Second American Revolution

9/11 After 20 Years

Mark Noonan28 Comments

I couldn’t until now write about the 20th anniversary. I’ve been pondering it all day and only now, as we flip over to 9/12 on the Pacific Coast calendar has it started to clarify in my mind what I’m thinking about it.

The 9/11 attacks, whatever they meant to you and me, meant something entirely different for the Ruling Class – the Deep State, whatever you want to call it. To us, they were a horrible attack on our country and the perpetrators needed to be hunted down and killed, cost what it might. To them – to the bosses – it was merely an acceptable level of violence and their whole thought in the aftermath was how to control us. To prevent, that is, from the people of the United States in their righteous anger and national unity upsetting the global applecart.

On 9/10, everything was great for them – things were cruising along. They were making money and firmly in power and the world was at their command. They were busy de-industrializing the United States and ever more shackling us to the dictates and moods of the international Ruling Class. Along comes some yahoos who go just a little too far – and the American people wanted answers and justice.

But answers would expose the bosses, don’t you see? It was a very preventable attack. Just some simple diligence on checking up on those coming into the country would have kept the hijackers out. But if you start doing that, you’re also going to interfere with the drug runners and human traffickers and, dang, there’s a lot of money in that and if steps were taken to keep out undesirables from the United States, all that would come to an end. Not only that, but once the full level of gross negligence was exposed, there would be demands that ruling class heads roll. Can’t have people lose out decades-long careers just because a few thousand people were murdered!

And then, if we really went after the source of the problem – the State sponsors of terrorism – then just think of all the vast, money-making (for the Ruling Class) operations would be lost! The financial hit to people already sleeping on piles of money would be terrible. The last thing any of them wanted was us hick morons going, “hey, Iran is the main sponsor of this stuff: get rid of that government.” So, they cooked up campaigns in Afghanistan and then Iraq – placing ours in shooting galleries and then tying their hands so that there was no chance of a clear cut victory. They calculated – correctly – that over time and with mounting losses, we’d just want it over with. No need to look into who failed and certainly no desire to take on the actual problem.

They were ok with all this because what bin Laden did had no ill effect on them unless they had the ill luck to be at work early at the World Trade Center that day (and what really big boss gets in before ten?). To them, 9/11 was a matter of messaging and then appearing to do something in response. Didn’t matter how it came out – they’d still be rich and in charge and they’d award themselves medals and letters of commendation no matter what happened. And if some poor kid from Akron got his legs blown off or another who killed the wrong guy had to be brought up on war crimes charges, big deal. It didn’t harm them.

But there was a fly in the ointment. We really did want those who did it killed and we really expected our Rulers to present us with victory. And as lie and failure piled up on top of each other, the creeping realization that things were in bad shape started to grow in our minds. Things just weren’t right. We don’t lose to ragged bands of Islamists with IEDs. But, we were losing. And as things continued to drag out and no improvement was in sight we started to lose our faith in the institutions. And, so, Trump: and that crisis really got the Ruling Class’ attention but to get Trump out, they had to amp up the lies to absurd lengths. This did make many millions of people dutifully fall in line to hate Trump…but it also woke up millions to just how lousy and creepy the Ruling Class is.

They did, in the end, get Trump out. In a ridiculously rigged election. While students were chanting “f*** Biden” at football games, cops and firefighters were lining up to shake hands with Trump on 9/11. This man who supposedly got 81 million votes while Trump was increasing his 2016 vote total by more than 11 million votes got booed in the streets of New York. It is too late for them, now. Sure, they have their supporters: the most mindless of Americans are still watching MSNBC to learn what to think each day, but at least half the country – and I suspect far more – has tuned it all out.

So, the long term effect of 9/11 is going to be, I think, the end of the Ruling Class. They couldn’t defend us and their lies just went too far. People are starting to wake up from the daze that we’ve been in for decades. We know: trust nothing. They’re all liars until proven otherwise.

How this will shake out over the next few years is anyone’s guess: but I don’t think we’ll go back. Biden was the Ruling Class’ attempt to put the cat back into the bag. They’d prefer Joe stick for two terms or, failing that, Kamala takes over for him. And they wouldn’t mind if a tame Republican replaces Biden. That was the plan here: get Trump out and then get the GOP to put up Jeb II or Romney II so that we could all go back to 9/10/2001. But that won’t happen. We, on our side, simply won’t put up with it. We still feel anger at those who did 9/11. We are still willing to fight the Islamists if need be. But we also know that our immediate problem is at home, not abroad and no attempts and stifling us in the name of “national security” or “national unity” will ever get us back to our 9/10 world again. We go forward – and to a future where those who failed us on 9/11 no longer have a say in this country.

The Real World is Knocking at the Door

Mark Noonan13 Comments

Wow! Two in a day. When was the last time I did that? But, I’m kinda at an impasse in figuring out the last chapters of Book VII in the Mirrors series and, also, I’m rather furious. So, here we go!

I upset a friend today – don’t know her personally as she’s a Twitter friend but she’s a nice, interesting, right-of-center lady with a fascinating background and lots wise and insightful things to say. What I said was this:

Guys: if you’re not willing to do a bit of shooting pour encourager les autres, this won’t get fixed. Only the thought that they may be shot in a fortnight will concentrate the military mind and get them off working a lobbying gig and back to learning how to fight.

And:

Why does the general who screwed the pooch get let off when the private he ordered to die in a badly planned and executed op is dead or legless? You want to be a general? Cool. Win or die. If it’s a defeat, better die in the battle or by your own hand. Don’t come back.

A bit harsh to modern sensibilities, but I think it needed to be said. I intend to say a lot more of it. We’re not quite at the point of aux armes, citoyens, but we’re pretty close. I was advised to not be so worried about it…and that law, Constitution and Courts will get us through.

Bad news: they won’t.

And that is why I am, indeed, worried. We don’t have a functioning government. The Media are mere regime propagandists. We have, in short, no way to fix this prior to the 2022 and 2024 elections and the part most at risk at the moment – the Executive – not before 2024. We don’t have people in charge – and we can’t get people in charge – who understand the gravity of the situation or, if they did, have the desire to help the United States out of it. The only calculation any of them are making is how to retain their own political viability. They have not, ever, had a thought for the United States or her people and they aren’t suddenly going to have one now.

