Chicagoans demand the government get serious about the borders.
Of Chicago. To keep illegal immigrants out of Chicago:
I’ve said for a while now that the way to save this nation, short of outright secession and breakup, is to re-embrace federalism.
This wasn’t exactly the scenario I had in mind, but maybe it’s a start.
A friend of the blog emails:
[This advertiser] had it right.
Oh, I completely agree.
It was still morning in America.Notice, of course, thst it was 34 years ago. Reagan had barely left office. The Berlin Wall had yet to fall, but it was teetering.
But this is a good time to remind d you to be the backlash you want to see.
The DFL did so much damage this past session, it’s hard to track all of it.
Rep. Hudson did a pretty good job of cataloging it – and why it matters (expand the tweet to see it all).
I’ll be talking about this extensively on the show this Saturday.
When trying to win a rhetorical or political battle, the idea is when the fact reflect the proposition that you are winning, and that your victory is inevitable. Not only does it show you are on track to win, but it sucks the morale out of your opponents as the contest slogs to its miserable, inevitable end. Sort of like a Timberwolves season.
The next best thing?
To paraphrase the old law school trope: when the facts are against you, argue the ideals. When the ideals are against you, argue the facts. And when the facts are the ideals are against you, convince the enemy that they favor you anyway.
And that’s what Big Left is trying to do; convince Real America that the game is already over.
It’s nothing new – it’s why they parroted twaddle about “the emerging Blue majority” and “Texas will turn blue!” over the past 20 years, as if all political trends are linear.
But there’ve been a few hot ones lately.
“Minnesota Is Irreversibly Blue!”
The DFL outspent the GOP 18:1 in the 2022 elections – and flipped the decisive seat by less than 400 votes.
Fewer than 1,000 votes would have put the House in GOP control.
But for a pretty dismal showing by the Jensen campaign, and the overturning of Roe (which can’t happen again), the Attorney General and State Auditor were on the cusp of winning.
Yes, statewide races are a problem – and I despair of the current MNGOP cracking that code, not that I’m not gonna try to push it.
But saying “Minnesota is pure blue!” is premature.
“Millennials Are Eternally Progressive!”: Maybe not so much anymore.
In the 2020 presidential election, voters who were 18 to 29 in 2008 backed Joe Biden by 55 percent to 43 percent, according to our estimates, a margin roughly half that of Mr. Obama’s 12 years earlier.
The exit polls show it even closer, with Mr. Biden winning by just 51-45 among voters who were 18 to 27 in 2008 (exit polls report results among those 30 to 39, not 30 to 41 — the group that was 18 to 29 in 2008).
And last fall, the young voters of ’08 — by then 32 to 43 — preferred Democratic congressional candidates by just 10 points in Times/Siena polling.
Nobody stays young and stupid forever (DFL communications staff notwithstanding).
“The General Public Is Embracing The Transgender Ideology”: Sincie 2021, the public perception that there are more than two genders has shifted six points.
Away from the transgender narrative.
Sack up, campers. This fight is just beginning.
Is there nothing in the worlds of negotiation, of convincing people to think and do things they aren’t entitled to, with the elegance, the power, the pure majesty of simply capping off one’s argument with a jaunty “full stop”?
If Abraham Lincoln had told Jefferson Davis “abolish slavery and rejoin the union, full stop!” there would’ve been no Civil War.
Had RIchard Nixon said “I am not a crook – full stop“, there’d have been no Watergate, no impeachment, no resignation.
If WInston Churchill had punctuated the Dunkirk speech – “…we shall fight on the beaches and the landing grounds, we shall never surrender, full stop!”, Hitler would have pulled back from France, abdicated, and fled to Mongolia.
Had the Pope responded to Martin Luther with a decisive “Iustificamur ex operibus, plenus finis” (“We are justified by works. Full stop“), there’d have been no Reformation, no 100 years war. \
If the guys in Milli Vanilli had simply said, “We are the real singers! Full stop!”, they would be bigger than Madonna, Elvis, the Beatles, Taylor Swift and Slim Whitman today.
So pity the poor Minnesota GOP. Who can stand in the face of such remorseless logic and deft rhetoric?
For example – I, personally, started out believing that “Rights” are inalienable, non-material things with which one is born, and from which one can not be legitimately separated except by very solemn due process.
