Morality

We Need Morality

Mark Noonan32 Comments

So one of the sob stories Democrats are putting out to make us feel bad about their shutdown of the government was this lady – I think in New Mexico – who was whining about how she needs SNAP…and has been on it for thirty years. Thirty! Since 1995!

Have you ever felt like a sucker?

I’m soon to turn 61 – and tomorrow I will get up and go to work. Put in my eight hours. Maybe slightly longer if its busy. I do this so that I can buy my food, my house, my car, my gas, my clothes, my cable service, my phone service…and those small, individually wrapped Reeces cups because I’m trying to keep my weight under control (successfully) and the craving for something sweet after dinner gets its fix with just one of those. You know: all my stuff. My wife works, too. That lady has been sitting on her ass since I was 30! Collecting benefits. And you know it isn’t just SNAP…I’m sure she’s raking it in with a lot of other programs and, of course, is isn’t like anyone checks when you show up at the local food bank for a bit of free grocery shopping.

Yes, we do have an absolute moral obligation to feed the hungry. The clothe the naked. To house the homeless. But it isn’t a one way street:

For you know how one must imitate us. For we did not act in a disorderly way among you, nor did we eat food received free from anyone. On the contrary, in toil and drudgery, night and day we worked, so as not to burden any of you. Not that we do not have the right. Rather, we wanted to present ourselves as a model for you, so that you might imitate us. In fact, when we were with you, we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat. – 2 Thessalonians 3: 7-10

The poor have a moral obligation to work – and even it is make-work. Some contribution to society…to the people who are getting up each morning, going to work and providing the food, clothes and shelter. No human being physically capable of work and under the age of retirement has a right to receive without giving something back. Enough of this welfare scam. I don’t care what we have them do, as long as they are putting in a solid forty hours every week. Have them sweep the streets if there’s nothing else…but that EBT card only reloads when it is recorded that you did forty hours that week. Period.

And, in the end, this is what will get them off welfare…make them be responsible. There are people who are willing to live on the margins of life as long as it doesn’t require any effort on their part. But these days we’re lavishing so much money on welfare that the so-called “poor” are living as well as people who work for a living…and that’s just wrong. Welfare is to keep you this side of starvation and nakedness…not so you’re at home eating EBT cheetos while others are out working. If we make them do drudge work, they’ll for the most part find some other way to earn their daily bread. And, hey, if some don’t – then at least we’re getting clean streets and they’re getting the knowledge (and pride) that they aren’t just a burden…they’re doing something useful day in and day out. That is basic human dignity, folks.

But aside from that, this has exposed the lack of real morality in our society. It isn’t merciful to let people be on welfare for decades (and in many cases, generations). It is just wrong. It should horrify people that someone is on it more than six months. A year, tops. I related after my Dad died in 2009 that I found his food stamps ID card from 1970 in his wallet…I never knew but he kept that souvenir of the bad times…probably as a reminder. There is no shame in getting help. Dad was out of work and had kids to feed. You do what you gotta do. But you don’t make dependency a life style…or if you are to be dependent for your whole life, then you sure in heck shouldn’t have a say in how society works. That is, if you’re on welfare, no voting.

It is time for us to really get back to knowing what is right and what is wrong. Being on welfare except as a temporary expedient is wrong. Being massively overweight on welfare even more so (and we’ve all seen the overweight people on mobility scooters whipping out the EBT card at Wal Mart). But it is also wrong to be a bum on the streets. To be drunk or high in public. To father children with multiple women you never married. To engage in irresponsible sex in general. To be illiterate. To be innumerate. To be poorly dressed in public. To be loud and boorish in public spaces. To brawl over nothing in a fast food joint.

We have to start punishing this sort of thing. Loss of voting rights is just the start. There also has to be labor sentences for having that brawl at the fast food joint. For being high. For generally being a disreputable person who is making life hard for everyone else. And if a person doesn’t take the lesson the first couple times they are sent to labor to make up for their poor behavior, then the punishments must get progressively worse until they are permanently at work or finally get the message and stop acting like turnip-brained barbarians. We’re all human beings. On average, none of us are smarter than anyone else. I am not some specially gifted person that I have a house, cars, clothes and food. I just work and pay my bills and do my small part to keep things going as best I can. It isn’t a special burden: it is just life. And it isn’t really all that hard…sure, I get up some mornings and wish I could be doing just about anything else but going to work…but I go all the same. It is called being a man. Being civilized. Being truly human.

The world works. It really does. But it only works when we do. When all of us suck it up and get the job done. We can’t sustain ourselves if half of us are living off the other half. Everyone who is at all physically capable must contribute (and none of this “but my back hurts” nonsense – I live with constant pain in my right knee and I still get to work…because you offer up your pain to God and get on with it…when I’m saying “disabled” I mean you have to be disabled. Just not capable of doing any physical labor at all). And everyone who tries to slack or acts like a barbarian has to feel it – they can’t skate on that. It is the little things that matter the most…and for a well-ordered society, the bigger threat is the welfare bum, not the bank robber. A bank robber bets his life that he can steal and not be killed…a welfare bum bets your life that you’ll feed him no matter what. Time for that to end.

Not one person in America should be hungry, naked or homeless. But not one person in America should be taking without giving.

Open Thread

Mark Noonan18 Comments

The other day the UK voted to kill people to save on their healthcare budget. Of course, it wasn’t presented that way…it was all about “compassion” … where we compassionately whack granny rather than take care of her. After all, the old broad has been around a while and in her current condition she can’t bake a pie…so, here: take this $20 pill instead of this $20,000 medical treatment. It is all just horrific…but what is to be expected by people who don’t really believe anything any more. This is why I say the UK is doomed – and its not doomed by Muslims being imported, but by Brits not believing in God or, indeed, anything of note. The Muslims will take over the dead body of Britain…but someone would no matter because very soon there won’t be any British people left even if you do see some white guy with a Cockney accent. The only slight chance for Britain is the fact that – like a lot of places around the West – there is an ongoing revival of Christianity among youth. Still small in numbers, but growing rapidly…so, there might be a fight for Britain. But not over the current system – over who gets to replace it.

