Alternative History

A Biden for all seasons

Posted on October 13, 2022October 13, 2022 by Mike

Heroes aren’t born, they’re made. Or, in the case of the Biden familia, made up.

DISGRACE: Joe Biden Falsely Claims Son Beau ‘Lost His Life in Iraq’

“Disgrace”? Nah, not really. That implies that the Biden marionette has some capacity for feeling shame or embarrassment. Onwards.

Joe Biden has often invoked his late son Beau Biden.

For example, after his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan he evoked his late son in a shameless effort to avoid criticism of his actions.

“So, when I hear that we could’ve, should’ve continued the so-called low-grade effort in Afghanistan, at low risk to our service members, at low cost, I don’t think enough people understand how much we have asked of the 1 percent of this country who put that uniform on, who are willing to put their lives on the line in defense of our nation,” Biden said last year when he announced the war in Afghanistan was now officially over. “Maybe it’s because my deceased son, Beau, served in Iraq for a full year, before that.”

Biden also alluded to Beau when he spoke to the nation after the terror attack at Kabul airport. “Being the father of an Army major who served for a year in Iraq and, before that, was in Kosovo as a U.S. attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war,” Biden said. “When he came home after a year in Iraq, he was diagnosed, like many, many coming home, with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain — who we lost.”

It was grossly inappropriate for him to constantly invoke his son who died of brain cancer as though it was the same thing as if he had lost his life while serving our country. But on Wednesday while giving a speech in Colorado, Biden claimed that Beau actually lost his life in Iraq.

Biden’s brain might be Swiss-cheesed, but it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that he would have forgotten how his own son died. So this naturally begs the question as to whether Biden was confused because of how often he brings up Beau as though he was a war casualty or whether he just thinks it makes him look better to say he was.

And frankly I don’t know which answer is worse.

The truth is even worse than those two options: Biden is using his dead son for his own selfish purposes, climbing up onto the coffin to thump his sunken chest and bray so as to score political points, in the manner of all DemonRats. As for Beau himself, his place in the annals of military history is secure.

Biden claims son Beau was the man responsible for shooting down Richthofen

In a speech to a teeming throng of over half a dozen supporters yesterday, “President” Joe Biden proudly praised his deceased son Beau as the flying ace who successfully ended Rittmeister Manfred Von Richthofen’s record-setting string of more than 80 victories in aerial combat, shooting the Red Baron down over northern France in April 1918.

Okay, I admit I may have made that last part up. But really, it’s only a matter of time before he does this, and you know it.

Since somebody or other brought up Richthofen just now, I have this great biography of him I got…shit, I don’t even remember how many years ago that was. What I DO remember is that it had some amazing photos of the man, his aircraft, his brothers Lothar and Albrecht, his Flying Circus, and such-like. The one that really gets me is this one:

The Lion in winter — *Richthofen suiting up for a wintertime mission*

Yep, it’s COLD up there among them clouds all right, aloft in a flimsy, drafty old crate with no cockpit canopy, no heater, and nothing but a small windscreen to huddle behind as a shield from the bone-chilling fury of the elements. Those pioneering WWI combat flyers, coming in on the very heels of Orville and Wilbur’s brief inaugural flight at Kill Devil Hills, were something else again.

Think of it: machine guns mounted on the top wing of their biplanes on a swivel, until a truly reliable synchronization gear came along towards the end of the war; aiming was done exclusively with Mark 1-Mod 0 eyeball, firing with the hand not occupied full-time with the stick. No radar, no HUD, no electric engine-starter motors, no communication with either ground control or the rest of their flight elements.

WWI combat aviators were a valorous, fearless breed for whom a “bombing run” consisted of hurling hand grenades from the cockpit at ground targets (or sometimes, enemy aircraft). These guys make today’s man-bunned, skinny-jeaned, feminized Hipster cock-noshers pleased to misnomer themselves “men” look like the dainty imposters they so truly are.

Gone in 60 70 seconds

Posted on October 2, 2022October 2, 2022 by Mike

The day what little remained of America That Was was murdered—on purpose, with malice aforethought, by evil, conniving bureaucrats.

On March 16, 2020, following a long weekend of negotiations and deals about the coronavirus, Donald Trump, Deborah Birx, and Anthony Fauci spoke at a White House press conference for the first time about nationwide lockdowns.

They handed out a sheet of paper – it mostly consisted of conventional health advice – that said in tiny print: “bars, restaurants, food courts, gyms, and other indoor and outdoor venues where groups of people congregate should be closed.”

Shut it all down. Everything. Everyone. As if the whole economy were a nightclub closing early.

This amounted to a full repudiation of not only the Constitution but also freedom itself. At the very least, it was a fundamental attack on the First Amendment guarantees of the freedom of religion because it attacked the rights of Christians, Jews, Muslims, and everyone.

All evidence suggests that Trump did not know that the tiny text was in there.

The reading of the text was left to the question and answer session.

Even when it was read by Fauci from the podium, Trump seemed distracted by something else, almost as if he did not hear or did not want to hear it. Later he bragged that the whole thing was his doing, but looking back at the history of that day, it is not so clear.

Let’s take this apart frame by frame to understand what happened in these 70 seconds as part of the Q&A session.

Which the author goes on to do, meticulously and deftly. Then:

Fauci reads the text and then he steps away from the microphone. He had just read what is in fact the most totalitarian instruction ever given by any government in the history of the world – I can’t think of another case of such a thing – that all human interaction must stop from sea to shining sea. After all, all congregate places include homes too. Then Fauci steps away from the microphone.

Here you can watch the full 70 seconds. Deconstruct it yourself. See what you think. It was momentous, probably the most significant in American history, the culmination of weeks of persuasion and planning.

Everything followed from that brief moment: lockdown chaos, the closed schools and churches, the end of basic rights, the wrecking of business, and then began the spending, inflating, mad welfare checks, and the demoralization of the population that continues to this day.

The population now subjected to shock and awe, the mask and vaccine mandates seemed minor by comparison.

All of it unfolded in 70 seconds on March 16, 2020. So far as I know, this is the first and only article written so far to reconstruct this brief moment in time.

And so it is, of which you should read the all, grim as it surely is.

Being human and all, Trump made many blunders during what by any standard would have to be acknowledged as a surpassingly momentous Presidency, but this one was probably the biggest, most damaging of them all. His inattention, in concert with his inexplicably blind faith in the good intentions and integrity of the Deep State’s horde of orcs like Fauci and Birx, would go on to doom him (and us) to a single term, and set the stage for the abominable “Biden administration” farce—a wholly disastrous “reign of witches” which will assuredly afflict America for generations to come, until such time as our posterity rediscovers their love for the blessings of liberty and determines that all and every measure must be taken to restore them.

Jefferson’s 1798 letter to John Taylor from whence the “reign of witches” quote originates, written in the wake of the passage of Adams’ notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, is worth reviewing at this point. Certainly, although there are significant distinctions to be noted between the circumstances of that era and our own, the thrust of the letter remains every bit as relevant today as it was back then, as is ever the case with the words and thoughts of the great man.

