It ain’t over till the fat transgender nonbinary wymrynzzz screams

It’s always hard to excerpt one of John Wilder’s pieces. There’s just too much rich, thoughtful stuff in ’em to trim it down without losing the thread. But there are times when you just gotta buckle down and do it.

Can you imagine if the Right was united? I can.

The corollary is obvious: quit fighting each other in the right. Stop. People don’t believe in your exact brand?

You can’t stand Libertarians? You can’t stand Lutherans? Baptists? Catholics? Vox Day? That atheist friend that doesn’t mind Christianity but still believes in freedom? The idea to fix our situation isn’t exactly yours?

Too bad.

We are in the same foxhole. Stop (metaphorically) shooting each other. Now. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. And if you’re fighting us, you’re against us.

How do you know if you’re with us?

  • We like building statues, not tearing them down.
  • We like building civilization, not tearing it apart.
  • We like the reason of facts and truth, not the politically correct statement of the moment.
  • We like justice based on law, not the social justice of the mob or judges that twist “shall not” into “sometimes.”
  • We like a culture of honor, not a culture of victimhood due to the self-imposed prison.

And that is the difference. The Left is bitter. The Left is seething. The Left is angry.

Why? Because, just like the foal with the cattle guard, they’ve made themselves prisoners. They’ve forgotten that becoming a prisoner might not be a choice for a horse, but it is for a person. But for the Left, that prison mentality is preferred.

The prison mentality is the chosen mentality of the Left. They see themselves as weak. Since they see themselves as weak, there is no choice but to hate themselves for that weakness. But outwardly, the Left rationalizes that weakness as being, somehow, good. They have to, because that’s all that stands between them and the unending self-hate. The Left raises an “anything goes” sexuality and sensuality to the highest plane because they are rooted in the Material, and cannot understand the Spiritual, the Transcendent.

The Right rejects that. All of it.

The Right is not evil. We hold the light of Freedom, of civilization, of the future of mankind in our hands. Why? Because they could never build it. The Left seeks to delegitimize our moral achievement, because they feel small and envious next to those that compete and create.

Remember, the Soviets never looked stronger than they did immediately before they collapsed.

I don’t think we will win.

I know we will win.

Not if we don’t recognize that we are indeed going to have to fight them, we won’t. And it looks more every day as if that’s going to mean actual, literal fighting, with more than just words, boycotts, and votes. But as pessimistic as I can be at times, actually I’m mostly inclined to agree with John’s take, providing the Sleeping Giant hasn’t been too slow to awaken this time. His post is certainly stirring, and heartening. A bit more:

I feel sorry for those who stand against the Right when we find our backs are to the wall. We have created the most powerful and free and prosperous culture in history. The Right doesn’t know its own strength. But it will learn, and the Left is afraid.

We will win. Maybe not this year. Maybe not next year. Maybe not even in the next decade. And the future won’t look like the past – that past is what led us to this crisis. We have the opportunity to remake our civilization, to remake America and to make it better.

And we will make it better.

And we will win.

We always have.

Oh, I can’t say I feel at all sorry for them, myself. I want them to reap exactly what they’ve sown, to get what they truly deserve, to be punished for their innumerable crimes, to pay in full measure for what they’ve done to this nation and the world. And like Wilder, I have to believe that, be it soon or late, they will. To think otherwise is to sink into a slough of despond that is bottomless.

More, please

Trump has made a few righteous moves the past week or so. This would be one of ’em.

The White House announced Friday that President Trump signed an Executive Grant of Clemency commuting the “unjust sentence” of Roger Stone, just days before the longtime political operative was slated to report to prison to serve more than three years for charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

In a lengthy statement released late Friday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the president had made the decision to commute Stone’s sentence “in light of the egregious facts and circumstances surrounding his unfair prosecution, arrest, and trial.”
“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency,” McEnany said in a statement Friday night. “There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia.  Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election.  The collusion delusion spawned endless and farcical investigations, conducted at great taxpayer expense, looking for evidence that did not exist.”

McEnany added that Mueller’s office “resorted to process-based charges leveled at high-profile people in an attempt to manufacture the false impression of criminality lurking below the surface.”

“These charges were the product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice,” she said.

McEnany had more to say yet, bless her heart, all of it good, good stuff. For myself, I’ll just repeat yet again what I’ve said for who knows how long now: yes, the malignant Left will scream bloody murder over this. So fucking what?!? They’re going to do that anyway, no matter what Trump does. So goddammit, just do what you were elected to do, Mr Preznit, and damn their eyes all to hell and gone.