And I know that seems a rather bleak assessment, but it won’t be the first time its happened. The most recent time it happened in a major power was France in 1940. Do you want to know what the Prime Minister of France, Paul Reynaud was concerning himself with in the last days before the French surrender? Getting his mistress and a suitcase full of government cash into Spain while angling for an ambassadorship to the US from Petain. At a time when the PM should have been bending every effort to defend France, he was making sure he had money for himself and his side piece and maybe a sinecure from the incoming collaborationist regime. And, mark this, Reynaud was in the PM’s office because it was thought that he was the most energetic French leader who would put up the best fight against Hitler. Compared to the other people in the council, he was a lion of defiance…the rest were even mores so into figuring out how to wind up in power and wealth even if it was under Nazi rule.

The collapse of France in 1940 stunned the world. But it had been in the cards for decades – all it took was Hitler to push open the door and it all fell apart. It was only, after all, kept together because the French people, who largely despised their government and leaders, couldn’t coalesce around a sole option to do away with the Ruling Class. Sound familiar?

No institution in the United States is respected. None can be trusted. We all know for certain or at least strongly suspect that everyone in the upper reaches is merely feathering their nests and doesn’t give a damn about the people of the United States. Our military is proving itself, in front of our eyes, incapable of mounting operations. We can’t even be sure that if we placed our troops into battle that they would know what to do. I hope they can. You do, too. But how much training have they really been doing since 2009? Sure, Trump for 4 years…but none of us suspected the rot we’re seeing and so Trump might not have, either. All it takes, now, is for someone to push in the door.

And that is foreign and domestic. Our government lacks legitimacy and not just because of the vote in 2020 – but because no one really believes it is representative of what the American people want. Are you going to fight for them? But our bigger worry is in the foreign sphere: what enemy of the United States is going to have the least fear of us right now? The only calculations they are making in Beijing, Moscow and Tehran is how much money it would cost them to do whatever they want. China’s leaders are thinking terms of, “if we invade Taiwan, global markets will probably drop 25% in a day or two and that will cost the exchequer X yuan: but we gain Y yuan by taking Taiwan’s assets.” If Y is greater than X, they’ll move. They have no worry about our response because we’ve just shown we can’t make one. Today Team Biden is fumbling around trying to explain away what might be thousands of US citizens still stuck in Afghanistan…with the underlying statement being that we can’t get them out. We lack the means to do so.

We won WWII and then we immediately entered a fantasy land and the more the world started to fall apart (and it has been falling apart since 1956) the more the Ruling Class gave us the functional equivalent of Bread and Circuses. I hope everyone enjoyed 50 years of pretending the bill will never come due, because it just has. The real world is back and it isn’t even pissed off…its just the real world where things happen and you have to deal with them, or die.

Good luck to all of us! Say your prayers. Hope that nothing really bad happens until after January 20, 2025.

The End of American Faith

Mark Noonan42 Comments

I believed, my friends. When I joined the Navy in 1983, my faith in America was boundless. And it stayed! I believed that the generals and admirals were good. I believed that most people in law enforcement and intel were good people. I swallowed the whole thing hook, line and sinker.

But I don’t believe any longer.

Back in 2011, I wrote this article arguing that if the Afghan government wouldn’t get on the side of civilization, it was time to abandon it. I was right! But, not nearly as right as I should have been.

We’re all rather stunned at the speed of the Taliban victory. We’ve seen the videos of Taliban with captured America equipment. But less remarked on is that the Taliban was able to mount this offensive this quickly…and then you see the Taliban clean, well fed…not like they’ve been hiding for 20 years in caves under intense pressure from a powerful enemy ready to strike hard at a moments notice. And then you ask: just what the heck were we doing there? Did we even fight them? Those videos we’ve seen of bombing attacks and claims of high value targets being killed…was any of that true? I just don’t know – and I can’t ask the government or MSM because they are all known liars.

And then you take a further step back from it…and place yourself in the boots of a battalion commander who wants to get his combat duty ticket punched but who also doesn’t want to wind up charged with a war crime it things get dicey out there and the troops kill the wrong guy, or even kill the right guy but on video which looks like (or can be made to look like) the shooting wasn’t justified. Given this, perhaps you just go through the motions? If an easy and clear targets serves itself up for you, fine: but getting down and dirty in it which might lead to a career ending mistake? Give it a pass.

And the senior officers probably won’t look too closely at it – they know the game, too. They played it years before and got through it with a star on their shoulder and now look forward to a post-military career as a lobbyist or TV talking head. Maybe even get a book deal out of it…with their picture on the cover in a uniform with more decorations on it than Patton and MacArthur combined had. Hold the pose: that stern look of command (the photographer will get the lighting right for that), eyes off into the distance. The viewer mentally hearing the Star Spangled Banner. Life is good! Don’t think about those guys who got nearly burned to death by an IED…

After really pondering it, I’ve come to the conclusion that it has all been utter sh**. Pardon the language but sometimes an old swabbie has to say it like it is. They never fought to win. Not the officers. Not the civilian leadership. None of them. They just wanted to be seen to be doing something which could be put up in public as brave…as they merely worked the system for advancement. The only person who cared about the troops, as such, was Trump…and you’ll notice that the senior officers, violating their oath (and they will stand before God one day to answer for that: mark my words), undermined him at every turn. He risked the game: the game of never win, get advancement, get rich.

I looked at the pictures of my father and grandfather yesterday – grandpa in his WWI Army uniform and dad in his WWII Marine uniform and I wondered what they would think about it? And then further wondered what they would do about it? Have we all become such cowards? I do think that dad and grandpa would have started shooting by now. People are dead. Thousands of them. Ours and theirs. And for what? So that defense contractors can make money and four star cowards can get rich? Admiral Byng was shot pour encourager les autres simply because he wasn’t aggressive enough against the enemy. What should be done with generals who weren’t aggressive at all? And the politicians who set it up that way?

How did we get to this? How cowardly did we have to be to allow this to happen? Was the bribe of a big screen TV and a Super Bowl enough? Sadly, it was. Using fake money the Ruling Class allowed us to purchase amazing luxuries to keep us distracted while they sold us out. Look in the mirror, folks, to find who is responsible for this.

But, now we know. We can’t go back: the lies have been exposed. We know. We can’t be fooled anymore. Now it turns about and becomes the responsibility of very specific people who are trying to keep this con going. And we, in our turn, must hold them accountable. They must be punished for what they have done. We have been betrayed by the very people we placed our faith in. Time will tell if these traitors get their proper wages.

