The Liberal Way of War

Discourse On Voluntary Servitude

Posted on June 21, 2020June 21, 2020 by Mike

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.

Derac(ist)ination

Posted on June 19, 2020June 19, 2020 by Mike

Et tu, Mrs Butterworth’s?

Both hot cereal maker Cream of Wheat and syrup brand Mrs. Butterworth’s have confirmed they’ve initiated packaging reviews in the wake of PepsiCo’s bombshell announcement on Wednesday that it would retire Aunt Jemima after 131 years.

That was quickly followed on Wednesday by a statement from Uncle Ben’s, which said it is “evolving the visual brand identity.” A spokesperson said the brand is “evaluating all possibilities,” so it is unclear if the name Uncle Ben will remain.

Once again, this marks a dramatic shift for these brands’ corporate parent companies, who just two months ago had little or no comment on the mascots’ roots in nostalgia for slavery.

“Nostalgia for slavery,” is it? Well, okay then. An easy call to make, I guess, especially when you hear the exaggerated Negro patois that fairly well screams—FOR JUSTICE!—from this old ad:

Sheeit, cuz, dat syrup ho be talkin’ all black n shit, nomesayn?

The Mrs Butterworth’s talking syrup-jug ads featured a woman named Kwelzeesha Obunto Bootylicious McCorkle for many…oh, no, wait, it was actually some cracker-ass bitch named Mark Kay Bergman, who later went on to voice female characters on South Park until her suicide in 1999, as well as doing…ummm…Disney’s Snow White?!?

Hey, can’t get much more “nostalgic for slavery” than that, right? Or black-stereotype-y, either.

Fucking idiots. But hey, you corporate crawly things keep right on with all the bowing, scraping, and forelock tugging to a pack of ravenous PC hyenas that will never be satisfied no matter how hard you grovel, by all means. Then, one day, maybe we’ll end up like this:

Activists Fight Racism By Driving All People Of Color Out Of Pop Culture
U.S.—Activists are fighting racism by demanding that people of color be removed from all media, brands, logos, mascots, and anywhere else they might pop up.

“Anywhere we see a person of color, we see racism. So we must end racism by making sure people of color are not depicted anywhere,” said white liberal activist Petunia Faucett. “We will not rest until all pop culture icons of color are eliminated. Then, racism will be over.”

Suuuure it will, genius.

Update! Well, this would explain a lot.

Ready or not, it’s war

Posted on June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 by Mike

Same as with the COVIDIOT shamdemic, the statue-toppling is NOT about what they say it is.

The Monument-Destroying Mobs Don’t Hate The Confederacy, They Hate America

Well, actually, wrong. They DO hate the Confederacy too, rest assured. But do they hate it more for all the usual reasons, or more because it’s part of American history?

To suppose this has anything to do with the Confederacy or the Civil War is to misunderstand completely the nature of what is happening right now in America. The people who are pulling down monuments, defacing statues, and demanding U.S. military bases be renamed do not have a limiting principle. They don’t distinguish between those who fought for freedom against the British Empire and those who fought for union against the slave states of the South. To them, the Union itself was a crime against humanity long before the South seceded. What kind of moral monster would ever fight to preserve it?

This is the 1619 Project come to life. If the American Revolution was fought to protect and preserve slavery then the entire history of American colonization and westward expansion is a litany of crimes that no one should celebrate. The Founding Fathers are no less guilty than Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis — not just because they owned slaves but because they founded the United States, a nation conceived not in liberty but in white supremacy.

In other words, as is always and forever the case with the Left, their position and attitude is based entirely on balls-out lies.

You will nevertheless hear, and likely have already heard, arguments for a limiting principle, a way to justify pulling down Confederate monuments while allowing monuments to Christopher Columbus or Thomas Jefferson to stand.

The comedian Andrew Schulz tries to make this argument in a recent YouTube video. Confederates were traitors and slavers, he says. Their monuments were built to glorify a treasonous and failed effort to secede from the Union.

Another bone I must pick. Many if not most of those monuments were built for a two-fold purpose: not to honor The Lost Cause itself—it’s entirely ridiculous to argue that they were—but 1) to honor what were fundamentally honorable men, accomplished and in some cases legendary soldiers about whom it might more fairly be said had varied motives for enlisting themselves in a less-than-honorable cause; and 2) to soothe the passions of the recently-conquered South, and help ease its transition back into full membership in the larger nation that vanquished and then severely abused them after the war.

