Definitions and re-definitions

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Pondering one of the Left’s most effective, reliable, and oft-used tactics. The wind-up:

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and a group of 14 other attorneys general penned a letter to Target CEO Brian Cornell this week expressing concern about the store’s removal of some of its Pride products.

Target lit a media firestorm last month when it announced it pulled an unspecified number of products from its shelves after the company faced “confrontational behavior” at its stores as well as threats of violence on its customer hotline.

While Ellison and AGs from California, New York, Maryland and more offered support for Target’s intention to keep its workers safe, they questioned if Target gave in to threats.

“While we understand the basis for this action, we are also concerned it sends a message that those who engage in hateful and disruptive conduct can cause even large corporations to succumb to their bullying,” the AGs wrote, “and that they have the power to determine when LGBTQIA+ consumers will feel comfortable in Target stores or anywhere in society.”

And then ace relief pitcher Porretto takes the mound to hurl the (red) pill.

Of course, neither Target’s workers nor its (remaining) customers are in any danger. They have no objective reason to feel “unsafe,” regardless of their sexual and political alignments. That’s not the point. The point is to keep the LGBTQ “pride” pressure at the maximum.

The above shows us three important things about the Left:

  1. Agenda: Forcing LGBTQ “pride” crap upon normal Americans.
  2. Priority: Worth involving high law enforcement officials and veiled threats.
  3. Method: Redefining normal Americans’ reactions to “pride” marketing as bullying.

The agenda is plain enough: thrusts by the LGBTQ promoters, particularly the promotion of transgenderism, are very much in the Left’s interest. The priority takes a moment to discern; state attorneys-general are far more significant players in public affairs than most suppose, as the law enforcers of their states answer to them. The method, as it so often is, is the redefining of entirely legitimate consumer behavior – i.e., the choice not to shop at Target – as “bullying,” a prosecutable offense in most states. While it’s rather difficult to prosecute persons whose identities are unknown, that’s a mere detail. The attack rhetoric of the attorneys-general is what matters.

There’s a ball-under-the-shirt aspect to this. Those attorneys-general aren’t aiming at prosecuting consumers for not shopping at Target, an absurd undertaking. Their concern is Target’s response to the loss of consumer traffic. They want the LGBTQ “pride” campaign “out loud and proud,” represented conspicuously in as many retail establishments as possible. Forcing arrant abnormality on normal people requires a massive full-court press.

A-yup, and they never have been exactly shy about implementing it, either. That, along with their dogged, single-minded determination and their eagerness to get down into the mud and fight dirty, are all part of the reason they keep right on winning in their ongoing battle not just with us, but with objective reality itself.

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What’s up with Too-Old Joe?

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Decrepitude, confusion, bodily deterioration, senility.

We need a serious conversation about Joe Biden’s brain
Speaking to reporters Wednesday, President Biden falsely claimed that Russia is at war with Iraq. Russia is at war with Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is “clearly losing the war in Iraq,” Biden told the press pool, “losing the war at home. And he has become a bit of a pariah around the world.”

On Tuesday, during an unrelated fundraising event in Chevy Chase, Md., Biden made the exact same slip-up, mistaking Ukraine for Iraq.

“If anybody told you … that we’d be able to bring all of Europe together in the onslaught on Iraq and get NATO to be completely united,” the president said, “I think they would have told you it’s not likely.”

Although many journalists did a fine job this week highlighting the president’s apparent confusion regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, one can’t help but feel as if the news industry as a whole is avoiding the obvious follow-up question. Namely, “Is Biden OK?”

It’s not an unfair question, either, considering the Iraq/Ukraine gaffes were not an isolated series of incidents. They are simply the latest in a string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements from Biden in the much longer string of bizarre, confused and mostly unintelligible statements that have come to define the Biden presidency.

“We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean,” the president said this month during an address before the League of Conservation Voters.

There is no such plan, of course, to build a railroad from the Pacific coast to the Indian Ocean. According to his White House handlers, the president was referring to a plan that would connect railroads across the African continent, linking ports on the Atlantic Ocean to ports on the Indian Ocean. Atlantic, Pacific. Tomato, tomato.

On June 19, the president promised to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and water by — the year he won the presidency?

“I’ve committed to — by 2020, we will have conserved 30 percent of all the lands and waters the United States has jurisdiction over and simultaneously reduce emissions to blunt climate impact,” he said.

Following a June 16 speaking engagement at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, where Biden promoted gun control efforts, the president signed off by saying, “God save the Queen, man.”

The press pool, which observed and reported on the president’s address in real time, was left befuddled by his remarks, not least of all because Queen Elizabeth II is still dead, and her son is still king.

“Several of you have asked me why he might have said that,” the Dallas Morning News’s Todd Gillman said in his pool report. “I have no idea. Other poolers likewise have no idea.” The White House, for its part, claimed the president was merely sharing a joke with a member of the audience, a detail that apparently went unobserved by the entire White House press pool.

There’s also the fact that Biden keeps claiming his late son, Beau, died in Iraq. Beau did not die in Iraq. Beau died in Bethesda, Md., six years after returning from a tour of duty in Iraq.

During his 2022 State of the Union address [emphases added], Biden declared, “Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Iranian people.”

In July of that same year, during his visit to Israel, the president said, “We must do every, every day — continue to bear witness, to keep alive the truth and honor of the Holocaust.” He corrected himself later, replacing “honor” with “horror.”

Earlier, during an event near the White House, Biden inquired about the whereabouts of the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), whose death the president himself had commemorated in a public statement just weeks prior. The White House flag had been even flown at half-staff for two days following the congresswoman’s death.

Or how about when Biden accidentally endorsed regime change in Russia, when he said during an overseas trip in Poland: “For God’s sake, [Putin] cannot remain in power.” This one was a particular headache for Biden’s handlers.

One could go on, but you likely get the picture. The kindest thing that can be said of this president is that he has lost his fastball.

Even that is being much too generous with this aged, mentally-addled old grifter. In a more sane and sensible world, he’d have long since been hounded from the office he usurped by the enraged citizenry from whom he stole it. Pedo Joe, along with the rest of the Grey Man handlers responsible for keeping this flimsy charade creaking and wheezing along the road to Perdition.

To be (more than) fair to the lying old fraud, though, it’s not as if Gropey Grampy ever was what anyone would call the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway. That being the case, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish Too-Old Jaux on one of his relatively good days from Jaux at his mental worst.

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What if…?

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You’ll never in a million years guess who the author of this brilliantly-conceived and -written piece is. I mean, never.

The quaint conceit of imagining what would have happened if some important or unimportant event had settled itself differently has become so fashionable that I am encouraged to enter upon an absurd speculation. What would have happened if Lee had not won the Battle of Gettysburg?

Once a great victory is won it dominates not only the future but the past. All the chains of consequence clink out as if they never could stop. The hopes that were shattered, the passions that were quelled, the sacrifices that were ineffectual are all swept out of the land of reality. Still it may amuse an idle hour, and perhaps serve as a corrective to undue complacency, if at this moment in the twentieth century—so rich in assurance and prosperity, so calm and buoyant—we meditate for a spell upon the debt we owe to those Confederate soldiers who by a deathless feat of arms broke the Union front at Gettysburg and laid open a fair future to the world.

It always amuses historians and philosophers to pick out the tiny things, the sharp agate points, on which the ponderous balance of destiny turns; and certainly the details of the famous Confederate victory of Gettysburg furnish a fertile theme. There can be at this date no conceivable doubt that Pickett’s charge would have been defeated if Stuart with his encircling cavalry had not arrived in the rear of the Union position at the supreme moment. Stuart might have been arrested in his decisive swoop if any one of twenty commonplace incidents had occurred.

