Jun 28 2022
Just HAPPEN to have their cases dropped – those are the cases for crossing the border illegally – just in ltime for them to be registered, and vote (or, have some OTHER person/organization do so for them) in the Congressional elections.
Why, who could be against THAT?
Haters, that’s who.
Jun 28 2022
Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane has a brief tale for us:
My ex-wife slopped [mayonnaise] on everything. We went through more mayonnaise in a month than I did in a year before I met her.
About the only thing I’ll use it on is a ham or bologna sandwich, but she’d slather it on everything. I almost exploded when I saw her smearing it on a fucking steak, and in a restaurant no less. It was almost a race to see who’d beat her ass first, me or the waiter. I know he was wondering what she was going to use it on when she asked him for it. Well, he found out.
Mayonnaise on a steak? The mind reels. (The stomach turns.) What on Earth could she have been thinking? Did she have no ketchup?
Jun 28 2022
[T]he [California] AG’s office concludes that the existing statutory requirement “that a public-carry license applicant provide proof of ‘good moral character’ remains constitutional,” and that this requirement isn’t limited to disqualifying felons, certain violent misdemeanants, and the like. And in particular the AG’s office suggests that people who hold certain ideological viewpoints should be disqualified:
Existing public-carry policies of local law enforcement agencies across the state provide helpful examples of how to apply the “good moral character” requirement. The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office, for example, currently identifies several potential reasons why a public-carry license may be denied (or revoked), which include “[a]ny arrest in the last 5 years, regardless of the disposition” or “[a]ny conviction in the last 7 years.” It is reasonable to consider such factors in evaluating an applicant’s proof of the requisite moral character to safely carry firearms in public. See, e.g., Bruen (referencing “law-abiding citizens”).
Other jurisdictions list the personal characteristics one reasonably expects of candidates for a public-carry license who do not pose a danger to themselves or others. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s policy, for example, currently provides as follows: “Legal judgments of good moral character can include consideration of honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, respect for the law, integrity, candor, discretion, observance of fiduciary duty, respect for the rights of others, absence of hatred and racism, fiscal stability, profession-specific criteria such as pledging to honor the constitution and uphold the law, and the absence of criminal conviction.” [Emphasis added]
As to how law enforcement is to figure out such matters, the AG’s office has some advice: Among other things,
As a starting point for purposes of investigating an applicant’s moral character, many issuing authorities require personal references and/or reference letters. Investigators may personally interview applicants and use the opportunity to gain further insight into the applicant’s character. And they may search publicly-available information, including social media accounts, in assessing the applicant’s character. [Emphasis added.]
Remember what I said here?
Finally, we can rest assured that anti-gun states and locales will impose fresh terms on the issuance of gun permits. Those terms could easily be made vague enough to support arbitrary denials. “Good moral character” — ? “No history of mental illness” — ? Meaning what? How long and expensive a court fight would most permit-seekers be willing to undergo in pursuit of their right?
Watch for it in a “may issue” state near you.
Jun 27 2022
I can’t help it; I have a scientist’s preference for data over opinions. I have another preference as well: for life, limb, and property. So I respect data about crime. In particular, I respect data about where the majority of crimes against person and property are committed. I avoid those districts to the extent possible – which these days means just about all the time.
No region on this planet is completely safe, of course, but using “statistical common sense” helps to reduce the risks to life, limb, and property as far as they can be reduced. So I respect the sort of advice John Derbyshire gives in “The Talk – Nonblack version:”
A small cohort of blacks–in my experience, around five percent–is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks–around half–will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.
Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:
- Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
- Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
- If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
- Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
- If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
- Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
- Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
- Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
- If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.
It’s a mini-sermonette about our present-day culture that the great majority of whites who read the above recoil from it in a kind of horror. Yet the great majority of them behave in accordance with Derbyshire’s advice. It’s hard to draw any inference other than the one I drew in this essay:
The essence of the taboo in American society is linguistic: not to speak the forbidden thought or attitude.