But I bring this up because there was this Lib-Dem MP who was rebuked from the pulpit by his priest. His Catholic priest. Had the guy been Church of England his non-binary priestess of color would have awarded him a medal for voting to kill. The MP was upset because the priest had made the public statement that he could no longer receive communion. That’s what bothered him – the public rebuke. Not the fact that he took his immortal soul in his hands and let it slip away because his constituents favor offing the elderly. The man goes to Mass every Sunday. Over the years the entire New Testament and most of the Old has been read out to him. He’s heard untold numbers of homilies expounding Catholic teaching…and he’s shocked and hurt that his public defiance of Catholic teaching led to a public rebuke of same. Catholic in Name Only! But that is the problem and if you wonder why we get some bad things happening in the Church – and, indeed, in all religions – it is just this: some people are only nominally in their religion. It is a sort of a hobby but it doesn’t touch their lives in any meaningful way…they live lives of practical paganism. And there are plenty of priests and pastors (and rabbis and imams) who are just as practically pagan as their wooden-headed congregations.

In case you wonder why I’m no longer in favor of universal suffrage it is really this: it isn’t that people are too stupid to vote but that people are too indifferent to be allowed to vote. If you don’t believe in anything, then why the heck are you even voting? For more welfare? To make some sort of social statement because you voted the “right” way? Well, that’s what gets us people like Obama in office so no thanks on that. I’d rather compete with people who hate me for a reason rather than people who hate me because TV told them to.

Canada tried to slap some BS tech tax on us retroactive back to 2022 and Trump terminated trade talks and Canada dropped the idea. It can’t be emphasized enough that access to the US market is the most valuable thing in the world…other countries might be richer per capita, other countries might have more people in them…but nobody has our combination of money and people. To sell in the USA is the most magnificent opportunity available…and people will pay through the nose for the privilege. That is what our Experts didn’t and don’t get and Trump instinctively knew all along. The tariffs are to get them to understand that there’s a price for doing business here and it’ll either be paid at the customs house or by a deal which allows us to sell in your country. Everyone gets to pick what they want but nobody gets a free ride any more.

Over on X a veteran posted about his experiences in the Muslim world during the War on Terrorism. It isn’t a pretty picture. It went viral. A lot. The guy has about 45,000 followers but the post is now up to 13.7 million views. Give it a read. What I believe is important about it is the fact that he’s just brutally telling us what it was like – with no condemnation of Muslims as Muslims. It is just what he saw – what he had direct experience of in a wartime situation in the Muslim world. I can tell it is true because it is a very extreme version of what I experienced in the peacetime Muslim world back in 1985-86. And do note that none of this sort of stuff was reported in the MSM…they’d be all over an American who shot the wrong guy but they never gave the actual context of what being there was like. It didn’t fit the Narrative.

First thing for all Americans to remember about Islam: it is different from the United States. This may come as a shock – especially for the fine people at Gays for Palestine – but they really aren’t just like us. Different language, different religious atmosphere, different historical development. The point being made in the post was that you can’t just willy-nilly transport these people to the USA – or the larger West – and expect them to simply fit in. Sure, self-selected people arriving via normal immigration process can be fine…and have been fine for ages…but waves of “refugees” being shoved in via NGO-funded human trafficking, not so much. The difference is that the Muslim who simply wants to live in, say, Germany and so does his best to live like a German is an immigrant…the Muslim trafficked into Germany is a combination of welfare bum and invader…who not only does not understand the West, but holds it in contempt.

We don’t want to have any more excuses for bad behavior – and it extends not just to importing people who don’t want to be here, but also to excusing Third World failure. I pointed out on X that Haiti is on the same island as the Dominican Republic and yet Dominica’s per capita GDP is more than five times that of Haiti. I asked, reasonably, just how could people louse it up as bad as the Haitians had? And then I got hit by The Excuse:

After independence from France – a quite brutal affair where the Haitians massacred all the white men and forced the surviving white women to marry Haitians – the French and Haitians reached a deal…and to be sure, it was a deal made with a French fleet off of Port au Prince. The French demanded an enormous sum of money as compensation for lost property and all the French who had been killed and, faced with overwhelming force, the Haitians agreed. These payment were enormous, especially on a poor country like Haiti, and the various financial means used to pay off the indemnity ended up working out to the last payment not being made until 1947. And that’s it, you see? Had that indemnity not been imposed, the Haitians would have had the economic sinews to build themselves up. There are serious calls for France to pony up $100 billion in reparations for all this.

I’d like to point out at this moment that 1947 was 78 years ago. Suppose Haitian development was negatively impacted by the debt – a reasonable assertion – this doesn’t explain why since the debt was paid there’s been no real improvement. Over the course of 78 years – a human lifetime – there should have been some movement towards economic prosperity and political stability. Instead we recently had some sort of bizarre cannibal gang rioting in Port au Prince. I get that Haiti has a legacy of slavery, colonialism and being treated unfairly by Great Powers…but lots of countries have that and aren’t basket cases. I start to suspect that there’s some fundamental failure in the Haitian people.

And we’re all done with that – and Trump revoking Temporary Protected Status for 500,000 Haitians has got the Democrats in an uproar and the rest of us asking, “does this mean we’ll get them all out? I’m sure there are more than 500,000 here”. It isn’t indifference to human suffering…it is impatience with endless excuse-making and explaining-away. The Haitians – and the rest of the people of the Third World – are human beings just like the rest of us. They are no dumber and no smarter than we are. They are as capable of building up a free and prosperous society as anyone…and we’re now suggesting that they get on it.

A Little Courage, Please

Mark Noonan9 Comments

My Dad didn’t survive World War Two. He won it. Might not seem like much of a distinction but I think it important – survivors are people who merely endured…victors are people who did something. I think that we in the West have gotten into the habit of thinking of veterans as “survivors” because it suits the overall Left worldview that we should do so…the concept that war is always bad and never solves anything has been deeply embedded into the Western mind, and I do believe deliberately…to get Westerners out of the habit of defending the West.