If, for instance, General Meade had organized his lines of communication with posts for defence against raids, or if he had used his cavalry to scout upon his flanks, he would have received a timely warning. If General Warren had only thought of sending a battalion to hold Little Round Top the rapid advance of the masses of Confederate cavalry must have been detected. If only President Davis’s letter to General Lee, captured by Captain Dahlgren, revealing the Confederacy plans had reached Meade a few hours earlier, he might have escaped Lee’s clutches.

Anything, we repeat, might have prevented Lee’s magnificent combinations from synchronizing and, if so, Pickett’s repulse was sure. Gettysburg would have been a great Northern victory. It might have well been a final victory. Lee might, indeed, have made a successful retreat from the field. The Confederacy, with its skilful generals and fierce armies, might have another year, or even two, but once defeated decisively at Gettysburg, its doom was inevitable. The fall of Vicksburg, which happened only two days after Lee’s immortal triumph, would in itself by opening the Mississippi to the river fleets of the Union, have cut the Secessionist States almost in half. Without wishing to dogmatize, we feel we are on solid ground in saying that the Southern States could not have survived the loss of a great battle in Pennsylvania and the almost simultaneous bursting open of the Mississippi

However, all went well. Once again by the narrowest of margins the compulsive pinch of military genius and soldierly valor produced a perfect result. The panic which engulfed the whole left of Meade’s massive army has never been made a reproach against the Yankee troops. Everyone knows they were stout fellows. But defeat is defeat, and rout is ruin. Three days only were required after the cannon at Gettysburg had ceased to thunder before General Lee fixed his headquarters in Washington. We need not here dwell upon the ludicrous features of the hurried flight to New York of all the politicians, place hunters, contractors, sentimentalists and their retinues, which was so successfully accomplished. It is more agreeable to remember how Lincoln, “greatly falling with a falling State,” preserved the poise and dignity of a nation. Never did his rugged yet sublime common sense render a finer service to his countrymen. He was never greater than in the hour of fatal defeat.

But, of course, there is no doubt whatever that the mere military victory which Lee gained at Gettysburg would not by itself have altered the history of the world. The loss of Washington would not have affected the immense numerical preponderance of the Union States. The advanced situation of their capital and its fall would have exposed them to a grave injury, would no doubt have considerably prolonged the war; but standing by itself this military episode, dazzling though it may be, could not have prevented the ultimate victory of the North. It is in the political sphere that we have to look to find the explanation of the triumphs begun upon the battlefield.

Curiously enough, Lee furnishes an almost unique example of a regular and professional soldier who achieved the highest excellence both as a general and as a statesman. His ascendancy throughout the Confederate States on the morrow of his Gettysburg victory threw Jefferson Davis and his civil government irresistibly, indeed almost unconsciously, into the shade. The beloved and victorious commander, arriving in the capital of his mighty antagonists, found there the title deeds which enabled him to pronounce the grand decrees of peace. Thus it happened that the guns of Gettysburg fired virtually the last shots in the American Civil War.

…If Lee after his triumphal entry into Washington had merely been the soldier, his achievements would have ended on the battlefield. It was his august declaration that the victorious Confederacy would pursue no policy towards the African negroes, which was not in harmony with the moral conceptions of Western Europe, that opened the high roads along which we are now marching so prosperously.

But even this famous gesture might have failed if it had not been caught up and implemented by the practical genius and trained parliamentary aptitudes of Gladstone. There is practically no doubt at this stage that the basic principle upon which the colour question in the Southern States of America has been so happily settled owed its origin mainly to Gladstonian ingenuity and to the long statecraft of Britain in dealing with alien and more primitive populations. There was not only the need to declare the new fundamental relationship between master and servant, but the creation for the liberated slaves of institutions suited to their own cultural development and capable of affording them a different yet honourable status in a common wealth, destined eventually to become almost world-wide.

Let us only think what would have happened supposing the liberation of the slaves had at that time been followed immediately by some idiotic assertion of racial equality, and even by attempts to graft white democratic institutions upon the simple, gifted African race belonging to a much earlier chapter in human history. We might have seen the whole of the Southern States invaded by gangs of carpet-bagging politicians exploiting the ignorant and untutored coloured vote against the white inhabitants and bringing the time-honoured forms of parliamentary government into unmerited disrepute. We might have seen the sorry farce of black legislatures attempting to govern their former masters. Upon the rebound from this there must inevitably have been a strong reassertion of local white supremacy. By one device or another the franchises accorded to the negroes would have been taken from them. The constitutional principles of the Republic would have been proclaimed, only to be evaded or subverted; and many a warm-hearted philanthropist would have found his sojourn in the South no better than “A Fool’s Errand.”

Read on to find out who the author of this sagaciously prescient essay is, then go grab a look at the fascinating backstory of how it came to be written in the first place, including a piercing prefatory quote from no lesser a light than Shelby Foote his own self. From the previously mentioned backstory article, a shimmering vision of a nascent Utopia is proposed, in stark juxtaposition with something a good deal…less felicitous, shall we say.

The reader is invited to see, from that surprisingly utopian perspective, our own world as both dystopian and implausible. The narrator mentions Jan Bloch’s once-famous book, The Future of War, which predicted with what proved remarkably accurate military detail the devastation that would attend war between major European states. But Bloch drew from this prediction the conclusion that such a war would never happen. (The author) asks: Suppose it had? A prostrate Europe might have descended into depression, unemployment, Bolshevism and fascism. Why, today in Britain the income tax might even be 25%! (In actuality, of course, all those things happened.)

Parenthetical aside in the penultimate sentence courtesy of moi, so as to preserve the secret of our mystery-author’s identity and thereby avert spoiling the surprise for you folks.

Taken for all in all, the whole thing is dispiriting enough to call to mind the wise words of John Greenleaf Whittier from his “Maud Muller” pome:

Of all sad words of tongue and pen
The saddest are these, “It might have been.”

Le sigh. Ah well, as I said yesterday, it all went the way it went—and so, here we all are. Whether that’s for better or for worse, I leave to the reader to determine.

Be sure to read both these fine works in their entirety, and in the order I linked ‘em. I won’t go quite so far as to say you’ll enjoy them, necessarily; in fact, parts of the first piece are almost painful to read, for reasons which I’ll refrain from going into now because spoilers again, but which will quickly become apparent. That said, both are thought-provoking and conversation-inspiring enough that I think you’ll find them very rewarding nonetheless.

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Pickett’s Charge

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Borepatch reposts an oldie but goodie on the swift and sudden ebbing of the Confederate High Tide.

Robert E. Lee is without doubt one of the greatest generals these shores have ever seen – arguably the greatest of all. And so I’ve always been mystified why he ordered General George Pickett to lead 12,500 of the South’s finest troops across nearly a mile of open ground against fortified Union lines, that July 3 afternoon so long ago.

The lesson of Fredricksburg from the previous year should have told him what to expect. General Longstreet had learned that lesson, and tried unsuccessfully to persuade his commander to call off the assault. Overcome with emotion – a premonition of slaughter, really – he couldn’t even speak the final order to advance, but merely nodded assent to Pickett’s request to charge. When the stragglers returned to their lines, General Lee (worried that the Yankees might charge to follow up their success) asked Pickett to rally his Division. Pickett replied, General Lee, I have no Division.

The War Between The States (“Civil War” to Yankees) was a brutal affair, where the weaponry had advanced faster than the tactics. It remains to this day the bloodiest conflict in the nation’s history, with more casualties than any other war we’ve fought. When you consider how much the population has grown since the mid-nineteenth century, it was even worse.

The psychological scars of that war were to linger for a generation or more. The sense of loss – needless loss – is perhaps summed up by Pickett’s Charge. William Faulkner captured this sense in Intruder In The Dust:

For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances…

Pickett never forgave Lee. Asked many years later why the charge failed, he replied that he thought that the Yankees had something to do with the outcome. He might have said that Lee had, too.

