Justice

The Last Chance

Mark Noonan19 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Modern: Treaty of Westphalia until today.

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

The Divided States of America

Mark Noonan46 Comments

It was pointed out on X today that if you take the Democrat-governed urban areas of Missouri out of the mix, the murder rate in six times less than in those cities. Do you realize what a remarkable thing that is? In fact, there are counties in Missouri which go years without a homicide. And this is why the gun rights people get angry about the whole debate – another person used words to the effect of “a couple black kids shot at a bunch of brown kids and this means me, a white man who doesn’t live there, has to have his rights violated?”. That was a very crucial observation to make. It illustrates the dual nature of America in 2024. A house divided.

Keep in mind that the murder rate is high in Democrat-run cities on purpose. I refuse to concede that anyone is that stupid: you know what will happen if you let criminals go or let them off lightly. They’ll just go and commit more crimes. I don’t care how many studies you have or supposed arguments that this will lower crime, you know it won’t. It can’t. The person who commits a robbery, rape or murder isn’t a petty criminal just starting out on the life of crime – but the time you’re sticking a gun in a store clerk’s face, dragging a girl into an alley or ending a human life, you are a hardened criminal. And it doesn’t really matter how young the criminal is. You can become a hardened brute very young. Heck, Hitler did it with his people in just a few years with his Hitler Youth savages committing heinous war crimes at the age of 16 in some cases. However the person got to the store clerk, girl or person about to die, by the time they got there the only way to stop them is with force – and with lengthy incarceration if caught.

And everyone knows this.

But they let them out – if they even bother going after them. One of the dirty secrets of American policing is how badly policed most minority neighborhoods are. Huge amounts of crime in such areas go entirely unreported and only the worst aspects of it show up in the records. And as I said, it is desired. All of those who run Democrat cities are infused with Marxist-Leninist thought. It started to come here in the 1930s with German commie refugees (ie, cowards who wouldn’t stand up to Hitler) and it has just entrenched itself ever more deeply. By now, most of them don’t even know they are just aping Lenin’s “who, whom?” and “loot the looters”. But it is what they are doing; their belief is that crime is the result of the system and those who benefit from the system must be punished by crime until they abandon the system.

But then, also, today Trump was ruled guilty by a fraud masquerading as a judge. Guilty of what? of nothing. He borrowed money with the consent of the lender and then paid it back on time with interest. They say it was a crime – they say the assets used to back the loans were inflated. Not according to Trump or the banks – not, that is, according to the people involved. But according to a “judge” Trump is guilty of fraud. The same system which lets rapists and murderers walk is throwing the book at Trump. And pro-life protestors. And J6 defendants. And whistle blowers.

Why? Because it is, once again, not about justice or law: it is about punishing political offenders. You are to have rapists wander your streets because you are guilty of the political offenses of being middle class/white/Christian/Republican. Trump is being charged on the political grounds that he threatens the dominance of the Left. The rapist and the murderer does not threaten the political dominance of the Left (and the Ruling Class is confident that private security will keep them safe). This is all very obvious by now. And yet plenty don’t see it.

Also today we learned that some Russian dissident got offed in prison and we’re all supposed to be horrified by it. Honestly, I had never hard of the guy. Some people I know have claimed some knowledge but, lets face it, he’s only news because they want another $60 billion for Ukraine so stoking emotions about his death is politically useful at the moment. But in light of this – and Tucker Carlson having some nice things to say about Russia – we’re being told that to question American moral superiority over Putin’s Russia is tantamount to treason. Really? Yes, I get it that the Moscow metro system is a showpiece in no way reflective of how Russian life is. But the rat, crime and drug addict infested New York metro system is entirely reflective of how American life is in the cities. Maybe Russia does suck, but why can’t we – supposedly free and responsible people – at least have a subway system where people aren’t urinating on the cars? Not having human feces in public places – and people smoking crack on the train – doesn’t seem like an unreasonable ask. To me, it is kinda basic decency. The glittering art of the Moscow train station is obvious a front…but there are no human feces there. So, plus one for Russia.