What they did to Stone was a travesty. Springing the man ought to be only the first step in the process of correcting that injustice. Everyone involved in the raid, the “trial,” the sentencing, and the persecution since ought to be made to pay, and pay heavily. If they’re gonna scream anyway—and they are—the pond scum by God oughta be given something to really scream about. Spill blood first, worry about cleaning up after.

Update! And right on cue.



Wait, you mean the “exploitation of the Russian hack” you tried—and failed—to have him removed from office over, you worthless, lying, piece-of-shit con artist? Die screaming in agony, pusnuts. Five minutes ago wouldn’t be soon enough to suit me.

Fruit from a toxic tree update! I didn’t expect Sarah Huckabee-Sanders to be topped. I was selling Kayleigh short.

“Roger Stone is a victim of the Russia Hoax that the Left and its allies in the media perpetuated for years in an attempt to undermine the Trump Presidency,” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Friday night. “There was never any collusion between the Trump Campaign, or the Trump Administration, with Russia. Such collusion was never anything other than a fantasy of partisans unable to accept the result of the 2016 election. The collusion delusion spawned endless and farcical investigations, conducted at great taxpayer expense, looking for evidence that did not exist.”

According to McEnany, Mueller and his team “resorted to process-based charges leveled at high-profile people in an attempt to manufacture the false impression of criminality lurking below the surface.”

“These charges were the product of recklessness borne of frustration and malice,” she added.

Bang. And also: zoom. But what did I say before about the Left having a shitfit?

Aside from the bogus origins of the investigation that led to Stone’s prosecution, one of the jurors, who served as foreperson on the jury during his trial, Tomeka Hart, apparently lied about her anti-Trump biases in order to get on the jury. Hart was a former Democratic congressional candidate, whose social media was full of anti-Trump sentiment.

Nevertheless, the left is freaking out.

“Donald Trump has abandoned the rule of law and made a mockery of our democracy. He truly is the most corrupt president in history,” tweeted Elizabeth Warren.

“There are no limits. This President will do anything and everything to flaunt the law,” echoed Amy Klobuchar.

“Does @realDonaldTrump’s corrupt commutation of Roger Stone piss you off?” asked Congressman Ted Lieu. “Then take your anger and put it to good use.”

But Stephen King really hit it out of the park by referring to Trump as “Orange Man.” “Trump has commuted Roger Stone’s 40-month sentence. Every time you think the Orange Man has hit the gutter, he bounces lower.”

Right back atcha, you suppurating pustule. You, and all the rest of your scum-sucking Lefty pals.

Clearly, these sub-normals inhabit some sort of inside-out Bizarro World. Anybody still think they can be reasoned with, compromised with? Or that it’s worth the bother to even try?

The more things change

Any of this sound familiar? At all?

With all the recent troubles we’re again being invited to an honest and open conversation about race, or said differently, the browbeatings will be resumed. Try this for honest and open: many of us, probably most of us, are tired of your whining, your so-called grievances, your violence and crime, your insults and threats, your witless blather and pornographic demeanor—all of it. You’re not quite 13% of the population yet everything has to be about you, all day, every day. With you, facts aren’t facts, everything’s a kozmik krisis, and abusive confrontations are your go-to.

Here’s the thing: some of us despise you, although fewer than you believe, but most of us plain don’t care about you or your doings. There was a time when we did care, but you betrayed our good will and played us for fools. We laugh about it now, but we actually believed you wanted equal opportunity and mutual respect and to live in harmony—all that stuff. Ain’t it a hoot? Imagine our embarrassment.

We talk among ourselves just like you do. It’s true, we have “frank and open discussions” when you’re not around. Why? Partly because it’s exhausting to tippy-toe around you. Partly because you think it’s your celestial right to tell us what we can say. And partly because you’re alarmingly aggressive or painfully dim-witted by turns. We never know which “you” will pop out of the box, or when. But mainly because you’ve revealed yourself as grasping opportunists without honor or principle. There’s your deal-breaker. There’s more.

During the recent riots you expected us to believe heisting snack food then torching the place was “standing up for justice”. When we didn’t buy it, you told us the looting and arson wasn’t done by the rioters after all, no, all the bad stuff was done by rioters from out of town. Apparently you think it makes a difference to us. And if we don’t fall for that one, you tell us you’re the real victims, you’re the ones “hit hardest” because the neighborhoods you looted and burned are, um, looted and burned.

We’ve never stood in your way but we don’t really care if you have good neighborhoods or not. The evidence says you don’t care either, unless we build and maintain them for you, what your enablers call “investments in urban communities.” They don’t mention the return on our past “investments”. Our former neighborhoods weren’t improved by your arrival. Your contempt for ordinary civility tells us no level of “investment” would make a difference. Listen up. It’s simple. Just like our neighborhoods are our responsibility, so are your neighborhoods your responsibility, not ours. Your clownish leaders will tell you otherwise but they’ve always been your responsibility and they always will be your responsibility. Accept it or don’t, you’re the ones who live in them. There’s more.