I’ve talked about this a bit and it stems from World War One…which the Western elite started to talk about in terms of it being useless slaughter about ten years after the war ended. It really got going with things like the play Journey’s End in 1928…which, being written by a veteran of the trenches, can’t be totally condemned…but the whole depressing aspect of it with everyone miserable and doomed to die doesn’t cover all the ground. The play is set in the front lines in March of 1918 and the men there are, in a bit of a sense, doomed…it isn’t spoken of in the play but the characters are directly in the path of the most massive offensive ever conducted in war: Operation Michael. This was where the Germans sent the very best 72 divisions of their army against 29 British divisions in line…and it started with a 4 hour barrage where 3,500,000 shells were fired. The grim reality is that those British units in the front line were going to lose a lot – some were totally destroyed over a couple days fighting. It was quite horrific.

But it was also an amazing British victory. No operation of the war was more creditable to the British soldier than his response to Michael. The very best of Germany came at Tommy in overwhelming numbers and the British soldier stopped him cold…Michael was a total failure and that failure ensured Germany’s ultimate defeat in the war (the German plan was for Michael to knock the British army out of the war and then turn the whole German army against the weakened French and unready American armies). And remember, it was just regular British units…filled with average British men from all over the UK and the Empire. The German forces were picked men…units specially crafted and trained for this exact offensive. The best of Germany met the average of the British Empire…and got it’s Kraut ass kicked.

But the public mind on all of it is of a useless welter of slaughter deciding nothing. And it is like that for all great and brave efforts. Even our movies and stories about victories in World War Two have this element of the hopeless in it…that it was all bad. For post-WWII military efforts it just gets even worse…the hopelessness of useless effort and death often combined with a subtext that the West is a criminal enterprise. This, I think, is why we see all over the West a simple refusal to defend itself. We’ve all seen videos of “migrants” on busses and trains in Europe verbally and physically abusing women and a bunch of Western men stand around pretending their don’t notice it. Sure, if they did try to do anything they’d probably get arrested while the “migrant” skated…but the fact that they’ve allowed such a thing to be betrays complete cowardice…and I don’t think humans are by nature cowards. This is an imparted reality…something made. On purpose.

We do need to get a collective backbone. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Audie Murphy. I’ve never faced combat. I have no idea how I’d behave in a life-threatening crisis. I hope I’d behave well…the lessons imparted to me by my combat-veteran father tell me that in a crisis I’m to swallow fear and do what needs to be done. I believe I’d give a good account of myself…that is, if I were on a bus and I saw a woman being abused, I would intervene. I wouldn’t care that I might get hurt or the authorities might arrest me afterwards…I would intervene because that is the right thing to do, consequences be damned. And we do see that in the USA when its totally absent elsewhere in the West…but we also know that it isn’t universal in the USA because we do get the stories where everyone did just stand around and let it happen.

Growing a spine is going to take a cultural shift – and that means a pop-cultural shift. We’re going to have to start retelling tales of heroism. More movies like The Alamo of 1960, less like Saving Private Ryan of 1998 – and, yes, I recognize the high quality in both films…but one is a tale of triumph in defeat the other a tale of defeat in triumph (after all, the key scene is a defense of a bridge against odds…and while most of the men died, the bridge was held…the evil Nazis were thwarted. A good outcome was obtained…but the movie ends it with it all being quite useless effort). It is a huge difference. And we need to get it back.

No, You Can’t Use my Morals to Kill Me

Mark Noonan37 Comments

The latest effort to derail DOGE has been to have moderate Right (not specifically Never Trump) people write despairing pieces about the failure of Conservatives to deplore Elon Musk’s serial adultery. He has 12 confirmed children, a social media influencer claiming number 13. They tie this into Trump’s sexual past and throw up their hands (a little dramatically) wondering just how we can do anything when those in charge of the movement are sinners? This effort is clearly orchestrated by the Left – which doesn’t care at all about morality but they will wipe their butt with their own flag if it helps them.

Rely on it, if we made an effort to codify morality into law, these same Right voices would rise in opposition to us on Libertarian grounds. The only people morality applies to, in their minds, is us: we have to be perfect and if we ain’t, then we don’t deserve to have power…or, indeed, anything.

To make it clear: adultery is a sin. Fornication is a sin. Horrible, bad sins which can destroy a human soul and condemn it to everlasting damnation.

But so, too, divorce and birth control. Working on the Sabbath. Not going to Mass on Sunday. Do you get what I’m saying? If we are to base our politics upon what is considered a sin in Christian theology, then we’re going to have a very different political organization. And one that won’t win anything. To be sure, winning in politics is not usually the most crucial consideration. We Christians are in the world but we are not supposed to be of it and we are supposed to, as far as possible, meekly live within the political structure trusting to God that things will work out. And for the most part, that is what Christians have done – it has been a long time since anyone really insisted upon any distinctly Christian policy in American politics. But things are different now. We’re not fighting for mere political power. We are fighting for our very lives.

We Christians are to accept martyrdom if it is thrust upon us. We aren’t to seek it out but if we are placed into the position where we can only live by denying God, then it is time for us to die – and joyfully so. But our prime duty here is escape if possible. Just as we are to avoid near occasions of sin, so we should avoid, if we can, situations where the choice becomes apostasy or death. That is what we’re trying to do here. I know it sounds perhaps a bit melodramatic, but it is win in politics right now, or die. If we lose and have to die, so be it – we trust in God. But let’s try not to lose.

We have to fully grasp what we’re up against. Remember, when the Palestinians sent in rape/murder squads to Israel, the global Left supported the Palestinians. They still do. Even today they are still out in the streets waving Hamas flags and calling Israel the bad guy. Think about that. They also sincerely believe that a human being can be born in the wrong body – and that anyone denying this is malevolent. They believe that punishing criminals is wrong. Not kidding about that: they are all in for “alternatives to punishment”…because they have internalized the idea that crime only happens because of injustice. We joke about saying “society made me do it”, but they really believe this to be the case…and so “society” needs to be punished. These are not reasoned, logical positions. They are not just false, but obviously false…and yet tens of millions of people in these United States of America believe it all and given that they further believe the world will die if they don’t get their way, we have the recipe for massacre.