We’re not actually free if there are bums wandering our streets in a drug-induced haze. They’re dangerous…and so we avoid the areas they congregate and we hope they don’t find their way to our immediate neighborhood. We’re not free if the crime rate is high; we have to lock our doors, perhaps arm ourselves, and pray that the criminals will pass us by because even if armed we don’t want to actually shoot someone. Sure, they aren’t free in Russia. In fact, there are hardly any free places left in the world – with rural America being the freest, but even there year by year it is less. And it gets less and less because an overpowering government sticks its nose in more and more…while also allowing criminals to wander freely, and persecuting anyone who steps out of line.

Another person said they are much freer in America than anyone in Russia is. Perhaps. But only marginally. And even with that, it is only because the government hasn’t got around to you yet. Think about it – if you were to be arrested as a white supremacist terrorist tomorrow, how confident are you that you could beat the rap? How long would it take? Think about your friends and family: how many would really stick by you knowing that doing so places them on the radar and at risk of arrest, themselves? The government can instantly ruin the life of any American citizen – and count on the MSM to take the government’s side, as long as the person arrested has been identified as an enemy of the Ruling Class. The Constitution won’t show up to help you – it is just a piece of paper. It only has power as long as people abide by it. That you could, by effort, get out of such an injustice doesn’t really mean anything – in that case, the process was the punishment. But in a nation really obeying the US Constitution, you’d have no fear of it even happening except by some bizarre mistake. Now we all know it can happen – and know that the only reason it hasn’t happened is that the Ruling Class is still a bit afraid of us…and, of course, we are armed. In the UK and Australia they are sending people to jail for trivial offenses…all of this, naturally, occurring after gun confiscation for your own good, dammit.

This is why we must steel ourselves to harsh actions. We don’t need a court ruling in our favor ten years after the violation…we need to start sending Leftist Ruling Class foot soldiers to jail. These corrupt and political judges, police officers, DA’s, NGOs etc all need to start seeing the inside of cells. For a long time. It is the only way we can possibly stop them short of violence.

These people – those who are persecuting people like Trump and pro-lifers – are not Americans. They are aliens. They are enemies. I don’t care if they have Mayflower ancestors…somewhere along the line they broke the mystic chains of memory and became anti-American. Out to destroy America and the Americans. It is either stop them, or they stop us.

Mercy: It Isn’t What You Think it Is

Mark Noonan33 Comments

Dan McLaughlin – a man of the Right but whom I often disagree with – posted a Tweet the other day saying we should have hung Jefferson Davis after the Civil War; this has sparked a bit of a debate with most people disagreeing with McLaughlin. I was one who supported the assertion. Not only Davis, but Lee; in fact, all elected officials of the Confederacy; all cabinet officials; all general and flag officers; all governors of seceded States; all elected officials of seceded States – all should have variously been hung or if mitigating circumstances were found, imprisoned for long terms, most for life. Additionally, all members of the Confederate States armed forces should have been permanently disenfranchised if no other punishment was warranted for actions during the war.

Harsh, huh?

But not really. For the longest time I went along with the agree-upon post-Civil War Narrative that Grant’s “let ’em up easy” terms were best as it was asserted it quickly restored national unity and ensured against a repeat. But upon long reflection, I have concluded that this Narrative is as much drivel as the former Confederate’s Lost Cause Narrative.

First off, there wasn’t going to be a repeat. The war was over. The South was utterly crushed. They had no means with which to wage war. The huge armies that the South managed to field in 1863 were gone and couldn’t be remade. It was more than a generation before the physical damage was repaired. The concept that the South – having just been wiped out – would resort to arms if we weren’t nice to the Confederates is just nonsense on stilts.