There’s a reason, for example, the anarchists and Antifa rioters in Seattle’s “autonomous zone” set up barricades and hung a sign saying, “Now Leaving The United States.”

These people don’t want to improve America. Like the monuments they despise, they want to tear it down.

Bingo. In the end, this is a real war we’re in now. We can only hope the Great American Awokening to that sad fact didn’t come too late to have any hope of fighting back, and of prevailing. Because the one and only alternative scenario is too awful for any liberty-minded person to contemplate.

Update! Common ground, with some extremely unlovely bedfellows.

Destruction of art is a common theme. In the late 18th century, the Jacobins took hammers to the kingly statues that adorned Notre Dame; today, the original heads, buried by sympathizers with posterity, are in a museum. The pharaohs encouraged the defacement of monuments to their predecessors (which is why many Egyptian artifacts are literally defaced).

Moving ahead a few years, the Taliban, 20 years ago, blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan, which had stood for more than 1,000 years. ISIS destroyed Syrian edifices and artworks that had outlasted millennia. Al Qaeda attacked our architecture and what it stood for (inaccurately, since the World Trade Center was a symbol of central planning, not capital).

You would think our pluralistic society would be more sophisticated. Nope: In the past decade, Yale has removed stained-glass windows depicting slavery, after an employee smashed one. Better to forget slavery?

Movies? You can’t watch “Gone With the Wind.” Nobody should watch this movie and think, “Gee, those were the days.” But a properly educated audience can understand that the movie shows the stark horror of failure, because the cause was wrong, and doomed.

We probably ought not watch “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as it glosses over black servitude, and so we should just miss its lessons about capitalism. J.K. Rowling has “incorrect” thoughts about the trans movement — so kids shouldn’t read “Harry Potter.”

“Black servitude,” is it? My increasingly-pissed off white ass, it was. Annie, the live-in maid character in IAWL, was a salaried employee, doing honest and honorable work for people that were clearly enchanted with her and treated her as fully one of the family. Anybody who perceives anything whatsoever demeaning or degrading about that once-common arrangement ought to extract their head out of their ass toot sweet, if it takes a fucking heavy construction crane to do it. And she was hardly “glossed over,” as can be readily discerned from even a most cursory viewing of the film.

The Long March reaches its destination

Posted on June 16, 2020June 16, 2020 by Mike

And once again, I find that a long post I’ve been working on for several days is superceded by somebody who says exactly what I was trying to, only better.

The crime syndicate dominated Windy City was fertile ground for the plot of world conquest. The Mob was already in the business of brutality, deception, and despotism, the same means Leftists use to achieve their goals. It was a natural partnership. Through the bait and switch tactics of “community organizing,” Frankfurt School corruption of education, and the nurturing of toxic radicals like Saul Alinsky, Bill Ayers, and Barack Obama, the Illinois spawned alliance of Marxist Crime has now long marched its way into being the political system of Globalism.

It’s not called what it is, of course. Leftists lie and distort; it’s necessary to hide their evil intentions. We’ve come to call this mass cultural subversion Postmodernism. And what we’ve been going through in 2020 is the push to bring Postmodernism to its final solution: the destruction of Western Civilization. Postmodern partisans seek to switch off the Enlightenment, in order to rule over a new Dark Age.

When I started writing this piece just a few short weeks ago, I had plenty to say about how the wacky woo hoo virus hysteria exposed massive corruption and Chinese influence in our traitorous elitists. Arbitrary and needless shutdowns devoured American prosperity, coincidentally right when a new trade agreement undercut Chinese market manipulations, and a tectonic scale spy scandal started emerging regarding the Obama administration and all their cronies.

China’s rigid totalitarian system is the desired outcome of the majority of the world’s administrative classes. They won’t admit this, but look at their actions, instead of listening to their empty words.