A few notable quotes from some of the men who were there:

I think that this is the strongest position on which to fight a battle that I ever saw.
—Winfield Scott Hancock, surveying his position on Cemetery Ridge

It is my opinion that no 15,000 men ever arrayed for battle can take that position.
—James Longstreet to Robert E. Lee, surveying Hancock’s position

This is a desperate thing to attempt.
—Richard Garnett to Lewis Armistead, prior to Pickett’s Charge

The fault is entirely my own.
—Robert E. Lee to George Pickett, after the Charge.

Almost to a man, all of Lee’s most reliable and trusted subordinates, foremost among them the eminently competent and formidable GEN Longstreet, were shocked and horrified at Lee’s uncharacteristic folly in ordering Pickett’s division to attack Hancock’s essentially unassailable position in the Union center atop Cemetery Ridge.

Having spent most of my “adult” (HA!) life intently studying Civil War history, reading everything I could get my hot little hands on from the time I was about fifteen or so, there’s another contributing factor that I consider probably the overriding one: CSA cavalry commander JEB Stuart’s ill-advised ride all the way around Meade’s army, a blunder driven by Stuart’s personal vanity which left Lee blind as to the enemy’s numbers, dispositions, and intentions and thus figured tremendously in the bitter, costly outcome.

At this point (ie, June 28th—M), Stuart had crossed the Potomac and uncovered the enemy’s movements (although unbeknownst to him, his courier had not reached Lee). He had captured a variety of goods, destroyed enemy property, and generally made a nuisance of himself. Yet all of this came at a cost. He was now approximately eighty miles southeast of the Confederate army, and the Federal army stood between him and Lee. He had yet to link up with Richard Ewell’s corps as his orders dictated. Worse, his ability to communicate with Lee was circuitous and precarious at best. Robert E. Lee, in turn, was “surprised and disturbed” to learn on June 27th that Stuart and his troopers were still in Virginia. Lee ordered scouts to try and locate his lost general. There was a growing, uneasy disconnect between Lee and his cavalry commander.

Jeb Stuart having crossed the Potomac, he found himself at a crossroads. Instead of turning northwest to attempt to unite with Lee and Ewell, he decided to continue his raid and turn east. Moving to Rockville, a Washington D.C. suburb, Stuart captured 125 Union supply wagons, loaded with food, hay, bread, bacon crackers and more. Thinking in bigger terms, Stuart contemplated then dismissed the possibility of striking Washington itself. Having by now captured nearly 400 Union prisoners up to this point, Stuart took some time to parole them, then plodded northward with his newly captured wagon train throughout the rest of the 28th and 29th. The splashier his raid, the further away Brandy Station seemed.

On the 29th, while his men cut telegraph wires and tore up the tracks of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Stuart discovered that the enemy was in Frederick, Maryland. The move seems to have jolted Stuart, who realized the sudden importance of uniting with Lee “to acquaint the commanding general with the nature of the enemy’s movements…” Finally, Stuart recognized just how serious the Union movements were, and just how imperative his presence with the Army of Northern Virginia had become.

By now, Stuart was actively searching to unite with Ewell, but didn’t know where to find him. Believing Ewell to be in Carlisle, Stuart set off for that town, only to discover that it was occupied not by Ewell but instead 2,400 Union militiamen. Threatening to shell the town if the Yankees didn’t surrender, “shell away and be damned!” came the reply. So shell away Stuart did, opening fire on the town. The Confederates were so exhausted that many of the troops slept through the bombardment.

Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee, only thirty miles away, remained unsure of Stuart’s whereabouts. Inquiries to subordinates brought only disappointment. An aide overheard Lee grumble that “Gen’l Stuart has not complied with his instructions.” Finally, one of Stuart’s riders located Ewell’s corps in Gettysburg, and returned to Stuart with orders to march for the town. This was the first communication that Stuart or Lee’s army had with one another since June 25. In that time, the Army of Northern Virginia had blindly moved north and found itself unwittingly trapped in an engagement at Gettysburg.

In the morning hours of July 2nd, Jeb Stuart made his way to General Lee. “Well, General Stuart,” Lee said simply, “you are here at last.” However muted, the rebuke no doubt stung. Stuart and Lee’s conversation was, according to an aide, “painful beyond description.”

Muted, perhaps, but coming from the quiet, calm, gentle-spoken Lee amounted to an extremely sharp condemnation indeed—a fact with which Stuart was all too well acquainted.

That said, Lee’s crushing defeat on the third day of battle at Gettysburg, capped off by the pointless disaster of Pickett’s Charge, was in fact brought about by numerous conditions and precipitating events and is not fairly attributable to any single cause, man, or decision: among those, the loss of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville in May looms especially large.

In the end, though, it all went the way it went. Who can say, really, even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight? Much as I hate to do it, I just gotta include Mike Walsh’s paean to GEN US Grant here, dang his beady little eyes. But with a YUUUGE caveat, which will be revealed anon.

These first few days of July are of importance to every real American. Not simply because the Declaration of Independence was unanimously adopted by the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, the document in which the new United States of America proclaimed its irrevocable break with Great Britain. We rightly celebrate that momentous event in world history tomorrow, the Fourth of July, with fireworks and hot dogs and perhaps even a renewed sense of patriotism in these troubled times when the foundations of our country are under relentless attack from the cultural sappers of the universities all the way to the top of our political system, headed by a senile old man who can only remember the grudges he bears toward the country he now ostensibly leads, and for which he has no love.

Of equal importance in our history, however, are the two epic battles fought during the same period in 1863, during the Civil War. Today is the third day of Gettysburg, the day when Pickett’s Charge spelled the end of southern dash in the face of the north’s overwhelming pluck and endurance, a mad suicidal race across a open field raked by Springfield rifles and twelve-pounder “Napoleons” cannon fire. It was the southern commander Robert E. Lee’s greatest blunder of the war, ending his brief invasion of the north and helping to seal the South’s ultimate defeat.

“Overwhelming pluck and endurance”? Well, okay, sure. But of far greater importance was the North’s overwhelming superiority in materiel, manufacturing, and able-bodied males of fighting age—advantages that would prove to be insuperable, and decisive.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, Ulysses S. Grant was about to cement his place in military history by concluding his nearly two-month long siege of the formidable Confederate fortress of Vicksburg. The town sat high above the Mississippi River on the eastern bluffs, its artillery commanding the mighty river in both directions. Behind it, to the east, were the forces of the breakaway Confederate state of Mississippi itself. The task looked impossible. But Grant was already an experienced hand at river warfare, having proved his mettle early with the victories at Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, working in tandem with the gunboats of flag officer Andrew Foote.

With his victories at Shiloh in 1862, which put the Tennessee River in Union hands, and at Vicksburg, Grant had twice bisected the Confederacy. It was the “Anaconda” strategy of the retired General of the Army, Winfield Scott, made flesh. Then, in November, Grant marched east and broke the stalemate at Chattanooga, leaving Georgia wide open for invasion and, ultimately, Sherman’s march to the sea. Despite General George Meade’s repulse of Lee at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln’s choice for a new commander of all the Union forces was clear: in March of 1864, Lincoln summoned Grant to Washington and named him general-in-chief of the Union forces. The moment had met its man.

That Grant was the greatest American of all time is indisputable.

Yeah, NO. Grant’s claim to greatness was never really based upon his competence as a general, his tactical acumen, or his inborn adroitness as a leader of men, but on bulldog stubbornness and pugnacity; unswerving determination; and a willingness to pour out the lifeblood of the soldiers under his command like water over desert sands in the pursuit of ultimate victory. His military success wasn’t so much a matter of the happy marriage of talent to experience, then, but more of personality and deeply-ingrained habits of mind.