Your air conditioned, smart phone equipped, EBT-financed “poverty” doesn’t wash to begin with, yet you’d have us believe poverty causes crime. There’s no payday for assault and rape and random killing. Police say 20% of your criminal violence is related to dope-dealing, okay, business disputes of a sort, but it says the rest of it is largely pro bono. We also notice you have a working knowledge of jury nullification and take pride in not “snitching”, typical gang behavior.

We say “what you think, you do. What you do, you are.” We know what you think—we hear it every waking minute. We know what you do. How could we not know what you are? Just so it gets said, crime causes poverty. It drives away productive people, their businesses and the opportunities you said you wanted. More bad news: you’re free to accuse them of anything you wish but they’re not coming back.

Schools haven’t been educating our kids for a long time. They’re too busy conjuring up new ways to teach yours, in fact, we’re beginning to think yours are the only ones who matter. There’s always some new scheme claiming dazzling success which, in the end, amounts to handing out the answers with the tests, or taking the annoying hard stuff out of the coursework, or entering unearned grades by hand. Whatever they’re doing they’re doing it wrong. Your kids are telling us, in every way they know how, they have neither the interest nor the inclination for academics. Perhaps we should listen. If what they want is “out” it’s worth considering and probably worth encouraging.

You tell us the schools have “failed to meet their needs.” And what are their needs, pray tell? Higher standards and tougher tests? Stricter rules and a dress code? Or some alternate universe where credit is earned for putting teachers in the ER, or for a string of abortions before the tenth grade? If you’d tell us what their needs are we’d at least know what needs we’re failing to meet. Until then we’ll mark it down for what it is, another lame excuse. They’re supposed to be schools, not day care or orphanages or theme parks.

You pester us with the “civil rights movement” of fifty years ago as though it happened last week, with tedious 1960s footage and cloying voice-overs, in an endless loop, like Groundhog Day, decade after decade. It’s understandable, you haven’t met any real resistance since those days. Breaking news: none of it matters any more, it all devolved into just another swindle, an extortion racket, “pay up or we’ll make a stink—and the bad optics are on you”.

Schools now teach something called White Privilege, which claims no overt act is necessary for us to be racist, in fact, absence of such acts is said to be direct evidence. It’s the “original sin” concept in a different wrapper, meaning our putative racism is bone deep and can’t be discharged by good works. Even so, they say we must atone in perpetuity for being white. They suggest we devote our lives in selfless service to you. No. Sorry. Whatever white privilege there may be, it isn’t enough. In fact, being subjected to White Privilege prattle is worth a couple of privileges.

Speaking of privilege, 60% of your college grads—and 20% of all of you—are employed by government. The intent is to create an artificial middle class of course, hence the trivial positions with imaginative titles and weighty salaries. In the lower reaches it’s the quota hires, typically unqualified. It’s a great offer. You pretend you’re doing something useful and we pretend to believe you. The rest of your grads are largely diversity directors, window dressing, teachers of dubious “studies” and improbable “histories”, and similar warehousing schemes for the otherwise unemployable. It’s as good as it’s ever going to get, except for those on the skinny end of the bell curve—for whom we have genuine, i.e., earned respect. You’d be a fool to leave it on the table, for as long as it lasts.

So here’s the deal. If you want to know what we really think of you, the answer is we don’t, unless you’re making yourself unavoidable or we’re cleaning up your latest mess. We can safely rely on you to make astonishingly irresponsible choices and blame us for the consequences. And you’ll demand we make good on them for you. We won’t take a chance on your sincerity ever again. Take it somewhere else, you have no credibility left with us. You’re a net liability, predictable to the point of surety. So we attend to our own lives and our own problems. It’s as it should be. We recommend it. As for you, frankly my dear, we don’t give a damn.

Now as y’all doubtless know already, Ol’ Remus and his Woodpile Report have been missing in action for a month or more. The above is one of his posts…from 2015. But somehow it still seems as fresh as tomorrow morning’s dew, don’t it? Bill says it best:

This one is about five years old, but reads as if it were written yesterday (which should tell you something about the endless, grinding monotony of the left’s approach to things).

They’re eternally running the same old routines from the same old playbook, only, y’jknow, more so.

Back to the future

If you build it correctly, it will work, to turn a phrase. Even a health care system.

More and more doctors across the country want to reduce costs and bring price transparency to the system. In 1997, anesthesiologist Keith Smith left his hospital job and opened the Surgery Center of Oklahoma (SCO) in Oklahoma City. “I wanted to see if markets could actually work in our convoluted health care system,” he told me. “I didn’t want to be an accessory to a crime anymore. Our mainstream system is criminal because of the way it fails to prioritize the care of patients.”