Events overtook the essay I was preparing. So now we have divisive race riots being inflamed, on top of the Overblown Outbreak. This is just a continuation of the same war, a new battlefield of the thoroughly planned and prepared Postmodern assault on the United States. It’s being facilitated across our culture by a massive betrayal by the New Aristocracy of the Well Connected, our own countrymen. As they’ve demanded society mask up to pretend to prevent disease, and to facilitate looting, our betters have been unmasked as the deeply embedded enemies within.

This is Postmodern War for the 21st century. It’s not fought openly with bombs and soldiers. It’s combat waged by other means, with biological agents, economics, propaganda, data manipulation, sabotage.

The primary difference between Bledsoe’s take and my own is that he’s way, WAY more optimistic than I am about the eventual outcome. We can only hope he has it right, and I don’t.

(Via Sarah Hoyt)

The only sane response

Posted on June 13, 2020June 13, 2020 by Mike

What he said, times a million billion.

This is 100% accurate.

Defund the police, and we will take matters into our own hands! pic.twitter.com/Vj9EFgcYpb

— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) June 7, 2020

The sooner the better, sez I. Because as I always say, the Left is never going to stop all this horseshit lunacy; it will have to BE stopped. Yes, that will surely mean violence and bloodshed, I’m afraid. So be it. Ace lays down the straight skinny:

The people with all the actual privileges scream that they’re “marginalized,” while attacking the people who are actually marginalized by the system as, supposedly, “privileged.”

It’s a madhouse, and one in which the lunatics run the asylum.

And it will not last long.

The left wants a revolution?

So do we.

Bring it on, soibois.

Mega, mega, megadittos.

Fake, phony, fraud

Posted on June 12, 2020June 12, 2020 by Mike

Much ado about very little.

The Covid-19 death toll may be less than half of what has been recorded because many victims of the pandemic would have died soon anyway, one of Britain’s leading medics has said.

Professor Karol Sikora, a senior oncologist who has built a huge Twitter following for his positive takes on the virus crisis, said doctors were sometimes too eager to put Covid-19 on death certificates.

Speaking to The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast – which you can listen to on the player above – Prof Sikora said the virus would be mentioned on death certificates when there was “any hint” that it could have been the cause, without proof, as well as retrospectively over the phone.

The total number of deaths, rather than what is on the death certificates, should be used to judge the impact of the virus, he said, estimating the real death toll to be 20,000 to 30,000.

He said: “It could end up that more people have died because of lack of medical care directly caused by the unavailability of it, because its facilities have been taken over for Covid.

“If we look at the numbers, how many people have really died from Covid that wouldn’t be dead at the end of the year? The numbers vary enormously. The current ONS data suggests 60,000 people have died from Covid. I’m sure that’s not really the case, it’s because of the counting we discussed earlier.”

Ahh, but even though our masters temporarily suspended the COVIDIOT panic so as to allow for the Black Lies Murder/PantiFa riots, don’t dream it’s over. Sundance sees what’s coming.

If we think they’ve thrown the kitchen sink at us, just wait. The Trump campaign has announced the restart of Keep America Great rallies to begin in Tulsa Oklahoma on June 19th. And with that announcement we can immediately predict the apparatus of the resistance forces will once again start pushing the COVID-19 narrative.

My response, SCREW ‘EM.

I refuse to live on my knees.

“Rally to the standard” is a call to arms when a situation is critical, there is no time for lengthy debate, and optimal solutions are needed. The COVID-19 virus was weaponized for political purposes against us and our economy. Nothing they attempt now to try and retake that position should be taken seriously.

Given their overlong record of incompetence, dishonesty, and utter failure, I can scarcely believe how seriously they were taken the first time, myself. The simple truth:

Is there going to be a second wave? Maybe. It doesn’t matter. We know enough about COVID-19 to realize that it’s not an excuse to continue to destroy the economy and send people into destitution. It’s not enough of a threat to destroy jobs, tank companies, and push people into another panic. We need precautions for the most vulnerable among us, namely the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. For the rest of us, we need (the) freedom to live our lives, go to work, go to church, or essentially whatever else we want to do.

It’s about choice. Just because lockdowns are not implemented again doesn’t mean people will be forced to venture forth into the coronavirus-ridden world if they prefer to stay locked down. But their choice to stay at home should not influence our choice to live our lives. The coronavirus didn’t kill the initial estimate of 2.2 million. It didn’t come close. It wasn’t a nothingburger, but it was nowhere near the existential threat we were told it would be.