Grant, the “greatest American of all time”? Oh puh-LEEZE, Mike. Over men like Jefferson, Washington, Adams, then? Over Patton, Nathanael Greene, Audie Murphy? Claire Chennault, Chuck Yeager? Over the indomitable Samuel Whittemore, even? I got no real gripe with the man, I really don’t, even as what for many years I’ve proudly referred to as an Unreconstructed Southron I don’t. But really, now: with a list of names like those as fellow contenders for the title, Grant wasn’t even “indisputably” the greatest American soldier of all time.

Update! Finally finished reading Walsh’s piece, after walking away in frustration and pique at the preposterous remark I just dispensed with above, and I must say I have no quibble at all with the closer:

Grant was there for his country in its hour of need. Now that a new, even deadlier threat has emerged thanks to the neo-Marxist Left that considers our entire country illegitimate, who will take his place? Only one thing is certain: he has to crush them as mercilessly as Grant crushed the South, except this time there can be no magnanimity, only unconditional surrender.

Amen to that, buddy, with big ol’ bells and a pretty bow on top.

Reading list update! Having mentioned being a life-long Civil War history buff, I feel compelled to commend to your gracious attention the works of the foremost writer and scholar on the topic: the truly remarkable Shelby Foote, in particular his spellbinding, magnificent magnum opus The Civil War: A Narrative.

I’ve read ‘em all; from Bruce Catton to Samuel Mitcham to you name it, I probably have it in the rickety ol’ bookshelf. Foote stands head and shoulders above them all, no question; for something that most would probably consider a dull, dry, overchewed subject at this point, Foote’s masterful writing chops; his insight; his encompassing grasp of the issues, the people, the times, and the battles themselves are simply beyond compare.

He truly brings the historical record to flesh and blood life for the contemporary reader; even if you have little interest in the subject, you’ll find this masterpiece impossible to put down. And even if you consider yourself quite knowledgable already about this pivotal event in American history, I guarantee you’ll learn something you never knew about before from the Foote books. Yes, they really are that good. This 10-minute vidya discourse on Pickett’s Charge, G-burg in general, and the present-day political wrangling over the Confederate Battle Flag ought to tell you all you’ll ever need to know about the man’s ready, marrow-deep knowledge of all things Civil War.

I decided long ago that if somehow I was required to get rid of all my books except one, I’d keep Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative. Yes, it’s a three-volume set, but if I wasn’t allowed some sort of consideration for that I’d say to hell with it, just go ahead and kill me now then.

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Best of

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An Independence Day compendium.

A Fundamentally Important Question for Independence Day
It will determine whether we survive as a free people.

As the Fourth of July fast approaches and we consider the many alternatives available for recreation and entertainment, we should pause to ponder an important question tied closely to the deeper meaning of the day.

The question is deceptively simple, but it goes to the heart of our relationship with government and every significant policy issue that confronts us. And the answer to the question will determine whether we survive as a free people.

The question to ponder on Independence Day is, simply: Where do our rights come from?

That is indeed the Question of Questions, the most critical query of them all. It is exactly what distinguished the United States as Founded from the operational understanding which had held throughout Whypeepuh Civilization™ right up until the Founding Fathers stood the previous arrangement on its head with the barest handful of almighty words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Bold mine, of course, and wholly dispositive. It is to our great discredit that those sacred words are no longer drilled into the empty skulls of every schoolkid from early on, forcefully and verbatim. This lamentable gap in their education is probably the single greatest reason why we are where we are—the principal signpost demarcating the Progressivist victory. It’s been a long, slow degenerative process that began with guess who? Three only, first two don’t count.

With their property and person protected by a Constitution enacted to secure the natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, the creative genius of a free American people produced unparalleled progress and prosperity.

However, as the twentieth century unfolded, certain politicians and intellectuals – with Woodrow Wilson the embodiment of both – thought that the principles of natural rights, individual liberty, and law-limited government embodied in the Declaration and Constitution were outdated relics of a simpler agricultural past that dangerously undercut to ability of the government to deal effectively with the complex challenges of industrialization and urbanization that confronted the nation in the new century.

Wilson and others believed that they had more “progressive” ideas for the updated and radically altered form of government they thought America needed. With the American economy and society becoming more and more complex, the progressives argued that founding assumptions about popular sovereignty and self-government needed to be rethought and the role of the people in the functioning of their government narrowed significantly.

For government to function efficiently in the “new republic” of the progressives, controlling authority needed to be consolidated in the executive branch where it would be exercised by credentialled technocrats who, insulated from the pressures of democratic accountability, would be free to use their expertise to regulate the affairs of Americans and modify private sector arrangements as needed to produce the results desired by the regulators. So was born the administrative state.

To justify and facilitate this massive anti-democratic concentration of power in the executive branch bureaucracy, progressives sought, and still seek, to discredit the concept of natural rights and replace it with the age-old authoritarian concept of malleable rights that are created by the government and then distributed and redistributed by the government according to its evolving policies and the needs of its supportive constituencies. And so were spawned the abuses of the administrative state.

Indeed so. It’s long been my sincere belief that Woodrow Wilson, curse his black soul, was the most loathsome, insidious threat to America As Founded ever to befoul the White House with his noxious presence.

Now, on to our next Best Of candidate.

Never Forget How Covid Controls Corrupted Independence Day

Fret not, James, I for one have absolutely no intention of ever doing so.

America was founded by rowdy folks who enjoyed nothing better than applying tar and feathers to British tax collectors. For a couple centuries, Independence Day was a day for raising a ruckus with firecrackers and plenty of other friendly detonations.

But in recent times, the Fourth of July has been downgraded to simply another victory lap for our political masters. We are still permitted to celebrate Independence Day but unfortunately, federal, state, and local governments routinely trample the rights that the Founding Fathers sought to make sacrosanct.

The Fourth of July in Washington has been going downhill ever since 9/11. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson scratched out the word “subjects” and replaced it with “citizens.” But on Independence Day 2003, I wondered whether that had been an editing error. I saw long lines of people waiting outside government checkpoints around the National Mall, kowtowing for permission to celebrate independence according to the latest edicts. Police and security agents continue to have a far heavier holiday presence in Washington and many other places than in earlier times.

How many Americans recall that the Fourth of July originally consecrated independence achieved thanks to resistance to a corrupt, oppressive regime? In 2018, Facebook, auditioning for a Federal Censorship Medal of Honor, deleted a Texas newspaper’s reposting of a portion of the Declaration of Independence because it went against Facebook standards on hate speech. Facebook used the same standard to suppress photos of the Branch Davidian home in flames after the FBI tank assault.

In 2019, when President Trump ordered the Pentagon to bring out of mothballs some World War II-era Sherman tanks, the media was indignant. The Washington Post condemned Trump’s “gaudy display of military hardware that is more in keeping with a banana republic than the world’s oldest democracy.” But the real problem was not the military relics. It was exalting government power and politicians on a day meant to celebrate individual liberty.

In 2020, politicians in most areas effectively canceled Independence Day. Governors and mayors had quickly imposed “stay at home” orders restricting 300 million people after the Covid pandemic erupted. Most of the media ignored the fact that Independence Day occurred under the most dictatorial restrictions of the modern era. Crowds were banned from watching fireworks that governments often chose not to ignite.

The Maryland Office of Tourism offered residents consolation prizes – the opportunity to watch a “virtual pet parade” online or see a “virtual Independence Day Tour” of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Could Independence Day ever become more servile? “Hold my beer,” announced Team Biden.

And then Faux Jaux proceeded to get busy showing us all how it’s DONE. More rich, buttery goodness, same tasty source.