During his first week in business, Smith got a call from a woman needing a breast biopsy. She asked him how much the procedure would cost at his clinic. He had no idea—no one had ever asked before. Smith called his surgeon and the testing lab for a quote, calculated his own cost for the 20-minute procedure, and gave her the estimated price—which ended up being well within her deductible, and a fraction of the price she was given when she pressed a local hospital for an estimate. Smith and his team decided to bundle prices for all their procedures and then made the radical move of posting the full costs on their website.

Almost immediately, Oklahoma hospitals, insurance companies, and legislators went on the offensive and tried to shut down SCO. Insurance companies made it mandatory for consumers to meet their deductible with in-network providers: if they went out-of-network to get a service, their deductible would reset to zero for the year. This made SCO’s otherwise-affordable services cost-prohibitive for many patients with insurance. The center’s waiting room emptied.

But SCO quickly discovered other types of consumers, such as companies with self-funded health-insurance plans, as well as international patients. Employers with self-funded plans take on the financial risk of providing health-care benefits to their employees instead of paying premiums to health-insurance companies like Aetna or Anthem. Though it’s generally larger companies that self-insure—Wal Mart is a well-known example—high costs in health care are driving smaller companies, including those with as few as 50 employees, to move in this direction as well. Self-insured employers have incentives to keep costs down, even if it means flying their employees for out-of-state treatments.

When self-insured companies from across the country learned that procedures at SCO cost a fraction of the bill at most other medical institutions, they began offering their employees incentives to go there, including stipends, paid time off, and even covering the cost for a friend or family member to accompany them. SCO also saw an influx of customers from Canada and Europe. Though these patients had government-funded coverage, delays in treatment for urgent conditions led them to pay out of pocket for treatment at SCO.

GREAT quote coming right up:

“Some people say that health care is too important to leave to markets,” Smith says. “I say it’s too important to leave to government!” Without the pressures of the market, Smith is convinced that there is no accountability and no incentive for health-care providers to pay attention either to value or quality.

Annnnd bingo, we have a winnah! Good on ya, Doc. But isn’t it remarkable how such plain, obvious common sense can sound downright radical to modern ears—and how we find ourselves going back to first principles to re-engineer a humane, functional health care system that will doubtless end up closely resembling the one we had until the government stepped in to screw the old one up so horribly?

Punch like a girl

Must drive ’em even more nuts than they already are, I bet. After all, he’s a white guywho beat up two black guys and a Russian.

PHILADELPHIA, PA—First, the rioters came for Andrew Jackson. Then, they came for Ulysses S. Grant. Then, they came for the Fonz for some reason. But finally, they came for the ultimate racist statue: the famous monument to Rocky Balboa in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It’s not clear why they thought it was racist, but the guy in the statue seemed to be happy, so he was probably a conservative of some kind whenever he existed, they reasoned.

But the statue survives to fight another day, as it went a full 15 rounds against rioters and was still standing after the bout.

The weak, sissy rioters charged the statue and started punching it, hurting their little man-baby hands and running away to cry to their parents, whom they probably still live with. A second wave came in, but Rocky stood strong. Things got a little dicey in the seventh round, when one rioter threw a rope around the statue and suggested everyone start rocking it back and forth, but then their soft, buttery smooth hands got chafed by the rope and they had to call it quits to nurse their wounds with coconut oil.

“Balboa was a real champion out there,” said one witness. “It was incredible.”

Finally, after 15 waves of angry rioters charged the statue, the dust settled, and Balboa won again, having gone for a full 15 rounds without breaking a sweat. Balboa was declared the winner in a unanimous decision as the judges were appalled at the rioters’ lack of form, indicating they had never punched anything before, except maybe customers’ buy-six-get-one-free cards at Jamba Juice.

Then they all went back home to Mom’s basement for a good, long cry.

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE!!!

Whatever you do, DON’T PANIC. Unless they tell you to.

A new pandemic is raging.  Even before the Covid 19 pandemic has subsided, the WHO has now warned that a virulent form of Hoof and Mouth disease has “jumped” species in record time from horse to humans and is threatening to devastate the planet. It is even more deadly than the original.  An appropriate name for the pathogen is being considered, as we speak. A tricky task, this, as it is imperative to avoid giving offense and fostering lasting grievance on the part of those who would level the charge of speciesism.  After all, equine phobia is a thing. We must avoid maligning horses and their hoofs at all cost. Needless to say, the same consideration must apply to their owners, as well as their countries of domicile and origin.