Any knowledge, however well confirmed, that a white American possesses that illustrates differences among the races as statistical aggregates must never be expressed in words. However, one may make use of the knowledge encapsulated in Derbyshire’s brief essay, as long as it’s never articulated where the shamans can hear.
Here’s something else I can’t help: contempt for those who knowingly lie about what they know full well. Thus, this piece at Chicks On The Right distressed me greatly. I shan’t excerpt it here. Read it and form your own opinions.
Perhaps “Martin” had an ulterior motive for his query. It doesn’t matter. As a white woman “Mockarena” would know that she’d be in elevated danger were she to blithely disregard Derbyshire’s counsel. She must know it. She probably behaves in accordance with it. But it’s plain from the exchange she presented that she would never, ever say so.
It’s cowardice and worse than cowardice, for it tacitly promulgates a falsehood. That falsehood could cause young, more impressionable Americans to take serious, unnecessary risks…probably out of a sense that it’s their duty to express “solidarity with the marginalized.” That’s worse than distressing; it’s contemptible.
It’s one thing to vow, privately or publicly, always to treat individuals on their individual merits. That’s praiseworthy. It’s what’s expected of us as decent persons. But when people act in and as groups, disaggregating the group into individuals and treating with each of them on his merits is flatly impossible. In such circumstances it’s the path of prudence to go with what you know. Thereafter, it’s the path of candor to own up to it – and never, ever to deceive others, whether directly or by implication, about the reasons for one’s decisions and actions.
America needs more than a return to the rule of law. We need a return to candor and sincerity as well – and no mincing about simply to avoid “hurting their feelings.” It’s high time. Charles Murray will tell you.
Jun 27 2022
Every now and then I get a burr under my saddle, and I have to vent. (“No, really?”) (Shut up, you.) Today is such a day. I hope you’ll indulge me, as the subject matter is critical to the future of Mankind. Yes, the subject is the one in the title of this piece – and if you’re put off by the notion, then stick around because it’s especially important that you get the message.
There are four categories of love. The classical Greeks had a word for each of them:
Christian love is of the fourth variety: “good will toward men,” as the angels sang over the shepherds of Bethlehem two millennia ago. It’s not a mushy-gooey sort of love. It seldom features in romance novels. And it involves neither the desire to possess, nor the desire to control. It is exactly and only the desire that others be and do well.
When Christ articulated the Two Great Commandments:
But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.[Matthew 22:34-40]
…He made reference to two different kinds of love. Love of God is Storge, the love of a child for his Father. Love of neighbor is Agape, the impersonal love that is a desire for the well-being of others, including a willingness to help out when appropriate. Neither seeks anything from the other except the same kind of love in return.
How could it be clearer? Yet the number of people who “don’t get it” – some of them maliciously and deliberately – sometimes seem to dwarf the number of those who do. This is particularly a problem among fiction writers, far too many of whom treat Christianity and Christians as some sort of malevolent, sentient plague.
I seldom see fiction writers denigrate or condemn any other religion. Judaism? Just about doesn’t happen. Islam? Too risky, unless your last name is Ringo. Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Wicca, Scientology? Haven’t seen it at all. But Christianity! We must be the spawn of Satan, to judge by how often other writers label the villains of stories and dramas as Christians.
It’s not right. How recently did Christians go slaughtering in the name of Christ? What was the body count? Who cleaned up afterward? And what parts of the Gospels did we cite to justify our rampage?
There have been villains who’ve called themselves Christians and who’ve acted in a wholly non-Christian manner – certainly without any trace of love-of-neighbor. But the creed prescribes love and condemns hatred. The Founder of the creed, when hung upon a cross to die in agony, said of his torturers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And there’s this:
And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left.
Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me.
Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and covered thee? Or when did we see thee sick or in prison, and came to thee?
And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.[Matthew 25:31-40]
Does that sound as if Christ wants His people to run around murdering, raping, pillaging, and oppressing others?