Independence Day is a time to recall the past crimes of officialdom. The Founding Fathers carved the First Amendment to ensure freedom of the press after the crown’s appointees muzzled criticism of King George’s regime. The Second Amendment, recognizing the right to keep and bear arms, was spurred by British troops seeking to seize firearms at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts. The Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches because British agents with general warrants would ransack any colonist’s house. The Fifth Amendment’s eminent domain provision was written after British agents claimed a right to seize without compensation any pine tree in New England for British navy ship masts.

But the battles our forefathers fought to secure our rights have long since been forgotten amidst a deluge of abuses at the federal, state and local government level. There are good reasons why barely 20 percent of Americans trust the federal government nowadays.

Americans should take their Fourth of July to higher ground. What matters is not what politicians say on any given day but the principles and values by which Americans live. Regardless of how often government agents violate the Constitution, citizens retain all the rights for which our forefathers fought.

Not if they aren’t willing to fight to defend them, they won’t—really, truly, literally fight. As in for-real, honest-to-Jeebus, all-caps WAR-type stuff. As the incomparable Confederate cavalry officer Bedford Forrest so memorably opined: war means fighting, and fighting means killing. Key quote: When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty. ‘Nuff said.

For me, then, the pivotal question was never whether Real Americans are prepared to die for their freedom, but whether they’re prepared to kill for it.

Our final chapter in this Best Of collection comes from Bruce Thornton.

Patriotism Under Siege
But we still have much to celebrate this Fourth of July.

This year’s Fourth of July arrives at a time of doubt and even disdain for our nation’s birth and foundational principles. For most of our history this day has celebrated the bold, epochal Declaration of Independence that staked a claim to self-government and freedom from the world’s most powerful empire. The nation that followed after eight years of war went on to become, and still is, the freest, most prosperous, and, for all its all-too-human betrayals of those principles, the most generous great power in all of history.

The heart of our affection does not come from blood and soil, but from truly revolutionary ideals expressed in the Declaration’s preamble: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The new nation was created to “secure these rights,” not to bestow or create them, and it “derives [its] just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Such obvious truths, however, have been for decades contested by some of our country’s most privileged beneficiaries, and the patriotism that expresses our country’s goodness disparaged and mocked. In its place a fashionable oikophobia ––the hatred of one’s country, principles, virtues, history, and the fellow citizens who still believe in our civic ideals and their goodness––preens morally and embraces the impossible utopias that such oikophobes promote.

Patriotism, the beating heart of our “unum” that binds the “pluribus,” is besieged at a time when we face dangerous developments like enormous debt, open borders, and assaults on our Constitutional order and Bill of Rights at home, and abroad totalitarian rivals “filled with passionate intensity” to supplant our global power, and diminish our freedom.

This sensibility was widespread among intellectuals, causing George Orwell to observe in 1940 that “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.” Worse, they were “trying to spread an outlook that (is) sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.”

Obviously, these attitudes affected morale during the interwar years and contributed to the popularity of appeasement, as Winston Churchill said in 1933: “Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals…But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias?”

Orwell’s and Churchill’s evaluations have turned out to be some of the best descriptions of our own country’s decades of anti-patriotic intellectuals, writers, and professors. And just as in England, Marxism has been the virus that has spread this dangerous fashion, especially among the so-called “woke.” Starting in the Twenties, variations of Marxist collectivism and anti-nationalism began to permeate American culture both high and low. The reason is obvious: The United States’ freedom, individualism, and entrepreneurial genius are all diametrically opposed to Marx’s “scientific history,” and collectivism’s bloody failures.

That’s just about the size of it, yeah. The battle lines couldn’t possibly be more clearly drawn, the enemies of freedom now out in the open and exposed—loud, proud, and all too obvious—the stakes for all of us of the highest imaginable sort. Which raises another of those age-old questions that have confronted Mankind since at least the glorious American Revolution, perhaps before: Will there be liberty, or will there be tyranny? There is no third option here, no honorable compromise that isn’t tantamount to defeat and surrender. Our Founding Fathers knew it; contemporary Americans urgently need to reacquaint themselves with the cold, hard facts before it’s too late, and we are well, truly, and forever lost.

All the above-excerpted essays are worth reading in full.

Update! if y’all will forgive the self-indulgence, it might be a good time to remind everyone of my own Independence Day essay, posted over at the Eyrie yesterday. Worth a look too, if I do say so myself.

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One for the Wirecutter

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That would be OG blogger Ken Lane, who posted up a link to one of the better Nashville songwriters of this or any other era, the peerless Chris Stapleton.

A damned fine singer too, is our Mr Stapleton. Funny thing about him, he’s a dedicated player of a tragically overlooked guitar, the Fender Jazzmaster. As it happens, my first gee-tar was a 64 Jazzmaster, an extremely high-value axe nowadays (backstory here). Stapleton, of course, was also a founding member of contemporary-bluegrass titans The Steeldrivers, leading us into a bonus CT rip.

Man, if those flawless vocal harmonies don’t raise the chilblains on the back of your neck, I just don’t know how I can possibly be of any help to ya. More on CT’s, shall we say, eccentric gear preferences:

Chris Stapleton’s primary electric guitar for his solo career has been the Fender Jazzmaster. Unlike many country players, who are sworn to the twang and aggression of the Fender Telecaster, Chris has a real soft spot for this Fender timeless classic, telling Rolling Stone that he bought his first one in the mid-2000s. It was a 1962 Jazzmaster reissue in, of all colors, ocean turquoise, far from the elegant sunbursts and denim of most country guitarists. On the color, Stapleton said “It wasn’t a color I looked at and was going, “Oh man, I need that surf guitar!” But I played it and, like with a car, you can meld with things: This is my guitar. That’s how that happened. There is great comfort in knowing what your rig is and then you don’t have to fool with it anymore.”

Fender launched the Jazzmaster in 1958, intending it to be an upmarket version of the Stratocaster, not unlike Gibson’s delineation of their Custom and Standard ranges around the same time. The Jazzmaster, as its name suggests, was marketed at jazz guitarists of the era. However, it was quickly adopted by surf rock guitar players in the early 1960s who highly valued its reduced sustain and unique resonance when compared to other Fender models.

The Jazzmaster sets itself apart from other Fender guitars in several ways. One is its distinctively large body, far bigger and heavier than those of the Stratocaster, Telecaster, or even the similar silhouette of the Jaguar. The Jazzmaster also boasts large, white “soapbar” pickups that bear a striking resemblance to the Gibson P90. This similarity is purely cosmetic, however, with magnetic pole pieces on the Fender soapbar pickup as opposed to the P90’s magnets beneath the coil. The Jazzmaster coil is wound flat and wide, more so than that of the P90, and far more than any other Fender pickup.

Stapleton also developed a close working relationship with Fender, culminating in the Chris Stapleton Signature Model Princeton (!!) amp.

He actually bought his first 1962 Princeton in Ohio during a writing session with Peter Frampton. Of the original Princeton, he said “I use that amp still. That amp was a studio amp of mine for many years before I got hold of another one because I thought I should probably buy another one”.

The 1962 Princeton was initially marketed as a student amplifier, as its diminutive size and lower output would indicate. However, plenty of gigging musicians worked out that the Princeton’s smaller frame meant it could attain saturation and overdrive at lower volumes than many of its competitors. Rock, blues, and country players were particularly enamored of its rich, saturated drive tone as well as the sparkling cleans for which Fender amps are famous.

Chris Stapleton’s signature Princeton was built to the man’s own specifications. The story of this amp’s birth seems deceptively simple. Stapleton told Billboard that “this was borne out of me calling Fender up [and asking them] to build this amp for me…I wanted a new amp that looked like the old amp and worked like the old amp, and that didn’t exist. So we called Fender, and very quickly the conversation escalated to doing something like this”.