Patriots need to stand strong against the next wave of lockdown attempts by government. Those of us in blue states or Democratic-majority cities need to be especially vocal with our unwillingness to comply with draconian mandates. We need to protest and take it to the courts if necessary. We need to engage in civil disobedience at times, and that doesn’t mean riot like the left is wont to do. We don’t need more riots. We need more common sense, and fighting Lockdowns 2.0 is a common sense play.

The fight isn’t over. We must keep the pressure up and make sure Democrats and mainstream media know we’re not going to fall for their fearmongering this time. Whether there’s a second wave or not, we must stand strong against authoritarianism.

We ought to be doing that anyway—continually, reflexively, every day and in every way.

Another thing we very much need to do is to stop granting the premise of the nefarious panic-mongers: squirming around about how we can reopen for business and still “maintain adequate social distancing,” “providing hand sanitizer,” wearing masks, etc—as if we were children begging an indulgence from mom and dad by making extravagant promises about what good little boys and girls we’ll surely be.

To hell with all that rot. Anyone who must beg his masters to grant him a little bit of freedom has already lost it. The Clampdown was an outrageous affront to American Constitutional principles; our supine response provided a grim demonstration of exactly how moribund that document really is…and why. The state and local officials who imposed those illegal edicts far exceeded their legitimate authority, and of right ought to be punished severely for that audacious power-grab. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty certain groveling and forelock-tugging about “safety” is NOT the way to go about that.

Defiance, not compliance, people. It’s the American way. Or it was.

No, no, a thousand times no

Posted on June 11, 2020June 11, 2020 by Mike

Remember when I said there was no way in hell I’d be strapping on one of those silly-ass face diapers, no matter what devious, conniving NC state official might insist that I do so in the name of “safety” over their dud COVID scam? Well, here’s another thing I can solemnly assure I ain’t gonna be doing: “taking a knee.”

Others, however, feel differently.

White police officers and members of the community gathered on Saturday to wash the feet of black faith leaders in North Carolina in an echo of the Biblical story of how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, according to a report in the Daily Mail.

The feet-washing event was part of a walk in Cary, North Carolina, to protest the death of George Floyd, led by Legacy Church Center co-pastors Faith Wokoma and husband Soboma.

Wokoma and her husband organized the walk, which included the “Washing of the Feet” ceremony, where at least three white law enforcement officers and three other white attendees washed their feet.

According to pictures on social media, the group knelt in prayer with buckets as the pastors sat on a bench. One attendee is heard on a megaphone praying for forgiveness.

Sad, pathetic, disgraceful—and, ultimately, futile and self-defeating. Mike’s Iron Law for dealing with the Left: they will never be satisfied, no matter what you yield up to them. Each met demand will always and forever generate another more bizarre and/or outrageous one. Far better instead to refuse to grant them a single goddamned thing, so as to forestall the deadly spiral of escalating demands that inevitably results from catering to even the most trivial of their wishes.

Ignoring that Iron Law for so long is probably the biggest single reason you could point to for why we find ourselves at the current sorry pass; appeasing the Left in even the smallest way is a sure-fire recipe for disaster in the long term, no matter how innocuous their initial demand might seem. As with Kipling’s famous wisdom about the Danes and the Danegeld, no matter what you give them, they will always be back for another bite, usually a lot sooner than you might think. Then another. And another. And another. Lather, rinse, repeat, until suddenly you’re shocked and horrified to find yourself standing in the ashes of a burned city, your nation’s history erased and rewritten, your national treasures and monuments reduced to smoking rubble.

And they’ll still hate you anyway, and want you dead. Make this your motto:

Kneel before them now, and before you know it you’ll be fellating them while you’re down there. And why not? By agreeing to humiliate and debase yourself at their command, you’ve already demonstrated the nature of what you truly are. After that, it’s merely a matter of haggling over price.

Some black lives matter

Posted on June 6, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

And some…do not.