The Limits of Tolerance

Mark Noonan38 Comments

Kurt Schlichter has an interesting thread on his Twitter feed. You can read it here, but the gist of it is that, just perhaps, our live-and-let-live attitude towards Blue State leftists isn’t such a good idea. In fact, it is a terrible idea – because we’re not dealing in them with people who merely have a different way to get to the same destination. They want something entirely different as an end result from what we want.

Consciously or not, we on the Right have internalized Voltaire’s maxim, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This, on the face of it, seems reasonable. Even necessary in self defense because it would seem that if we want assurances we can say what we wish, we must extend that assurance most definitely to those we disagree with. But like many catchy phrases of modern times (Voltaire counts as modern for the truly instructed once you realize that “modern” began after the Reformation), it falls apart on examination. Even Voltaire would have seen that, if had lived a little longer. He had the luck to die in 1778, safely protected by an Ancien Regime which would, aside from a little pestering from time to time, allow anyone to say anything. Voltaire never got to meet his intellectual progeny who, around 1793, would have cut Voltaire’s head off. It turns out that for some people in France, what they wanted to say is that certain classes of people had to die. In the event, letting people say anything they want didn’t work out very well.

If you never have before, now is the time to understand why the Catholic Church had an Inquisition. It wasn’t to be mean. It wasn’t even to maintain control of people or stop the expression of new ideas. The time of the Inquisition’s greatest power, the thirteen to the sixteenth centuries, was a time of immense intellectual advancement in the Catholic West. Now, to be sure, as the Inquisition was run by human beings, it naturally messed up hideously on a regular basis and, in the end, it wasn’t the right way to go about things even if done with the best of good will. But that doesn’t mean the purpose was wrong – and the purpose was to prevent people from expounding ideas which, if adopted, would be fatal to the social organism. It wasn’t to stop people from finding better ways of achieving known, desirable goals…but to stop people from coming up with insane goals and then trying to get everyone to go along.

You know – like an insane goal that we shall have from each according to his ability and to each according to his need. That sort of lunacy which can never be and must require a whole series of lunatic actions if it is to be so much as attempted. As if we can know what anyone’s full ability is and whether or not they are exercise their ability to the maximum extent. And then the even greater lunacy of saying that everyone gets what they need…as if anyone knows what anyone else actually needs. That small phrase, just a few words which seem so good to the eye and ear, have piled up a hundred million corpses. So far. They continue to pile up to this day and they’ll keep piling up just as long as we allow people to express the Marxist ideal without let or hindrance.

You may ask yourself here just why is it that people keep going along with it. After all, the corpses are there: there’s no doubt what the enactment of a Marxist system must entail. For all the Marxist attempts to say that no one has got it quite right so far, there are still all the dead and that should finish the idea. But, it doesn’t. I’ll tell you why: do you believe in yourself? Do you believe that people should believe in themselves? More than likely, 99% of people who read that will go, “sure; we have to believe in ourselves”. There’s only one thing wrong with that.

It is insane.

For heaven’s sake, believe in anything but not yourself. If you believe in yourself you’ll eventually start worshipping yourself and become a self-centered cretin who is sure the world owes him a living. Drop it. Believe in God. Believe in Nature. Believe in anything but yourself – you’re not good enough for you to have such blazing faith in yourself.

But you see how it is? It is a nice, catchy phrase and it seems to speak a truth. A moment’s examination of your own life – all the very stupid things you’ve done – will immediately inform you that believing in yourself is about the stupidest thing you can do. But, there we go: almost all of us in a happy, dazed mentality of believing in ourselves. So, too, the Communists. They read the phrase and it seemed sooooo good. Who can argue with everyone getting what they need, right? And so in spite of there being abundant evidence that you are your own worst enemy and that communism piles up corpses like no tomorrow, people continue to believe in both propositions.

But now we have a real problem. It is pretty bad that we’ve become a people who believe in themselves all through serial divorces, addictions and blind-alley career choices, but the worst mistake we’ve made is to hold that those who want something evil should still be allowed to evangelize for their twisted faith. If you had someone living with you who lied to and about you every day, stole everything they could lay their hands on and sought for the power to beat you to death, what would you do? Continue to live with that person? Or would you take some sort of self-defensive action? I think you’d be looking for a way to protect yourself.

But when we extend our house to our society, we seem to lose sight of that. The Marxists – conscious or otherwise – in our society lie to us and about us all the time. They lie when they say they merely want freedom and equality. They lie when they call us racists and Nazis. They are always seeking, under the guise of social justice, to grab as much of our property as they feel they can get away with. And now we see in the Antifa types their willingness to use physical violence against us – and while such things may start with a mere bike lock to the face, they end with us lined up against a wall, if we let it go on. We can’t allow this to go on any longer: we must steel ourselves to the fact that tolerance cannot extend to tolerating those who wish us dead or enslaved. Either they have to go, or we will.

Don’t let anyone hang you up on this. They might say something along the lines of, “people have to be free to choose”. That is an enormously correct statement. But if someone is choosing to rob a bank, I’m going to try to stop them. People can choose to be Marxists. Or Nazis or Fascists or whatever they want. But if they choose to be Marxists or Nazis or Fascists then they have chosen to kill or enslave me, who will never be a Marxist, Nazi or Fascist. I take them at their word: they all say, in their various ways, that a complete overturn of society is necessary in order to usher in some perfect world…with their perfect world not having any room for me or those like me. Fine. Believe what you wish: I will take action to defend myself.

We must by law seek to remove from the Marxists their ability to participate in the public square. They must not be part of education; they must not be part of corporations; they must not be part of government at any level…from voter to office holder. They must be excluded because we know, with absolute certainty, that if they ever get their way, their first order of business will be to exclude from education, corporations and government all those who do not subscribe to their views.

We have also learned over the past 60 years or so that we can’t argue Marxists out of their position. Oh, you might find the odd Communist here or there coming to wisdom and rejecting the ideology but experience has shown that hardly anyone ever converts from Communism. The Conservatism which held that free spirited debate would lead to the triumph of Truth was wrong. It was wrong because the Communists never view argument as a process whereby Truth can emerge. They already have Truth, as far as they see it – if they are arguing with you, it is merely to keep you busy until they’ve got a big enough stick to club you to death. Don’t be so surprised by this unwillingness to see the evidence. The Germans kept faith in Hitler until a Russian soldier kicked in the door and raped the frau. Years after it was abundantly clear that Adolph had got it wrong, people were still fighting to the death to defend his regime. We human beings are astonishing in our ability to use reason…but we can use it just as well for bad as for good. The only defense against bad reasoning is absolute, humble faith in God. Communists, though, don’t believe in God.