Yet I keep encountering this notion that Christians are a danger to non-Christians, when in point of fact we’ve sallied forth many times to come to the aid of others who don’t share our faith. On occasion that’s included persons who openly and actively hate us and wish us dead or enslaved. And then there’s the abuse we get from writers and dramatists. To go by what they say about us, you’d think we adore Hitler and Stalin rather than Jesus of Nazareth, the Prince of Peace.
We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves. It’s there in black and white. In the many times and places where Christians have been persecuted for being Christians, how many instances of violent resistance have there been? If the number isn’t zero, it’s really BLEEP!ing close to it. Yet the number of our persecutors is legion.
By now you’re probably asking yourself “Who pissed in Fran’s Cheerios® this morning?” It’s a fiction writer, a man of vast imagination with a large and varied body of work. As much as I’ve enjoyed his stories, I’ve had to grit my teeth over his treatment of Christians and Christianity. While P. S. Power is entitled to his own beliefs and opinions, I would advise him to think seriously about controlling that particular prejudice. Undisguised bigotry can cost a writer a good share of his potential audience. That’s something indie writers, in particular, can ill afford.
Jun 27 2022
These days, this place on the planet that used to be a nation groans under a tribulation of bad ideas, bad choices, bad conduct, bad management, and bad faith. We have not been so ripe for regime change since 1776. A ruling Party of Chaos is doing absolutely everything to disorder our lives and there really is no generous interpretation for its motives. Everything it touches breaks, wilts, withers, splinters, rots, poisons, and infects the body politic, driving it deeper into derangement. It doesn’t even pretend to make sense because that would require making distinctions between what is true and what’s not true.
“The Time of Our Time.” By Jim Kunstler, Clusterfuck Nation, 6/27/22 (emphasis added).
Jun 26 2022
Really?
Because maternal deaths have plummeted since the mid-20th century. With prenatal health care, delivery is often safer than abortion for the mother, and certainly safer for the child.
Do SOME few women kill themselves attempting to abort? Sure – as do others kill themselves for other reasons. Much as I would like to, I can’t see that ALL suicides can be prevented. Nor that ALL death by self-administered abortions can be stopped.
As far a children living in poverty, Leftist always bring up the “it costs SO much to raise a child to adulthood” trope. Their numbers never seem to have any realistic relationship to the reality of real people’s lives, and completely ignore the fact that, for subsequent kids, the cost is less, as most of the baby stuff is already in the house, and – other than those cute little dresses – kid’s clothes can be used by the next kid. Or bought at a resale shop.
Funnily, the Left never allow the argument that illegal immigrants generally require subsidies for their kids, thereby reducing the money that might keep American kids from growing up in poverty. Poverty for Americans is hunky-dory for Leftists, as long as it allows them to bring in more Dem voters.
I’ve pretty much given up on expecting Leftists to use logic, reason, or principles.
Jun 26 2022
My responsibilities to my Gentle Readers are more extensive than you might imagine. Yes, I’m here to provide analysis and commentary. Yes, I’m here to dissect the statements of others who don’t always express themselves clearly. But alongside those duties, I’m also here to pull the wool off your eyes – to tell you, and anyone else who might wander in, when you’re being deceived, and how and why.
Deceptions take many forms. The one that most concerns me at the moment is an old bug-bear of mine: the deliberate distortions of words.
He who deliberately perverts a word, employing it to mean something it has never meant and will never mean, is a deceiver of the first stripe. Such persons are many today. The nostrums they’re selling point in the general direction of death. See this collection of essays for my thoughts on such things to date.
Sometimes the distortions are relatively easy to penetrate. That’s especially the case with some of the more blatant Death Cult propaganda. Remember this one?
WASHINGTON — The House voted decisively Thursday for the first ban of an abortion procedure since the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling that women have a right to end their pregnancies. Strongly supported by President Bush, the bill could be on his desk for signature in days….
“Don’t ever forget, this is about Roe v. Wade,” said Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision making abortion legal. “It’s about restricting access to safe medical procedures throughout a pregnancy.”