Keep in mind that the whole basis of Nazism was stupidly wrong – ultimately based upon the belief that the Jews were an organized, malevolent force in the world deliberately out to destroy the civilized people – ie, the Aryans. This is no different from the modern Left believing that we are an organized, malevolent force deliberately out to destroy the planet. The Germans bought the Nazi argument and at least 40% of the American people have bought the Left argument. It won’t take much for a solid majority to get behind “born in the wrong body” and “that hamburger is killing the Earth!”. And people who think that the world will end if they don’t prevail are not noted for holding back…once you get that idea fixed in your head that only total destruction of the enemy allows you to survive, you’ll do anything to get your way.

I am not here in this year of 2025 trying to preserve Christian morality – we lost that fight decades ago when we didn’t oppose the completely insane idea of no-fault divorce…when we seriously went along with the idea that a promise made to God and Man can be annulled by a judge. At that point, the slide down into Elon Musk having 12 or 13 children from a large number of women was kinda baked in. And, on the whole, this is actually far more human than the Left which wants to trans kids they don’t abort…and suicide them if they wind up depressed teenagers. At least Musk is making babies and wanting them to get on a path towards a useful life. Better if he wasn’t nailing everything that will sit still for five minutes…but if I’ve got a choice between a world where people are bumping uglies with wild abandon and having buckets of children and another world where they lop off healthy body parts and then suicide the result…I know what I’m choosing. And I did just mention the suicide thing, didn’t I? Really think about that – the Left thinks it is good if people can have taxpayer funded “doctors” kill them if they’re feeling out of sorts. They don’t even call it a necessary evil any more – they call it good. Positive. A great outcome. Yay death!

For my own safety’s sake, I must defeat these people. Because I am not like them, I don’t want them jailed or killed. I will allow them to remain in their personal delusions…but I must do everything I can to remove them from all power and influence in the world. I will go pretty far here, including to eventual disenfranchisement and confiscation of their wealth if that proves necessary to stop these insane people. But for right now, I think that if we can de-fund them that will solve most of the problem…my conviction is that these insane beliefs are only given credence because subscription to them ensures well-paid sinecures for those willing to push the lunacy. Don’t ever downplay the power of a dollar sign in front of a morally and intellectually weak person. Much is written in the history books about how the German generals went along with Hitler even when it was clear his military commands were leading to disaster…much less is written about how Hitler secured and retained that compliance: money. He simply bribed his senior leaders to go along…and go along they did, only concerned about keeping their place at the trough. So, too, the modern American Left. And if we take away the money…if nobody is paying them to be insane, then there’s a strong chance they’ll stop being insane. And Musk is leading the charge in taking away their money.

Do I trust Musk? No. The default position on anyone with a great deal of money and/or power is mistrust. Trump gets trust now because he’s proven himself in the face of terrible odds to be on my side. Musk? Well, he’s doing some good things but so far the chips haven’t really been down…he hasn’t had to choose between his own happiness and the good of the people. The Left is pushing that way and he’s probably going to be forced to make that choice. We’ll see how that goes. But, meanwhile, he’s doing what I want – except too slowly and being far too nice to the Left. I want what he’s doing put on overdrive. Musk is a tool. He’s useful right now. If he remains useful then I’ll keep backing him – but the minute the tool is broken or proves ineffective, I’ll drop him like used chewing gum.

And here’s the kicker: once I defeat these insane people and restore a world where truth is the basis of action, then I can start to revive Christian morality – or, indeed, any moral code. People who think that abortion is good are not going to be converted to Christianity with ease. Heck, just getting them to stop being raving lunatics is a herculean task. But if they are no longer paid to believe that abortion is good then they might stop actually believing that abortion is good…and that will open them up to the prospect of understanding that being a good person requires a strict moral code enforced by law and custom. But this is all for after: after the Left is defeated. I can’t get there from here – I must first get rid of the lunatics. Then I can talk.

Evil People Like Being Evil

Mark Noonan17 Comments

People are now really noticing the grooming scandal out of Rotherham, UK and there’s all the “how can this happen?” sorts of statements going on. I refer you to this passage in Book VII: Empress:

This, I think, is what we normies don’t fully realize. A person on X asked is there’s some sort of passage (ritual?) where becoming a child abuser is necessary for advancement in the Establishment. To this I replied, in a way. You see, to really have power with the full backing of the global Establishment, you must sign off on abortion as a positive good. No more of this mucking around with “while I’m personally opposed” drivel from the 1980s…you have to get out there and say and do actions which actively promote abortion as a moral good. Once you’ve passed that Rubicon…well, tolerating the abuse of kids is easy. And, as noted above: fun. Rely on it: the people who covered up Rotherham had a big, old laugh about it…because their ability to cover it up and their current program to just bareface it out demonstrates their power.

“So, now you know we pretty much actively encouraged it. So, what? What can you do about it? Oh, and here’s a Bobby to arrest you for posting about it on social media.”

We aren’t quite there in the USA yet but, as per usual in social disintegration, we’re always about a decade behind the rest of the Western world. Takes longer here because of our federal system and written Constitution. But make no mistake about it, and we’ve already seen it: the government is going to eventually try to arrest us for noticing government corruption. And just like over in Europe, they’ll justify it as a fight against racism or whatever alleged “phobia” they can think of. Trump is going to become a finger in the dyke in 17 days…but if we don’t really dig deep and reform, then he’s just going to slow it down.

This really should come as no surprise – we have seen it before. In the Soviet Commissar forcing his female prisoners to be his sex slaves. In the Nazi camp guard waking up is prisoners with ice water in the middle of the night. Needless cruelty done just because the perpetrator can do it. And they do it because they enjoy it. Having no sense of decency and no real conception of God (whatever they might have started with long since burned out of them), they just do it because they can. Solzhenitsyn theorized that the interrogators of the Lubyanka must have got together to discuss ways and means of being cruel because once it happened to one prisoner, it soon happened to all the rest…as if they were trying out new ways of being gratuitously cruel…with some har, har, hars and back slapping as they decided which prisoner to try it out on first. And then these people went home to their wives and/or girlfriends and acted like they were normal human beings.