Secondly, the former Confederates weren’t in the least moved by mercy. Their sole purpose once we decided to let them go was to restore as far as possible the supremacy of the Planter Class which had engineered secession and lost the Civil War at massive cost to those Southerners who had no stake in the Planter Class. The Klan was formed six months after the last battle; and it’s purpose was to beat down any person, black or white, who might strive for a new direction in the South. Anyone who wanted blacks voting, getting educated, owning property was targeted. Yes, most of the direct violence was against black people…but plenty of white people felt the fury as well; to intimidate them into looking the other way when the Klan went out to murder. The only thing which prevented the former Confederates from reimposing slavery was the 13th Amendment – and with the Klan they imposed a system which was all but slavery.

Davis, Lee and a few other top people hanging from a gallows and you don’t get this. Disenfranchised Confederate soldiers means black Southerners united with those whites who resisted the Confederacy (and there were a lot of them) would control the future of the South. There would have been a real Reconstruction; a real re-integration of the South into the national political system…not this bastard, hybrid system we had from 1865 to 1965 where in parts of the country American citizens were routinely denied basic rights because of their skin color. There was more shame in Jim Crow than slavery, when you really think about it – we inherited slavery; we made Jim Crow…or if not made it, tolerated it. Looked the other way; pretended it wasn’t happening or wasn’t a problem. It was a poison injected into our society after the most glorious moment in our history – the end of slavery. And think of all the people who died or were brutalized because of Jim Crow. Set that against twenty or thirty people hung…people who had, no matter how you sliced it, levied war against the United States, and so were traitors by the strict definition of the Constitution.

Mercy, you see, isn’t softness. It isn’t a refusal to acknowledge what happened and demand an accounting – it is a decision to remit full punishment for transgression. In other words, you do not exact your pound of flesh. But this doesn’t mean you don’t take an ounce or two. After the Hungarian rebellion against Austrian rule in 1848, one of Bismarck’s friends bemoaned the repression the Austrians were dealing out to the defeated Hungarians. Bismarck asked in reply words to the effect of, “what about all the people who died in the rebellion? Doesn’t their blood cry out for justice?”. What Bismarck was hitting upon is that anyone who resorts to arms bears responsibility. To be certain – and Bismarck would agree – at times you can be in a position where resort to arms is the only way out. But even if you are fully justified in fighting, people are going to die…and it will be the most innocent who suffer the most because you decided to fight. The Hungarians felt they had to fight (I’ve thought about it and I don’t think they were justified; there were vitally necessary reforms but there was no reason to fight; given the nature of the world at the time, the Austrians weren’t being oppressive brutes and there was a great deal of willingness to reform in the government); fine – fight. But they lost. And now the instrument of government must exact a reckoning on those who resorted to arms. Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister (in effect) was alleged to have said, “certainly, there must be mercy. But first, some hanging.”. You can’t just start a war, lose it, and expect everyone to act as if nothing had happened. So there was some punishment – and some mercy. In the long stream of history, one of the Hungarians condemned to die for rebellion was eventually pardoned and rose to be Prime Minister of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; but there still had to be the hanging.

We need to get back to an understanding that a price has to be paid. There is nothing free. And the more disruptive the action, the higher the price. We have turned mercy into mere mushiness; a sentimental unwillingness to make sure that those who dare greatly also understand that failure has its very high cost. Our latest iteration of this is the BLM/Antifa riots and the spate of store lootings. Everyone wants these things to stop – but I might well be the only person in the United States who understands that if you want to be merciful, then some people will have to pay, and perhaps with their lives for the most egregious. And keep in mind that I oppose the death penalty! On the whole, don’t use it…but if we identify, say, twenty people who organized the BLM/Antifa riots which led to so many devastated lives…then four or five of the worst offenders being hung is merciful…because the survivors would never risk a repeat of it, and so we won’t have thousands of people with ruined lives because someone wanted to make a violent political point.

Human life – human civilization – is a precarious balance; everything has its mirror and it is in striking the balance between the two extremes that we find peace, freedom and safety. Tolerance balanced with intolerance. Order balanced with liberty. Justice balanced with mercy. But balanced. No element being allowed to run away with itself; everything kept in check by its opposite. We have lost that balance and so everything gets ever more insane. It is time to revive it.