On D-Day, everything everyone fought for, white, black, asian, native or hispanic has been overshadowed by the forces of communism using social justice as a cause. The one undeniable fact, if they are bothering to deny it, is that all of the damage done has been done in cities run by communist Democrats. Most of the black lives lost have been lost in communist democrat-run cities by police forces under their control, acting (it would be logical to conclude) under their direction. In Chicago, long run by communists (whether they admit it or not) black lives are cast away by the dozens and there are no protests for those black lives. If black lives truly mattered to these governors and mayors, they would not use them to their political advantage. They allow shootings to go on every day in order to get gun control legislation. They use it as an excuse, but those young black lives are lost and these mayors turn their backs, because they are benefiting politically. These same mayors can’t stand people protesting to feed their families, run their businesses and make a living, but when their communist political allies, Antifa and BLM protest, the mayors protect them, let them out of jail as soon as they are arrested, the police are told to stand down. If the people want control of their cities, they have to start by ridding themselves of the communists in city, state and county governments.

We are not witnessing a racial revolution, that is a lie being told by communists in both the Antifa and BLM leadership to present their opposition as racists, but there is nothing racist about hating communists or communism, that is the duty of every human being who does not want to be ruled by a dictator, forced to live under conditions of the pandemic lockdown forever. The deception is to ask if black lives matter, which, of course they do. Black lives were lost in all of our wars, all the way back to the Revolutionary war, more black lives have been lost in some wars than others, but black lives have mattered throughout the history of this nation. There are black lives that have mattered to the economy of the nation, entrepreneurs who revolutionized business. There are major corporations in the hands of black lives that matter. In order to be faithful to truth and history, it must be recognized that the celebration of freedom is to celebrate black lives honorably and courageously employed in maintaining that freedom and trying to overthrow that nation is to disrespect those black lives. But Black Lives Matter is a political organization not a term, not a recognition, not an understanding so to agree that black lives matter is not to agree with Black Lives Matter.

It is not enough to recognize that black lives matter. Most will happily agree that black lives pursuing the American dream, agreeable to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, patriotic to the idea of freedom and the republic matter more than black lives pursuing communism, who are antagonistic to the ideal of freedom and individual rights, seeking a dictatorial government in the false belief that they will be in charge of it.

I feel sorry for those who have had their heritage co-opted by an aggressive political organization (BLM), feeling bullied into going along with the communists thinking that they are standing up for racial equality. It is a difficult distinction for many of them to make. The pride they feel when seeing images of people like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Jr, Jesse Owens, the Tuskegee Airmen and others is rightfully theirs and it is not for Black Lives Matter, the organization, to co-opt those images and put them to work for their cause of communism, a cause most of those individuals would not support.

And yet that is precisely what they’ve done—brazenly, audaciously, unconscionably—just one among an endless and ever-growing litany of despicable Leftist crimes.

Getting woke to the Left

Posted on June 6, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

Jim Hoft posts some sobering scenes from the aftermath of the Left unchained.

For the past week the left has been protesting, rioting, looting, shooting officers, beating innocents, torching national landmarks across the United States.

This is the fruit of the American left: pain, chaos, suffering, violence, fear and arson.

Indeed it is. But if the past week’s irrational and opportunistic anarchy results in a long-overdue awakening to the Left’s true nature as the ruthless enemy of all that is good, decent, and reasonable in America, then it may yet prove to be worth it. Hoft’s third entry puts it straight: “This isn’t a protest, this isn’t solving any injustice, this is the result of leftist media and celebrities encouraging divisive racism and violence to hurt the country and thus Trump.” Bingo, nailed it in one.

But let’s not forget to include the full-throated endorsement and assistance of Democrat-Socialist Party elected officials at all levels across the nation, too. The bottom line is that when it comes to Leftist hatred, wanton destruction, and evil, All Are One.

No peace, no justice

Posted on June 6, 2020June 7, 2020 by Mike

As always, the violent, fascist Left has it exactly backwards.

These rioters aren’t Martin Luther King Jr. or even Malcolm X. They are Alex and his droogs from “A Clockwork Orange” out for a night on the town, albeit with less style and a duller patois. Violence is the point.

Protests responding to the cruel police killing of George Floyd have been turned into nationwide riots and looting. This is not about Floyd anymore. His killing was universally condemned, the cops involved were fired, and homicide charges have been brought against the officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck. More should be done, and what has been done could have been done sooner, but folks are not looting the Nike store in downtown Chicago for greater justice. They just want to smash things and take stuff.