It really is a freedom or slavery choice before us – and if we wish to be free, we’re going to have to go after those who would take our freedom away. It isn’t our fault. We didn’t start this. It was not our side which subscribed to a philosophy which necessitates the overthrow of society and the imposition of an impossible dream. All we ever wanted to do was live our lives as we see fit. And that is all we still want – we just need to understand that in order to live free, those who would take away our freedom must be destroyed in the public square.

Waking From the Globalist Dream

Mark Noonan13 Comments

A Twitter friend wondered how long “back the blue” will be a Conservative thing and it is a valid point to make – just how long will we support the police when we never see them refusing an unconstitutional order? Same thing with “support the troops” when we now see the Australian Army eagerly obeying orders to go door to door to ensure nobody is visiting a neighbor. Do we really believe the United States Army would act any different? Do we have any confidence that the soldiers have even read the Constitution they swear to defend? That they know what things like “peaceably assemble” mean?

We’ve been living in a strange world where even those of us who take a little pride of knowledge have really not seen what is now becoming jaggedly clear right in front of us: that our government – our whole society – is built to prevent us from being free citizens of a Republic. And it goes back much further than most suspect and the guilty parties aren’t all Democrats or Leftists.

It was, after all, Theodore Roosevelt who created the US Army general staff and the FBI. The general staff was, of course, in response to Roosevelt’s disgust at the slipshod US military effort in the Spanish-American War. The FBI was put together to get after the Anarchists who were thought responsible for McKinley’s assassination. I’d like to point out here that as badly organized as the Spanish-American effort was, it did result in a smashing US victory both in the Pacific and the Atlantic in just a few months and while the murder of McKinley was a national tragedy, the fact that we didn’t go a minute without a functioning executive proved that there was no fundamental flaw in the system. Things worked – but, here comes TR and he’s gonna make an FBI to get those Anarchist bastards and he’ll build a General Staff so that we won’t have sloppy military efforts in the future! And we had to do all this, you see, so that America could take its place in the world. I remember it, guys: I remember learning in school about how wonderful TR and Wilson were because they saw they need for America to get involved in the world. My God, were we all suckers!

But, they went and did it and as they did so, they screwed up again and again. See the pattern already set: government screws up, so lets make government more powerful.

And how did it work out?

Well that splendid FBI, ever expanded until it amounts to a separate department of government and is now able to spy on and entrap any American who steps out of line failed to prevent the attempted assassination of TR, FDR, Truman, Ford and Reagan while entirely failing at the assassination of JFK. It also missed the rise of the Mafia and even in its supposed glory years it took ages and lots of lives to bring down bank robbers like Dillinger.

Great, huh?

How about that General staff? Well, it did manage to allow its air force to be caught on the ground in the Philippines hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor and then managed to get caught with its pants down in Tunisia and Belgium. But after working out the kinks it then got blindsided by the North Korean invasion of South Korea and the Tet Offensive.

Doing well!

A picture is starting to emerge here: that failures by government are always used as an excuse to empower government and that as time goes on, this government becomes ever more concerned with thwarting the people rather than any supposed foreign enemy. Again and again over more than a century, this has been the rule. You’ll also note that only on rare occasions does anyone in government when things blow up get fired. They relieved Admiral Kimmel after Pearl Harbor…but how many further examples can you find? Who got shot for being caught flat footed at the Bulge? 19,000 dead American soldiers seems to call for someone to face the axe. But, instead, we elected the Supreme Commander President.

I think that now we’re starting to notice – really notice – because of two things: Trump and the fact that the lies needed to sustain the system are becoming so brazen that you really have to be committed to the Ruling Class to not see it. But it is as though we are waking from a pleasant dream to a cold reality. Some don’t like it and seek to go back to sleep (that’s Never Trump), but the rest of us are, I think, getting a bit grim about it – mostly because we’re understanding that everything has failed. There is no institution which retains respect. Everyone has been bought to one degree or another and so they’re all in on the primary effort: keeping you and I ignorant and unwilling to challenge them.

Things are going to get interesting. I note with great care that the ChiComs – probably in cooperation with Team Pudding Brain – are re-running 2020’s fear mongering…claiming with leaked video (again) that they are in desperate straights with these new variants…so, we’d better mask up! But don’t close the borders! That’s the tell, guys: if it was real, the first order of business would be closing the border to even legal entry, let alone illegal. But I see this as a desperate ploy to once again frighten us into compliance so that they can cheat to win in 2022 and 2024. I don’t think it’ll work – and if it does, even worse for them: a people who believe they can’t win by ballots will seek other means. Because no matter how you slice it, enough of us are awake to matter.

The Crisis of Lawlessness

Mark Noonan38 Comments

I asked a question of Never Trump that I’ll never get answered: what is the positive result obtained by getting Trump out? What’s better?

Nothing, of course – and, indeed, everything is worse. There isn’t a single real metric of American life you can point to where there has been an improvement. Everything is even more shot through with lies, the economy crumbles, our enemies around the world rejoice…and in response to all this, the government is trying to censor dissent.

Somebody put up a Tweet yesterday condemning Pence for his 1/6 actions and one of the blue check Never Trumps rose to Pence’s defense. Naturally, of course; what you expect. But I pointed out that if Pence had provoked a crisis by refusing to certify the four contested States, we’d be better off today. Sure, it would have cause a blow up. Probably riots in the streets. But, we got the riots anyway. And if the House had ended up electing the President, it would have been according to the law set in place for precisely this situation: where there wasn’t a candidate whom the overwhelming majority believed had legitimately obtained 270+ electoral votes. The Founders weren’t stupid – they knew that things like this could happen.