I added the emphasis in the above. Nita Lowey knew what she was about. Rather than call abortion what it is – killing an unborn human baby – she called it a “safe medical procedure.” I greeted that distortion at The Palace of Reason, when the subject came up there:
Safe for whom? It’s certainly not safe for the baby.
But of course, that confronts the pro-abortion advocate with something he dares not deign to acknowledge. He’ll probably call you a sexist for daring to say it.
It’s better to rap such a person’s teeth with the truth about his intentions, rather than to proffer it to him as gently as I did. Watch how it ought to be done:
“[E]ven the ancient pagans noticed that Nature imposes nothing on you that Nature doesn’t prepare you to bear. If that is true even of a cat, then is it not more perfectly true of a creature with rational intellect and will—whatever you may believe of Heaven?”
“Shut up, damn you, shut up!” she hissed.
“If I am being a little brutal,” said the priest, “then it is to you, not to the baby. The baby, as you say, can’t understand. And you, as you say, are not complaining. Therefore— “
“Therefore you’re asking me to let her die slowly and— “
“No! I’m not asking you. As a priest of Christ I am commanding you by the authority of Almighty God not to lay hands on your child, not to offer her life in sacrifice to a false god of expedient mercy. I do not advise you, I adjure and command you in the name of Christ the King. Is that clear?”[Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz]
The power of that passage has remained with me for sixty years. It’s a brilliant illustration of the proper reply to one who seeks to deceive – yea verily, even if the one she seeks to deceive is herself. The riposte needs to be forceful – even brutal. Breaking through a shield of self-deception will always require great force, because the deceiver and the deceived are one and the same.
Self-deception we must not permit.
Self-deception isn’t confined to the Left. They do a lot of it, true, but we do our share right along with them. A lot of people in the Right are doing it over the very same subject: abortion.
The overruling of Roe v. Wade was a good and constructive first step. Yet it’s not more than a first step. Too many pro-lifers are treating it as a grand victory rather than a modest entering wedge.
The Alito opinion merely returns authority over the subject of abortion to the state governments, in keeping with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. In no state in which abortion is currently legal has it been rendered illegal by that opinion. State legislatures must first have their say, and we cannot be certain what they will say until they’ve said it.
Those states dominated by the Left will probably leave abortion legal. The rulers’ constituents want it that way, and the rulers fear to be turned out of office. Those states in which the Right is dominant will probably outlaw or restrict abortion. The rulers of those states know their constituents equally well. But there are other forces in play, some of them not very nice. They make certitude unwise.
If we want women not to seek abortions, we must work on the beliefs and attitudes of the women themselves. Abortion in the earliest stages of gestation is easily concealed under another name – “menstrual extraction” is the usual term – so even should abortion as such be outlawed nationwide, abortions that the law can’t touch will still occur. The only way to reduce them in number is to get women to accept the sanctity of human life, including unborn human life.
Whatever we might wish, this drama has more acts to play out. The Dobbs decision has given us an opportunity, nothing more. We who are pro-life must not evade the necessity of further, certain-to-be grueling work…especially not to ourselves.
Jun 26 2022
My daughter was visiting, and it had been good, after a rough start. She’d been in an accident just a short distance from our house. No injuries, but her car was damaged. Fortunately, it can be repaired, and her insurance company is on the job of getting it back in operation.
But, no, the problem started Saturday. My sister texted a picture of herself in the hospital ER, with a badly swollen leg after a fall. I was pretty sure that it was broken.
Which, it is. But also more. She is also suffering from “bone rot” – necrosis of the bone. Basically, her bones are dying off. It can be caused by many things, but in her case, it’s likely a previous bout of cancer and chemotherapy. She is in a lot of pain.
My daughter volunteered to help out until she had to return home in a few days. My brother and I are planning to assist her 80-year old husband for at least a few hours a day. My husband is planning to travel back here Monday.
Sometimes, I feel as though we are lurching from crisis to crisis.