It is true that we are compleatly under the saddle of Massachusets & Connecticut, and that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance. Their natural friends, the three other eastern States, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union so as to make use of them to govern the whole. This is not new. It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order, and those who have once got an ascendency and possessed themselves of all the resources of the nation, their revenues and offices, have immense means for retaining their advantages. But our present situation is not a natural one. The body of our countrymen is substantially republican through every part of the Union. It was the irresistable influence & popularity of Gen. Washington, played off by the cunning of Hamilton, which turned the government over to anti-republican hands, or turned the republican members, chosen by the people, into anti-republicans. He delivered it over to his successor in this state, and very untoward events, since improved with great artifice, have produced on the public mind the impression we see; but still, I repeat it, this is not the natural state. Time alone would bring round an order of things more correspondent to the sentiments of our constituents; but are there not events impending which will do it within a few months? The invasion of England, the public and authentic avowal of sentiments hostile to the leading principles of our Constitution, the prospect of a war in which we shall stand alone, land-tax, stamp-tax, increase of public debt, &c. Be this as it may, in every free & deliberating society there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties & violent dissensions & discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time. Perhaps this party division is necessary to induce each to watch & delate to the people the proceedings of the other. But if on a temporary superiority of the one party, the other is to resort to a scission of the Union, no federal government can ever exist. If to rid ourselves of the present rule of Massachusets & Connecticut we break the Union, will the evil stop there? Suppose the N. England States alone cut off, will our natures be changed? are we not men still to the south of that, & with all the passions of men? Immediately we shall see a Pennsylvania & a Virginia party arise in the residuary confederacy ,and the public mind will be distracted with the same party spirit. What a game, too, will the one party have in their hands by eternally threatening the other that unless they do so & so, they will join their Northern neighbors. If we reduce our Union to Virginia & N. Carolina, immediately the conflict will be established between the representatives of these two States, and they will end by breaking into their simple units. Seeing, therefore, that an association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which never yet existed, from the greatest confederacy of nations down to a town meeting or a vestry, seeing that we must have somebody to quarrel with, I had rather keep our New England associates for that purpose than to see our bickerings transferred to others. They are circumscribed within such narrow limits, & their population so full, that their numbers will ever be the minority, and they are marked, like the Jews, with such a peculiarity of character as to constitute from that circumstance the natural division of our parties. A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to it’s true principles. It is true that in the mean time we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war & long oppressions of enormous public debt. But who can say what would be the evils of a scission, and when & where they would end? Better keep together as we are, hawl off from Europe as soon as we can, & from all attachments to any portions of it. And if we feel their power just sufficiently to hoop us together, it will be the happiest situation in which we can exist. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, & then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are the stake. Better luck, therefore, to us all; and health, happiness, & friendly salutations to yourself.

Adieu.

Sounds all too familiar, no? Even moreso for the coda, painfully so.

P. S. It is hardly necessary to caution you to let nothing of mine get before the public. A single sentence, got hold of by the Porcupines, will suffice to abuse & persecute me in their papers for months.

There can be no serious doubt that, if Thomas Jefferson was alive today, such “extremism” would long since have motivated the FBI to raid his home, rifle through his papers and personal effects, and roughly bunge him into durance vile for a long stretch, as retribution for his many “crimes against the State.”

(Via WRSA)

Occam’s Razor says…

Posted on September 11, 2022 by Mike

No, 9/11 was NOT an “inside job,” perpetrated by the US goobermint, Mossad, whothehellever. The conspiracy theorizing began before the smoke had cleared in Lower Manhattan; sad to say, the preposterous theories have only proliferated ever since, and would seem to be deathless. I’ve run this Cracked mag classic debunking the nonsense here I don’t even know how many times over lo, these past 21 years. I’m happy to do so yet again.

Now, fans of this site know, I don’t be trustin’ me no government. I’ve put in time at various intelligence agencies and at one major government contractor (Kellogg, Brown & Root). I’ve worked for these people and let me tell you, the government is a mess. And elected officials, don’t get me started on those people. They’ll do anything it takes to get votes.

But here’s the thing. The 9/11 “Truth” guys, the Loose Changers and all the many websites, they don’t just think government is corrupt. They think everybody, and I mean everybody, is either evil on a demonic scale, or a mindless sheep.

For instance, how much money would it take to get you to kill 3,000 random, innocent Americans? Or, say you stumbled upon somebody else’s plan to kill 3,000 innocent Americans. How much would it take to get you to stay silent afterward?

A hundred dollars? Two hundred? Two hundred fifty?

Well if the conspiracy guys are right, there are people reading this right now who took that deal. No kidding.

Here’s why. The entire 9/11 “Truth” movement rests on the idea that the World Trade Center towers were rigged with explosives, a “Controlled Demolition” like you see with old buildings. That’s the whole thing. They say the buildings couldn’t have come down otherwise.

Forget the fact that no experts on the subject agree with them. That’s not the point right now. We’re just trying to get inside these guys’ heads.Now, maybe you could keep the plan itself a secret. A few dozen murderous black ops guys, demolitions experts with a grudge against the USA, maybe they’ve been brainwashed. Who knows. Maybe it could be done. People point out that the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb was kept a secret, so why not this?

But the cover-up. Holy shit, guys. Covering this thing up after the fact would be like trying to keep the atomic bomb a secret after Hiroshima. Just wait ’till you hear this.

First, picture the demolitions teams wiring up the World Trade Center towers with explosives prior to the attack. Obviously you couldn’t do it during business hours, since it’d be kind of hard to explain to the 100,000 people who worked at or visited the WTC towers on any given day why you had a huge chunk of wall torn out and were wiring up a bomb on the steel beams there.I mean, keep in mind, I don’t know how big of a job that would be (no one has ever demolished a building that size before) but a building just half the size of one WTC tower took 4,000 separate charges to bring down. Four thousand.

That job took seven months of prep work… and they had the run of an abandoned building, without having to hide their work from 100,000 people every day. Our demolition crew, on the other hand, can work only at night and has to spend the last bit of every shift carefully repairing the wall and hiding any evidence of charges or detonators as not to be discovered during the day.

Huge teams of demolitions experts, who had no problem wiring a building full of innocent New Yorkers to explode, hired in secret, worked every night for what had to be a year (and that’s only if they had a big enough crew) placing maybe 10,000 separate charges in each tower and another few thousand in WTC 7 (the smaller WTC tower that also collapsed, later in the day on 9/11).

And nobody notices.

Truckloads of bombs, dozens of mysterious workers, going in and out of the building, night after night. Security at the building doesn’t catch them, Port Authority Police don’t catch them, random eyewitnesses who stumble across the operation and call the cops don’t catch them, maintenance workers who stumble across wet paint and repaired walls and bits of strange wire don’t catch them, security cameras don’t catch them.

The bomb-sniffing dogs who were brought in from time to time (remember, these buildings were bombed by terrorists in 1993) who are trained to find even one bomb, fail to notice the 10,000 bombs lining their building.If you’re saying that nothing could possibly be more retarded than that, you’re wrong.

No, they’re just getting started.

And indeed they are. The article includes a link to Popular Mechanics’ thorough flensing of this crapola, another good ‘un that I’ve excerpted several times here. The PM piece has been split into two separate articles, one on the WTC specifically and one covering the Pentagon, which the conspiracy fever-dreamers absurdly maintain was never even hit by a plane at all. To wit:

At 9:37 a.m. on September 11, 51 minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center, the Pentagon was similarly attacked. Though dozens of witnesses saw a Boeing 757 hit the building, conspiracy advocates insist there is evidence that a missile or a different type of plane smashed into the Pentagon.

CLAIM: Two holes were visible in the Pentagon immediately after the attack: a 75-foot-wide entry hole in the building’s exterior wall, and a 16-foot-wide hole in Ring C, the Pentagon’s middle ring. Conspiracy theorists claim both holes are far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757. “How does a plane 125 [feet] wide and 155 [feet] long fit into a hole which is only 16 [feet] across?” asks reopen911.org, a website “dedicated to discovering the bottom line truth to what really occurred on September 11, 2001.”

The truth is of even less importance to French author Thierry Meyssan, whose baseless assertions are fodder for even mainstream European and Middle Eastern media.

In his book The Big Lie, Meyssan concludes that the Pentagon was struck by a satellite-guided missile—part of an elaborate U.S. military coup. “This attack,” he writes, “could only be committed by United States military personnel against other U.S. military personnel.”

FACT: When American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon’s exterior wall, Ring E, it created a hole approximately 75 feet wide, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon Building Performance Report.

The exterior facade collapsed about 20 minutes after impact, but ASCE based its measurements of the original hole on the number of first-floor support columns that were destroyed or damaged. Computer simulations confirmed the findings.