But they ain’t. Now, to be sure, as long as we are alive we are all capable of redemption but we also know per the Bible that sometimes hearts can be hardened…that God lets the choice of the wicked be ratified and that’s when they get exceptionally horrid. People who have those hard hearts might, at times, seem normal…they can still put on the false front. But deep down inside they’re just looking for the next cruel thing to do…and the more senseless it is, the better. Remember, the slaves of GULAG and the Arbeitseinsatz didn’t have to be treated brutally…nearly starved and beaten over trivial things. In fact, the Soviet and Nazi regimes would have got vastly more economic benefit out of their slaves had they been well fed and treated with kindness. It actually worked against the regimes to do what they did…Nazi soldiers lacked sufficient weapons and supplies because of it towards the end of the war. But it happened…because, as I said, evil people like to do evil things.

So, what to do?

First thing – call it evil. These aren’t mistakes. These are failures of the system. These are deliberate, malicious acts of evil and those who did them have to be very severely punished.

That is going to be the key to restoring our world. To resume a society of logic and decency – severe punishment inflicted upon the wicked. If we don’t do that, then we’re doomed. I’m hoping that we’re just about to start doing that.

The precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart – Psalm 19

Mark Noonan13 Comments

You heard that this morning when you went to Church.

Right?

It really struck home…and sort of worked into something that occurred to me earlier in the week: the laws of God are not a ban on fun, but just ten simple rules (boiled down to two by Our Lord) for a sane life. The precepts of the Lord really do give joy to the heart. Think about it. If everyone on Earth just agreed to abide by the Ten Commandments for one week – just seven, little days – think about what a wonderful week that would be? No lies. No murder. No adultery/fornication. No theft. No wrath or jealousy. It would be a week of total chill…and it would cost us nothing. Nobody would lose a thing by it. If we would obey the precepts of the Lord, we’d be living pretty joyfully.

And that’s why the world today is held up by a scaffold of lies. It is all a bunch of drivel designed to really get to one thing – that people don’t have joy in their lives. And that just tells you who the author of the modern world is right there.

Here is Nevada we are inundated with pro-abortion ads. The most sick and twisted is teenage-looking girls (I’m sure they’re over 18 for legal purposes but clearly chosen to look 15-ish) begging us to save their right to an abortion. “Think about us”, they say. We have to make sure they can get an abortion…we have to make sure, that is, they can get their lives ruined as early as possible but at least scrape away the most inconvenient result (and, of course, protect the older men who abuse them…can’t forget that: Question 6 here in Nevada legalizes abortion for minors without parental consent…because we must ensure the degenerates can dispose of the strongest evidence against them). What strikes you about it – aside from revulsion – is how very sad it is. That we’ve clearly got girls of a very young age who are resigned to being sexually used and tossed aside…and abort that kid so you can have your career in a cubicle farm.

If they were just working on obeying the precepts of the Lord, of course, they’d look forward to marriage to a man who will promise and kids growing up and all that normal, sane, human stuff. Can’t have that, can we?

On and on like that. Young boys are also taught to ruin themselves – that their relationship goal isn’t to make a manly promise to a woman, but to skip from one to another because that “respects” a woman’s independence. This has had the effect of making more and more young men have contempt for women…to see them as objects. And irritating objects at that. Useful for only one thing so why put up with her outside of the bedroom? It is causing a real crisis in manhood…men aren’t geared to be like that and talking them into being pigs is causing psychic breakdown in the men as well.

There was a reason we used to stamp on people who lived badly and lied – and it wasn’t because we were anti-fun. It was because we had a little bit of common sense. We were a mature, sensible people – we didn’t believe childish notions about having one’s cake and eating it too. We knew that life was a series of trade offs and that if we wanted a bit of real happiness and prosperity then we had to ensure at least a basic level of morality – that we had a least a little bit of obeying the precepts of the Lord, even if a lot of people did cut corners on that when they could.

We have to get back to that.

It will be difficult.

But it will be worth it.

The Evil Know They’re Evil

Mark Noonan26 Comments

Candace Owens rose to fame via being a black woman on the right: certainly a rare bird. But it appears that she did so to become famous: that is, her views weren’t informed by knowledge and thought, but by what needed to be said to get Conservatives slobbering all over her. It did help that she’s a very pretty young lady. But now she’s going full bore into the very worst parts of the swamp of anti-Semitism. She is rightly being condemned for this but I think that the condemnations are going about it wrong – they mostly accuse her of being stupid or venal or some such. She may well be all sorts of things, but the primary thing she’s being is evil.

Given her youth, my expectation is that her education is lacking. It has been a long time since any Western system of education provided an actual education. Some private schools do, but the general run (even in most private schools) is pretty deplorable. Even the smartest kids don’t really know all that much. And one of the subjects where things are worst is in history – it is either not taught at all, or it is a sort of kindergarten-Marxist view of history which leaves out much fact and all context while pushing some pretty transparent lies. And that, I think, is why so many youngsters are feeling the pull of anti-Semitism…when you’re told in school a pack of lies and then discover this, you start to doubt everything…and latching on to those doubts are the anti-Semites. Mostly Muslim in origin these days, but the more traditional Nazi types are also active here. This is why Owens not too long ago rather breathlessly reported to us that the Germans were treated harshly in the aftermath of WWII. The over 50 were all, “of course they were: they deserved it. And more”, but the younger were shocked about it. This has led Owens, and many others, into the fever swamps.

But that still doesn’t excuse. No matter how ignorant Owens is. No matter how many lies have been fed to her, she still knows that her views about the Jews are wrong. She knows it because she knows that she, as a black woman, would reject with fury any attempt to paint all black people as malevolent. The human heart can be corrupted and, per the Bible, it is sometimes permitted to become hardened at the choice of the person…but that still doesn’t excuse:

Therefore, you are without excuse, every one of you who passes judgment. or by the standard by which you judge another you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, do the very same things. We know that the judgment of God on those who do such things is true. Do you suppose, then, you who judge those who engage in such things and yet do them yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? – Romans 2:1-3

Owens and those like her are now judged – if they don’t repent, then what they have meted out in judgement against the Jews will be repaid to them. They have falsely accused the Jews of a conspiracy to destroy, can they escape judgement for this? They know they shouldn’t. They know all Jews are not bad and cannot be judged as a group. But they do it anyway…for a bit of fame or money or power. They accuse the Jews of trying to destroy and thus reveal themselves as people trying to destroy. It is a very dangerous ground to go on…and God does permit hearts to be hardened. None of us know precisely what happened to Hitler after that bullet passed through his head – but given how hardened his heart had become, we have a strong belief about where he likely is today. The people like Owens are risking everything they have…for nothing.