Jun 25 2022
Take someone like me, who gets around $900 (gross) Social Security each month. If we shaved off 6 cents for every dollar spent, I would receive $5.40 less. Every month, meaning that, over the course of a year, I would receive just a smidge under $65 less. Correction: that number should be $54. 00. I really should never post anything with numbers on the fly. Too easy to accidentally move the decimal point and not notice.
I could live with that, if it meant the deficit could be eliminated. And, the beauty is, legislators will not be targeting individual programs, but cutting the budget across the board.
I like it, but check out the link, and see what you think about it.
Jun 25 2022
A lot of people would like to disbelieve that statement by Mac Stipanovich. Some will say “There must be some missing context;” others, “Maybe he was just funnin’ us.” After all, the man was a Republican political consultant. By flapping his yap the way he did, he’s “given the game away” and endangered Republican prospects for the elections ahead. Surely that would endanger his career prospects, too!
Well, no, it wouldn’t, and I shall tell you why:
Take them seriously, Gentle Reader. They’re an education in political dynamics, all by themselves.
The professional politician’s first and highest priority – and this never changes – is to get elected to office. He puts a degree of effort into that quest that ordinary Americans could never fathom. It’s a classic monomania, and it drives him with the fury of a Cat 5 hurricane. Nothing – let’s slam that word really hard — NOTHING — is permitted to interfere with that goal in the slightest way.
What does he need to get elected? Votes. Lots of votes. And he doesn’t care how he gets them. So he’s naturally receptive to the appeal of individuals who can plausibly claim to know how to get him votes. Such an individual could be three feet tall, covered with warts and rank hair, and speak in the language of Hell itself. (I have no idea if, in the style of Adam Zlugy, there are political consultants from Hell, but I’m sure there are some in Hell.) He will hire whichever of them has the best credentials, which usually reduces to a record of bringing in the sheep votes.
There is no effective counteracting influence to that drive, for there is nothing that matters as much to the politician as getting elected – and re-elected.
Let’s imagine for a moment that the politician approaches his desire for high office equipped with some convictions about right and wrong. Let’s imagine further that he arrives in office to confront sitting majorities: professional politicians who, to put it bluntly, don’t give a shit. They’re there to be there, and for no other reason. They intend to remain there come Hell or high water. How will they react to his announcement that this or that must be done, because it’s “right?”
They probably won’t laugh audibly. But they won’t show the newcomer perceptible willingness to go along with him. Rather, they’ll subtly encourage him to emulate them.
In this connection, one must not underestimate the power of time and persistence. The newcomer confronts a large body of men who’ve “been around,” who “know how things are done around here.” Their urbanity and experience are seductive. (Never mind what they’ve actually accomplished.) As he adapts his behavior toward theirs, they provide subtle increments of reinforcement. His political consultant will reinforce the process with polls, opinion surveys, and reports of “trends” among likely voters.
“This is the way it is” morphs into “This is the way it must be…especially if I hope to remain here.”
In his regular bouts to retain his office, no one matters more to the politician than his party colleagues and his consultant. The former provide advice and endorsements; the latter designs and implements his campaign strategy. Neither need involve what the politician has achieved, if anything. All that matters is what will garner a sufficiency of votes.
The critical word here is image: the politician’s and that of his most plausible general-election opponent. His colleagues and his consultant are critical to both.
After two or three terms in office, the politician has “learned” all the following:
He might say that during his years in office, he has “found his place in the world.” In actuality, as C. S. Lewis put it, “the world” – the micro-environment composed of the corridors of power and the men who roam them – has found its place in him. The idea of being ejected from that domain becomes intolerable to contemplate. Whoever and whatever can keep him there is inherently to be preferred.
The issues no longer engage his moral sense. His convictions are transformed into keepsakes of his “naïve” years: that rosy-glassed period before he came to grips with “political reality.” It matters far more that he and “my sort” hold the levers of power than that they actually do anything. He has grown comfortable with all of it…though from time to time – usually among his grandchildren – he’ll take his old ideals out of the shoebox and fondle them nostalgically, perhaps with a tinge of regret. His consultant might even encourage him to do so…as long as he puts them back in the shoebox, replaces the lid, and returns the box to the high shelf in his bedroom closet before he goes back to the campaign trail.