Let us discuss the symptoms: Because we are confronted with a new disease, the syndrome and its various manifestations are still regarded as capable of impressive plasticity—that is, they are changing and changeable. The disease can rampage through every organ, bone, nerve, blood vessel and system in your body. The result is manifold noxious, painful, and deadly symptoms that appear to be unrelated to each other. Furthermore, these symptoms are similar to every disease, ailment, malady discomfort and inconvenience that you, or anyone else in the world, has ever experienced. Thus, it is easily confused with other morbidities. But, make no mistake about it, the underlying cause can only be one thing when testing indicates that the pathogen is present.

Curiously enough, the pathogen has an affinity for the right foot of its human host. At this early stage of the pandemic, we can already state, with confidence, that the microbe can be detected by the application of a simple laboratory test to the right foot. A swab administered between the big toe and second toe with a sterile Q-Tip is capable of rendering a true positive, false positive, true negative or false negative result, based on the suppleness of the skin.  In short, the test is just as efficacious as the current Covid 19 test. A small fragment of DNA of the patient’s skin is sufficient for one of the above four possible diagnoses.

However, acute observational skills are also imperative!  Let us describe what we definitively know: In addition to the laboratory test, the disease can also be diagnosed visually, if the carrier’s big right toe angulates away from the foot, upward by one fourth of an inch, in either or both directions.

Because an emergency has been declared, a vaccine is being rushed to market and will be ready between six months and two years from now.  It will be administered alongside the greatly anticipated vaccine for Covid 19. By necessity, we have dispensed with the usual safety controls required for other drugs. Fortunately, therapeutics, such as hydroxychloroquine, widely in use for over 70 years for other diseases, and proven safe for them, is frowned upon by pharmacists. They are withholding the drug from the patients whose doctors prescribe them for Covid 19. Obviously, the pharmacist’s judgment should and does pre-empt the advice of the patient’s doctor!  The pharmacist studied drugs in school.  That is why he or she is called a pharmacist. What does a doctor know?

Now that we know what we are dealing with, what do we do to prevent the spread?  We cannot simply wait for the vaccine. Patience is not an option. There is no time for that. We must act now!

Fortunately, our experience with Covid 19 has paved the way for imposing the additional discipline required for battle against the soon to be renamed disease originating from the beloved horse. First of all, we have become accustomed to sheltering in place. We now have learned to distinguish between essential and non-essential businesses.  We wear a mask and we maintain social distance. Furthermore, we are intensely motivated to continue to observe the above admonitions, rules, and guidelines, thanks to our recent and current riots.

The riots have taught us that the nonessential businesses are the ones that the rioters have looted, ransacked, and burned.  We know that they are nonessential because we are still alive even though those businesses are gone. If they had been essential, I would not be writing this essay and you would not be reading it. 

This would seem to be satire worthy of the Bee itself…OR IS IT?!? No matter what, we must all proceed with extreme caution to eliminate all risk until we’re absolutely certain one way or the other. Therefore, I am pleased to join the author in her urgent call for a new national and/or state and/or local and/or neighborhood decree requiring every American to…

No, I can’t do it; you gotta go read the whole thing to find out.

Independence Day, or something like it

This is gonna be a long ‘un for sure, with some twists and turns y’all might find surprising. I’ll probably still only manage to get around to a fraction of all the things I want to say even so, and I’m thinking I’ll just go ahead and dump half of it below the fold under the “More” link.

First off, a real gem from the inimitable John Wilder.

Boston, Massachusetts: 122 killed, 211 wounded in a daybreak raid by troops sent to confiscate privately owned weapons and ammunition. “Patriots” claim government troops fired first.

It has been reported that at dawn a group of self-styled “Patriots” engaged a heavily armed troops sent to confiscate guns and ammunition. These “Patriots” though initially outnumbered, stood by the side of the road, fully armed with modern assault weapons at the ready. The “Patriot” leader at the site, John Parker, claims to have been only standing there with the other “Patriots”. It has reported that Parker said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

According to Parker, the soldiers ordered the “Patriots” to disperse, and he ordered his men to “disburse and go home,” but “the soldiers were yelling,” and there was confusion. There was a shot, fired, but both the “Patriots” and the spokesman for the troops claim the other side fired the first shot. Badly outnumbered at first, the “Patriots” were reinforced by the local members of their radical libertarian movement as the firefight wore on. House-to-house fighting was reported.

Sources to this blog have indicated that the “Patriots” had been tipped off to the troop movements and were aware the gun confiscation was coming. The troops were forced to withdraw under fire, although rescue from a larger detachment of troops from Boston was required for their safe evacuation.

A local lawyer, John Adams, viewed the battlefield the next day, “The die was cast. The Rubicon crossed.” Pressed by this blog for an explanation of these cryptic comments, he referred us to our previous post (American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?).