The hand-wired Chris Stapleton signature amp is a twelve-watt combo with attractively simple controls, featuring Fender Vintage Blue tone caps, Schumacher transformers, and an output tube-biased tremolo circuit. Its cabinet is made from solid pine, covered with textured brown vinyl. Like the bourbon-barrel Blues Junior, its handle is brown leather, and its dark brown faceplate matches the darker brown control knobs. Two 12AX7 preamp tubes, two 6V6 power tubes, and a single 5Y3 rectifier tube power its Eminence 12” Special Design CS speaker. It also has a built-in tremolo effect.

Never have played a brown Princeton—in fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever even seen one before. I DO know the later (mid-late 60s, pre CBS) blackface Princetons are sweet-sounding little amps, although a bit on the, umm, quiet side to suit my taste.

Eyrie up!

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Monday’s Substack offering, Empire, falling, is now live and kickin’ in its stall. It’s the dreaded Independence Day musing I mentioned earlier today, including a wee mite of digression into ancient CF history which is bound to edify and delight you CF Lifers who were hanging out at this hogwallow back then. To wit:

Fact is, it really is difficult to know where we are in America today. As you CF Lifers will recall, this blog was born in the immediate wake of the 9/11/01 atrocities; the domain name was registered on 9/14, if I remember right. Being a complete newcomer to this whole “blogging” phenomenon, I had no clue about the dominant bloggerware systems back then—GreyMatter, Moveable Type, etc. No clue? Hell, I didn’t even know such things existed in those earliest days.

So I whipped up a design for this crazy new trip I was embarking on over the next two days; Adobe GoLive (version 4? Or 5, maybe?) was my WYSIWYG web-design weapon of choice in those Aulden Thymes. The very first CF posts went up on 9/16/01. I had screenshots of that first effort stored on one of my old Macs, but alas, they’re gone with the wind now.

The one thing I know for sure: the America we lived in then bore little, if any, resemblance to the one we’re living in today. It’s incredible to realize just how drastically the US has changed in such a relatively short span of time. In fact, I doubt that there’s been any other twenty year span that DID see such radical, sweeping change to both the nation and its culture in our long history, with the Civil War v1.0/Reconstruction era being a possible exception.

Amazingly, it ain’t all gloomy and doomy, even managing to conclude on an at least somewhat optimistic note. You know what you must do, Glasshoppa.

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Independence Day placeholder post

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As I’ve been repeating for lo, these last several years, in my opinion July 4th should properly be a national day of mourning, not of celebration. But honestly, I can’t help but be of two minds (at least) on that. Yes, we have utterly failed in our duty to uphold the documents of America’s Founding, the Declaration and the Constitution. That being the case, however, it does NOT necessarily follow that the ideals, the principles, the bedrock definitional values of the Founding are not themselves worth celebrating, each and every year from now until Doomsday. Yes, even when we have a senile, corrupt old grifter roosting in the Oval Office.

So over the last cpl-three days I’ve been engaged in an internal tug of war over which direction I should take with this year’s Independence Day offering, both here and over at the Eyrie—which, in the usual run of things, I would’ve already finished by now.

So whilst we’re all waiting for me to figure out whether I want to be the gloomiest of all possible Guses this year, as has become my habit, or to ignore certain current, ugly realities in favor of a less topical post extolling certain eternal verities everyone here should be quite familiar with by now—never wasted time, IMHO—enjoy this wonderfully engaging and inspirational scene from what I always thought was a wildly underrated movie.

And yes, of COURSE I have an up-close-and-personal story involving Moscow On The Hudson, in particular a certain popular NYC news anchor who makes a brief cameo appearance therein. Maybe I’ll just say heck with it all and write about that.

We Don’t Talk About This

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Coleman Hughes has a YouTube channel which presents his hour-plus interviews on a variety of social topics. One episode was a discussion with Charles Murray on intelligence and the social consequences of different average IQs of the different races.

Hughes repeatedly said that it would poison the social climate if we came out and acknowledged that blacks are less intelligent than whites.

It should be noted that while Coleman Hughes comes off as intelligent, better informed than most on the issues he discusses (admittedly a low bar), and willing to listen to contrary opinions, in every interview he brings up his experience as a black man in America and his concerns for blacks as a group. He seldom brings up what’s best for the US and Americans as a whole; I don’t recall him doing so at all but may simply have missed it.

So, he claims that it would “poison the social climate” to admit that blacks (and hispanics) are on average less intelligent than Whites and East Asians. He doesn’t deny that it’s true. He simply thinks that it should not be talked about.

The delta has many real-world consequences, from income levels to incarceration rates. These have been discussed in many places, including many of Murray’s books. He thoroughly documents his research and his method for coming up with the statistics on which he bases his conclusions. You can reasonably question the validity of the social sciences and their use of statistics, but to the extent that you accept them, Murray’s work is solid.

Rather than rehash the work and the numbers, let’s simply state that the typical black man in America is less intelligent than average. He has less education on his record, is less likely to have gotten education or training which leads to a well-paying job, has a lower income than average, is more likely to be involved in violent crime, and is more likely to have spent time in jail or prison. Murray claims that most of the discrepancy in outcomes derives from his lower intelligence.

Coleman Hughes doesn’t want the lower average intelligence to be discussed because it would poison the social climate.

But that’s exactly what we’re getting when we refuse to talk about it. There are big differences between the races in the social outcomes listed above. If it’s not because of intelligence (or we can’t admit that it’s because of intelligence) then there has to be some other cause.

In the absence of any other (acceptable) explanation, our society has settled on systemic racism as the cause.

No matter what hiring quotas and black-only scholarships and all the other special set-asides, blacks don’t do as well educationally or economically. That’s why, no matter how far society bends over to compensate for the dread Systemic Racism, it’s never enough. (One of the reasons. The other is that it’s a very profitable grift and the leeches will never voluntarily let go.)

Rather than hush up the regrettable difference in population intelligence, we need to acknowledge it, face it head-on, and work out ways for society to give the best opportunity for everyone to work with what they have. Ending the idiocy of pushing all teens into college and instead providing vocational training for those not suited for college is an obvious step. This will have a disparate effect on blacks (and hispanics) but who cares? We can set someone up to succeed as an auto mechanic rather than fail as a college graduate with a useless degree and a pile of college loans.

It won’t happen, of course. Facing the truth might hurt feelings (and cut off the gravy train). Instead, we’ll keep on as we are, building resentment on both sides because we won’t address the elephant in the room.

Reality is the thing which won’t go away, even when you refuse to talk about it.

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Pride goeth

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Hrm, let me see now—goeth BEFORE something or other, wasn’t it? Something like that, I think, can’t recall just what.

LGBT groups are widely supported by every power center in our society. Major banks, corporations, globalist think-tanks and governments all inject incredible amounts of funding into woke projects. Rebels don’t get support from the establishment power structure, only useful idiots do. And this time the establishment is using leftist activist idiots to target the western world with the same tactics it has applied against other nations.

But how does Pride really undermine our civilization?

First, the basic mantra of Pride is…well…pride. Pride is a failing and a weakness, not a virtue. I’m not sure why someone should have any pride in their sexual proclivities. Being gay does not make you special. It makes you a minority, but it’s not an accomplishment that deserves a parade or an entire month on the calendar. The saying “Pride comes before the fall” exists for a reason; self aggrandizement based on zero accomplishment and delusions of entitlement lead to a path of self destruction.

Second, Pride activists are rebels without a cause. There are no rights under the law in the west that gay and trans people don’t have. Zero. Zip. Zilch. In other words, they must now create reasons to rebel from thin air. So, what is all the whining and rage about? What do these revolutionaries do after they have already been given equal rights? As far as I can tell, the LGBT+infinity movement is now dedicated to targeting and indoctrinating (grooming) children.

Nearly every law recently passed in conservative states dealing with LGBT issues specifically protects children from ideological brainwashing in public schools, or prevents the chemical and surgical mutilation of their bodies in the name of gender politics. Trans activists refer to such laws as “genocide.”

