are entirely victorious. Until the left is utterly destroyed, we can’t let up for a moment.

Actress Emma Thompson burns through three tonnes of carbon to save the planet. From you.

Happy Easter!

Mark Noonan2 Comments

On the first day of the week,
Mary of Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning,
while it was still dark,
and saw the stone removed from the tomb.
So she ran and went to Simon Peter
and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and told them,
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb,
and we don’t know where they put him.”
So Peter and the other disciple went out and came to the tomb.
They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter
and arrived at the tomb first;
he bent down and saw the burial cloths there, but did not go in.
When Simon Peter arrived after him,
he went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there,
and the cloth that had covered his head,
not with the burial cloths but rolled up in a separate place.
Then the other disciple also went in,
the one who had arrived at the tomb first,
and he saw and believed.
For they did not yet understand the Scripture
that he had to rise from the dead.

John 20:1-9

Pre-Mueller-Mageddon Open Thread

Mark Noonan39 Comments

Tomorrow is The Day of all Days: the Mueller Report gets released. Whole thing is a waste of time, of course, but that won’t stop Democrats. If they are at a loss, they’ll just bald-faced lie and make up stuff about it. I think, though, that the pivot they’ll revolve around is whatever is redacted – they’ll assure their suckers viewers that in those areas is the proof that Trump is a Russian stooge. What I’m hoping for is that as we ring down the curtain on Mueller, Barr starts to raise the curtain on a general investigation into government corruption.

Robert O’Rourke (D-Never Be Caught Dead in Texas Again After This) says that he doesn’t give to charity because he gives himself to us. Seriously: I’m not kidding. That’s what he’s asserting. And the Democrats claim that Trump is a narcissist.

Jazz Shaw has an interesting bit on the UAW’s continuing efforts to unionize the VW plant in Chattanooga. It’ll probably fall flat: but, I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t time for us on the right to become Unionists? What I mean is that there is a real need for worker unions – trouble is, the worker unions we have these days mostly represent government employees and are the merest tools of the Democrat party. But suppose we started up a union which represents only private sector employees and remains strictly non-partisan while pushing for various worker protections? Think about it: we’re all starting to feel a grip of fear that one unguarded comment on social media could get us fired; might be nice to have union protection against that. So, too, might the cubicle workers (mostly customer service of various types) like some protections against stupidly absurd work schedules (serious, guys: I know whereof I speak…some times they have these poor people working mornings one day, evenings the next and then take their two days off and split them up)? Might also be nice to have unions which work against government regulations which are designed to restrain trade. We should ponder this.

RSM wonders if Soros is funding Democrat anti-Semitism.

Trump son-in-law Kushner is apparently working on a Middle East peace deal to be unveiled later this year – naturally, the Palestinian leadership is opposed before the plan it is even presented. What people won’t admit – because they are cowards – is that the PA is a mafia-like organization and if they made peace, there’d be no place for the current mafia bosses. It doesn’t matter that the Palestinians suffer under poverty and corruption. It certainly doesn’t matter that a few Israelis are killed by the guys in Gaza (matters even less that Palestinians are killed in response). All that matters is that the mafia bosses continue to live well and siphon off foreign aid money to their Swiss bank accounts. Until people confront this fact and kill the Palestinian leaders, there will be no peace.

Gotta love the Poles – they propose to name a new, American military base in Poland, “Fort Trump”. Of all the Europeans, the Poles are about the only ones worth an American’s attention…though the Czech’s and the Balt’s are ok.

Notre Dame and Civilization

Mark Noonan

NOTRE DAME is not a myth. Notre Dame is not a theory. Its interest does not spring from ignorance but from knowledge; from a culture complicated with a hundred controversies and revolutions. It is not featureless, but carved into an incredible forest and labyrinth of fascinating features, any one of which we could talk about for days. It is not great because there is little of it, but great because there is a great deal of it. . . . Notre Dame, on its merely human side, is mediaeval civilization.