Why wasn’t the hole as wide as a 757’s nearly 125-foot wingspan? A crashing jet doesn’t punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University.

Oof. The piece goes on from there to take out the rest of the trash with similar aplomb. Personally, I find it disgusting the way 9/11 has faded from our collective consciousness, although admittedly it was probably inevitable that it would. Worse yet is the way that, as Steyn has pointed out, rather than making life tougher on the Muzzrat nations who financed, abetted, and joyously cheered the atrocity, we’ve preferred instead to make it tougher on ourselves with walled-off public spaces and government buildings; grossly intrusive yet ineffectual airport “security”; total, 24-7-365 police-state survellaince, and such-like.

Instead of calling a spade a spade and placing the burden of guilt and responsibility squarely on the shoulders where it rightfully belonged, we sheepishly acquiesced to Bush’s wholly grotesque “Islam literally means peace” falsehood as if 9/11 was OUR fault—painstakingly tripping over ourselves in apology for heinous acts of persecution which never actually happened, inspired by a purported “Islamophobia” that never actually existed. Those who DO remember should make sure that they remember it correctly and accurately, not the bizarre, twisted hobgoblin haunting little conspiracy-theory minds.

Don’t fall for the bullshit, folks; all you’ll end up doing is making yourself look like a damned fool. Should you ever be tempted to take such nonsense seriously, ask yourself one question: Do you really think the bumbling, inept FederalGovCo we’re all too familiar with could ever have the competence, cunning, and intelligence necessary to successfully pull off as massive, as complicated a hoax as this? And then keep it going in total silence, with nary a leak, whistleblower, or exposé cropping up anywhere for all these years?

Like I said: preposterous. Absurd. Bullshit.

Everything old is new again

Posted on September 7, 2022 by Mike

Mark Twain is claimed to have said “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t, but after reading Divemedic’s ingenious post, I’m saying to hell with all that; it definitely repeats itself, as far as I’m concerned.

In a nation weakened by worldwide economic issues and a world that has grown weary of war and strife, a chief executive struggles

The head law enforcement officer of the nation, acting on orders of the chief executive, orders a raid on the opposition party’s headquarters. There, the police find evidence of seditious material, including a plot to attack public buildings. The chief executive takes to the airwaves with claims that the opposition is planning to attack the capitol.

Shortly thereafter, the capitol is attacked, and one of the men arrested in an unemployed construction worker who admits to being under the command of the leader of the opposition party. The chief executive declares, “we must crush out this murderous pest with an iron fist.”

A few hours later, the chief executive issued an executive order that effectively abolished freedom of speech, assembly, privacy and the press; legalized phone tapping and interception of correspondence; and that 4,000 people be arrested, imprisoned and tortured.

Later that year, a sensational criminal trial got under way. The man who burned the Capitol, the leader of the opposition party, and several key figures of the opposition party went on trial for sedition.

As the trial proceeded, a different kind of trial captured the public discourse. A member of the opposition undertook an independent investigation of the destruction of the Capitol. The combined research resulted in the publication of The Brown Book on the Insurrection. It included early accounts police brutality, as well as an argument that the insurrectionists were simply pawns. The chief executive’s party members were the real criminals, the book argued, and they orchestrated the insurrection to consolidate political power. The book became a bestseller, translated into 24 languages and sold around Europe and the U.S.

At any rate, a full 5% of the legislature was declared to be in league with the accused insurrection. They were imprisoned and held for a trial that would never come. Their seats were left vacant, and the leader’s party was free to hold legislative referendums without them present.

Fearing that the insurrectionists were gaining enough power to become a threat to the very nation, the legislature passed an enabling act that temporarily granted emergency legislative powers to the chief executive so that he and the head of the nation’s law enforcement could deal with the spreading insurrection. Soon thereafter, the chief executive passed away after a sudden and brief illness. The chief law enforcement executive then declared himself to be the new chief executive, then used his emergency powers to pass a law declaring himself to be the permanent head of government and disbanded the legislature. He ordered jailed anyone who opposed his new powers.

Read on for the O Henry-esque twist at the end.

Second look at the Bundy Ranch standoff?

Posted on August 16, 2022August 16, 2022 by Mike

The Bundy family’s take on our awful central government’s true nature was more accurate than they’ve ever been given credit for.

BUNKERVILLE, NEVADA—The Bundy Ranch roundup has understandably stirred thin-stretched emotions as the federal government seizes cattle belonging to the Bundy family. The family settled in the late 1800’s and has ranched in the area since. The federal government allowed Nevada ranchers to graze their cattle on federal tracts of land adjacent to their private properties for generations. The federal government later created the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to administer and “protect” the vast swaths of federal land—including the land the Bundy family’s livelihood was—and still is—dependent upon. The BLM began restricting ranchers’ usage of federal lands to protect various species, and the BLM decided to restrict the Bundy family’s usage of the federal land they historically grazed. The federal government told the Bundy family that a tortoise existed on the land and therefore the land’s usage for cattle would have to decrease—thus creating a scenario where the Bundy family could make fewer resources. A 20-year legal battle ensued.

There exist a number of elements to the story that inject shades of grey into the dominant media narrative. Perhaps hundreds of Bundy supporters have already shown up to the ranch area to “protect” the family and their land—which is federal land—but federal land such usage was promised to the family in the government’s efforts to get people to settle the West after Mexico ceded the land to the U.S. Court documents—discussed later in this article—reveal that the Bundy family decided at some point that the federal government was illegitimate and that they no longer had to give heed to the federal courts. The Bundy family patriarch has openly stated his willingness to use force against federal agents if they take his cattle off of the federal lands; the federal agents stand ready to use force against the family or their supporters if they interfere with the cattle removal. Both sides are armed, both sides are frustrated, and the rhetoric and hyperbole surrounding the entire matter has left many onlookers from around the world confused as to what is actually happening.

In the immediate aftermath of the infamous cattle roundup, Cliven Bundy granted a number of high profile media interviews continuing to deny—to the point of absolutely ignoring family history—what the federal courts have twice told him.

“I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada,” Bundy recently told a radio reporter. “…I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But, I don’t recognize the United States Government as even existing.”

Oh, it exists right enough, I’m afraid. Cliven and several of his compatriots ended up finding that out the hard way. The thing I remember being struck by more forcefully than anything else at the time was the near-universal condemnation of the Bundys from the Right. Even folks whose ideological inclinations might be taken as suggestive of deep antipathy for FederalGovCo, its minions, and its nefarious works were suddenly tripping over themselves to join [wpdiscuz-feedback id=”hw7r99ujes” question=”Comments? Complaints? Thoughts?” opened=”0″]the mad rush to take the Almighty State’s side[/wpdiscuz-feedback] on this one.

Same as it ever was

Posted on August 14, 2022 by Mike

Bayou Pete commends the late John Ross’s Unintended Consequences, an early-on staple of the dystopian-future/Civil War v2.0 genre, to our attention, posting an excerpt from the hefty 700-page tome’s Author’s Note as a lure for prospective readers.

A friend in law enforcement told me that because of this book’s content, I should not let it be published under my own name. Violent events happen in this story, and our country’s current situation is such that these events could indeed come to pass. My friend’s fear was that this book might precipitate such violence. He told me to expect to have drugs planted in my car during routine traffic stops, or have other similar miseries befall me and my family. He advised that if I did have this work published, I should use a pseudonym, employ an intermediary for all publisher contact, and in general prevent myself from being linked to the finished work, to avoid reprisals.

I didn’t do that, not only because of free speech considerations, but because I disagree with my friend’s hypothesis. I believe that if the instigators glimpse what may lie ahead, they will alter their behavior before wholesale violence becomes unavoidable. It is my hope that this book will reduce the likelihood of armed conflict in this country.