To be sure, Pence should have said he’d do that by mid-December – to force the issue. To force, that is, some bi-partisan action that everyone could trust to determine who really got to 270 or, failing agreement on that, let everyone know that on January 6th, the House was going to vote State by State to determine the next President while the Senate voted to determine the next Vice President. It probably would have been Biden, folks. Even with the GOP controlling a majority of the House delegations, deals would have been struck to get Biden to 51 House delegations voting for him…with guarantees in place about certain steps Biden would take once in office. And even though we on the Right would still despise Biden, we’d swallow it – because it would have been done according to law (and one of the things in such a deal would be election security going forward; it would have to be – some very solid assurance that such a thing couldn’t happen again).

The whole problem of our modern times is precisely this: a refusal to follow the law. Now, don’t get me wrong – you’ll find reams of legal briefs and court decisions which make it seem like we have laws, but we really don’t. We almost never follow the law anymore. Too inconvenient. Oddly, it was Trump who was the first President probably since Coolidge to really try to follow the law – and in so doing he got badly burned by lawless people pretending to use law against him (for instance, those ridiculous lawsuits – which were ratified by the SC in the sense that they weren’t just tossed out as obviously stupid – against the President reversing the orders of the previous President).

I date the rise of official lawlessness to the Roe decision. You can probably go back further, if you like, but that is a nice catch-all for it. In Roe, the SC simply ignored the law and said it meant something that it didn’t. It was absurd – if any government action was to be taken about abortion, it had to be on the State level as the Constitution was silent on it and had nothing in it remotely relating to the practical or moral aspects of a procedure which didn’t exist in 1787. The federal courts from the get-go on it should have said, “take it up with the States or Congress, we simply have nothing to say here.”. But, they didn’t – because some judges wanted it legal and knew it wouldn’t be made so nationally by either Congress or the 50 States. Same thing, later, with same sex marriage and a host of other issues…things which simply aren’t covered by federal law being placed into federal law by judicial fiat.

But that isn’t the end of it. It isn’t just the Courts ignoring the law – the government, as a whole, ignores the law. Team Pudding Brain is trying to get Facebook to censor “misinformation”. This is obviously against the law. But they’re doing it and Facebook will go along with it. And even if we get a Republican President into office in 2024, neither the Biden people pressing for this illegal action nor the corporate executives carrying out the illegal action will be arrested. The law doesn’t matter. The censorship thing is just the latest, of course.

A couple days ago I saw an ad for an upcoming movie. Looks like a tear-jerker about this guy, brought illegally to the US as a child, who now faces deportation. It was obviously made to stick it to Trump and his supporters. And, of course, we’re all supposed to feel sympathy for the guy and then agree that the law should be set aside. That’s the key thing. I can’t say for certain that the producers of the movie knew that’s what they were doing, but that is what it is all about: a demand that the law not matter. We’re so shot through with lawlessness that we have whole bunch of people who just assume that if the law says you can’t, then the law must be wrong and simply ignored. This is the path to not merely national suicide, but the end of civilization (which we can see when we watch those videos of assaults and brawls which pop up regularly on social media these days).

We can’t allow that. As I watched the ad, it occurred to me to ask the character, if he were real, two questions:

  1. Why is your problem my problem?
  2. Why should I ignore the law for you?

The first question might seem a little heartless, but it really isn’t. It is a clarifying question. The problem the guy in the burning house has is my problem if I’m in proximity and can render aid. The problem of the guy in the burning house a thousand miles away isn’t my problem. For me to consider that I have to act for someone, there has to be a reason I am morally obligated to do so. I did not bring the child in illegally. I did not advocate for a system which would permit a child to be brought in illegally. So, what is my concern with the individual in question? The lawless always try to make out that all of us must do something in the setting aside of law – that if we won’t agree to the exception (which immediately becomes the rule) then we have failed morally. That isn’t the case.

The second question is the far more crucial. Laws can, of course, be set aside. It is why we give the Executive the power of pardon and why we allow for prosecutor discretion. There may be a case to allow the law to be set aside – but these will always be on a case by case basis. The cannot be blanket – they cannot be, that is, to merely ignore the law. The law is the law. It was placed on the books for a reason. Maybe it was a bad reason. Maybe it no longer serves the reason it was created. But however it got there, until it is changed according to law, it must be enforced with only the rarest exceptions allowed.

The Rule of Law is civilization. End of discussion. You either have law and civilization, or you have lawless barbarism. Right now, we have lawless barbarism. If the actual, physical barbarism hasn’t come to your locality, then that is simply because the barbarians haven’t got to you. Yet. We must restore absolute respect for the law, as written, or we are doomed.

Kicker: it may take a revolutionary overthrow of the system for us to be able to make laws.

Post Vacation Open Thread

Mark Noonan170 Comments

Hi guys! Sorry, went to San Diego for a few days. Del Mar and La Jolla are still heaven on Earth, even though they are in Commiefornia.

Anyways…

I think three days of rioting is “ok” in the sense that people won’t get too upset about it. Three weeks of rioting raises a lot of eyebrows. Three months of rioting…I think there could be massive reaction against it. Like a Trump 45 State landslide sort of reaction. I don’t know, of course: I am theorizing. Democrats seem convinced that chaos helps them: the implied threat is “vote Biden or this continues”. But Trump has his answer for that: sending in federal cops to arrest the BLM/Antifa types on federal charges (did you know merely spray painting a federal building can get you a year in jail?; the laws against vandalizing federal property have some teeth!). Trump is letting the American people know that their choice is him and peace or them and war. We’ll see how people decide: but I’m starting to run across deep blue people who have had enough.

Do keep in mind that we are already 2nd class citizens in our own country. That is an established fact: the St Louis couple who defended themselves have been charged with a felony while the rioters get their charges dropped. To be sure, the State AG is going to ride to the rescue, and that is good: but how many times will you and I be let off by liberal city politicians and how many times will the GOP AG ride to our rescue? We are the oppressed; not them. Their oppression is a made-up thing (so made up that they have to fake racist incidents) our oppression is real: our jobs and social standing is at grave risk merely for people finding out we’re Trump voters. Voting Trump is the only chance we’ve got to restore ourselves to full citizenship.

Kasich will speak at Biden’s convention. I think that Kasich will switch parties and run as a Democrat in 2024, myself. I think he also knows that Biden is doomed and he’s essentially going to build his brand as the man who can lead the Democrats out of the far left fever swamps starting in 2021. It won’t work: he doesn’t realize how much he’s despised by the left base of the Democrat party. Only a complete rejection of everything he’s ever stood for will be acceptable to them…and even then, they’ll just take the scalp and go with someone who has always been a true believer. Its not that Kasich isn’t willing to crawl…its that no one like a turncoat.