But then I read this:
And voila! I’m convinced! A “right” is a bit of material swag bestowed on the deserving by the political process!
Even “Lieutenant” Governor Flanagan, who punctuated one of her (very, very few non-risible) arguments with this…
Is there nothing that phrase can’t do?
…
I came across this tweet last week.
At first blush, I thought it was parody, and not especially good.
I moved from there to Assumption B – a chuckleheaded sophomore political science major from Austin, or Seattle, or maybe the University of Saint Thomas. It can be hard to tell parody from reality with them, sometimes.
That’s what I thought. Or, let’s be honest, that’s what I hoped. Parody, or young lefty dolt.
But no. Mr. Lee is a California state assemblyman, detailing the world he and most of Big Left hold out as their idea.
No mention of that social credit score you gotta pass to get into your “public bank account”. No mention of who’s going to be teaching at those “awesome public schools” or building, maintaining and operating that “green transit”, or even why either would exist if people get Universal Basic Income. No mention of how in a world without the generation of value and wealth, the “UBI” will pretty much inevitably devolve into ration tickets, to buy…what? Who’s doing the producing, the farming? Robotic cricket mills creating insect paste is about the only logical option.
No single book has shaped not just my understanding of modern history, but my own journey from adolescent leftist to conservative more than Modern Times, Paul Johnson’s epic history of the world from 1918 to about 1980 (and, in a revised edition, through the 1990s.
It wouldn’t be a great exaggeration to say that Johnson was the most important modern historian, thinker and writer in my life – not least because he, in starting out on the left before seeing the light and becoming a libertarian-conservative, more or less as I was doing at the time. He went from being an editor at the New Statesman to an adviser to Margaret Thatcher and leading public intellectual of the right, bringing his intellectual and historical gravitas with him.
And few books explain the debt modern society pays to a brief period in history, from 1815 to the mid-1840s, when self-educated men laid the groundwork for most of what makes modern society modern (from the steam engine and electric communication to the popular vote and pants) than Johnson’s Birth of the Modern .
And on, and on. through dozens of books. I still have 40 to go.
Johnson passed away last week at 94.
Modern Times shaped a generation and more of people who had studied history as interpreted by the Left. His explanation of the Great Depression drew greatly on the works of libertarian economists and provided a strong antidote to the conventional wisdom that FDR has saved capitalism from itself…A culture that produced Paul Johnson and others like him explains why British literary writing and journalism, on the whole, is so much better than most of what is produced in America. As Stephen Glover of Britain’s Daily Mail explains: “Even readers who thought they might disagree with him looked forward to his next offering. He never penned a dull sentence or had a dull thought.”
This blog, in its own way, started out as my little way of trying to repay my debt to Johnson .
He’d certainly be canceled with extreme prejudice, were he in his prime today.
I listen – as rarely as I can – to NPR’s “On the Media”. The show is basically an unthinking cheerleader for America’s “elite” media.
And their latest theme is participating in the war on “Nostalgia” – particularly, against the notion of looking to the past for lessons that might help with the present and the future.
The first segment was keynoted by a fellow – some sort of historian – who declaimed in an adenoidal ,mid-Atlantic voice no different than a thousand others on NPR “What does nostalgia for the fifties get you? It gets you dead, sooner! The life expectancy was 66 years! Now it’s 78!”
That’s right – if you think society could gain by returning to some of the social and moral stanards of the past, you also have to roll back science! And bring the Klan back too!
Not really exaggerating that last bit – because nostalgia isn’t just wanting to derive some wisdom from another time. Nosirreebob, it’s bringing Hitler back to life!
You’re not learning from the past. You’re begging to repeat it, all of it, especially the worst of it.
We can not defund NPR fast enough.
Last week, this blog received something of a challenge: A debate on “who the fascists actually are in modern American society”. \
But one of the key tenets of a meaningful debate is to make sure you agree on your terms.
What is…
…well, let’s start with the state that each side in American politics accuses one another of – “Fascism”, “Communism”, “Naziism”, “Socialism” – all of which have much in common, all of which are subtly different in some contexts and utterly indistinct in others.
The left’s self-indulgent rhetoric has denuded terms like “Fascist”, “Nazi”, “Racist” and “White Supremacy” of much of their meanings, and usefulness as debate yardsticks. The right did the same with “Socialist” (although the left has played its part in sapping that term of its zing as well).
