Miscellany

     Yes, another of the dreaded “Assorted” columns. Have mercy, Gentle Reader. This is one of my mechanisms for “flushing the static.” Besides, sometimes there are connections to be found among the bits of Web-flotsam. Give it a spin on your mental merry-go-round and see where it gets off.

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1. “You are about to witness a crime.”

     (Try to imagine that being said by Karl Malden.)

     The crime is mine. It’s an excerpt:

     It takes effort to remain living among men yet connected to the natural state, or what grandpa described as “God’s natural order.”

     The effort requires a person to separate themselves from the unnatural outcomes of man’s manipulations, rules and unnatural order. In common speak we must make an effort, literally think about it and take action, to create distance from chaos and return our mindsets to the natural order we were born with.

     Ultimately, prayer and even church are an outcome of prior thoughtful human leadership recognizing our need to sit still and return to our natural state.

     Gentle Reader, you simply must read Sundance’s essay from beginning to end. It’s beautifully appropriate to the Christmas season, and filled with a spirit for which there is only one word: worshipful.

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2. Race matters.

     (With no apology to Cornel West.)

     This piece by Wolf Howling is incomplete, in a way. It shies back from an imperative conclusion. Sometimes a writer will do that, out of fear of the consequences of speaking the obvious…even when “the obvious” is something everyone with three functioning brain cells already knows.

     But there are other bits and dribbles available to cement that unspeakable truth. One came from…drum roll, please…a chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights:

     “Civil rights laws were not passed to protect the rights of white men and do not apply to them.” – Mary Frances Berry

     Another is visible in a must-read piece about the operation of the Washington State Supreme Court:

     [I]n any Washington State Court, if you are in litigation against a black and he gets a verdict he doesn’t like, all he has to do is claim there was implicit, institutional, or unconscious bias against him. You can’t prove there wasn’t, so you have to keep giving the opposing party — and this no doubt also applies to Hispanics or transexuals or American Indians or homosexuals or fat people or immigrants — new trials until he, she, or it gets a favorable verdict.

     You can say that a white witness or lawyer is confrontational. Lawyers do it all the time. You can say that a white plaintiff is greedy or faking it or got his friends to lie for him. But if you say that about someone in a protected class, he can yell that you evoked unconscious bias in the jury, and you have to prove you didn’t. Why even go to trial? Just give a non-white plaintiff whatever he asks for.

     Got it yet?

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3. “Respect the Constitution? I’d rather threaten our adversaries.”

     Adam Schiff might be the foulest creature ever admitted to the halls of Congress:

     Now that the FBI, Homeland Security, and other elements of the Deep State stand revealed as the moving force in the suppression of conservative and libertarian content on Twitter, Schiff’s threat is almost laughable in its desperation. Yet I have no doubt that if he could reify it, he would do so with a snarl. The man really does consider himself above all laws – whether of Man or God. And California has repeatedly sent him to Washington.

     I should thank God more often that I failed to relocate to California, way back when.

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4. “Higher education.”

     The New School for Social Research is alma mater to some certifiable moonbats, but I never expected this most recent excursion into dreamland:

     Students at an elite, private university in New York City are occupying a campus building with the demand that all be given A grades.

     The original reason for The New School occupation, which began on December 8, was to support striking faculty members who were lobbying for higher wages and better health care.

     Though the faculty strike has since been resolved, a letter of demands now calls for A grades for all students. It says in part: “We demand that every student receives a final course grade of A as well as the removal of I/Z grades for the Fall 2022 semester.” The letter insisted, “Attendance shall have no bearing on course grade.” (According to the New School’s website, an “I” grade is a “temporary incomplete” and a “z” grade is an “unofficial withdrawal.”)

     Would anyone care to argue against my proposal that the whole of American “higher education” be walled off permanently – no one ever to be allowed out?

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5. A possible explanation for much.

     Andrea Shea King, the Radio Patriot, has posted a large piece about the final year of the Trump Administration that’s provocative to say the least. Whether it’s absolutely accurate, I cannot say. Much of it is motivationally consistent with the events as we experienced them. I invite the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch to consider Andrea’s article in light of their own knowledge of events. Please put your opinions in the Comments section.

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6. Our “Fall of Trantor” moment?

     Charles Hugh Smith seems to think so:

     A great madness sweeps the land. There are no limits on extremes in greed, credulity, convictions, inequality, bombast, recklessness, fraud, corruption, arrogance, hubris, pride, over-reach, self-righteousness and confidence in the rightness of one’s opinions. Extremes only become more extreme even as the folly of previous extremes wearies rationality.

     This is very much in line with the diagnosis of John C. Wright:

     Our age ventures to destroy civil order, to denature man, to defame heaven, and to establish and maintain an Empire of Lies. For our age is devout toward unreality, and worships untruth. Every major institution is fraudulent, fake, and false.

     And of course, we have this for…comparison:

     “The fall of Trantor,” said Seldon, “cannot be stopped by any conceivable effort. It can be hastened easily, however. The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the Galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds.” [Emphasis added]

     Your mileage may vary.

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     That’s all for today, I think. I have a long drive ahead of me – Joy the Newf has to go back to her surgeon for a checkup – and as usual I need time for the novel-under-construction. See you tomorrow.

3 comments

    • Bear Claw Chris Lapp on December 20, 2022 at 9:32 AM

    Listened to a little of Tucker. Scanned briefly most of the other links.  These people are all mostly grifters, some worse than others.  Some tell us what many already know.

    Sundance’s piece was like a great sermon and spoke to me on another level. His Grandfather is wise.  That’s why I tell young people to talk to old people because they know stuff.

    Thank you for linking to that. If all you read today is that one piece do it. The rest is drivel mostly from evil people who will find that special place in hell in the end.

  1. Darn you and everyone else who is recommending books that I need to add to my Kindle library (I’d gotten rid of the hard copy years ago).
    I have STUFF to do! I’m losing sleep at night, staying up for “just one more chapter”.

    1. Well, in that case I suppose I should refrain from recommending Mackey Chandler’s “April” series, which I’ve just finished and loved from beginning to end!

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