The very real problems of police misconduct and racial injustice have been buried under rubble and broken glass, then obscured in a haze of smoke and tear gas. Progress was possible— in his last State of the Union address, our bombastic Republican president was boasting about criminal justice reform — but that requires basic civil order. The problem with “no justice, no peace” is that although the absence of justice will indeed corrode peace, without peace there is no possibility of justice.

It’s a good enough column generally, but he downplays the very real threat the rioters present by blithely dismissing them as fundamentally unserious about their nascent revolution, motivated not by ideology and hatred, but by boredom. When cities are burning, property and businesses being destroyed, and innocent people being brutally beaten and murdered, that’s a mistake, I think.

It’s DIFF’RUNT when they do it, see

Posted on June 5, 2020June 5, 2020 by Mike

Anybody out there still kidding themselves that the phony Coronavirus Doomsday ploy was anything other than a head fake, a subterfuge?

This is insane and has no rational or scientific basis. pic.twitter.com/2Cdiw2r4tL

— Dodd (@Amuk3) June 5, 2020

The riots and looting will probably begin to lose steam and gutter out over the next several days, having served their purpose as successfully as the last one did. Which leads me to wonder what the next Deep State/Left/Democrat-Socialist maneuver is going to be. You can be sure that they already have one planned and ready to go.

“Is it a setup?”

Posted on June 1, 2020 by Mike

Well, I mean, DUH.

Social media users have been reporting mysterious piles of bricks in cities across the country in recent days, stoking speculation that the stashes are being planted to encourage violence amid the countrywide protests over George Floyd’s death.

On Sunday, police confirmed the existence of such piles in Kansas City, urging residents to notify police if they discover any new stashes.

Rioters in Manhattan reportedly happened upon a pile lying in the street Sunday night despite it not being clear what the bricks would be used for in terms of construction.

In Dallas, Instagram user @reubengotsoul said he was disappointed to see a “RANDOM stack of bricks in front of the courthouse,” adding that he believed it was a setup.

Odd, that. Has anybody thought to ask evil Nazi scum George Soros if he owns any brickyards or construction companies, perchance?

Determining who funds Antifa is difficult because the movement is highly decentralized and consists of private individuals and loosely affiliated groups.

Journalist Lee Stranahan downplays the significance of funding to Antifa.

“While it’s been proven that funders like Soros and the Democrat Party have paid protest organizers and some protesters, groups like the violent Black Bloc [sic – black bloc refers to a set of tactics, not a group] typically aren’t motivated by money, but instead come to protests because of their anti-American ideology, base criminal desires and thrill seeking.”

Nonetheless, the left-wing billionaire George Soros has ties to Antifa through a group called the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ). Soros’s philanthropy, known at the time as the Open Society Institute, gave $100,000 to AfGJ ($50,000 in 2004 and $50,000 in 2006).

Odd, that. But I’m SURE it’s all just a coincidence.

TINVOWOOT follies

Posted on May 19, 2020May 19, 2020 by Mike

I pray he’s wrong. I fear he’s right.

We have two justice systems, one for them and one for us, meaning we have no justice system at all.

Sorry to have to break this to you. I know it makes you sad, but how do you think I feel? I spent 27 years helping defend this country and voilà – here we are, a flippin’ banana republic. Turns out our elite is perfectly cool with treating our Constitution like Charmin.

You do understand that to the establishment, this dual track system where they ignore the law and we get the law dropped on us – including through active framing, as with LTG Flynn, to keep us in line – is how they want it, right? This is not an unintended consequence. They are for this.

They are actively for the abuse of the legal system to persecute their political enemies. You adorable naïfs come to me thinking that I, as a lawyer, will assuage your gnawing fear that something is rotten in the state of America. “Kurt, but this…this isn’t right? How can some people be prosecuted but other people with connections get away with crimes?” Well, the answer is simple: that is how many of the people with their grubby paws on the levers of power want it.

They want to use the government to stifle dissent, as the IRS did to Tea Party groups.

They want to make people afraid to oppose them by threatening them with crushing legal fees and maybe jail if they dare join the opposition – look at the trail of bankrupt Trumpworld folks after Obamagate.