So I’m going to try to settle on one of two terms to use as yardsticks; “Authoritarian” and “Totalitarian”. They are more pedestrian and academic than the list above – no mortal enemy of our nation has rallied behind either of them, so (let’s be charitable) neither side has seen fit to devalue them yet.
And yet, America – or parts of America – seems to be turning into an authoritarian society.
To wit:
So – how do we define either of ’em?
John Miltimore has a decent start in this blog post; he defines “totalitarianism” with fourteen criteria. It works as a matter of . I borrow and adapt them below:
Once we have the definitions nailed down, we’ll debate each point. Then, victors, losers and maybe even draws will be declared.
So I started with Miltimore’s list, added and rewrote a few things, and reorganized them:
Co-option of Institutions
Society’s formal institution are convinced to support the goals of the regime, or gotten out of the way, willingly or not.
Co-option of Society
An authoritarian society co-ops the institutions, not only of government, but of society itself. Government deploys carrots and sticks to create a society that complies – willingly or not. .
Eroding Rule of Law, Uplifting Rule of Men
Free peoples laws observe a process over a goal. Authoritarians laws have goals – not always stated clearly in the text.
Perverting Society’s Norms
While the institutions squash dissent, the co-option of society gradually makes dissent not only too costly, but unthinkable.
Creating Official Boogeymen And Enemies
A state of war hysteria keeps peoples minds from what they’ve lost to the regime – it even makes them happy to sacrifice wealth, freedom and autonomy. Authoritarians need enemies.
So what needs to be added or removed?
Berg’s Seventh Law (“When a progressive issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds“) was written long before I first read Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals”, so I didn’t know that Alinski’s Rule 4, “”Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules”, is more or less the same idea.
The most tiresome, and omnipresent, meme of this election is “a vote for Republicans is a vote against Democracy”, combined with labeling any call for scrutiny of election laws and processes on any level as “election denialism”.
It’s a way of “othering” people – for, in most cases (shaddap about Marjory Taylor Greene – for defending a system of self-government …
…that is under constant attack by the left themselves.
It’s time to start calling out:
…as the threats to self-government that they actually are.
This is Giorgia Meloni, the new prime MInister of Italy.
The media is referring to her as “Far Right” – or, in moments of revelatory candor, “Fascist”.
Check out the speech. You be the judge – while you still can.
And remember – if William F. Buckley, Jack Kemp, Barry Goldwater, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, Lech Wałęsa and Newt Gingrich were coming onto the scene today, they’d all be called “fascists” too.
How do we know that?
Because they said it back then, too.
Is there someone out there, anywhere, who read this:
…and thought “Hmmm – government is clearly not working for my family, and the “Inflation Reduction Act is clearly a turd that will raise prices…
…but he ended it with the word “Period”.
Hmmm.
He must be onto something”?
Former Trump hand Michael Anton, writing for Compact, offers a bracing view of the various pathologies of Trump haters, whose numbers are legion, at least among the chattering classes. I am going to pull a few quotes; this article is a festival of pull quotes, truly a “read the whole thing” special. But a few of Anton’s observations deserve particular consideration, to wit:
Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.
All along the Potomac, you can sense it: oh boy, here comes the hoi polloi. The whole point of the current January 6 show trial is to demonstrate, beyond question, that your concerns do not matter. Stay outta the 202, y’all. The enmity Anton describes began before Trump — before the MAGA hat became the visible headgear from hell, the tricorner hats of the Tea Party were not a source of great amusement to our betters, but rather an unwelcome interruption to the exciting new world on offer. The concerns of those citizens mattered not at all then and little has changed.
The Tea Party did not last; it was leaderless by design and easily coopted and dispersed by the professional Republicans who serve as junior partners in the Beltway ecosystem. So nothing changed. What did change? This time the hoi polloi had a herald, who happened to be a publicity hound from Queens.
Why did Trump get the gig? Why wasn’t the herald someone more housebroken, like Marco Rubio or “Jeb!” or John “Daddy Was a Postman” Kasich? Amazingly, it was because a carnival barker like Trump was more credible than the other worthies in the field were. Back to Anton:
The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want.
