Word gets around. I must have said and written that millions of times by now. Yet those who most need to remember it often seem unwilling or unable to do so. Barbara Tuchman defined folly as “knowing better but doing worse.” As a historian, she had plenty of examples to study. They continue …
Category: The Left
Mar 14 2025
Stupid Or Evil: The Only Possible Terminus
Despite the dichotomy in the title, Leftist activists have all but uniformly decided that we in the Right are evil. And of course, when in combat with one who is evil, there are no rules. Anything is permissible. The most favored tactics are those that incite terror among the evil one’s supporters: Two …
Mar 13 2025
Stupid Or Evil: The Ongoing Saga
Time was, politically engaged Americans generally understood that it’s possible for intelligent, well-meaning people to disagree about the merits of a proposed policy or policy change. They could dispute what it would bring about without either side being provably wrong. Indeed, they understood that even after the consequences of the change have arrived, some …
Mar 12 2025
Frontiers In Intolerance: Indie Publishing
While writers who’ve elected to go independent, exploiting the 21st Century’s gatekeeper-free outlets for publishing our fiction, have a variety of reasons for doing so, the retention of control over our works is prominent among them. Conventional publishers seldom permit a writer that degree of control. They demand changes of all sorts, ostensibly to …
Feb 27 2025
Politics Is Everything To Them…
…therefore, everything must be politicized: Washington Post opinion editor David Shipley resigned Tuesday after the paper’s owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, announced that, going forward, on the opinion pages, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” […] Of …
Feb 13 2025
Mobilization Strategy
If you’re a would-be aggressor, and you want “your people” to mobilize behind you, you’ll need to present them with: An enemy they can be taught to hate; A hateful action against them by that enemy. Among conflict-studies’ scholars, this is sometimes referred to as the “Pearl Harbor” gambit, owing to President Roosevelt’s …
Feb 06 2025
The Group Lookout
Groups are dangerous. (“Groups give me an itch.” – Keith Laumer’s fictional diplomat Jame Retief) They possess powers that mystify the uninitiated, and terrify those who… well, those who seek to be accepted by a group! I, a determined “non-joiner,” have regular clashes with groups of all sorts. From them have come some of …
Feb 05 2025
What A Difference Two Weeks Make
It’s impossible for me not to smile. Indeed, my smile is so persistent and so wide that it threatens to amputate my jaw. We are witnessing the demolition of the most malevolent enterprise since the fall of the Soviet Union — in real time. The driving forces are two that virtually no one …
Jan 23 2025
Divisionaries
Good morning. The many scathing comments about the Episcopal Bishop who saw fit to lambaste President Trump at a service he attended got me thinking about the Left’s use of the tactics of division to advance its agenda. It’s a subject on which I wrote long ago, so rather than repeat myself, please enjoy …
Jan 21 2025
Looking Ahead
As we enter the second Trump Administration, it’s vital to keep certain fundamental truths in mind at all times. Today’s piece, therefore, will be a reflection upon those truths. I believe they’ll shape the political battles of the next four years… and that those battles will be characterized by a no-prisoners, no-mercy attitude among …
Jan 15 2025
A Word And A Defeasible Tactic
Certain words, as all my Gentle Readers already know, have been anathematized: driven out of the common lexicon by censorious P.C. evangelists. I’ve written about this before. But those actions have evoked reactions in many cases. One of them is the contemporary practice of condemning the individual’s privilege of discerning better from worse, or …
Jan 14 2025
Reality Is Unbending
…but human nature can be pretty stiff too: It’s not that [California left-liberals] can’t learn. They’re not stupid in the sense that they don’t understand that the people they’re voting for are blithering idiots. It’s that human nature prevents them from accepting the fact that they’ve been wrong so that they can change. …
Dec 14 2024
Numbering The Days
Eleven days to go until we commemorate the birth of the Son of God in human flesh. Eleven days more before we break out in choruses of “Adeste Fideles” and “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and start ripping the gaily covered paper off the packages under the tree. Eleven more days to imagine what …
Dec 11 2024
The Black-Is-White Chronicles
Just a quick thought, as the day promises to be a difficult one. The acquittal of Daniel Penny by a New York City jury has the Left’s pet talking heads in a fury unmatched since the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse… which had those selfsame persons in a fury unmatched since the acquittal of …
Dec 09 2024
They Weren’t “Failures”
A lot of people have been blathering about the Obama and Biden presidencies as colossal failures. Would you like to know who is most heartened by such statements? Then read on. Failure is an evaluation. It requires an assessment of several things: What the operator intended to achieve; Whether he actually achieved it, …
Dec 06 2024
Who Decides Part 2: “The Rules”
You’re an intelligent and erudite person, aren’t you, Gentle Reader? I certainly hope so. Which means you’re already cognizant of the old saying that “war is a continuation of diplomacy by other means.” While it’s not absolutely true in every applicable respect, it contains a terrifying insight. In a peacetime situation (“Peace: a …
Nov 29 2024
There Is Only One Guaranteed Remedy
Mark Steyn put us on notice long ago: If it were just terrorists bombing buildings and public transit, it would be easier; even the feeblest Eurowimp jurisdiction is obliged to act when the street is piled with corpses. But there’s an old technique well understood by the smarter bullies. If you want to break …
Nov 25 2024
Outlets
The Left’s control of the communications industry – education, entertainment, news media – privileged them politically for several decades. They still command the heights in those three areas. However, they don’t want dominance; they want total, unblemished control: Staff are protesting against a new US imprint of global publisher Hachette Book Group (HBG) …
Nov 18 2024
Everything Old Is New Again Dept.
To get a truly broad sense of the insanity rampant throughout our species – a copious supply of evidence to that effect, at any rate – there’s no substitute for a single book: Charls Mackay’s immortal 1852 study Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Today, mindful of this evil, I reproduce a …
Nov 16 2024
You Can Feel The Hatred From Here
So! Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who recently changed her party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, has been selected to be Director of National Intelligence, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t like it: New York Democrat Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to nominate Tulsi Gabbard for the position of director of national intelligence, …
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