Planned Parenthood is ditching their founder, Margaret Sanger, over her support for eugenics. They won’t ditch the baby-killing, of course. After all, Hitler built the Autobahn…

This be ridiculous.

I don’t think teachers realize how much they are shooting themselves in the foot by insisting schools remain closed. Every ounce of goodwill they have is being wrecked. Kids don’t seem to catch the ‘Rona very much and they also don’t seem to transmit it very much. Meanwhile, store shelf stockers have been doing heroic work for months. My hope: this kills the very concept of public education.

Stop Reacting. Start Thinking.

Mark Noonan16 Comments

Earlier today, I got myself into trouble on Twitter: I had suggested that we shouldn’t immediately dismiss an idea because it conforms in some to what BLM might want. I got a pretty consistent explosion of outrage directed my way. And, I understand it and am sympathetic to it. But it was difficult to try and explain myself in a series of Tweets…so, here is a larger exposition of my ideas.

Our opponents aren’t a rag-tag bunch of Bolshevik wannabees: they are a well-funded and tightly organized Ruling Class which is determined to have its way. The rag-tag rioters out there shouting to kill the police and such are just the bought and paid for operatives of this Ruling Class. And the key is that the rioters don’t know it.

Some of them don’t know, simply: in other words, they are just ignorant fools following along with whatever seems cool at the moment. But others have a level of sincerity against injustice and simply think they are fighting the Establishment when what they are doing is the Establishment’s bidding. You’ll note how quickly “Defund the Police” got discarded…and even when it has advanced a bit, as in Minneapolis, the big shots are merely hiring private security details (on the taxpayer dime, of course). The target of the mob is, what? It is Trump. It is religion. It is you and me. It isn’t Nike and Hollywood. It isn’t Pelosi. It isn’t Yale’s gigantic endowment. It isn’t the actual system of control: the government bureaucracies; the intelligence agencies; the megacorporations; popular culture manufacturers.

My idea is that there is, indeed, a great deal of injustice out there – and a great deal of this is visited on the poorest Americans, who are disproportionately minority. I’ve talked about this before: poor people simply ground up in a legal system they can’t navigate their way out of. Some times, of course, because they are incompetent…but some times simply because once you get caught in it, there’s no way out unless you have a bucket of money. From the perspective of such a person, it seems at times like things are stacked against them…and then they see us, on our side, backing the blue…the same blue which the Establishment set up and which goes lightly where it can get burned (ie, rich and middle class neighborhoods) and drops like a hammer where it can (ie, poor neighborhoods). It can seem to such a person that you and I are the problem…that we set this up.

We know we didn’t. We back the blue not because we’re bastards, but because we know that law is a must. But even our side has been a little blind here: what if the laws, themselves, are insane? Shouldn’t the blue we back have gone, at some point, and said “I won’t enforce this insane law. Fire me if you want, but I became a cop to make sure justice and peace prevail.” Never a peep like that – and, finally, we got our taste of it with the lockdowns: we were finally the people being targeted for the enforcement of insane decrees of government. And the ground shifted and we were prepared for deep reforms of the police…which also entailed a willingness for deep reforms of all government and how it interacts with the people. Hey, presto!, riots…and we’re all back to “back the blue” and lets crack some heads. We’re forgetting that the same people who sent the cops out to arrest kids in a playground also let the rioters run wild…and in both the arresting of kids and the allowing of riots the police did as they were told.

How about we stop being suckers, at least for a bit?

We really have to start thinking and stop reacting. The riots do need to stop. The police do need to enforce the laws. But the laws have to be sane – and we can’t get sane laws until we get power and we won’t get power until the overwhelming mass of the people swing in line behind us. 51% won’t do it. That’ll just lead to our eventual political defeat or civil war…or both. We need 60 and 65%. We need to convince huge masses of people who ostensibly hate us to come over to us. This means we must talk to them – and talk to them about what they think is important. And do things they would like to have done. Not the Bolshevik stuff (the Establishment tolerates the odd Bolshy in the realms of power…but keeps them on a leash: eg, Bernie). But stuff like reforming the police. Instituting neighborhood militia for routine patrols. Pouring in buckets of money confiscated from liberal moneybags (Yale’s endowment would be a good place to start).

It comes down to this: what are you trying to conserve? A theory, or a civilization? The institutions are corrupt to the bone. Our Ruling Class is un-American and merely interested in keeping its wealth and privilege; and to do so it feels it must destroy family, property and religion. I think it is time we thought anew and acted anew…that we cease to fall into the categories the Ruling Class has provided for us and start to reach out to all. Some will spit on us. That’s ok. But some will come over if we show that we want justice…and if we show them who their real enemies are.

How Far Do We Let the Left Go?

Mark Noonan46 Comments

The District Attorney of San Francisco – huge Commie rat – has decided that public urination will no longer be a crime. One fine person made the correct suggestion: someone should go piss on the DA’s car. But once that excellent and patriotic action is completed, what then? Well, it got me thinking (I know, dangerous!) and then I recalled Article 4, section 4 of the United States Constitution:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…

A Republican form of government is not just a bunch of voting going on. No; not at all. A Republic is a thing of dogmas and rules – and it only works if all the rules are enforced to the best of everyone’s ability. And one of the rules of a Republic is that laws cannot be set aside – but that is just what the DA is doing. In my view, per the Constitution, Trump could give the DA 24 hours to reverse himself and, if he refuses, send in US Marshals to enforce laws against public urination. A bit extreme? Sure – but extreme times do call for extreme measures.

It is best to step back a bit and think about what we’re dealing with here and the first step in that is to ask just why anyone would do anything which would allow or encourage people to piss on the streets? The answer lies in the DA – Chesa Boudin. If that surname seems familiar, it is because it is: he’s the son of Kathy Boudin, the psychotic Commie murderer. Which means that Chesa is both the son and grandson of hard core Communists. When his ma got arrested shortly after his birth he ended up being raised by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. He worked as a translator for the Commie dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. He’s a true believer, folks; he’s Communist to the core. And that means he believes – completely – that all of the social pathologies in society are the direct result of Capitalism…and that once Socialism is in place, all of these pathologies will disappear. No, seriously: this is what Commies believe. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

The reason why a Commie doesn’t want to enforce laws against public urination is not because he likes to smell piss on the streets: it is because he’s sure that the man pisses on the streets because the Capitalist system made him that way, and no real Commie is going to do anything to prop up the Capitalist system. What the DA is doing is essentially saying, “see, you Capitalist bastards! This is what you created!”; and he’ll then go on to propose Communism as the cure; though given he’s an American Commie and has learned from the experiences of his parents and grandparents, he’s not going to flat out say that…he’ll call it being Progressive and working against the criminalization of being homeless.