What Tea Party/MAGA types want isn’t hegemony over their betters. Rather, they want to be left alone, without the ministrations of those who have plans for how they ought to live their lives. Can’t have that, of course. And if you are old enough to have had friendships of over 30 years, you understand and have likely experienced the following:
People I have known for 30 years, many of whom still claim the label “conservative,” will no longer speak to me—because I supported Trump, yes, but also because I disagree on trade, war, and the border. They call not just my positions, but me personally, unadulterated evil. I am not an isolated case. There are, as they say, “many such cases.”
Kevin Williamson and the NR gang, pick up the white courtesy phone. Then Anton gets to the nub:
How are we supposed to have “democracy” when the policies and candidates my side wants and votes for are anathema and can’t be allowed? How are we supposed to live together with the constant demonization from one side against the other blaring 24/7 from the ruling class’s every propaganda organ? Why would we want to?
I am not sure we can. There’s more, a whole lot more, at the link. Consider it carefully, as we are in a dangerous moment.
SCENE: Mitch BERG has just ordered at a food truck, and is waiting for his order to come up. Avery LIBRELLE steps around the corner. BERG visibly ponders abandoning his food and slipping away – but LIBRELLE sees him first.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Oh, godododoooood golly, Avery, it’s great to see…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. The Supreme Court just took us down the road to authoritarianism.
BERG: Let me guess. The Dobbs case…
LIBRELLE: …was a blow for tyranny.
BERG: Quick question for you, Avery. Six unelected justices, fifty years ago, making up law out of whole cloth…
LIBRELLE: Democracy!
BERG: Thousands of legislators, and 435 Congresspeople, directly representing millions of voters?
LIBRELLE: (Hisses) Tyranny!
BERG: You do realize these series of satirical sketches barely qualifies as parody, anymore, right?
(And SCENE)
Joe Doakes from Como park emails:
I’m seeing hysteria on the Left. “Roe was overturned. Do you know what this means? It means gay marriage, contraception, inter-racial marriage, affirmative action – all of them are at risk!” Thus far, Conservatives have been trolling Liberals using the same line Liberals always use on us: “Oh, no, we aren’t going after those, this decision was strictly limited to one issue.” Time to take the gloves off.
The Supreme Court’s legal basis for Roe v. Wade was the notion that somewhere in the emanations of the penumbra of rights protected by the Constitution is a right to privacy. The Supreme Court abandoned privacy as the legal basis for abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, substituting the notion that abortion is a liberty protected by the Due Process clause of the 14th Amendment, the “right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The Supreme Court went further in the gay marriage case, Obergefell v. Hodges, which caused Justice Scalia to write: “If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: ‘The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie.”
Once the Supreme Court decided it could invent new rights based on vague notions of privacy, the meaning of the universe, and personal expression of identity rather than historical analysis or constitutional precedent, state laws which had stood for 200 years were tossed out. But now that the Supreme Court has regained its senses, Liberals are correct that all the fake ‘rights’ which were grounded on fanciful bases are at risk. As they should be. The Supreme Court is not a place to impose through litigation the policies which you could not have achieved through legislation. If gay marriage, contraception, inter-racial marriage, affirmative action, and partial-birth abortion are rights which the nation wants protected by the Constitution instead of being protected by state legislatures, there’s a perfectly good amendment process which has been used more than two dozen times already. Go to it. Knock yourselves out.
Yes, we’re coming for your made-up ‘rights.’ We’re coming after all the abominations imposed on us over the last 50 years, taking back the power usurped by the Supreme Court and returning it to the people in the states, where it belongs. Power to the people! Why should we apologize for that?
Joe Doakes
Joe has anticipated one of my “Avery Librelle” plays in one act.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Modern Monetary Theory says the government can borrow and spend as much as it likes without consequences. If we can afford a gas tax holiday, why not an income tax holiday, a social security tax holiday, a liquor tax holiday?
Or is MMT a lie and the gas tax holiday simply at attempt at buying votes with taxpayer money?
Joe Doakes
It is, of course, a purely academic exercise, like so much of the policy big left has been foisting on this country for the past hundred years and change.
“ACK-shu-ally, we’re not fifty states. We’re one country“.
Show of hands if you’ve heard at least one progressive, lodged far on the left side of civic education’s Dunning-Kruger curve, say something like that.