They want to frame people working for their enemies and ruin them and put them in prison, a la LTG Flynn.

This permeates liberal culture. Did you know that the ACLU – the Alleged Civil Liberties Union – just sued Betsy De Vos because she ordered reforms to campus man-witch trials that gave men such radical due process rights as the right to know the charges, to have time to respond to them, to not be judged by the same person who is prosecuting them, and to confront their accuser? The ACLU came out against these things – at least in cases where ole Grandpa Badfinger’s not the accused. And speaking of that handsy old weirdo, how about all those lib luminaries leveling with us that even if he did what Tara Reade said he did, eh, no biggie. They’ll vote for him anyway, and that whiny broad should stop crying all over their beautiful progressive narrative.

I’d love to be wrong. Maybe I am. Maybe the unbroken track record of injustice we’ve seen over the last decade will suddenly break. And maybe my pet unicorn Chet will be the foreman of the jury when one of these slugs somehow gets called to account.

“Then I guess we should just give up and resign ourselves to tyranny?” Oh no. Oh, not at all. My short-term assessment is grave, but my long-term assessment is bright. Tyranny tends to fail over time. Remember, the establishment’s embrace of tactical tyranny is an admission of weakness. When they weren’t threatened they could afford to hide their true nature. All this is their last-ditch effort to resist the popular uprising against their inept rule.

We need to stay on the offensive.

But how do we win?

Alas, Kurt’s prescription for winning relies entirely on voting our way out of this, which…well, you know.

Wonder what the percentages might be

Posted on May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Mike

Of present-day “Anericans” who are officious, insufferable, priggish assholes, that is.

I get it. No one wants to wear a mask. They muffle your voice. They itch your cheeks. They fog up your glasses. And, until recently, all the experts said they were ineffective against the coronavirus. But now the script is flipped, and it’s the virtuous thing to do. If you don’t, well, you’ll likely face the censure of your peers.

And that judgment is harsh. In the early days of maskopolis, my wife and I went to Safeway with our faces uncovered. Shameful, I know, but our connect in Hong Kong hadn’t yet hooked us up with a box of those blue bad boys.

As we strolled down an aisle — not noticing the arrows indicating that we were walking the wrong direction on a one-way path — our eyes met with those of a tall masked man, who was gingerly picking out cans with his surgical-gloved hands. He looked at us sternly, and pointed to the mask on his face and then to the arrows on the floor. A silent reproach.

And effective. Although it seemed incredibly rude at the time, the eyes of this latter-day Dr. T. J. Eckleburg stuck with us. We wear masks now, and pity those who are as foolish as we once were.

Effective, my fed-up ass. Shoulda punched the jerk right square in the mouth and left him layin’, sez I. “Effective”? Only insofar as it’s allowed to be, and not one jot or tittle more. The proper way to deal with any finger-wagging, self-righteous bluenose remains the same as it always was: get up in their faces, punch back twice as hard. A meek shrug of the shoulders and a firm tug on the ol’ forelock in humble deference only encourages the juiceless bastards. Then, next thing you know, they’re shuttering your business, yelling at you from Chinese-made drones, scolding you from billboards, and locking you in your damned house.

Mask-wearing, while certainly a health-conscious practice, is also a performance for the benefit of your neighbors. Those who play their parts poorly will be booed.

It is a grim show to be sure, put on in my neighborhood by a bunch of noseless, mouthless suburbanites imposing rules and regulations on their unexpectedly leisure-filled existences. But it is one in which we have all been given roles.

For most of us, it could be worse. On the front lines of this thing, there’s no chance to worry about whether or not to wear masks. Medical workers don’t have the time. My two brothers, one a pizza delivery man and the other a barista at Starbucks, don’t have a choice.

And yet, when no one else is around, I know they are just like me. Down goes the mask, and they breathe easier. For a little while.

This whole mess is nothing but a performance, really, Safety Theater for the boobs, the sheep, and the panic-ninnies. Speaking strictly for myself, I will NOT be donning any mask, unless I’m suddenly and inexplicably called upon to help remove a spleen or sew up a wound or something. I simply ain’t doing it, and I don’t give a shit if saying so hairlips every cannibal on the Congo, either. The performance will just have to stagger on without me somehow.