The events listed above happened 245 years ago, except John Adams being snarky to me, yet somehow the concepts behind them are fresh in American life in 2020. The battles of Lexington and Concord, though small by today’s standards, produced the “shot heard ‘round the world” as the American Dream and American Identity were formed.

Why yes, you WILL want to read the rest, why do you ask? John’s closing question is piercing; its pertinence is everlasting, and will never fade.

Next, via Ed Driscoll, a 4th of July speech from the greatest President America ever had, or ever will have.

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought.

A wonderful, insightful speech that, to those among us of a certain raddled decrepitude, probably sounds at least somewhat familiar. But then, we old fogies came up in a time when Civics was still a class taught in the schools.

As beautiful, as uplifting as Coolidge’s speech most certainly is, however, it is also profoundly depressing—downright heartbreaking, in fact, when you contemplate how very much we’ve either allowed to be stolen from us or just flat given away with nary a thought.

Continue reading “Independence Day, or something like it” →

A win is a win

Even the smallest victories count in these parlous times.

A southern Illinois judge on Thursday voided Democrat Governor J.B. Pritzker’s Coronavirus lockdown orders.

The Illinois Attorney General’s office is expected to appeal.

Pritzker first declared a statewide disaster because of Coronavirus back in early March and continued to issue 30 day extensions — he has used the disaster proclamations in his restrictions in each ‘reopening phase’ dubbed “Restore Illinois.”

Recall, back in April Republican Rep. Darren Bailey sought a restraining order against Governor Pritzker and Clay County Circuit Judge Michael McHaney sided with him personally.

Judge Michael McHaney on Thursday said state law does not give governors the authority to extend disaster proclamations past 30 days or activities and businesses via executive order.

Mo’ bettah still:

The immediate implications of Clay County Circuit Judge Michael McHaney’s order, which stemmed from a lawsuit filed by state Rep. Darren Bailey, were not clear.

“That’s gone as we stand here right now,” said Bailey’s attorney, Thomas DeVore.

“This is a victory for freedom. This is a victory for the people of Illinois,” Bailey said Thursday outside the courthouse, where he was greeted by supporters, some of whom wore T-shirts that read “My governor is an idiot” on the front and “Fire Pritzker” on the back. None of them appeared to be wearing the face coverings required under Pritzker’s executive order

At the risk of seeming churlish, I’d like to remind those good folks that they’re the ones who hired the “idiot” in the first place.

Vicious cycle indeed

As the title says:

An Unexpected Cultural Clue About America Today, from…Elvis
Elvis Presley’s 1969 hit, “In the Ghetto” provides a prescient glimpse of what would later happen to generations of young black men who lived out their short lives on the mean streets of America’s urban ghettos.

As his first big hit in more than eight years, “In the Ghetto” played a key role in resurrecting his singing career, which floundered in the 1960s when he transitioned away from live performances to pursue an acting career in Hollywood.

Written by singer/songwriter Mac Davis, the song was originally titled “The Vicious Cycle,” an apt description of the endless trail of tragedies that would befall millions of young men fated to be born in the ghettos of America’s biggest cities. 

Now, the article itself is good, and you should definitely take a gander at it. Needless to say, the song is a bona fide classic—a powerful, unforgettable piece that Elvis did a most moving rendition of, rightly vaulting the once and forever King back to the pinnacle of artistic and commercial success after his long 60s drought.

But it immediately put me in mind of the parody version Paul Shanklin did for Rush Limbaugh years ago, too. So I did a quick Duck Duck Go search just for the hell of it, and looky what I found.




HOWLINGLY funny, a real scream. Stick with it all the way through and I’m confident you’ll recognize which part has had me choking with laughter all damned day long. Shanklin’s rip is funny enough all by itself, but whoever put this video together is nothing less than a damned genius.

To hell with ’em all

DuToit follows up on my NOOSCAR screed with a sentiment that I can only second, with all my heart and soul.

Ditto for the NFL. Both organizations, flush with TV money, don’t seem to give a rat’s ass about their actual audience.

Naturally, this whole thing is irrelevant to me, as I don’t follow either sport (being of the Europhile heritage, prefer the actual football, and Formula 1). So I can look at the situation dispassionately and with quiet amusement, treating the doings of both as a marketing exercise.

Not that football and Formula 1 are paragons of righteousness, of course; I expect them both to succumb to the blowjobs demanded of them by the various foul organizations such as BLM, feminism and Pantifa and their loathsome offshoots.

The nice thing about supporting a sport, however, is that participation is purely voluntary and money not spent on an NFL Redzone subscription can just be spent on ammunition or a new gun — which will really piss off all the Commies.