Among the many failures – or acts of sabotage – of modern American education, perhaps among the biggest, most dangerous shortcomings is the complete collapse of civics education.
Modern students seem to learn nothing aboujt:
With that in mind? Perhaps the Dobbs decision, and the court’s new-found originalism, are a big step in the right direction for a nation more divided in many ways than before the Civil War.
Because the alternative to a renewed federalism is a national divorce at best, and civil war at worst.
This has become one of my pet peeves:
That one, there.
Would you say “I’ve got a right for my kitchen not to catch on fire?”
Only if you’re an idiot. You have a right to a kitchen. You have a responsibility to keep it from catching on fire.
Would you say “I’ve got a right not to have my house hit by a tornado?”
You could. It’d be absurd. You do have a responsibility to watch the sky, turn on the radio, and look out for your and your family’s safety, though.
So – is there a “right to safety?”
No. Adults have a responsibility to protect children.
And literally none of the things Rep. Edelson is demanding will ive up to any part of that responsibility.
Today, Democrat conventional wisdom is that the USSR was going to inevitably collapse, and that everyone – well, every Democrat – always knew it.
It’s not true, of course:
Forty years ago today, Ronald Reagan gave one of his greatest speeches – but unlike “A Time for Choosing“, or the Brandenburg Gate, or Point du Hoc or Christmas 1981, not one of his most widely heralded or remembered ones.
It was his speech to the British Parliament 40 years ago today, in which he predicted, and called for, the collapse of Communism.
Here it is:
And if Democrats were right, this would have followed by a wave of “Well, no, duh” by the political and cultural left of the day.
After Reagan’s speech at Westminster, historian Robert F. Byrnes collected essays from 35 experts on the Soviet Union — elite thinkers in American higher education — in a book titled “After Brezhnev.”Their conclusion: Any thought of winning the Cold War was a fantasy. “The Soviet Union is going to remain a stable state, with a very stable, conservative, immobile government,” Byrnes said in an interview. “We don’t see any collapse or weakening of the Soviet system.”
Of course, Reagan was right:
Within a decade — on Christmas Day, 1991 — Mikhail Gorbachev announced the complete dissolution of the Soviet Union. The 40-year-old Cold War came to a peaceful end because American democratic capitalism had laid bare the economic, moral, and spiritual bankruptcy of Soviet communism. As Reagan told an adviser when asked about his policy toward the Soviet Union: “We win, they lose.”
But now is not a time for nostalgia.
Forty years ago, the cancer destroying freedom was an external enemy.
Today the enemy – the same enemy, if you think about it – is here, within our borders, at our Capitol.
Forty years ago, the same egghead class that is canceling conservatives on campus was poo-poohing the thought that Communism would ever go away.
We need another leader – or group off leaders – who can envision eradicating the cancer that is eating life, prosperity…freedom, from within, just as certainly as the Soviets did (if with less bloodshed – so far), and lead toward that goal with the same exuberance and confidence.
Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.
All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.
He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.
I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.
I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.
Then, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…
I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don’t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives…then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.I no longer have the patience to listen to you.
The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.
Continue readingLet’s start with a little music:
The facts we hate
We’ll never meet
Walking down the road
Everybody yelling, “Hurry up, hurry up!”
But I’m waiting for you
I must go slow
I must not think bad thoughts
When is this world coming to?
Can’t speak for anyone else, but it’s tough avoiding bad thoughts these days. The larger question isn’t having bad thoughts, but whether you can express them. John Hayward, a/k/a Doc Zero, notices something important — the calls are coming from inside the house:
There is a part of the conservative sphere that has always felt populism is the ultimate sin, only the Left should be allowed to fight culture wars, and genuine conservative grassroots movements should be immediately run down with rhetorical lawn mowers.
There are different reasons why some conservatives gravitate to this way of thinking. Some are paid grifters. Some live deep inside the left-wing information sphere and inherit its prejudices, such as the notion cultural combat is toxic for conservatives but OK for lefties.
It’s always about the rice bowls. But there’s more:
For these timid elements of conservatism, the worst offense of the Right is questioning the motives of the Left. Nothing makes them spring into action against other conservatives faster than insinuations of bad faith or sinister motives against the Left.