~G.K. Chesterton: in “Fancies Versus Fads” (1923)

That last word is important: civilization. These days, no one really knows what the Middle Ages were like. They are scorned as a time of ignorance, poverty and oppression. It wasn’t like that, at all. It was a very high civilization – better than any contemporary and better than all that had come before it.

First and foremost, we must remember what it came out of – the destruction of the Roman Empire was a cataclysm such as the world had never seen before. Indian and Chinese civilization had suffered, many times, invasion and conquest. But the barbarians were easily absorbed into the Chinese and Indian civilizations and though there might have been some alterations in how things were done, the basics of each civilization endured. Indeed, were almost entirely unchanged. That is the real oddity of both Chinese and Indian civilization – for 2,000 years or more, there was no real change in how they worked. The underlying ideas behind them just kept going…in a rather sterile manner, but going. When Rome fell, the entire civilization which underlay it went with it.

Some of the barbarian invaders wanted what Rome had, but especially the latter barbarians who finally overthrew Rome were uninterested in any civilization. They were barbarians in the purest sense – only wanting wealth and adventure with no thought for the morrow. When there work was done (say, by about 700 AD) there was very little left. Books were rare as most libraries had been destroyed. Most of the Roman infrastructure (roads, bridges, aqueducts) were in ruins. War and disease and dropped the population to a fraction of what it had been during Rome’s height. And then, schooled by the Church, people got back to work – slowly building an entirely new civilization on the ruins of the old.

Notre Dame was not built by barbarians, but by people of a highly sophisticated civilization. The church, itself, attests to the technical skill of the civilization as well as to it’s artistic excellence. But beyond that, Europe was already filled with scholars expanding the frontiers of human knowledge – and unlike the sterile, nearly unchanging civilizations of the East, the Europeans were rapidly absorbing and adapting every good thing they could come across from other civilizations. These people were eager for knowledge and improvement and were willing to dare greatly. Not for these Europeans was any sort of stand-pat attitude. And Europeans were already greatly curious about the non-European world (Marco Polo made his journey to China in the 13th century, shortly after Notre Dame was completed). And as Chesterton pointed out, Notre Dame was an excellent, enduring symbol of what these highly civilized people were about.

And now its burned down – and the pity is that the civilized people who built it are long gone and replaced by barbarians, who despise Notre Dame because they both can’t understand it as well as being incapable of building something like it. They are very much like the Visigoths and Vandals who threw down Roman civilization in the 5th century. It is sad, I think, what is going to happen: a bunch of people who have no idea of anything are going to place themselves in charge of rebuilding Notre Dame and they are likely to create a savage monstrosity in it’s place. We can only hope that in some future year, civilized people will knock down what they are about to do, and replace the crude, barbaric result with something remotely as civilized as Notre Dame.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan4 Comments

The Notre Dame fire has revealed an intense level of hatred among the global left for the West. We knew it was there, but when you see the some on the left cheering a burning church, you know you’ve got a problem. They hate us and want us gone – and they are allying with the most vicious parts of Jihadist Islam. We’re in for some bad times.

Its pretty much a given that the Obama Administration spied on President Trump – the only question remaining is, who ordered it? Does it go all the way up to Obama? It could: it would take a really gutsy subordinate to order such a thing without the President’s knowledge.

Bill Weld (R But Really D-MA) is going to challenge Trump in the GOP primary. Not a single person on Earth, including Weld, knows why.

Jewish voters are upset with the Democrats defense of anti-Semites. I look at it like this: if you’re in any way a Jew, you’re going to abandon the Democrat party. It is as simple as that – just as all real Catholics are abandoning the Democrat party. The Jews (and Catholics) who retain their Democrat registration are no more than nominally part of their religion. You can’t be in a party which rejects everything you believe in.

Steyn points out a rather large SJW flaw.