And the only way for US to be happy is for THEM to be profoundly unhappy.

A beautiful past, but no future

Gerard reminds us of all we’ve lost.

We told our children that any child could grow up to be President. And then we made it come true.

We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.

We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.

Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes and hues and scents.

We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.

We did Levis.

We saved Europe twice and liberated it once.

We invented Jazz.

We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysburg address.

We went to the moon to see how far we could hit a golf ball.

We lifted a telescope into orbit that could see to the edge of the universe.

We let the People arm themselves at will. Just to make sure.

We electrified the guitar.

We invented a music so compelling that it rocked the world.

We ran our farms so well we fed the globe.

We made the automobile and the airplane.

We let you get rich. Really, really rich.

We had poor people who, even at their most wretched, were richer than any other poor people on the face of the planet.
We were the noblest nation the world had ever known.

We had so much freedom that many of us voted to just throw it all away.

Even towards the end, as we dissolved into the petty bickering and idle entertainments that come with having far too much leisure and money, many among us were still striving to make it higher, finer, brighter, better, and more beautiful.

Even towards the end, the best of us declined to give up and pressed on. “Where to? What next?”

I left out several of ’em, just to give you a reason to click on over for the rest. Gerard links to what you might think of as a followup to this one, too. Taken together, the two posts make for some mighty depressing reading.

Yes, yes, I say!

To our new national anthem. But not the one they think.

In an increasingly anti-racist era when problematic iconography — ranging from Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben to even the Dukes of Hazzard General Lee car and country band Lady Antebellum’s name — is being reassessed, revised or retired, America’s national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” seems to be striking a wrong note.

Last week, protesters in San Francisco toppled a statue of the song’s composer, Francis Scott Key, a known slaveholder who once said that African Americans were “a distinct and inferior race of people, which all experience proves to be the greatest evil that afflicts a community.” This week, Liana Morales, an Afro-Latinx student at New York’s Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts, refused to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at her virtual graduation ceremony, explaining to the Wall Street Journal, “With everything that’s happening, if I stand there and sing it, I’m being complicit to a system that has oppressed people of color.” Instead, Morales performed “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” a hymn widely considered to be the “Black national anthem.”

So, if “The Star-Spangled Banner” goes the way of the Confederate flag and Gone With the Wind, what should America’s new national anthem be? Whatever it is, Walker says there should be a formal “vetting process” to make sure the next anthem doesn’t have a terrible past; Powell, for his part, suggests John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which he says is “the most beautiful, unifying, all-people, all-backgrounds-together kind of song you could have.”

But what about “Lift Every Voice and Sing”? That song, written as a poem by James Weldon Johnson in 1900, set to music by his brother J. Rosamond Johnson in 1905, and first publicly performed as part of a celebration of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday by Johnson’s brother John, was dubbed “the Negro national hymn” by the NAACP in 1919. In more recent years, it has been referenced in Maya Angelou’s 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing; it was also performed in 1972 by Kim Weston as the opening number for the Wattstax festival and by Beyoncé during her celebrated 2018 Coachella set.

Okay, so the Star Spangled Banner, clearly, is out, just another victim of the Left’s ongoing campaign to destroy every last bit of American history, culture, and tradition on the altar of political correctness. And clearly, we will be required to instate something Nee-grow approved in its place. So I have a few suggestions.

WARNING: the videos embedded below the fold are EXTREMELY NSFW. In fact, if rough language and overt sexual suggestiveness and perversion are problematic for you, you’ll probably want to forego clicking the “More” link entirely. Continue reading “Yes, yes, I say!” →

Just deserts

Spank ’em, but good.

The DC police are not sitting back and letting violent mobs overrun the city tonight and it is causing the militant leftists to panic.

In a refreshing change, the DC Metropolitan Police stopped a criminal mob of vandals attempting to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson outside the White House. They used chemical irritants to disperse the crowd.

Personally, I woulda been fine with using Sarin or mustard gas on ’em, myself. But hey, at this point I’ll take what I can get.

Like children who are being told “no” for the first time, the criminals took to Twitter to whine about the rules being enforced.

“ALERT: Protesters and law enforcement are fighting in Lafayette Park. SIGNIFICANT DANGER,” a far-left anarchist account dedicated to tweeting police and protest locations tweeted in a panic. “PROTECT VULNERABLE PROTESTERS.”

Yeah, die screaming, you sniveling punk.

Police are reportedly prepared to stop the demonstrators from constructing a “Black House Autonomous Zone” similar to the one set up in Seattle, that has been plagued by violence, thefts, and even murder.