History has shown us that government leaders often ignore the fundamental fact that people demand both dignity and freedom. Because of this disregard, these decision-makers then initiate acts that are ultimately self-destructive. To illustrate this point I will remind the reader of the origin of two of modern history’s most destructive events, and of all the warning flags that were frantically waving while the instigators rushed headlong towards the abyss.

In the late 19th and very early 20th centuries, European leaders formed two major alliances. Germany, Austria, and Italy comprised one coalition, and Britain, France, and Russia the other. Belgium remained neutral per an 1839 treaty signed by all of these nations except Italy. The smaller European countries became indirectly involved in the two aforementioned alliances. One such example was Serbia, a country Russia had pledged to aid in the event of war between Serbia and Austria. Despite Russia’s presence, Austria annexed a large part of Serbia, a province called Bosnia, in 1908.

Few people remain emotionally indifferent when their culture and country are taken over by an aggressor, and the Bosnian Serbs were no exception. Many Bosnians despised the government that had chilled their independence. In spite of this obvious fact, the Austrian leaders sent an archduke to the capital of Bosnia to survey the people Austria now ruled. This archduke was resplendent in full military ceremonial dress, festooned with medals and other military decorations, and accompanied by his elegantly-dressed wife. An objective observer might at this point have said, “Stripping motivated people of their dignity and rubbing their noses in it is a very bad idea.”

As we all know, the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination has reverberated and echoed throughout world history ever since the day it occurred, beginning with its immediate consequence, WW1, leading in its turn to WW2, and continuing right on through the Bosnia-Serbia conflict of the 1990s. In our time, the war-tocsin’s reverberations are starting to sound downright clangorous once again.

Today in America, honest, successful, talented, productive, motivated people are once again being stripped of their freedom and dignity and having their noses rubbed in it. The conflict has been building for over half a century, and once again warning flags are frantically waving while the instigators rush headlong towards the abyss, and their doom.

It is my hope that these people will stop and reverse their course before they reach the point where such reversal is no longer possible.

Sadly, tragically, our own wannabe despots seem to be no more intelligent, reflective, or modest than their predecessors, making any reversal of their hell-bent-for-leather race to catastrophe and horror unlikely in the extreme. Peter follows up with some essential, if grim, wisdom that none but a self-serving, supremely arrogant ProPol could fail to take note of.

I believe the (fictional) internal conflict that John Ross foresaw for the USA back in 1995 is perilously close to becoming a reality in 2022. The reasons are more varied and complex than he predicted almost thirty years ago, but the outcome is likely to be very similar. I hope and pray that doesn’t happen, because I’ve seen civil war and internal conflict in several nations and know how absolutely, genuinely horrific it can be for those caught up in it. However, those pushing to impose their views and policies on the rest of the country appear blind to that reality. They simply won’t leave people alone. They’re imposing their views and insisting that the people of this country “get with the program” – or else. (To cite just one current example, adding 87,000 people to the IRS is not about more efficient functioning of that agency. It’s about picking on dissenters and making their lives unbearable, just as the IRS did when it was “weaponized” under the Obama administration. Expect the same thing today as then, only on steroids.)

I hope John Ross’s vision of what might happen in the USA may never come to pass…but I fear that may be a pipe dream. Read his novel for yourself. It seems eerily prescient in many ways.

Prescient? I’d say so, yeah. Not having read Ross’s classic yet myself, I took advantage of Peter’s link to the free version and downloaded it (there’s also a for-pay edition available at Amazon), for which gracious inclusion I humbly thank him.

Pobody’s nerfect

Posted on August 12, 2022August 13, 2022 by Mike

Ron, we hardly knew ye.

A shameful aspect of woke intolerance has been the degrading of historical figures who fail to meet current standards of politically correctness. This vindictive fervor has spread from removing the statues of Confederate commanders and statesmen to removing those of American Founding Fathers who owned slaves to pulling down the statues of abolitionists who were not as radical as they might have been. It is therefore upsetting to discover the role played by Governor Ron DeSantis, who has become a poster boy for conservatives, in contributing to this madness. Like his predecessor Rick Scott, DeSantis thinks it’s a good idea to dishonor a Confederate commander in order to elevate a civil rights icon.

In 2018 Scott signed into law something that DeSantis put into effect in 2019, removing the statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith from Capitol Hill in Tallahassee and replacing it with one of the civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. If Scott and DeSantis were trying to highlight their devotion to the civil rights cause, perhaps to increase their share of the black vote, all they really did was behave foolishly. Both Bethune and Kirby Smith deserve to be honored as Floridians, although unlike Kirby Smith, Bethune was born not in the Sunshine State but in Mayesville, South Carolina. I have no idea why this should be a zero-sum game, as it seems to be with Southern Republican governors. DeSantis, Scott, and Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have all removed statues of Confederate heroes from place(s) of honor and substituted for them civil rights activists.

No one is asking that Southern governors add to the number of Confederate memorial statues (that still abound in the former states of the Confederacy.) If our Southern Republican governors want to give recognition to more recent state celebrities by erecting statues to them, that is their right. The question is: why demean long-honored heroes in trying to pay homage to civil rights pioneers? Even if Southern Republicans have become strangely indifferent to seeing those associated with the Confederate cause being slighted, the swapping undertaken by their governors still strikes me as unseemly. It reflects badly on the character of those leaders who engage in such clumsy virtue-signaling. Why can’t they add new heroes without subtracting older ones, who long commanded respect?

As an historian I can find much to admire in Bethune and Smith both. A dedicated and deeply religious black educator, Bethune focused on the Christian development of her students. She also deplored any misconduct on the part of blacks and like her mentor Booker T. Washington, Bethune, who was a stern disciplinarian, stressed the need for blacks to behave in a civil fashion in their own society as well as in the larger white one. Significantly, she allied with the Democratic Party and the New Deal administration in fighting disabilities against members of her race. And she played an important role in drawing away the black vote from DeSantis’s party to the Democrats during the 1930s. (Before the mid-1930s blacks had been overwhelmingly Republican.)

Kirby Smith is equally worthy of our respect, as a remarkably intelligent military leader and a dedicated natural scientist. Beside his resourceful service in the Confederate army, in which he won victories from Virginia to Texas, he distinguished himself as a brave commander in the Mexican War, after graduating with honors from West Point. After the Confederacy’s defeat, Kirby Smith devoted the remainder of his life to being a professor of mathematics and botany at the College of the South in Sewanee.

Apropos of absolutely, positively nothing, the Playboys played a huge, buck-wild fraternity party for a cpl-three years running at the University (not College; more on that anon) of the South, which was one of the loveliest college campuses I ever did see. Good times, good times. Onwards.

He also spent considerable time collecting and categorizing plants and became a distinguished botanist. There is no reason Florida’s pantheon of state luminaries cannot make room for this distinguished native son as well as for Bethune. Even more relevant, there was no justification for removing Kirby Smith’s statue, which was already placed on Capitol Hill in Tallahassee.

Finally, I can’t imagine that Bethune, any more than Kirby Smith, would have any use for the woke America now demanding that we celebrate her.

What decent, intelligent, reasonable person possibly could?

It’s mighty disappointing that DeSantis would go along with this nonsense. Now admittedly, nobody is right about every last thing, and a governor of DeSantis’s rapidly-burgeoning stature has only so many hours in his day to get things done. This forces said gov to prioritize some things over others. That said, it remains my unswerving belief that there of right ought to be NO more concessions made to the shitlibs, no matter the issue.

The Leftard camel has been allowed to poke its big, ugly snout way too far into the tent already for my liking, and I can’t even begin to imagine that DeSantis is in agreement with those assholes on this particular topic. Any and every time they can be dealt a defeat, regardless of its perceived import, they not only should be, they must be, just as a matter of principle.