The Need to Punish

Mark Noonan9 Comments

Just a little while ago I finished watching the movie Narvik. Highly recommend. Five stars. It is a dramatization of the German attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik in 1940 – the Germans invading Norway primary to gain control of Narvik because, during winter, that was the port where a huge portion of Germany’s iron ore came from. Lose that port, lose the war: that was the point for the Germans. It is a Norwegian movie so it is in subtitles for the most part, but it is well done so that you hardly notice that you’re reading the dialogue.

While a war movie, it isn’t centered on war, as such. Certainly there are battle scenes but the story is really about what do you do? Who is right? Who is wrong? What is moral? What is immoral? Collaboration or resistance? Fight on when its hopeless or just quit? The Germans, naturally, are the bad guys – mostly because they really were. But the British are not portrayed very favorably either. Neither are the neutral Swedes. The French (who really did come to fight for Narvik) are given a dose of glory. As I said, definitely recommend. But aside from offering you a couple hours of interesting and moving entertainment, there was something that struck me in the movie.

There is this scene where Gunnar – a young, Norwegian soldier; he, his young wife and child are central elements of the story – finally gets really into the fight and is able to pay out the Germans in their own coin. He shoots two Germans manning a machine gun nest. As he’s turns to leave, he notices that one of them has started moving. He quickly goes over to the man and turns him over: he’s just a kid (like Gunnar) but he’s also no threat: he’s dying and the lad’s dying eyes plead with Gunnar, “help me!”. But all Gunnar does is shove him a bit and, as the kid dies, ask “why are you here?”. No answer is provided: and for Gunnar and his dead enemy, no answer is ever going to really be provided.

The scene bore in on me the crime that is war. Don’t get me wrong: if you’re fighting to defend yourself, you commit no crime – but to start a war is a crime. There is never a justification to start shooting, or set up a situation where the other side feels it must start shooting or die. That player in the movie dying at his post represents millions – and even though, in this case, it was a young German, we do feel the sadness; the loss. The pointless waste of a life. But as we really consider it, we must never forget that it was a crime – and the attacker from the youngest little soldier in the ranks to the top military and political leaders are guilty.

Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. For by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. – Romans 2:1

Any 18 year old Fritz in the German army, if asked, would say that it would be wrong if a foreign army suddenly descended on his home town and started confiscating, ordering about, oppressing and such. And so, the Germans who landed at Narvik knew they weren’t supposed to do that. No citizen of Narvik or Norway had in any way offended any German in the least. You have no excuse. You may obtain forgiveness, but you have no excuse.

And that thought, in turn, brought me to think about our larger crisis, domestic and foreign. The way the world is really in bad shape. And it occurred to me this is because, after more than a century of incredible evil done by nations and ideologies, nobody was ever sufficiently punished for their transgressions. Justice must always be tempered by mercy, but it still must be justice. Because we must apply mercy, after WWII we wouldn’t line the Germans up and shove them into gas chambers…but hanging a few Nazi leaders hardly atoned for the crime. And this leaves aside the fact that nothing was done about the Soviets, who were only marginally less bad than the Germans.

It is said – and generally accepted – that after WWI the punishment of the Germans was too harsh. The reality is that it was too light. Remember: they attacked France, Belgium and Luxembourg without the slightest provocation. And this led to four years of miserable, slogging warfare where untold numbers of young men died when, with just an ounce of decency on the part of the Germans, they would have lived. All the Germans had to do to save the lives of millions was…not attack people who offered no offense in any way. Quite honestly, for a century after that, the Germans should have been de-jure shackled to plows to pay back those they attacked. And WWII was even worse…and all we did was hang a few Nazis and then let the Germans get rich building cars and then we sat there, slack jawed, as they complained about what we did during the war. And, remember: no excuse. Any German asked in 1939 would have answered “no” to the question “should Nation X attack Germany unprovoked?”. They knew what they were doing was wrong. And they gloried in it…and only rejected it when it was all over. Germans want to complain about Dresden? They should feel lucky that every city and town in Germany wasn’t razed to the ground.