Reality is that which is independent of our opinions and preferences. Whether we like it or not, it is. In the above we have the reality of majoritarian politics conducted in a quasi-democratic order. Rare is the office-holder who successfully resists the dynamics I’ve described.
There have been a few, over the years. However, as the decades have passed they’ve become ever fewer. Their colleagues have become ever more adept at filtering out the “unreformables,” or at neutering those who persist among them. The rise of a Donald Trump who actually means what he says and resists the pressures against him becomes ever less likely.
And the Mac Stipanoviches of the political world grow fat, sleek, and ever more contemptuous of Us the People. Perhaps there is some justice in it, though I dislike the notion.
Jun 25 2022
Pretty much everything. If you’re looking for breaking stories, you’re wasting your time watching the well-paid establishment.
Nice racket. Collect Big Bucks for parroting Dem press releases and talking points. Interview with a gentle touch tired old Dems, from their flunkies, to long-out-of-office has-beens and never-weres, and – occasionally – get a carefully edited interview with HRC or other “exciting newsmaker”. Sprinkle in specious studies and “investigative” papers from the NGOs, and the representatives of Old Media can sit back and drink their half-fat, no sugar, almond milk frappuchino, content that they have served their Dark Masters well.
Jun 24 2022
Late in coming, but welcome – I wrote about it (and other related topics) here.
Jun 24 2022
Now and then, we get a “Kinsley gaffe” – i.e., when a politician accidentally tells the truth – that tells us more than we ever knew. (Sometimes it’s more than we wanted to know, but that’s a subject for another tirade.) We have one before us today:
For decades, the Democratic Party had commanded a majority of Florida’s registered voters. But the state was changing, as Trump’s election helped energize a shift in political affinities. The Republican Party’s rank and file became increasingly radical, and G.O.P. leaders appeared only too happy to follow them. “There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy,” Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff to Governor Bob Martinez, a moderate Republican, told me. “They had lots of different names—they were John Birchers, they were ‘movement conservatives,’ they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: we exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised—and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.
“So what happened?” Stipanovich continued. “Trump opened Pandora’s box and let them out. And all the nasty stuff that was in the underbelly of American politics got a voice. What was thirty-five per cent of the Republican Party is now eighty-five per cent. And it’s too late to turn back.”
The contempt for conservatives that snippet expresses is beyond anyone’s ability to deny. It’s “in your face.” It relishes its own sense of moral and intellectual superiority. It could almost be a pulpit emission from a hell-and-brimstone style preacher. Why, you’d almost think it had to be from a Democrat.
Yes, the main thrust of the article is to demonize Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but the snippet above is critical to any true comprehension of our political Establishment.
“Republicans” who think this way are a more important obstacle to reclaiming our rights and restoring Constitutional government than all the Democrats in existence. Ponder that in your spare moments.
Jun 23 2022
…it’s unwise to rely on the honesty or candor of the political class.
A few hours ago, the Supreme Court struck down New York State’s “may issue” handgun-permit law:
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a restrictive New York gun law in a major ruling for gun rights.
The justices’ 6-3 decision is expected to ultimately allow more people to legally carry guns on the streets of the nation’s largest cities – including New York, Los Angeles and Boston – and elsewhere. About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in states expected to be affected by the ruling, the high court’s first major gun decision in more than a decade.
The ruling comes as Congress is actively working on gun legislation following recent mass shootings in Texas, New York and California.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority that the Constitution protects “an individual’s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.”
Just in case you haven’t seen any in a while, this is good news. What it isn’t is a guarantee that states hostile to the right to keep and bear arms will honor the decision, and the right it protects, in practical terms. Administrative processes can be made so painful and expensive that they deter effectively everyone from exercising their rights.
For example, for some time now, the state has gotten away with a protracted waiting period before an applicant for a carry permit is notified of its decision. Here on Long Island, it’s averaged about a year. There’s no reason that period could not be made longer, effectively vitiating the right by administrative means.