A little more on the University of the South:

On July 4, 1857, delegates from ten Southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas—were led up Monteagle Mountain by Bishop Leonidas Polk for the founding of their denominational college for the region. The goal was to create a Southern university free of Northern influences. As one of its co-founders, Bishop James Otey of Tennessee, put it: the new university will “materially aid the South to resist and repel a fanatical domination which seeks to rule over us.” Another of the co-founders was John Armfield, at one time co-owner of Franklin and Armfield, “the largest and most prosperous slave trading enterprise in the entire country.” His promise of $25,000 per year far exceeded any other donations and was considered a “princely offer” by a Nashville newspaper. The majority of the land for the university was donated by the Sewanee Mining Company on the condition that a university “be put in operation within ten year”. Today, according to Steven Deyle, “[d]espite his central role in its establishment, Armfield’s contributions to the University of the South, an institution that supposedly symbolized southern ideals, have all but been forgotten…The initial reports and histories of the university barely mention him, and except for a bluff named in his honor, there is no other commemoration for Armfield on the campus today.”

The six-ton marble cornerstone, laid on October 10, 1860, and consecrated by Bishop Polk, was blown up in 1863 by Union soldiers; many of the pieces were collected and kept as keepsakes by the soldiers. A few were donated back to the university, and a large fragment was eventually installed in a wall of All Saints’ Chapel. Several figures later prominent in the Confederacy, notably Bishop General Leonidas Polk, Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr., and Bishop James Hervey Otey, were significant founders of the university. Generals Edmund Kirby Smith, Josiah Gorgas and Francis A. Shoup were prominent in the university’s postbellum revival and continuance.

Because of the damage and disruptions during the Civil War, construction came to a temporary halt. Polk died in action during the Atlanta campaign. He is remembered always through his portrait Sword Over the Gown, painted by Eliphalet F. Andrews in 1900. After the original was vandalized in 1998, a copy by Connie Erickson was unveiled on June 1, 2003.

In 1866, building was resumed, and this date is sometimes used as the re-founding of the university and the year from which it has maintained continuous operations (though official materials and anniversary celebrations still use 1857). The university’s first convocation was held on September 18, 1868, with nine students and four faculty members present. Presiding was the Rt. Rev. Charles Todd Quintard, vice-chancellor (chief academic officer) of the university, second Bishop of Tennessee and “Chaplain of the Confederacy” (compiler of the Confederate Soldiers’ Pocket Manual of Devotions, 1863). He attended the first Lambeth Conference in England (1868) and received financial support from clergy and laity of the Church of England for rebuilding the school. Quintard is known as the “Re-Founder” of the University of the South.

During World War II, the University of the South was one of 131 tertiary institutions nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

As I said, it’s a damned pretty place, nestled in the Tennessee mountains just a tad over fifty miles from Chattanooga. If I remember right, it’s also a hop, skip, and a jump from the real-life location of the fabled Rocky Top, made legendary by this bluegrass chestnut.

Sick fucks

Posted on July 12, 2022July 12, 2022 by Mike

Oh HELL no.

“Who controls the past controls the future,” writes George Orwell in 1984. “Who controls the present controls the past.” Were he with us today, Orwell would be getting tired of being right all the time, but he has just been proven right again: Thomas Jefferson’s famed mansion Monticello has been turned into a fount of woke propaganda that denigrates Jefferson and treats unsuspecting visitors to an over-the-top orgy of victimhood and white guilt regarding slavery. The Left hates America and wants very much for you to hate it, too.

Jeffrey Tucker of the libertarian Brownstone Institute said Saturday that “the whole thing has the feel of propaganda and manipulation. People on my tour seemed sad and demoralized.” That’s exactly the goal, Mr. Tucker: make Americans sad and demoralized and vulnerable to those who would have them believe that this nation has been evil from the beginning and is in drastic need of a thorough overhauling of its political system and society in general. Tucker added that when he was at Monticello, his guide was “surly and dismissive” of Jefferson’s remarkable achievements.

Monticello is no longer about Mr. Jefferson’s achievements. According to the New York Post, Monticello’s “new emphasis is the culmination of a 10-year effort to balance the historical record, officials of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation, the nonprofit that owns the estate, have said.” “Balance the historical record”: that’s a calculated and clever way of saying “Do everything we can to denigrate Thomas Jefferson and make those who admire him enough to visit his home come out hating him.”

Accordingly, the Post reports, “visitors complain that employees go out of their way to belittle Jefferson and his life.” One visitor wrote on Facebook that “the tour guides play ‘besmirchment derby,’ never missing a chance to defame this brilliant, complex man.” Another wrote: “Always enjoyed visiting Monticello in the past. The workers are super friendly and helpful. Unfortunately on this guided tour, we were lectured more on slaves and Sally Hemmings than the man himself. Half of the comments on Jefferson were critical. I expected for, the price, to have enjoyed it more. Even my 11 yr old daughter noticed the bias. We all are aware of the tragedy of slavery during the early part of this country’s history. Please center your presentations on the man and his accomplishments rather than promoting guilt.” Not a chance.

A third visitor said: “Visited a few years ago and had a great experience and got to learn a lot about Thomas Jefferson. This time every video slandered his name and the entire focus was on his mistress. Very disappointing and shocking to see how they are trying to rewrite history to make it seem like the founding fathers were terrible immoral creatures that happened to start a country.” Ah yes, now you’re getting the idea.

At this point, Monticello might as well be renamed Guilt Plantation. The Post noted that even the ticket booth to the place gets into the act: it’s “decorated with a contemporary painting of Jefferson’s weeping slaves.” In Jefferson’s music room, “a grim modern painting of a faceless figure with a matte black head now looms over the room, positioned so that it directly confronts visitors as they enter the mansion.” This masterpiece, according to Monticello guide Susan Woodward, was “commissioned in honor of Juneteenth” and was intended to be “quite provocative.” A card next to this painting explains that its “hands and face of featureless tar” are meant to signify “the faceless lives of all who served in bondage, witnessing but never recognized.”

I’m sure you’ll all be every bit as shocked as I was to learn who’s behind this vile desecration.

Not surprisingly, “The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is run by a roster of big-money Dem donors and former Democratic officials.” Monticello’s descent “has largely been funded by left-leaning philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, who donated $20 million toward that effort in 2015. Rubenstein is “on the boards of the globalist World Economic Forum, China’s Tsinghua University, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.” Now it’s beginning to become clear why all this is happening.

The endgame is not just to make Americans despise Thomas Jefferson, but to make the average American ashamed of being American. That’s what this has been about from first to last.

But of course. It’s who they are. It’s what they do. The bottom line:

Jefferson is just the sort of man whom the fascist thugs of Antifa, busy smearing ACAB on the sides of buildings and hurling obscenities at police in pursuit of their vision of socialist utopia, and their moneyed backers would despise and fear. They want a docile American populace, frightened into submission to their authoritarian vision. The example of Thomas Jefferson could inspire Americans instead to pledge their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to preserve our hard-won freedoms. Can’t have that. Jefferson’s name must be made anathema to Americans.

The scumsuckers will never get it done—not here, they won’t. Speaking strictly for myself and nobody else, I’ll see every last man Jack of them in Hell first.

Will Russia take on the job Americans just won’t do?

Posted on July 6, 2022July 6, 2022 by Mike

That would be the job of taking down a tyrannical, frankly illegitimate US goobermint. The real question, though, is: why on earth would they bother?

WHY RUSSIA WILL DEFEAT THE UNITED STATES
Like many boys in the 1980s, I dreamed of being a “Wolverine.” If you hail from Generation X or you are a late-stage Millennial, you know that is not a reference to a Marvel superhero with retractable metal claws. It is a reference to the teenaged freedom fighters in the movie Red Dawn. Raised on a steady diet of American patriotic zeal and a hatred for communism, boys my age fantasized of killing Russian invaders. Those days are long gone. The United States is no longer the “good guy,” and Russia is no longer the “bad guy.” We are the Marxists, now.