Bad faith has been a growth industry on the port side since, I dunno, Rousseau maybe. It’s certainly not a recent development. Continuing on:
Run through the list of top issues: if you want border security, you must be a xenophobe. If you oppose abortion, you must be a blind religious fanatic or misogynist. If you want smaller government, you’re cruel and greedy. Question global warming? You’re a tool of Big Oil.
We are rat bastards, aren’t we? I must not think bad thoughts. But there’s more:
But as soon as any head of steam builds among grassroots conservatives for questioning the motives of the Left on similar grounds, the timid conservatives leap into action. Tut tut! That language is out of bounds! How dare you imply Lefty’s agenda is deliberately destructive!
They’ll tell you it’s paranoia and slander to talk about the destructive agenda of the Left even as hyperventilating lefties are busy laying out their agenda with hundreds of social media videos and vowing to destroy anyone who gets in their way.
I believe Mel Brooks had a number in Blazing Saddles about this, calling it the French Mistake. In modern parlance, that would be David French. But we’re not done:
Too much of the conservative commentariat is exactly that: commentators. They were comfortable remarking on the passing scene, not changing it. “Activism” was a dirty word, something the OTHER guys did. Tossing harmless Nerf footballs of theory around op-ed pages was good enough.
Change is hard and things are pretty cozy in the covens along the Potomac. And most of all, dudes wearing tricorner MAGA hats are not our kind, dear. We must not think bad thoughts. I’ve pulled a lot out of Hayward’s thread, but there’s even more. You should read it in full. But while his cri de coeur is compelling, it is clear our betters remain in their sinecures. And we’ll come back to that topic in the coming days.
Green, “sustainable” energy policies that make middle class live unsustainable.
Transitioning from houses to apartments, from cars to mass transit.
Moving from meat to vegetables, with maybe some insect thrown in as a treat.
Hyperinflation, which serves mainly to make common savings and investment worthless, but does wonders for the wealth of the plutocrats, “futurists” and pols – who will give up no cars, houses, yachts ,warmth or food.
Seems like the “new world order” looks a lot like the old, pre-1776 world order, doesn’t it?
Victor Davis Hanson – perhaps more optimistic than I feel at the moment – in a piece you should read. Pull quote:
So a reset reckoning is coming—in reaction to the “new orders” championed by Biden and the Davos set.
In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—and arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.
What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.
I hope he’s right. The boundless stupidity of the “send me more stimmies” set – whose votes count just as much as those of smart people – serves as the counterexhibit.
I’m not sure that the Biden administration, like the Obama administration before it, is undertaking multigenerational effort to destroy this nations “red” heartland.
But if they were, I wonder what they would be doing differently?
A friend of the blog emails:
Neil Young’s Unknown Legend, one of my all time favorite songs, came up on my playlist.
It’s been, geez, two or three weeks now. I’m not sure if I’m not supposed to listen to Neil or not.
(Name Redacted)
One of the greatest aphorisms about music Dash art, really – Asia “ love the art, ignore the artist”. And I figure, once the song goes out into the world, it belongs to us (subject to copyright and intellectual property), not them.
But it is getting to the point where it’s hard to tell what you are, and are not, supposed to support if you want your dollar to stop working for the enemy.
For example, a certain brand of razor blades (which shall remain unnamed for purposes of this post) was a revelation to me when I first discovered it; I actually enjoyed shaving for the first time in my adult life.
Now, I happen to like this particular brand of razors every bit as much as I like Michael Knowles (who is an excellent writer, but kind of ok as a talkradio host) – so I was relieved to see that this particular brand of razor still sponsors other conservative talk radio, and I wasn’t going to have to go out into a razor market dominated by “woke “brands like Gillette to try and find a new brand of blades.
Idaho bill would require prosectors to reimburse people with successful self-defense claims, whom they opt to prosecute anyway:
If enacted, the legislation would require the county or prosecuting state agency where the person was charged with a crime to reimburse the defendant for “all reasonable costs” if they are found not guilty by reason of self defense. Reasonable costs would include lost wages, the costs of any lost business opportunities and legal costs including bail, expert witness fees, attorney’s bills and other expenses. The bill also includes a “safety net” to protect defendants if they are sued by victim in a self-defense case, she said.
It’s intended to provide consequences for the sort of malicious, specious prosecution of people like Kyle Rittenhouse – cases with lots of political sturm und drang but little to no actual evidence of unjustifiable homicide.