This ain’t Red China, people—not quite yet it ain’t, although it’s now one hell of a lot closer than I’d prefer. On these shores, the air is by no means so polluted as to require mask-wearing outdoors as a matter of simple survival. So I’ll just say it: I don’t care which government official demands that I do so, it just ain’t happening, bub. Might as well lock me up now, cocksuckers. I didn’t manage to make it to this ripe old age only to start knuckling under to every dimestore dictator currently crawling out from under every rock on the landscape now.

Of night, and light

Posted on May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 by Mike

A dismal tide is sweeping across America, leaving unprecedented destruction in its wake.

When the coronavirus landed on our shores, communist China came with it.

We have become part of a mass scale human experiment in government control and it turned out that stripping away our freedom wasn’t all that difficult. Under the guise of concern for our health and well-being, tyrants came out of the woodwork. Our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our lives are being destroyed as the left solidifies and expands their oppressive powers. We’ve been herded around like cattle, threatened, isolated, confined, silenced, and arrested. You name it, it’s happening.

You tell me if what follows sounds like the United States, or China.

We’ve been told who can work and who can’t, with language that separates us according to who is and who isn’t “essential” as the almighty State supersedes individual rights and the family unit.

We’ve been physically and verbally harassed, threatened, fined, detained, arrested, jailed, and/or placed in forced quarantine. Business licenses have been revoked. Going to work without the permission of the government is now a crime. So is going to the park or a beach. Children playing together is also in defiance of the government. So is placing flags on the graves of veterans. The list of infractions goes on and on and on and on. Examples read like the manifesto of a demented madman.

Brown goes on, and on, and on from there, with a most impressive collection of supporting links, and it all makes for truly…well, dismal reading. But even as the darkness falls, a hopeful ray of light shines forth in the person of Texas Supreme Court Justice Jimmy Blackrock, who wrote the majority opinion springing hair-salon hero Shelley Luther from durance most vile:

He began with a quote, “The Constitution is not suspended when the government declares a state of disaster.”

Then he crisply explained it.

Blacklock wrote, “All government power in this country, no matter how well-intentioned, derives only from the state and federal constitutions. Government power cannot be exercised in conflict with these constitutions, even in a pandemic.

“In the weeks since American governments began taking emergency measures in response to the corona virus, the sovereign people of this country have graciously and peacefully endured a suspension of their civil liberties without precedent in our nation’s history. In some parts of the country, churches have been closed by government decree, although Texas is a welcome exception. Nearly everywhere, the First Amendment ‘right of the people to peaceably assemble’ has been suspended altogether. In many places, people are forbidden to leave their homes without a government-approved reason.Tens of millions can no longer earn a living because the government has declared their employers or their businesses ‘non-essential.’

“Any government that has made the grave decision to suspend the liberties of a free people during a health emergency should welcome the opportunity to demonstrate — both to its citizens and to the courts — that its chosen measures are absolutely necessary to combat a threat of overwhelming severity. The government should also be expected to demonstrate that less restrictive measures cannot adequately address the threat. Whether it is strict scrutiny or some other rigorous form of review, courts must identify and apply a legal standard by which to judge the constitutional validity of the government’s anti-virus actions. When the present crisis began, perhaps not enough was known about the virus to second-guess the worst-case projections motivating the lockdowns. As more becomes known about the threat and about the less restrictive, more targeted ways to respond to it, continued burdens on constitutional liberties may not survive judicial scrutiny.

“Ideally, these debates would play out in the public square, not in courtrooms. No court should relish being asked to question the judgment of government officials who were elected to make difficult decisions in times such as these. However, when constitutional rights are at stake, courts cannot automatically defer to the judgments of other branches of government. When properly called upon, the judicial branch must not shrink from its duty to require the government’s anti-virus orders to comply with the Constitution and the law, no matter the circumstances.”

That’s the whole decision.

And a most excellent one it was, too. That right there, folks, is exactly what I mean when I talk about our duty to defend the Constitution, rather than sitting back hoping it will defend us. Bravo to Justice Blacklock. We will NEVER have as many like him as we need, no matter how many there are out there.

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