If we go to war with Russia, which I suspect will likely happen, Russia will win. The reason is simple: ideologies never defeat national identity. This has been true throughout time. Whenever an ideological army attempted to conquer a defined people, the defined people have always won. Even within the ideological proxy wars of the 20th Century, fighting was defined as contests between peoples. Communist North Vietnam framed its war with South Vietnam as one in which Vietnamese patriots fought European-American imperialism and manipulation. The Soviet Union was trounced in the early years of World War II for a multitude of reasons, but one of those reasons was that early propaganda tried to frame the struggle as one between fascism and communism. Soviet peasants could care less about the global proletariat. When the political messaging was re-framed within the context of a “Great Patriotic War,” Russians galvanized and hardened their resolve. Many such examples exist.

Today, there is no American people. The United States has been intentionally redefined. American identity is rooted in post-nationalism. It is ideologically globalist, combining the totality of the economic coin – Marxist on one side, free market capitalist on the other. In so doing, American political and cultural leaders have created an ideology that supplants God with Cultural Marxist societal elements – from homosexuality and transgenderism to subjectivity versus objectivity in all facets of decision making (e.g., “Common Core” math). Simultaneously, free market capitalism has been weaponized as a democratization process, creating a world of consumers addicted to cheap trinkets and material comforts that transcends sacrifice for one’s national best interests. This is evident from outsourcing manufacturing to the importation of cheap labor en masse. The United States that you once knew is dead. The guardians of this new American dystopia – the DOJ, FBI, IRS, and DOD – will target those who question the paradigm shift. Consequently, J6 protestors are hunted with impunity while the antifa – i.e., those who fight most violently for this new ideological state – are protected from prosecution.

Russia, generally speaking, has none of these problems. Russians know they are Russian. Russians are not seeking a globalist new world order. Russians prefer a world order led by Russians, but in the absence of that power, they would be happy to have a regional hegemony that protects Russian interests. In other words, unlike the globalist ideologues that lead Americans and their Western allies, Russians are nationalists. In a war, you need nationalism to win. If you think I am wrong, consider the U.S. military’s current struggles to recruit. It dovetails with a drop in patriotism. It turns out that the U.S. DOD never realized that transgender black dancers with a victim mentality do not volunteer to fight for a country they perceive to have oppressed them; misguided patriotic Southern White boys do – and less of them now want to be part of it. Putin’s military leadership enjoys no such confusion.

The US military having been reduced to a mincing, dress-clad paper tiger of indeterminate gender thanks to Woke leadership, I have little to no doubt the Rooskies could defeat it handily, all else being equal and assuming the Ukrainiain thorn had been removed from the Bear’s paw. But the US domestic political situation being what it now is, the bond between Heritage Americans and the US military is nothing like as strong as it once was, always a seriously bad omen for any nation’s defensive prospects.

On the other hand, the occupation phase is liable to be a stone bitch, I imagine, a fact I’m confident the Russian leadership is every bit as cognizant of as I am myself. On the other other hand, the Left has trashed this place so comprehensively, over so long a period, one has to wonder what Russia would really gain from such a chancy move. In sum, they probably COULD do it, sure. Which doesn’t mean they SHOULD.

I have to say, I can’t wait to see what Aesop’s take on this speculative proposal might be.

(Via WRSA)

Will the US fall like Rome?

Posted on July 4, 2022July 4, 2022 by Mike

Maybe not. Then again, maybe so.

Added to greed, avarice, and incompetence was a mix of climate change, unstable borders, and an elite population soaked in corruption. All told, you have a basic understanding of what destroyed the Roman world.

Yes, the history of this civilization often sounds like our own. But then, it sounds like most every other civilization that has existed in any part of the world at any time in history. There is something consistent and familiar everywhere you travel in human history.

Believe it or not, this is where the good news is found. Yes, America is a republic, but it is not, by any means, Rome. This observation was made in correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1819. Jefferson wrote,

I ask myself What was that government which the virtues of Cicero were so zealous to restore, & the ambition of Caesar to subvert?…I do not say to restore it, because they never had it…if their people indeed had been, like ours, enlightened, peaceable, and really free, the answer would be obvious. ‘restore independance (sic) to all your foreign conquests, relieve Italy from the government of the rabble of Rome, consult it as a nation entitled to self-government, and do it’s will.

What is important here is that the American Founders were not naïve about the weaknesses of Rome. In particular, they despised the emperors and sought whatever good they could find in the old republic.

The American Founders admired the Roman virtues of citizenship and piety, and the Roman government balanced by the citizens, Senate, and magistrates. However, there was no idea of “rights” among the Roman citizens. Only power.

The Romans would never have created a “Declaration of Independence” in which these beautiful, high-minded words would be announced: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This sort of thinking could only have emerged after the prohibition of the gladiatorial bloodlettings of the Roman world, or the imperialistic greed of the emperors. It could never have been written by a society that believed the enslavement of human beings to be the norm. While some signers of the Declaration, like all humans, struggled with hypocrisy, their ideals have made America great in a way that Rome could have never imagined.

America, like all republics, has freedoms that allow citizens the right to go insane. No free nation will be free of human nature. The current internal and external threats to America do not have to bring, out of necessity, its destruction.

The good news is that America has stronger foundations than Rome ever knew, and those foundations not only seem to be holding, many Americans are rediscovering those foundations in the midst of a modern contest for the soul of the nation.

And the bad news is, with the rise of an insane, despotic Left in our very midst we now find ourselves obliged to cope with the selfsame struggle the Founding Fathers faced in their own time, a battle waged in one sense or another since the emergence of Western Civilization itself: the neverending struggle between Liberty—ie, Good—and Tyranny—ie, Evil.

The essential nature of our Leftist Enemy is that it MUST rule, that it MUST conquer, that it will countenance NO dissent or disagreement whatsoever. It can leave NO ONE alone and unmolested, to live out his life according to his OWN wishes and beliefs. Thus is our essential problem at once as unneccessary as it is utterly insuperable.

I commend to y’all’s attention my Notable Quotes section over in the right sidebar, NC Reed’s immortal summation in particular: Ain’t no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it. Which, when all is said and done, means that we cannot live peaceably among them. Not for long, we can’t. There can be no comity, no accomodation, no compromise with tyranny. It is a binary solution set: one side must win, and one side must lose. There is truly, literally nothing more to it than just that.

We MUST NOT lose.

Federalism: the true American way

Posted on July 2, 2022July 2, 2022 by Mike

Another in Hayward’s long succession of brilliantly conceived, impeccably crafted, and truly insightful Twitter treatises.

There are many reasons why power should be devolved to the states, as Dobbs did with abortion. The obvious one is that individual voters have more influence over state legislatures. Your voice rings much louder in state capitols than in Washington.

Of course, the left-wing / globalist project for decades has been to centralize power, and then internationalize it, moving it utterly beyond the reach of voters. This was very much by design – they know federalism gives YOU more control, and they don’t like it one little bit.

Cause after cause beloved to the Left is portrayed as a “consensus” of “experts” that must be imposed on the people against their will, with no input from voters and no means for individuals to resist. They’re increasingly less shy about saying their agenda is beyond democracy.

Another positive feature of moving issues to state legislators is that they tend to gain clarity. D.C. is much worse about stuffing issues into titanic trillion-dollar spending bills. Rarely does the national Congress vote clearly on one thing.

The needs of individual states and their populations can be different. The consensus of their voters can be very different. A free republic of sovereign individuals shouldn’t have many one-size-fits-all, no-dissent-allowed solutions.

When power returns to the states, the people also gain the option of moving to different areas if they have severe issues with how a state is being run. They can merely travel to other states that allow what their home state has prohibited.

This is crucial, even if the number of people who actually decide to relocate is fairly small, because it is a manifestation of the one TRUE freedom, the only one that really matters in the end: the Power of No. The ability to say no, to refuse, is the fountain of all liberty.

Corruption is the horror plaguing the entire world. The corruption and waste in our federal system is absolutely sickening, and it’s permanent. There is no way to fix it without shifting power and money to the states, which can be monitored more closely and held more accountable.