Such utter nonsense should never have been allowed to get this far. Indulging Leftist violence and chaos for too long only means that the eventual cleanup takes longer, costs more, and is more dangerous for the actual humans charged with doing it. Leftist trash ain’t worth it; it should be taken out immediately, any time it rears its pimply, screaming face.

Discourse On Voluntary Servitude

That’s the best-known work of French judge and philosopher Étienne de la Boétie, a passionate and uncompromising advocate for human liberty and against tyranny. As y’all reprobates and nogoodniks may or may not have noticed, I have been stealthily expanding the “Notable quotes” section with some more good stuff lately, and ran across a memorable one from de la Boétie via a WRSA link to yet another excellent Robert Gore piece, which I will get to excerpting anon in its own post. But seeing the one I plonked into the sidebar mentioned in a comment at SLL inspired me to revisit some of de la Boétie’s work myself, which I admit to having all but forgotten about after his having been glancingly mentioned back in my college French class back in the Pleistocene or thereabouts.

So without further ado, enjoy (if that’s the right word; it makes for pretty uncomfortable reading, actually) these bits from his seminal Discourse On Voluntary Servitude, also known as “The Against-One.” It’s somewhat lengthy, but quite rewarding; you should bookmark it and read it all when you get the time. Written in around 1548 when de la Boétie was only 18 years of age (!), the central thrust is that tyrants hold power only because and for as long as the people concede it to them. Its relevance to current-day America’s self-inflicted contretemps is self-evident.

To achieve the good that they desire, the bold do not fear danger; the intelligent do not refuse to undergo suffering. It is the stupid and cowardly who are neither able to endure hardship nor to vindicate their rights; they stop at merely longing for them, and lose through timidity the valor roused by the effort to claim their rights, although the desire to enjoy them still remains as part of their nature. A longing common to both the wise and the foolish, to brave men and to cowards, is this longing for all those things which, when acquired, would make them happy and contented. Yet one element appears to be lacking. I do not know how it happens that nature fails to place within the hearts of men a burning desire for liberty, a blessing so great and so desirable that when it is lost all evils follow thereafter, and even the blessings that remain lose taste and savor because of their corruption by servitude. Liberty is the only joy upon which men do not seem to insist; for surely if they really wanted it they would receive it. Apparently they refuse this wonderful privilege because it is so easily acquired.

Poor, wretched, and stupid peoples, nations determined on your own misfortune and blind to your own good! You let yourselves be deprived before your own eyes of the best part of your revenues; your fields are plundered, your homes robbed, your family heirlooms taken away. You live in such a way that you cannot claim a single thing as your own; and it would seem that you consider yourselves lucky to be loaned your property, your families, and your very lives. All this havoc, this misfortune, this ruin, descends upon you not from alien foes, but from the one enemy whom you yourselves render as powerful as he is, for whom you go bravely to war, for whose greatness you do not refuse to offer your own bodies unto death. He who thus domineers over you has only two eyes, only two hands, only one body, no more than is possessed by the least man among the infinite numbers dwelling in your cities; he has indeed nothing more than the power that you confer upon him to destroy you. Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? What could he do to you if you yourselves did not connive with the thief who plunders you, if you were not accomplices of the murderer who kills you, if you were not traitors to yourselves? 

It is incredible how as soon as a people becomes subject, it promptly falls into such complete forgetfulness of its freedom that it can hardly be roused to the point of regaining it, obeying so easily and so willingly that one is led to say, on beholding such a situation, that this people has not so much lost its liberty as won its enslavement. It is true that in the beginning men submit under constraint and by force; but those who come after them obey without regret and perform willingly what their predecessors had done because they had to. This is why men born under the yoke and then nourished and reared in slavery are content, without further effort, to live in their native circumstance, unaware of any other state or right, and considering as quite natural the condition into which they were born…Nevertheless it is clear enough that the powerful influence of custom is in no respect more compelling than in this, namely, habituation to subjection. It is said that Mithridates trained himself to drink poison. Like him we learn to swallow, and not to find bitter, the venom of servitude. 

By this time it should be evident that liberty once lost, valor also perishes.

Like I said, uncomfortable reading—not least for how thoroughly it reinforces the truth behind the hoary old saw which claims that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite how desperately the Left would like to believe otherwise, some verities really ARE eternal.

The loudest silence you’ll ever hear

Speaks volumes, too.



How very odd, the way Planned Parenthood’s original mission has been so thoroughly erased from history.

(Via Megan Fox)

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CF Glossary

ProPol: Professional Politician

Vichy GOPe: Putative "Republicans" who talk a great game but never can seem to find a hill they consider worth dying on; Quislings, Petains, Benedicts, backstabbers, fake phony frauds

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Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

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FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing

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—Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan

"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."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

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—Bill Whittle

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