And I do think that this unwillingness to punish on the larger scale has led to our unwillingness on the lower scale. We’re forever finding excuses. Letting the guilty off. Figuring out how we can turn a blind eye to it. Easier that way, don’t you know? To punish is to take responsibility…and to assert a standard that you, too, must he held to. It is almost as if by letting Nazis and Communists off we then gave ourselves permission to bomb mud huts in Vietnam and drone wedding parties in Yemen. That if we let the mugger and armed robber off in our streets, we can then excuse the politician taking bribes. That if we all smear a bit of sh** all over ourselves, none of us will notice we stink.

It is high time that we got ourselves cleaned up. That we start to punish the guilty. Yes, yes, yes: always tempered with mercy. But mercy is to reduce the punishment either in scope or duration…but there must be punishment. The guilty must feel at least some of the pain they inflicted. And nobody has an excuse – the dictator plotting war and the punk plotting robbery already know they shouldn’t – and they know they shouldn’t because they know they wouldn’t want themselves to be the victim of an unprovoked attack or a robbery. When we think of all those who have been victimized by war and crime over the past century because our failure to punish encouraged the next war or crime, then really no amount of harshness meted out to the guilty is excessive. If the Germans in 1939 had been shackled and working merely to feed themselves and pay back those they attacked, then there would have been no WWII. In Europe, 60 million people would not have died. Try to sell me that brutally humiliating the Germans for, say, 50 years after WWI would have been worse than WWII. And how many in our cities have been robbed, raped and murdered by people who had previously robbed, raped or murdered? You tell me that punishment doesn’t deter crime? Maybe – but I know what a guy breaking rocks in the hot sun for 10 years won’t do for 10 years: rob. That’s at least some people not robbed; and that makes the punishment of the robber just and merciful. And as merciful to the robber as to any potential future victims – by punishing, we are at least for a time preventing the miscreant from sinning, and that’s a good thing.

Trump Demands

Mark Noonan67 Comments

Back around August of 2016, I was talking over the election with the Mrs and, at that time, was figuring that Trump had a real chance of winning. But I was also thinking that the Establishment would pull out all the stops to prevent this. Not, by the way, because of the policies Trump proposed, nor even because of their false claims that he was a racist or any such thing. No, they were afraid of him winning simply because he would be the first President we’ve ever had who owed nothing to the Establishment. That is the key to understanding the amazing level of hatred directed Trump’s way. He doesn’t care what happens to the Establishment.

And the Establishment is corrupt to the bone – and gets away with it simply because no one does anything about it. They can’t – either they are personally compromised, or fearful that their closest allies will be caught up in an anti-corruption sweep. So, everyone just pretends its all good…with only the odd, egregious violator sent up the river, and even then only if such an action won’t harm the Masters of the Establishment, the Democrats. Trump comes rolling in and, being on the right side of the law, himself, sees no reason to worry about investigations…regardless of where they lead.

I don’t know why, exactly, Trump has allowed the Mueller fiasco to continue as long as it has – I can only assume he’s got his own plan, on his own timeline, and has made the calculation that it isn’t the right time to shut Mueller down. But his demand over the weekend that the DOJ look into Obama Administration spying is clearly a shot across the bow. We don’t know what Trump knows – what he has been able to obtain on his authority as President detailing just what happened. We can count on it that many bureaucrats would do all they can to thwart Trump in getting information…but at least some percentage of them still hold to the old, non-partisan ethic of the bureaucracy and so will obey Presidential orders. Trump likely knows a lot about who was doing what and under who’s orders.

But he can’t act precipitously on such information. It is going to be a lot harder to get convictions than most suspect. First off, Justice is riddled with people who will do all they can to blow cases. Secondly, any trials in the DC area would have a juries packed full of anti-Trump people who could easily be lead to saying “not guilty” no matter what. Also, when it all comes out, it has to come in a way very easy for the broad mass of the American people to understand. The MSM will just flat lie about it, of course…but if it is very obvious, even the most blatant lies won’t keep people from understanding the truth.

Big things are about to happen, I think – and what I think they’ll amount to is a full attack on a corrupt Ruling Class. Stay tuned.