You cannot “reform” a system that has trillions of dollars and millions of footsoldiers to protect every one of its corrupt fiefdoms, every nickel of its bloated agenda. There are no clean, big governments, and there never will be. The Leviathan has too many fangs and claws.

You cannot audit a system as titanic and broken as the federal government. It will never, ever be “transparent.” Among other things, it simply has too many people working for it, and far too many of them are utterly beyond the reach of voters. In no sense do they answer to YOU.

Lord knows state governments can have plenty of scandals, and some of them are Leviathans in their own right by any objective standard, but at least the people have a better chance of securing accountability – and if they give up on reforming a corrupt state, they can just leave.

One other great feature of federalism, perhaps its most subtle advantage: there are no tyrannical “settled issues.” Nothing is every really settled forever. The future is not held hostage to the past. Voters can change their minds, and change the law.

That is a HUGE advantage to the cause of freedom, a key aspect of sustaining that climate of persuasion that is so far superior to the corrupt business of demands and commands. Voters must be persuaded in perpetuity. Today’s law must be nourished and sustained tomorrow.

This will soon become clear in the matter of abortion, as states may tighten or loosen their restrictions as voters demand. No more phony “census” of ersatz “experts” chiseled in stone and used as a cudgel against generation after generation. Bad arguments will take a beating.

In a free republic, most of the laws should be written on paper, not carved in stone. The Constitution can be changed, but it’s not easy. That means not many issues should be “settled forever” with the permanence of the Bill of Rights. Permanence is power, to be used sparingly.

Everything I have said in this thread is the antithesis of leftist, statist, authoritarian ideology. They would howl that every single point I’ve raised is an offense against their sacred agenda, which must be imposed for the good of whatever they claim to care about.

“How can a government of wise experts be subjected to scrutiny by the proletariat? Why should brilliant social engineers have to explain themselves to the rubes over and over again? People moving to other states, saying no to our judgments – that’s absurd! THE EARTH IS ON FIRE!”

There is no better way to illuminate tyranny than to enumerate the virtues of a system that would make it impossible, and let the would-be tyrants tell you why that’s unthinkable.

Nothing to add from here, except for expressing my thanks to KT for taking the time and trouble to bust this excellent piece out of Twitter Format Prison confinement and compile it all as just plain old text, sparing me from having to do thirty friggin’ embeds, which is an acute pain in my ass.

Another opinion released

Posted on June 24, 2022June 24, 2022 by Mike

This one is sure to be of interest to everyone, since it comes from a renowned, widely-respected, and highly-regarded Constitutional law scholar and all. I mean, we’re talking here about a man whose words on the topic have for many years carried one hell of a lot of weight, and rightly so.

Joe Biden said he is “deeply disappointed” with the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday to strike down a New York law that restricted access to concealed carry permits of handguns, saying in a statement that it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution.”

Oh, shut the fuck up, you old fool. Like you have the vaguest clue about either one of those two things, or ever did have your whole squandered life long.

In a statement released hours after the Supreme Court released its decision, Biden expressed his deep disappointment in the ruling, and said it should “deeply trouble us all.”

The statement continues:

In the wake of the horrific attacks in Buffalo and Uvalde, as well as the daily acts of gun violence that do not make national headlines, we must do more as a society — not less — to protect our fellow Americans. I remain committed to doing everything in my power to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer. I have already taken more executive actions to reduce gun violence than any other President during their first year in office, and I will continue to do all that I can to protect Americans from gun violence.

I urge states to continue to enact and enforce commonsense laws to make their citizens and communities safer from gun violence. As the late Justice Scalia recognized, the Second Amendment is not absolute. For centuries, states have regulated who may purchase or possess weapons, the types of weapons they may use, and the places they may carry those weapons. And the courts have upheld these regulations.

I call on Americans across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety. Lives are on the line.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, also condemned the ruling, calling it a “dark day” for New York that “is sending us backwards.

Hochul stated when the 2nd Amendment was written, U.S. citizens only had access to muskets and that she was “prepared to go back to muskets” through gun regulations.

Fuck you, liar. US citizens at that time had “access” to all and every type of weapon, exactly as the Founders intended, up to and including privately-owned artillery pieces. An interesting little tidbit you may not have known about until right this very minute:

Even in 1934, when Congress responded to media-hyped Prohibition and Depression-era outlaws such as the Dillenger gang by regulating machine guns, suppressors, short-barreled rifles, and short-barreled shotguns under the National Firearms Act, they kept artillery pieces fully legal and free to own without Uncle Sam getting involved. Ironically this meant that for three decades you could buy a functional military surplus field gun, cash-and-carry, but had to pay a $200 tax and undergo a background check process to get a .22LR suppressor.

That “loophole” was eventually closed.

It was in 1968, that the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, introduced as H.R. 5037 by U.S. Rep. Emanuel Celler (D-NY) and signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson (D), regulated most “destructive devices” with a bore over .50-caliber. This meant that modern artillery “such as bazookas, mortars, antitank guns, and so forth” were placed under ATF restrictions in a kind of retroactive addition to the NFA. Before that time, you could buy surplus hardware such as working Boys and Lahti anti-tank rifles at local outlets, cheap.

With all that being said, modern breechloading artillery is still available in the “Land of the Free and Home of the Brave,” provided it is registered with the federal government and properly taxed. Still, legacy artillery systems like muzzleloading black powder field guns, such as Hamilton and Madison would be familiar with, do not require tax stamps.

For now, anyway.

Honestly, I had no idea that a fella could legally buy himself a breech-loading field piece to this very day. Then again, familiar as I am with what the tax-and-fees bite amounts to for Class III (ie, full-auto) rifles and subguns—HELPFUL HINT: as high as balls on a giraffe, as Goose likes to say—I can just imagine what you’d have to shell out for FederalGovCo’s permission to park a breech-loader out on the front lawn. Be that as it may, it’s nice to know they’re still legally allowed, even if they’re priced well out of my personal reach.

Better yet is knowing how batshit-apoplectic the ongoing legal availability for private purchase of a nice Napoleon, Howitzer, or 24-pound siege gun would make Plugs Biden if he only knew. Which, you can be sure he doesn’t. Somebody oughta mention it to him over porridge one morning before the addle-pated old fart goes down for 9AM nappies. The grand mal flailing and flopping about as a result would surely be the most epic and hilarious to date, which is really saying something.

Ain’t it funny, though, how shitlibs from sea to shining sea have suddenly conjured in themselves this awed reverence for the sanctity of States’ Rights and the unchallengeable primacy of State over Federal Law after oh, about a century and a half or thereabouts of reflexively dismissing such notions as peurile claptrap, antiquated bosh of the purest ray serene. But hey, whatever gets you through the next fifteen minutes, eh, Proggy?

Headlines from a better world

Posted on June 24, 2022June 24, 2022 by Mike

The Bee checks out the news in an alternate universe, wherein Trump is serving his second term as President.

Nancy Pelosi announces 38th impeachment proceeding against President Trump.

Unemployment reaches 0% for first time in history, stock market gets so high they have to add another digit to the counter.

Trump holds ecumenical church council to unify all the denominations under the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

Ukraine invades Russia.

United States purchases Greenland in tremendous deal.

Americans save $1600 on July 4 BBQs.

American troops pulled from Afghanistan in careful, strategic, slow withdraw; 0 Americans stranded; utopia breaks out.

New York Times publishes article explaining why $1/gallon gas is bad and racist.

Naaaah, we’re MUCH better off staying here in Bizarro World with Grampy Gropey and his pinhead crew. I left a good few for y’all to click on through for, but even so there are two more I just can’t resist putting up.

President gives coherent speech.

Everyone who ever took their kids to a drag show arrested.

Heh. Yep, obviously not OUR universe, more’s the pity. Neither of those last two things could ever happen in this shitty timeline we’re all stuck in.