Any enforcement of any law regarding property or public decency or such is seen by a Communist as a mere propping up of the Capitalist system, because all such laws were created by Capitalists for the sole purpose of retaining power. They aren’t about public safety or justice or anything such thing. Capitalists are inherently incapable of doing anything good – all the laws are merely enforcement of Capitalist supremacy (though today’s Commies will more usually say they are about supporting White Supremacy – which is just a substitute phrase for the Class Enemy; you know, Capitalists). A true believer like Chesa Boudin simply will not enforce any laws – which means most of them – which he, as a Commie, considers to be laws enacted by Capitalists to suppress the people (whom he is the Vanguard for, being that he’s a conscious revolutionary Communist, dig?). At the end of the day, electing Chesa Boudin as DA was an act against the existence of a democratic Republic…there is a good chance that even most San Francisco voters didn’t realize this but it still remains that a person is in the DA’s office who is opposed to the whole idea of a Constitutional order (remember: all of that Constitutional order was merely created to protect the power and wealth of Capitalists/White Supremacists/Homophobes/Insert-Hated-Group-Here). He is, in short, opposed to a Republican form of government. And, so, must be stopped.

Right now a whole bunch of my fellow Conservatives are going to start going, “hold on there, sparky: what about federalism and local self rule? You call yourself a Distributist and that means you say you believe in Subsidiarity (thing should be done on the lowest level possible); you some kind of hypocrite?”. I don’t think so – no more than the Founders were. They placed in the Constitution very strong protections for States and individuals…but they also did include the above quoted bit, and also permitted the federal government to suspend the writ of habeas corpus. And do note the justifications for suspending the writ: in cases of invasion, insurrection or when the public safety may require it. The public isn’t very safe if those charged with enforcing the laws decide not to because their loyalty isn’t to the Republic, but to a Communist revolution which will overthrow the Republic.

The bottom line of Article 4, section 4 is that we are not allowed – no matter how much we might want to – to vote ourselves into tyranny. 99% of the people of California could vote to impose a Bolshevik Dictatorship, and that vote would be immediately null and void per the Constitution…and if the people of California decided to resist the restoration of freedom, then the writ of habeas corpus could be suspended and everyone in California trying to support the Bolshevik government could be arrested and held without trial.

What we’re seeing in the deeply Progressive areas of the United States is people voting for tyranny – voting for DA’s who won’t enforce laws; voting to excuse themselves from provisions of federal laws (the “sanctuary cities”. eg); allowing non-left voices to be physically attacked; threatening people with fines and tortuous legal action for merely dissenting. My question: how far do we let it go? My view is that we’ve let it go far enough, other’s may dispute this; but in the end, we’re either going to enforce our Constitution or we’re not…the Left is counting on us not enforcing it until they’ve gained enough power to simply do away with it. And make no mistake about it: that is what they want – an end to liberty, and end to property, and end to free thought. Their goal is a socialist future. That they believe this to be a good thing – meaning, that some of them sincerely think they are working for our benefit – is irrelevant. We know where this leads – how long will we let them advance? Where is our line in the sand?

We have to decide that, and decide it very soon. And if we want to have this be a peaceful push back, then our best recourse is to use the tools the Founders entrusted to us, including the tools designed to protect people from their own folly. The Founders knew full well that people – being at times perverse – would vote for very asinine things. They gave wide latitude for such idiocy – and, indeed, no sane person will lightly try to interfere with local self government. But, come on: we’ve got full blown Communists undermining the rule of law; we’ve got insane homeless people defecating and pissing on the streets; we’ve got masses of illegal immigrants being protected in violation of law; things are getting a bit out of hand…and they’ll get worse if we don’t start to take action.

A Clean Break

Mark Noonan47 Comments

As the last few weeks have played out in politics, it has forced me to do a complete re-assessment of how I’ve looked at the world for my entire adult life. To be sure, this reconsideration has been ongoing for about a decade, or maybe a little more, but it has really crystalized out recently. It is time for a complete, clean break with what went before and to chart a new path forward.

What Hunter Biden did is nothing new; it isn’t in the least remarkable. He was merely the recipient of what people in his position routinely receive: a special deal which allows him to be very rich for little or no effort. This way his life can be devoted to what really matters: hanging around with other rich people, attending conferences and galas and generally having a swell time. And if he decided to follow in Daddy’s political footsteps, the way would be cleared for him in some safe seat. If you start looking into it – as Matt and I did in our 2007 book, Caucus of Corruption – you just see that it is everywhere. In that book, for political reasons, we concentrated on the Democrat side of the aisle (given that our goal was to show the absurdity of the Democrats 2006 campaign against a so-called “GOP culture of corruption”), but we could easily have written it about politics, in general.

What it really shows is that people who go into politics – with a few very rare exceptions – are in it for themselves. They want power and money and attention and fame and praise and so they go into politics – and almost invariably, if they are even modestly successful at winning office, wind up richer than they did when they started. And it has been going on for a long time, folks; throughout the Western democracies. Just a small quote from Chesterton about 1910 will suffice to show it:

There are, I believe, some who still deny that England is governed by an oligarchy. It is quite enough for me to know that a man might have gone to sleep some thirty years ago over the day’s newspaper and woke up last week over the later newspaper, and fancied he was reading about the same people. In one paper he would have found a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. In the other paper he would find a Lord Robert Cecil, a Mr. Gladstone, a Mr. Lyttleton, a Churchill, a Chamberlain, a Trevelyan, an Acland. If this is not being governed by families I cannot imagine what it is. I suppose it is being governed by extraordinary democratic coincidences.

Funny, huh? How people from the same family can keep winding up on top. Either they are families of geniuses, or someone is making things happen. What are the odds that the son of an American Senator would be just the person an oil company needs to pay $50,000.00 a month to? That the daughter of a President would be just right for that $600,000.00 news gig? Or that another daughter of a different President would prove to be perfect to host the fourth hour of the Today show?