Why? Perhaps because they know that in order to perpetuate their numbers they MUST groom kids into the fold. A large percentage of LGBT devout have no children and will never have children. So, the only way they can continue their cult is to hijack the minds and bodies of other people’s children.

This is the hill leftists have chosen to die on, and for good reason – Any successful color revolution requires the support of the youth. If you can turn a society’s children into soldiers for the cause, it is much more difficult for that society to fight back. The natural inclination of most adults today is to bend to the whims of their kids, not go to war with them. The problem is that many kids are generally ignorant and inexperienced. They are easily manipulated and easily used, and are more likely to be exploited for ill purposes by evil people.

Third, the primary tool for pursuing and brainwashing western youth has been the public school system, and more specifically the teachers and teachers unions. The speed at which public schools are now openly embracing far-left ideology is shocking, and it is all due to the teachers. Understand that public schools have your kids for half the day, while you might be lucky to get a couple hours with them per day on average. Most parents work hard, and don’t have time to keep track of their kid’s personal lives and who is influencing them.

Leftist teachers argue that sexualized discussions in class should be protected as a form of civil rights activism. They say it is discriminatory to block lessons on LGBT issues and gender identity issues. This is obviously nonsense. There is absolutely no reason for teachers to be talking to students about sexual subjects, whether gay or straight, and there is zero concrete evidence to support gender fluid theories. Again, this is ideology, not science.

In a strange method of circular defense, leftists often argue that children are far more at risk from religious “groomers” such as Catholic priests. As if to say, “Hey, they do it, why can’t we?” It’s a common retort, but a false one.

According to studies cataloging child sex crimes Public School TEACHERS are 100 times more likely to sexually abuse children than Catholic priests. And guess which political party teachers unions give 94% of their donations to? Yes, the Democratic Party.

Surveys show a massive imbalance of leftists in education. Among English teachers, there are 97 Democrats for every three Republicans, with the proportion being even more one-sided among health teachers, with 99 Democrats for every one Republican. Among math and science teachers there are 87 Democrats for every 13 Republicans. The bottom line? The woke problem among children in the US is primarily a teacher problem. Get rid of the leftist teachers and you get rid of the problem.

Fourth, the basis of the Pride movement, beyond pride itself, is exaggerated sexuality for gays in an era of oppressed sexuality for straights. Have you noticed that straight people (especially straight men) are now heavily admonished for any expression of desire, while gay people are allowed to flaunt their sexuality in the streets, even in front of children? There is a grotesque double standard being put in place which glorifies gay sexuality while straight sexuality is attacked.

The elephant in the room here needs to be addressed, which is that a society that is conditioned to be increasingly LGBT, or that transitions people from childhood using indoctrination, surgeries and hormones is going to have collapsing population numbers. And maybe that is one of the establishment’s goals – To make the west infertile.

Well, hey, what better way to destroy Western Civ in toto? Y’know, exactly as The Plan I keep harping on explicitly urges.

SO. Anybody out there still doubt that this really is a bona fide war being waged against us, folks? Or that Real Americans who believe said civilization to be worth defending better damned well get it in gear and starting fighting back against The Enemy, with a quickness?

Anybody? Bueller…?

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Eyrie up!

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Friday’s Substack column—”You’re here, we ain’t skeered, get used to it”—is now up and running. It’s a tirade on the Transgender Jihad, and the likely result of this daylight barking madness. SPOILER: it ain’t gonna be pretty, people.

Keep fucking around and you’re gonna find out, freaks. And when you do, a whole lot of others are gonna be taken down right along with you. When the Saxon at last does get his hate on for reals, there aren’t gonna be very many of them who are all that interested in differentiating betwixt the Quick and the Dead, I’d bet.

Which, truth to tell, I can’t quite say I’m as bereft as JJ is regarding that prospect. Far as I’m concerned, while they may not themselves be hurling open threats in the teeth of parents who simply prefer that their children not be raunched up the fudge tunnel like those openly participating in the Transgender Jihad have, by their silence the less radical Left types (if any) still make themselves at best complicit in this most unwholesome of trends.

So be it, then.

As is mentioned at the close of the Eyrie post, there will be an update later so as to bring a very-much-related Brandon Smith dissertation into the mix, which I will notify y’all of as and when. Til then, hit the link and partake of it.

Update! The above-mentioned Eyrie addendum-slash-update has been all taken care of, via the judicious application of a little linky self-love.

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Affirmative Action State-Mandated Racism struck down, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas has thoughts

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The greatest USSC Justice of all time deals out the righteous juridical smackdown to a dissenting dipshit.

As RedState reported earlier, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 vote Thursday that the race-based college admissions processes used by Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) violate the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, effectively striking down the use of affirmative action programs in college admissions.

In Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting opinion in the UNC case, Jackson, who was nominated by President Joe Biden to the Supreme Court in part based on a campaign promise to nominate a black woman, accused the court’s conservative majority of “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness,” proclaiming that the Justices “detached” themselves from “this country’s actual past and present experiences,” while lecturing the “ostrich-like” members about so-called “lived experiences.”

In his concurrence with the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas responded accordingly to Jackson’s dissent. Here are some noteworthy excerpts:

Accordingly, JUSTICE JACKSON’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step. Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism.

JUSTICE JACKSON then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to “experts” and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the in-nocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will “tell us [what] is required to level the playing field” among castes and classifications that they alone can divine. Post, at 26; see also post, at 5–7 (GORSUCH, J., concurring) (explaining the arbitrariness of these classifications). Then, after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able—at some undefined point—to “march forward together” into some utopian vision. Post, at 26 (opinion of JACKSON, J.). Social movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, have ended disastrously.

Unsurprisingly, this tried-and-failed system defies both law and reason. Start with the obvious: If social reorganization in the name of equality may be justified by the mere fact of statistical disparities among racial groups, then that reorganization must continue until these disparities are fully eliminated, regardless of the reasons for the disparities and the cost of their elimination. If blacks fail a test at higher rates than their white counterparts (regardless of whether the reason for the disparity has anything at all to do with race), the only solution will be race-focused measures. If those measures were to result in blacks failing at yet higher rates, the only solution would be to double down. In fact, there would seem to be no logical limit to what the government may do to level the racial playing field—outright wealth transfers, quota systems, and racial preferences would all seem permissible. In such a system, it would not matter how many innocents suffer race-based injuries; all that would matter is reaching the race-based goal.

The rest of Thomas’ characteristically-brilliant, well-reasoned, and just plain commonsensical opinion can be found here, beginning at Page 97.

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Tucker on Twitter

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Episode 7 is now up and running, sports fans.


Haven’t watched it yet myself, but from what Margolis has to say about it, I’m thinking it’s liable to be another winnah.

In the latest episode of Tucker on Twitter, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson made a rather bold prediction about the 2024 election.

Carlson pointed out that the recently released WhatsApp messages from Hunter Biden to his Chinese business partner proved that Joe Biden was involved in (or at the very least knew about) Hunter Biden’s influence-peddling schemes. He called the messages a “smoking gun” that “would have been enough to cripple a normal president, would have been more than enough to keep a normal president from running for office again,” yet they had “virtually no effect on Joe Biden.” Why? Because the mainstream media relentlessly defends him from his scandals.

If there’s anything that the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have proven, it’s that Joe Biden is a pro-war authoritarian. Emergencies like pandemics and wars allow those in power to behave like dictators in the name of “democracy,” and Joe Biden is no different, so our institutions will do anything to keep him in power.

“The people who control Joe Biden — Susan Rice and the rest — know they can continue to run our government, writing the press releases, formulating the policies, and they can do it effectively forever, as long as Joe Biden gets dressed in the morning, and of course that’s their strong preference,” Carlson explained. The problem is Biden’s failing mental health. His cognitive decline was easier to keep hidden during the pandemic but is now impossible to ignore, and it’s getting worse by the day.