Hyeppeh Joomteemf ‘n’shit, yo!

Posted on June 19, 2022June 19, 2022 by Mike

So earlier on this most auspicious of several other Nigger Day! holidays we now have strewn carelessly about the calendar like junk vehicles, broken toys, and stolen bric-a-brac across the dead brown grass of a Darktown front lawn, the local classical-music station spent the afternoon highlighting the “contributions” to the orchestral music oeuvre (not so auspicious, actually) of Black Composers (if any).

I used that “if any” aside sarcastically, yes, but advisedly too. Because apparently, there are indeed a handful of uppity Neegrows who claim to be composers of symphonic music. After enduring a painfully wretched interlude of truly godawful sqwronk and blorgle, including one “composition” featuring a male singer for whom one couldn’t help but feel a certain measure of pity as the poor fellow tried manfully, but all in vain, to locate some semblance of melody somewhere in the unmusical, atonal mosquito repellent this alleged Black Composer™ dared to claim as his own. As I was desperately cramming bits of toilet paper, styrofoam packing material, asbestos swatches, and cigarette filters up against my eardrums to blunt the agony, I realized that, as a huge ST-TNG fan, I had heard this material before:

You guys may think I’m just being funny here, but I swear that’s what this crap sounded like. Seriously.

Which doesn’t mean that there are NO black classical-music composers worth lending an ear to, mind. I know of at least one: the great Justin Holland, a true-blue, gin-you-wine-article American Original of the classical guitar.

Justin Holland (July 26, 1819 – March 24, 1887) was an American classical guitarist, a music teacher, a community leader, a black man who worked with white people to help slaves on the Underground Railroad, and an activist for equal rights for African Americans.

Holland was known nationally, not only as a musician but also as a civil rights activist who worked in the same national circles as Frederick Douglass. His goal was to develop his personal growth, in order to stand as an example for others to see. As a teacher, he deliberately chose a “cautious and circumspect” bearing, keeping his relationships with students strictly professional. He chose work that was considered honorable and held high standards, and the professional respect that accompanied his position aided his civil rights goals.

A measure of his success in showcasing the admirable African American to the world came after he died, when he was given eulogies, by white people as well as African Americans, about his skill as a musician and his personal character.

…In 1845 he moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in the Western Reserve, where he worked on his dream of complete acceptance for African Americans by white Americans, with complete equality. Cleveland was another place where white people were sympathetic toward African Americans. He saw the area as a place that gave him the opportunity to work toward that goal. He consciously embraced education and assimilation as the best ways to overcome racial barriers and prejudices. He looked to European culture as a source of admirable standards (and hoped that middle-class Americans around him would associate him with those standards as well.) He spoke of his own music in terms of European excellence, teaching the “correct system” to fret the strings on the guitar, as done by “the best Masters of Europe.” He also wrote a 324-page treatise on subjects of moral reform.

The standout thing about Justin Holland is that, nearly unique among classical-guitar composers and performers, all of Holland’s work proudly bears a readily-identifiable Made In America™ stamp. To wit:

All of his stuff I’ve ever heard—and I’ve heard quite a bit over the years—is like this: lush, gorgeous, with all the Spanish or Italian influence sanded off to leave nothing but pure America the Beautiful shining through. If you listen close enough, you can hear the earliest stirrings of another distinctly American form in there: jazz.

Pretty, no? So here’s to ya, Justin Holland; God rest ye, and long may your beautiful music endure. You are a credit not just to your race, as they used to say, but to your art, and to your nation as well.

Democracy? NO

Posted on June 11, 2022June 11, 2022 by Mike

The senile fool Biden, in another of his characteristic rambling, incoherent speeches this week, repeatedly lauded “our democracy” as if that’s actually what this country is, the original system of government the Founders set up for their posterity. T’ain’t so, McGee; any poor sod with even the most niggardly dollop of historical literacy in his gift knows better than that. Eric Peters last year posted a collection of quotes condemning democracy in the most virulent terms from our blessed ancestors, which one of his handlers/wardens/keepers should consider reading to the stumblebum ***”president”*** sometime so as to enlighten his stupid ass. After the quotes, Eric provides some commentary of his own, interspersed with more historical context.

In light of the Founders’ view on the subject of republics and democracies, it is not surprising that the Constitution does not contain the word “democracy,” but does mandate: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government.”

These principles were once widely understood. In the 19th century, many of the great leaders, both in America and abroad, stood in agreement with the Founding Fathers. John Marshall, chief justice of the Supreme Court from 1801 to 1835 echoed the sentiments of Fisher Ames. “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos,” he wrote. American poet James Russell Lowell warned that “democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” Lowell was joined in his disdain for democracy by Ralph Waldo Emerson, who remarked that “democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” Across the Atlantic, British statesman Thomas Babington Macauly agreed with the Americans. “I have long been convinced,” he said, “that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.” Britons Benjamin Disraeli and Herbert Spencer would certainly agree with their countryman, Lord Acton, who wrote: “The one prevailing evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

By the 20th century, however, the falsehoods that democracy was the epitome of good government and that the Founding Fathers had established just such a government for the United States became increasingly widespread. This misinformation was fueled by President Woodrow Wilson’s famous 1916 appeal that our nation enter World War I “to make the world safe for democracy” — and by President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 exhortation that America “must be the great arsenal of democracy” by rushing to England’s aid during WWII.

Very few of us have probably thought it all the way through, but as it happens, this sudden drive to promote democracy over the true American ideal of government had a specific and most sinister purpose behind it.

On September 17 (Constitution Day), 1961, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch delivered an important speech, entitled “Republics and Democracies,” in which he proclaimed: “This is a Republic, not a Democracy. Let’s keep it that way!” The speech, which was later published and widely distributed in pamphlet form, amounted to a jolting wake-up call for many Americans. In his remarks, Welch not only presented the evidence to show that the Founding Fathers had established a republic and had condemned democracy, but he warned that the definitions had been distorted, and that powerful forces were at work to convert the American republic into a democracy, in order to bring about dictatorship.

Welch understood that democracy is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Eighteenth century historian Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee, it is thought, argued that, “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.” And as British writer G.K. Chesterton put it in the 20th century: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”

The push for democracy has only been possible because the Constitution is being ignored, violated, and circumvented. The Constitution defines and limits the powers of the federal government. Those powers, all of which are enumerated, do not include agricultural subsidy programs, housing programs, education assistance programs, food stamps, etc. Under the Constitution, Congress is not authorized to pass any law it chooses; it is only authorized to pass laws that are constitutional. Anybody who doubts the intent of the Founders to restrict federal powers, and thereby protect the rights of the individual, should review the language in the Bill of Rights, including the opening phrase of the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law…”).

As Welch explained in his 1961 speech:

…man has certain unalienable rights which do not derive from government at all…And those…rights cannot be abrogated by the vote of a majority any more than they can by the decree of a conqueror. The idea that the vote of a people, no matter how nearly unanimous, makes or creates or determines what is right or just becomes as absurd and unacceptable as the idea that right and justice are simply whatever a king says they are. Just as the early Greeks learned to try to have their rulers and themselves abide by the laws they had themselves established, so man has now been painfully learning that there are more permanent and lasting laws which cannot be changed by either sovereign kings or sovereign people, but which must be observed by both. And that government is merely a convenience, superimposed on Divine Commandments and on the natural laws that flow only from the Creator of man and man’s universe.

Such is the noble purpose of the constitutional republic we inherited from our Founding Fathers.

Amen. Can anyone be surprised that, as we have wandered ever deeper into the muck and mire of an artificially generated and wholly misguided infatuation with democracy, our national plight has steadily worsened in equal proportion? As I always say: The fault, dear Horatio, lies not in the principles of our Founders, but in ourselves. The farther we stray from the ideals and prescriptions of those great men, the more wretched the misery we create for ourselves becomes.

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