Valerie Jarrett wrote a book which sucks so bad she had to manipulate sales to show up on the best seller lists. My view: I bet the manipulation was done with the knowledge of the list makers. No way in heck will the Progressives allow someone like Jarrett to fail – she’s all they want: a mean spirited, anti-American creep. As an aside, Matt and I – still making money off Worst nearly 3 years after it came out – wonder how many sports cars and mansions we’d own if a major publisher had picked it up back in 2016. There’s a huge amount of talent out there which doesn’t go anywhere because the people who decide are slaves to the powerful.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan20 Comments

President Trump is mulling sending all the detained illegals to the Sanctuary Cities. Naturally, our liberals blew a gasket when they heard that! But, that’s because they’re racists and only want illegals around to cut grass and clean up…they don’t want they actually around. But I think President Trump did get this a little wrong – what he should do is assign all detained illegals to the top 20 income zip codes in the United States. I want immigrant tent cities in Central Park and Martha’s Vineyard. I don’t think Democrats realize just how much most people will think such a proposal merely fair.

President Trump also took Rep. Omar (D-West Somalia) to task for her downplaying the 9/11 attacks – and almost instantly, every Democrat out there was out with a statement saying that Trump was threatening Omar’s life. Which means:

1. Democrats get their party line and just recite it on que.
2. Democrats actually thought the American people would swing behind Omar over Trump attacks.

Democrats are really dumb.

Assange is back in the news. Never liked the guy. Not sure the government is on firm ground in prosecuting him, but he’s not a friend of the United States in any way, shape or form.

What to do about Nationalism? Interesting article about it at Powerline.

So, Ken Starr says his investigation indicated that Hillary’s treatment of Vince Foster triggered his suicide. Which is better than our usual thoughts that his death was a bit of Arkancide.

Cindy McCain reminds us why we didn’t like John McCain.

Miserably failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams is under investigation by the Georgia State Ethics Commission. They are all grifters, these Democrats: every last one of them.

The Left Wants to Force Us to be Liars

Mark Noonan12 Comments

The story:

Every House Democrat but one has co-sponsored a bill requiring schools to allow male athletes who identify as transgender girls to compete on female sports teams.

Democrats’ Equality Act would amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to make “sexual orientation and gender identity” protected characteristics under federal anti-discrimination law. Among other things, the bill would force public schools to expand female athletic teams to include biological males who identify as transgender girls.

Supporters of the bill are brazenly asserting that experience has shown that male-to-female trans athletes have no inherent advantage over biological females. Think about that: you know that isn’t true. You know, without even looking up the recent news stories of female athletic records being broken by trans athletes, that people making such an assertion are lying to you. But, they go ahead and do it – and they are defying you to call them liars. They feel confident you won’t, because you’ll be afraid of the social ostracism which may result.

It simply defies reason – meaning, it is insane – to hold that men are not physically stronger than women. Sure, you can probably find a completely in shape, well trained female boxer who can kick my a** into next week…but, in the normal run, a woman hitting me will have very little affect save, perhaps, to annoy me a little. And I’m not a big, athletic guy – I’m smaller than average and I don’t work out. I’m not guessing about this: I’ve been hit by a girl my height with all her might (long story)…it didn’t do a darned thing to me. The movies which show a 120 pound woman taking down a 200 pound male bad guy: garbage. You know it. I know it. The people making the movies know it. Men are physically stronger than women by a lot, and there’s an end on it. But, the left is now insisting that we discard what we know to be true. They are demanding, that is, that we agree to be insane – and to lie about it.

And that is the crucial thing here – the lie. It is very, very important to the left that we become habitual liars. A nation of liars has no moral center – and no way to defy the purveyors of lies. Done long enough, a nation of liars becomes incapable of recognizing the truth. This is the last line: if they push us beyond it, we’re done. We’ve already surrendered every other thing to the left (thanks, Tru-Cons!) and if they can get us to lie – especially if they can get us to do it out of cowardly fear – then we’ll never be in a position to take them down.