“In a year or two, he will be gone completely, and there will be no hiding it,” Carlson said. “At that point, the Democratic Party will face a succession problem.”

“If Joe Biden is reelected next year and then forced to leave office during his term due to disability or death, that means Kamala Harris will become president of the United States,” he added. “And nobody wants that, not even her husband.”

Heh. Well, I mean, what sane, decent person would, really? On the other hand though, as near as I can determine nobody really wanted Biden either, and look where we all are anyway. Turns out election-rigging has consequences, I suppose. Until such time as those sham “elections” have been UN-rigged, then, my overall take on bothering to “vote” for “President” will remain a big, fat MEH.

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Thanks, Yertle!

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Oh, we really got him now!

Ana Navarro whipped out the tiny violins on ABC’s “The View” this week, declaring that the Biden corruption scandal “is a story of a father’s love, and Joe Biden has never and will never give up on his son Hunter…

“That is part of his heart.”

The “View” co-host was simply echoing the spin from the White House to get out from under the latest avalanche of damning evidence about the Biden family grift machine during Joe’s vice presidency: Honest Joe is guilty of nothing more than loving his wayward son.

The New York Times’ Nick Kristof echoed the sentiment in a cringeworthy piece titled “The Real Lesson From the Hunter Biden Saga: It isn’t about presidential corruption but a determined parent battling his son’s addiction with unconditional love.”

But the allegations against the president and his family are too credible to be wiped away by a secondhand sob story.

Every defendant has a hard-luck tale and it’s a little much from a family that has been the epitome of privilege for decades when they don’t even try to provide an explanation. 

Nor will Biden’s on-brand defiance fly this time.

The optics of his son and Joe’s brother Jim Biden — who still is under federal investigation — at the White House in bow ties for a state dinner last week was so in-your-face that even the Times raised an eyebrow.

It was just two days after Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal, and Attorney General Merrick Garland was preposterously in attendance. 

Very funny, Joe!

Much as I hate to say it—and I do, I truly, truly do—the nation owes a great debt of gratitude to Sen Yertle McTurtle (U—Turncoat) for refusing to allow the scumbag Garland on the US Supreme Court back when Ogabe tried to put him there.

What, me, worry?

That’s why he laughs in reporters’ faces when they dare to shout a snatched question as he hurries by.

But the questions keep coming, nonetheless.

“President Biden, how involved were you in your son’s Chinese shakedown text message?” he was asked as he emerged from the White House Wednesday morning.

The question from Post journalist Steven Nelson was about a Whats App message, subpoenaed by the FBI from Hunter’s iCloud, that IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley had given to the House Ways and Means Committee as part of his damning testimony about DOJ interference in the five-year tax investigation into Hunter.

But Biden bullying reporters will not make the evidence disappear — and it leads to the president.

Shapley, the IRS agent in charge of the criminal investigation of Hunter in Delaware, told CBS Tuesday evening that DOJ obstruction served to protect Joe from exposure.

“There were certain investigative steps we weren’t allowed to take that could have led us to President Biden,” Shapley said.

Shapley has testified that his team was blocked by the DOJ from asking questions about Joe or other family members who received money from Hunter.

They were not allowed to ask about the “big guy” or “dad,” were refused search warrants and denied access to Hunter’s laptop, which the FBI had authenticated by February 2020 as genuine and untainted and having “likely contained evidence of tax crimes.”

In the end, Shapley’s team of 12 elite criminal investigators was removed from the case before Hunter’s sweetheart deal.

As I’ve so often said about so many others, Shapley had better be constantly checking six from here on out. Despite the current tsunami of blah-de-blah about “walls closing in” on the Bidens and such, there’s one fatal flaw dooming the otherwise gratifying thought of impeaching Biden, Garland, or anyone else: those fully-and-firmly-in-cahoots Vichy GOPers would have to be the ones to initiate it.

So, y’know, so much for THAT Big Idear.

And lest my Garland comment above lead anyone astray, let’s not anyone be thinking the current scoundrel of an AG is the only problem at DoJ, or even the biggest and/or worst. Perish the thought.

DOJ Rot Goes So Much Deeper Than Merrick Garland
Does Garland still deserve impeachment for his assortment of abuses, such as sitting on his hands to avoid real accountability for the younger Biden (and his pop), while weaponizing the country’s top law enforcement agency to try to send Biden’s top presidential challenger to federal prison? Absolutely. Is it smart politically for Kevin McCarthy to use the current momentum to hold Garland to account? Probably. Is the alleged involvement in a foreign bribery scheme enough to merit Biden’s own impeachment? Most definitely.

But if the blame — and punishment — for the DOJ corruption revealed by whistleblowers stops with Merrick Garland or even Joe Biden, it will happen again.

That’s because the Justice Department’s pattern of shielding the Biden family from the law wasn’t masterminded by either man. It happened because of career officials and bureaucrats, whose names most Americans don’t know, and whom Americans will never have the chance to vote out. They didn’t have to be told what to do.

The problem of a bureaucracy so bloated that the people’s elected servants in Congress and the White House can’t keep track of, let alone shut down, its mischief is not unique to the DOJ. But the Justice Department’s role as arbiter of how — or to whom — the law applies makes its rule-by-pencil-pusher especially dangerous.

Electing the right president or appointing the right attorney general will only help with that insofar as he can root out the career rot in the 115,000-employee DOJ. As the Gary Shapleys get pushed out, the integrity they bring to agencies like the DOJ and IRS will go with them.

And while corruption in the vastly left-leaning bureaucracy almost always benefits Democrats, the problem goes beyond partisan politics. If government agencies are so powerful that their work to protect political allies and topple their challengers continues unabated by the electoral process, then elections are no real transfer of power and we are not a functioning republic.

That’s not just having a bad apple for an attorney general. That is a crisis of governance.

Annnnnd bingo, there you have it. Our boozum chum JJ closes things out nicely.

We are most certainly not a functioning republic. We no longer have even the illusion of a functioning republic anymore. It’s why the notion of candidates and primaries and elections is for me mostly an academic exercise. There is an evolutionary process going on brought about primarily by the surprise 2016 victory of Trump and then the reaction to him and to the millions of people who put him in office by the Biden’s “love brokers.” It’s also a revolutionary process, or at least the final act in one which had been going on since 1913, if not before then. We are changing into a government and society that more and more is a dystopian nightmare. The only question is how deep and how dark will it get. If history teaches us anything, there is no limit.

The other side of that coin vis a vis revolutionary processes is the reaction by the people. If, as the Left constantly shriek “silence is violence,” there can be no one on the sidelines. “You’re either with us or the terrorists,” which the execrable Dubya was right about, except at the wrong time and referring to the wrong sides. Unless there is some black swan event that we cannot perceive, then I don’t really see anything that is going to stop the crazy train we are on from plunging into the abyss.

Maybe it’s the attack on our children that is finally waking people up, at least to that heinous movement. But from one depredation, revolutions have sprung up. And going after the children is one huge depredation. They crossed one big ass rubicon with that. We shall see what the reaction will be or if it can develop into a chain reaction to change the course of history. Here’s hoping.

Indeed so. Because history has one other lesson to teach us: throughout all of it, NO dictatorship, NO tyranny, NO “reign of witches” has ever been permanent. Contra Sefton’s last line from the first ‘graph, there actually is a limiting factor fully in play here—not the sadism of the dictators; not the sudden, unlooked-for rage of the oppressed; but time itself.

So keep the faith, baby, and be of good cheer no matter how dark and desperate the situation might momentarily look. Even if all else should fail us, good ol’ Father Time always takes care of business and settles all accounts ere the end. T’was ever thus, and t’will ever be.

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