It is very important for us to resume calling evil what it is – and calling out those who practice it. We do have to be careful: there is a line where a person is mistaken rather than evil. Like the person who wishes abortion to be legal for fear that banning it is worse than keeping it. That isn’t an evil view. It gets into evil when we start having people “shouting their abortion”, as if killing at kid, even if incidental to saving a mother’s life, can in any way be something to be proud of. It is a tragedy at best…murder at worst. And everyone knows this because everyone knows they don’t want to be killed at the convenience of another. The judgement they meted out will come back to them. That we leave to God, but what we have to do is close it off. We can’t end evil, but we must place it aside, condemned and controlled…as far as practical in a pluralist, human society.

It is my view that once we stopped calling evil what it is, we essentially gave permission for it to flourish. We were told that calling birth out of wedlock disgraceful was wrong…and so we stopped, and now 40% of all births in the USA are out of wedlock. There was a reason we called out of wedlock births bad…not to be mean, but to discourage people from doing it – instinctively knowing that the best chance a child has is with two parents committed to each other and to the child. Any other arrangement would be bad and could prove fatal. But we were told to stop. Too mean.

Tell that to the 100 or so kids under 18 who will OD on drugs next month because they come from not broken homes, but homes that were never built to begin with…some pathetic, ill-educated woman cohabitated with an equally pathetic, ill-educated man…for a night, or a week, or a month…and a child emerged 9 months later lacking family and structure and the sense of belonging this creates…and so he dies at 16 on a dare after taking some drugs because he had no ambition or hope. That is what happens when we stop calling evil what it is. That and all the other monstrous social pathologies we see every day in our sad, dying society.

Time to stand up and start calling evil what it is. Tell the wicked. Tell them again. When everyone shouts at you, tell them again. They aren’t wrong. You can call the wrong, wrong. You can educate the mistaken. The only thing you can do with evil is stop it. And we’d better get doing that fast before we’re overwhelmed.

Do You Want to Die?

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Couple things came across on X today that got me thinking a little more deeply about our current condition.

The first was a news report about the President of the International Olympic Committee claiming, to quote, there is “no scientifically solid system” to determine male or female.

Next thing was a report out of the UK where the government is going full-Gestapo against British people who dared to be upset about foreign savages stabbing British girls.

Final thing was, in response to that, someone posting a link to the Sex Pistols song, God Save the Queen. You remember it, don’t you? I do; and this bit:

God save the Queen
She ain’t no human being
There is no future
In England’s dreaming

These three things rolled around in my head a for a bit and it occurred to me, very counter-intuitively, that because the Brits tolerated that lyric, they are now being arrested for posting memes about foreign savages.

It might seem wrong to think that because, of course, the UK government is savagely repressing free speech whereas the Sex Pistols were a sort of test case for free speech. The sort of thing we were told we must allow to happen or we’d all end up arrested. Well, the Brits did let it happen – and now they’re being arrested. Funny, isn’t it?

There’s no future in England’s dreaming. They did get that right, but not how they meant. What they meant was that there was no future in England’s dream of a solidly middle class society of strictly law-abiding people who did the right thing cheerfully. Punk rock was at war with that. So was the rest of British pop culture – and, indeed, pop culture all through the West; taking endless shots at the staid, boring old fuddy-duddies who just wouldn’t let people have fun. We’ve got to fight for our right to par-taaaaay!

But, of course, nobody was ever against having fun – but the fuddy-duddies did object to thinking that being garbage was fun…being drunk. Being stoned. Being on welfare. Dressing like a weirdo. This wasn’t fun; this was just being insulting. And living off the productive while doing it. So the fuddy-duddies objected and got made even more fun of…and so they just let it happen because, being fuddy-duddies, they didn’t want to seem rude. Problem was that there was a social system which was based upon sobriety, hard work, thrift, being law-abiding…and it was so very successful that it built a surplus that lazy, profligate drunken thieves could take advantage of. That old fuddy-duddy society is now long gone…and now your daughter can be murdered by a foreign savage and if you object you’ll get a visit from the police.

And that brought my mind back to the IOC President – what he said is a lie. He knows it is a lie. Everyone who heard it knew it was a lie. He knew that everyone who heard it knows that he knows it is a lie. Yet, he said it; he went ahead and lied. And he still has his job. The particular lie here isn’t really the point – the point is that our society has become so entirely suffused with lies that we don’t really even notice them. A lot of people commented on the article – but only very rarely did anyone call it a lie. They called it stupid. They called it ignorant. They called it all sorts of things but only a few (me, included, of course) called it what it is: a lie.

You have to really roll that around in your head for a moment, what the IOC guy said: he is denying not some controversial theory of the universe but a self-evident truth. I don’t need to prove to anyone what a man is. I don’t need a DNA test. I need to merely see the person – naked if necessary just in case there’s been some surgery, etc – and that will tell me what I need to know. I no more need to prove a person is man or woman than I need to prove to anyone that water is wet by pouring a bucket of it over their head. We know water is wet. We know what a man is. We know what a woman is. There’s no guesswork here. And that makes the IOC President a liar – quite an egregious and ridiculous liar. The only possible out for him would be a determination that he is stark, raving mad. Because only a madman can possibly not know the difference between a man and a woman. Anyone else making such a claim is just a liar.

It is said that C. S. Lewis was greatly influenced by G. K. Chesterton and I do believe this is true – if for nothing else than that both of them hit upon the requirement that if you’ve gone wrong, you have to go back to the mistake – no matter how far back that is – and fix it from there. It is no use trying to tinker with the mistake. You can’t fix wrong – you can only stop being wrong. And as I pondered all of this, it came into my mind that the error – where we went wrong – was when we accepted the assertion that we must tolerate wrong if we want to be right.