You know that is all bullsh**. I know it is, too. They know it as well. But, it just keeps happening and happening because, well, that’s just the way it is. And it wouldn’t be so bad if they were at least any good at being an oligarchy! Back in Chesterton’s day, there was the cold, hard reality that Winston Churchill was at least as talented as his father, Randolph. There was something there – there was, that is, a justification for Winston getting a leg up (and he did) to enter politics based on his father’s previous efforts. These days, you get to benefit even if the previous person in line was a complete, rotten failure. And rotten failure is all we’ve gotten – and I’m getting very ecumenical in that, by the way. I’m not excusing anyone on partisan grounds any longer.

To be sure, the Republicans I voted for in the past were at least better than the Democrats I voted against (with the exception of McCain: knowing that I’m the co-author of Worst President, please understand that I believe McCain would have been even worse than Obama proved to be). But they were only better in degree, not in kind. I mean, let’s face some cold, hard facts here: President Bush the Younger was re-elected with 51% of the vote in 2004 and came into his second term with high approval ratings and a Republican Congress. With all this, he couldn’t even manage to de-fund Planned Parenthood or NPR! It could have been done, easily, in a budget reconciliation between House and Senate and there would have been nothing the Democrats could have done about it. This was “better” than a President Kerry who probably would have increased PP funding, but not really better in that the taxes of pro-life Americans were still going to fund something they consider abhorrent…and which Bush and the entire GOP campaigned on getting rid of.

I know some will say that this is just our GOPe screwing it’s base and that the Democrats don’t do that. But, they do. Obama was elected in 2008 with 53% of the vote and came into office with a Democrat Congress and a filibuster-proof Senate majority…and he couldn’t even get the single payer health system Democrats say they want. It would have been easy. The GOP could have done nothing to stop it. Enact a 10% payroll tax to fund it and just start passing out the cash to people who need health care. That you and I know it would have been a disaster is neither here nor there – our side had lost the election and the Democrats won all the power they could possibly need to make all Democrat dreams come true…and they couldn’t do something like that. They instead wound up with the abomination known as Obamacare which even if it had worked as planned would still have left millions out in the cold and cost like the devil – but they couldn’t even write something that worked! Meanwhile, not only did Obama not end the wars they campaigned against in 2008, he started new one’s…droning the living sh** out of every poor, brown skinned person they could target (well, those they weren’t letting in as unvetted refugees, that is). A public works bonanza that didn’t create any public works. A slew of new spending which improved nothing. This is what the Democrat voters get for investing their time and effort? Yep – in other words, nothing: but lots and lots for whomever is the crony. Democrat cronies made out like bandits. But your average purple-haired Democrat wanting more safe spaces? Not much.

And as far as the social disintegration we’ve seen over the past 60 years – we’ve been blinded by the Democrats pushing the disintegration that we haven’t noticed the Republicans letting them do it. And when they have power to roll it back, doing nothing of the sort. And now we see in the Epstein case the reason why it might have all been allowed to happen: Lord only knows how many of the high and mighty are caught in that web…but what better way to get out from under that rock than by making the rock legal? By making you, a normal person, the bad guy if you point out some of the disgusting actions?

Illegal immigration to provide votes for Democrats and cheap labor for Republicans. Wars which don’t end in victory or defeat. Enforcing immorality against popular wishes. Providing government sinecures to anyone who will toe the line – and who won’t be got rid of no matter how corrupt or stupid they prove. Accepting money from foreign entities who want the United States destroyed. Both sides, all the time – and on top of being this stupidly destructive, raking it in for themselves, their families and their friends. It is time to bring an end to all that. By peaceful means if possible but, ultimately, by any means necessary. Our peaceful means are President Trump.

Trump isn’t part of the system, you see. Dimwits look at his billions and go, “he must be one of them”. But, the bottom line is that he’s not. He’ll hang out with them. Be friends with them. But he never was of them. He made his own way and got his pile of money…and then looked around and saw, from the 1980’s, what was happening to his country and started to wonder why, and if there were anything he could do about it? He essentially first let Bill Clinton have his chance. Then Bush the Younger. Then even Obama. But he found out something – it didn’t matter who was in charge, they were all in on it, together. That is, regardless of stated political philosophy, the primary goal of nearly everyone in politics was personal enrichment and making sure no outsider pushed his or her way in. Trump decided to push his way in.

And now he’s there – and outside of a precious few (Cruz, Paul…and, oddly, McConnell), he’s nearly alone fighting for one thing: us. The United States of America. We, the people. And everyone inside is furious and terrified and so are lashing back as much as they can hoping that something, anything will turn up to get rid of Trump. And, make no mistake about it, they are already planning on punishing us for electing Trump. They don’t propose to allow this sort of thing to happen again.

I’ve mostly stopped arguing with liberals these days – first off, it is pointless but, secondly, I’m starting to pity them; nearly as much as I pity that shrinking number on the right who still stand aloof from Trump: they simply can’t shake free from the line they’ve been fed. And none of us can get high and mighty about that: to one degree or another, all of us were suckered at one time or another. All of us believed in some aspect of the con being used to keep us confused, frightened and divided while the Ruling Class stays fat and happy. But for those of us who have awakened from the con, it is time for a clean break – a refusal to accept that anything over the past 60 years was any good…a desire, that is, to move forward in an entirely new way, unshackled to whatever we might have said or done in the past. We can see what happened; we can see what needs to be done – we can’t trip ourselves up (nor allow our opponents to slow us down) by fussing over what views we might have expressed previously. Our desire is a Constitutional Republic of free people – our means of getting there must be “whatever works”, not adherence to a dogma which might, upon review, only have been a means whereby the con artists kept us in line in the past. I, for one, will only defend what I find defensible and will attack whatever I see as wrong.

We still have a magnificent window to win this thing and fix our nation – naturally, the first requirement is protecting President Trump. But the next step is just as important: a complete review of everything and asking the question, “Is this good?”. We’ve already learned that so-called “Free Trade” wasn’t what many of us thought it was – take that as your template and ask yourself, “is this thing I’ve adhered to really in the interests of a free people? Or is it something which only serves the well-connected?”. As Lincoln once said, it is time to think anew and act anew: not to create something different (nothing can be more magnificent than the United States, as far as human effort allows), but to recreate what we had, but even better than before. And if that mission requires us to knock a few off their pedestals, then that’s just what will have to happen.