You know the argument: its generally associated with the Libertarian ideal these days but its been around for a long time. Let’s just say it started with Voltaire in the 18th century – “I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it”. This, of course, was in stark opposition to the societal expectation of his day – in both Catholic and Protestant countries – that there are some things you just couldn’t say. Mostly related to blasphemy against God. To be sure, some nations took it hard in the direction of not saying anything against the King, or the government, or the higher orders in general and that was wrong. But because Louis XV would unjustly send a man to the Bastille for speaking out of turn about Madame du Pompadour it doesn’t necessarily follow that we must allow everything to be said as if nothing matters.

It is a good theory, I’ll grant it that – it does seem that if I in any way curtail someone’s ability to say a thing then it might come out that I, in my turn, am curtailed. But what if what the other person is saying is just a lie? What if its an insane lie? What if its an assertion that we can’t tell man from woman? To be sure, we didn’t immediately jump from Rousseau’s absurdities to “hey, I can’t tell what a man is”, but it is a rather straight line. There is another quote from Voltaire which is pertinent here: “those who can make you believe absurdities will get you to commit atrocities”. Yeah. No kidding, Volty ol’ buddy. We went from the absurdity of the proposition that humanity once lived in a “state of nature” to “you can be born in the wrong body” in just 250 years. Blink of an eye. So maybe defending to the death everyone’s right to say whatever they damned well pleased wasn’t such a good idea?

What we’ve done is place lies on the same platform as truth and said, “you’re equal, have at it”. But lies, being lies, cheated and has now kicked truth to the curb and is running wild. Here’s my assertion on this: nobody actually believes a lie. Even the people who get conned out of money by the more conventional kind of liar – you know: “hey, I can get you 25% returns forever, just give me your money”. Nobody believes that – the “suckers” are just hoping they get paid before the pyramid scheme blows up. Everyone knows that there’s no such thing as a free lunch and that what is too good to be true is always false. A six year old can believe a lie. A senile person can believe a lie. No person in possession of their senses does.

But people do go along with the lies – for a variety of reasons and none of them matter. What matters is that they are participating in them even if just by silent consent. And they participate because they are expecting a payoff before it all goes to hell. Even if that payoff is just what they think will be a little bit of peace and quiet. And after now a couple centuries of allowing lies to pervade we are now in a situation where things are starting to crack – and I mean the basics of civilization. You see it: most obviously in the public brawls and looting of stores. But it is also in a bridge that can’t be repaired for years, or a space capsule that can’t land because, apparently, someone forget to make sure it could land…or maybe they didn’t even know what’s required for landing a space capsule? But they launched the thing! They did that – clearly didn’t know if it would work, but they launched it. Far more important than the space ship was that the lies were agreed to…and I’m sure the workforce that failed to replicate 1969 tech is filled with diverse and equitable people…when we need some geek with a slide rule to just do the math.

So, as Chesterton and Lewis pointed out, to fix this we have to go back to the beginning and start all over again. Our mistake was to allow lies. We must not allow lies any more. First off, we have to punish those who are lying. This is crucial: they must feel real pain. Not so much to punish them (though there is that) but to instruct everyone else that lying is bad. Really bad. Like so bad you should never, ever do it. Not even a little bit. Secondly, and far more importantly, we have to ban lying. We can’t let people lie and call it free speech. Just can’t. I know: tricky. This won’t be easy – but if we allow lies to flourish then we’ll just get more lies. Liars like to lie – beats working for a living. Until it is legally and socially impossible to lie and be rich, we’ll just continue to be overwhelmed…and our civilization will die. First in a round of cruel oppression as the liars try to kill everyone who won’t go along, secondly as everything falls apart because liars can’t do things like keep roads and sewer systems working. And do keep in mind that I said the liars will kill us – in fact, they already are: those girls stabbed in Britain were stabbed by liars. Sure, maybe a foreign savage held the knife, but it was a polished, urbane bureaucrat who invited the savage in via lies. Bottom line is that one way or another a lot of people are going to lose everything – liberty, property and life. Your choice: liars, or you.

Punish the Barbarians

Mark Noonan19 Comments

I wrote not too long ago about the need to punish – that is, if we want to have civil society then we are going to have to start punishing the miscreants who are increasingly making civil life intolerable. And this wasn’t a call to jail criminals – it was a call to punish. To physically harm these people. And often for what we have been conditioned to call relatively trivial offenses these days. It is necessary to do this – and we will as a society eventually do it – because human beings, because we’re Fallen or just perverse, take your pick based on theological/philosophical beliefs, can only be made civilized. You can’t politely ask a barbarian to behave – you have to whip him into compliance. As we learned over a thousand years, after a while force is reduced to habit and hides its claws. That is once you’ve punished enough people become polite and transmit this moral code to their children on the regular and so barbarism largely vanishes. Unless you do something stupid like think that people are naturally nice and so you can put away the whip forever.

This is also necessary in the realm of international affairs. States are made up of people and so have all the inherent weaknesses people have. But a bit worse in that there is no cop you can call on a nation that has decided to become outlaw. Only other nations can bring it to heel, often at high cost and a lot of bother; war being a fearsome thing, most nations prefer to avoid it as long as possible and often for far too long, allowing the outlaw nations to gain quite a lot before their avarice awakens their enemies to the peril. And that is just for the more conventional nation trying to grab land and resources. At other times, especially in the modern world, the outlaw nation isn’t merely trying for a bit of larceny (though that is always at the bottom of any aggressor’s actions), but are also imposing inhuman cruelty as a part of national policy. The Nazis are, of course, the prime example of this: not only wanting to conquer the world, but also enslaving or murdering everyone they deemed non-Aryan.

The Nazis to a large degree did get what was coming to them. Not enough, in my view: the Germans (as well as the Japanese and Italians) got off far too lightly for putting the world through the Second World War. But it was still sufficient punishment to ensure that no German, Japanese or Italian would decide that a program of conquest and massacre is the way to go. We’re now approaching 80 years since the end of the war and such sentiments in all three nations are only held by tiny numbers of kooks who have no chance of national power. But what was done to the Axis powers during and after WWII also shows the necessity of doing it.

Think about World War One; we are taught that the harsh peace of Versailles caused German resentment and so led to World War Two. Drivel! The reparations were, relatively, no different from what Germany had imposed on France after the Franco-Prussian war. The territories sliced off from Germany were territories the Germans had taken in unjust wars of conquest in the past. And then you really have to think about Belgium and France: they literally did absolutely nothing to bring on the war. They were minding their own business, not offering any threat to anyone in 1914 when the Germans demanded their abject surrender with the threat of invasion if not complied with. It took both of those countries massive blood drain to expel the Germans. Huge amounts of their territory was ruined by war. And, remember: they were completely innocent! And all the French demanded post-war was the return of stolen land and cash compensation for all the death and destruction. That was reasonable. The Germans were unreasonable to so much as resent it. A Germany which had been far more severely punished for WWI would never have started WWII…just as the severely punished Germany of 1945 has not and will not start WWIII.

And you know why I’m bringing this up – the Iranian attack on Israel. While it was ongoing the leaders of the West – from Pudding Brain on down – were calling on Israel to show restraint. Not calling on Iran to show restraint: Israel. And more than likely Israel will show restraint, just as they have in Gaza. Just as they have with their Arab/Muslim enemies since 1948. And that’s the problem: the restraint. As we see in American streets that allowing barbarism just gets you more barbarism, so it is in international affairs. When a savage attacks and you let him live, that just means he’ll attack again…and probably more nasty each time as he figures out new ways to be a son of a bitch.

How should Israel punish? Ideally with their nuclear arsenal. I know: we’re not supposed to say things like that. How could you! The Ultimate Weapon can never be used! Whatever; its just a big bomb. And if Israel really wants to make a point, they’d target Iran’s primary nuclear facilities with nuclear weapons. It would get the Mullahs attention. It would let them know they are outclassed and facing an enemy unafraid to push the button. It is, in fact, the only way for Israel to really punish Iran as Israel is too far away and has too small a population to go toe to toe in a ground war. Sure it would cause outrage – but only among the people who really just want Israel to die already so they can get on with living off Arab oil money in peace and quiet.

In the larger context, if we want to end this international anarchy where States use lunatic proxies to wage war against us – and infiltrate our societies with Islamists committed to our destruction – then we’re going to have to start punishing the nations causing the trouble. To nutshell it: there are no innocent Palestinians. No innocent Iranians. Point blank: if a nation uses its own or irregular forces to attack us – any of us, anywhere at any time – then that nation and its people are outlaws. And outlaws must feel pain. Lots and lots of pain. So much pain that no matter how much they hate us, they’ll never dare look crossways at us again. Our mistake post-9/11 was our assumption (and I did share it at the time) that there was a separate part of the Muslim population causing the trouble and if we could just isolate that part and destroy it, all would be well. Doesn’t work that way. Just as the SS doesn’t work without Fritz delivering the mail, so Islamists don’t work without Abdul milking the goat. All Germans were collectively responsible for Auschwitz. All Muslims were collectively responsible for 9/11. And the only way a German in WWII got out of his responsibility was by actively working for the downfall of the German regime – so, too, the Muslim on the street: he’s guilty unless he actively joins the fight against the Islamists. Want me to make it clear: all Muslims were responsible for 10/7 and Israel has a right to punish all Muslims any way they see fit until such time as all Muslims stop 10/7 from ever happening again.

If we don’t start to see it this way, then we’ll never get out of this mess – and that is bad for Muslims as well as for us. Had we spent WWII just trying to hit SS infrastructure, we would have lost. The SS would have remained in control – and along with killing and oppressing non-Germans, the SS would to this day be killing and oppressing Germans. The Islamic world must learn a harsh lesson; in this case, that they can’t harbor Islamist supremacist thoughts and remain safe. That just allowing it to be means eventually a bomb is coming for you and your family. The only way to safety for Islam must be surrender of all dreams of Islamist conquest – just as the only way to safety for Germans in 1945 was to give up the Nazi dream.

What, then, is punishment? Aside from direct military action there must be surrenders of territories. Removals of populations. Trials of criminals. Occupation by victorious enemies. In other words, what happened to Germany in 1945 must happen to Islam.

We are in no way physically or mentally ready for any such thing; but we’re going to have to get ready. Because they won’t quit. Israel will respond in some military fashion to Iran – and maybe even hit some pretty important targets. But the Iranians are expecting that. It won’t alter the game as far as they are concerned; just a bump on the road to their ultimate victory is how they’ll view the matter. In fact, that Israel won’t use nuclear weapons will likely be seen in Tehran as proof of Israeli cowardice and will actually encourage them to try more attacks. Until we steel ourselves to some very harsh actions, this just goes on and on.

The Evil Must End

Mark Noonan23 Comments

Got my heart broken a bit today – saw this story of an 18 year old kid from backwoods Mexico who was abandoned by the traffickers because he couldn’t keep up. The good news is that he was found and got help – and will be returned to his mother in Mexico, as he tearfully desired. And, you guessed it, there was Cartel involvement: it looks like in some way the kid and/or his family owes the Cartel money and his journey was to get work to pay them off. Just in case anyone out there really thought all these people were just coming for themselves. They’re not: huge numbers are just walking ATMs for the Cartels. We can guess how many are successful in paying off the Cartels: almost certainly it is zero.

He’s just 18. Sure, a legal adult but think back a moment to when you were 18…if you had just been ripped from your family and left to die in a foreign desert. How scared would you have been? How many tears would you have shed? How desperate for your mother’s love would you have become? This was just a slight peek into the immense human tragedy Joe Biden and his puppet-masters have created…and created with callous disregard for human life.

I struggle mightily, my friends. A Catholic cannot support the death penalty. Various official Church pronouncements have condemned the practice. But I admit that I want those traffickers who abandoned the boy to die. Of course they won’t, at least not from official hands. And, yes, if they were at my mercy, that is what they would receive. I’m built for it; God made me this way. I am deeply flawed as a human being but I am ready to forgive.

But this must stop. All of it. All of this ruination of human lives. It doesn’t have to be this way. Kids do not have to be transported across continents to work for the Cartels. Drug addicts do not have to die in our streets. We do not have to put up with mobs looting stores. Public brawls over nothing. Anti-Semites marching through our cities. None of this is tolerable. It all has to go. This all must end. If you ever think we shouldn’t, or if you ever feel sorry for those we will punish, then you just think of an 18 year old kid left to die in a desert. Steel your hearts. The evil must end.