Alternately, the state could impose a huge fee for the permit. That’s been the case in New York City for some time – and there’s no reason that fee could not be escalated to the skies. The rationale would be the “costs” of maintaining the permits and the bureaucracy that records and tracks them.
Finally, we can rest assured that anti-gun states and locales will impose fresh terms on the issuance of gun permits. Those terms could easily be made vague enough to support arbitrary denials. “Good moral character” — ? “No history of mental illness” — ? Meaning what? How long and expensive a court fight would most permit-seekers be willing to undergo in pursuit of their right?
So yes: good news. But the Omnipotent State is clever and elusive. It seldom accepts a setback passively. Watch New York’s next moves in this regard. I certainly will.
Jun 23 2022
That’s the question on millions of Americans’ minds after the utter, protracted betrayal of Republican officials – federal and state – to represent the preferences of the voters that elected them. Their most recent defection is on the subject of greatest importance to social stability: the right to keep and bear arms. Fourteen GOP Senators, all but one of them from a “deep red” state, have supported the recent “gun control” bill. That’s more than enough to force it through Congress to Biden’s desk.
The voters who seated them are appalled. They’ve watched the defection of the “party of the Constitution / party of limited government” to the dark side in real time. They’ve carpeted their floors with scalp flakes from all the head-scratching. They’ve pondered whether they can trust the evidence of their senses and the verdicts of their reasoning. But the facts are as they are.
I wrote on this subject quite recently:
No period of Republican federal dominance has done anything of consequence to reverse the trend of government expansion. Washington’s destruction of our rights, our economy, and our sovereignty has been relentless.
In truth, it’s worse. As Tucker Carlson said just last night, the GOP has acted to support the fatuous, wholly destructive Biden agenda virtually from the day the Vegetable-in-Chief was inaugurated:
Indeed, by collaborating with the forces striving to suppress investigation into the nationwide vote fraud in November 2020, they’ve sided with the Democrats, including the most vicious of them, from the morning after that fateful election.
But what’s this? Another “Vote Republican!” pitch? Is anyone else asking “Why should we bother?”
If we confine our thinking to what we can do via the ballot box, we have foredoomed ourselves.
Some commentators have theorized that the GOP’s defections from our interests are part of its overall electoral strategy. They argue that the more of the Biden agenda passes, the better it will be for Republican electoral prospects in November this year and November 2024. Viewed thus, Republicans’ tacit and not-so-tacit compliance with the Usurper Regime is actually a stroke for achieving such Republican dominance in Washington that nothing will be able to impede a conservative revival. The consequence, they claim, will be a true and massive course correction that will revitalize the Constitution and the rights it guarantees.
But one does not advance by retreating. The notion that the GOP’s defections are setting up the Democrats for an electoral haymaker is absurd. The individuals involved in these betrayals are inherently more concerned with their own electoral fortunes than with those of their party. (Remember how few of them have ever held a non-government job.) What are they counting on to keep them in office?
The answer to that question is the “two-party system” itself. Establishmentarians maintain rigid control of the state and local party chapters. They wield sufficient power to prevent the rise of genuinely conservative, Constitution-faithful individuals. Such persons only break through the Establishment’s barriers under the most unusual circumstances. So incumbents who have the support of the party bosses are protected from upstarts who will challenge their fidelity to the positions they claim to espouse. And of course, to vote for a candidate who wears neither the (D) nor the (R) is to “waste your vote.”
The loss of voters’ trust in “their” representatives and the electoral system generally is nearly total and appears irreversible. Yet as long as all alternatives are foreclosed, current conditions will continue.
What alternatives remain?
The one with the widest approbation is “Irish democracy:” the disaffiliation and de facto secession of individuals from the political system. The Irish are well known for this, as are the Italians. “Pass whatever laws you like, gentlemen. If we choose to ignore them, what are you going to do about it?” And there was a time when Americans could have implemented that alternative with good confidence that it would be effective. However, today matters are not so favorable. Too many of us are too dependent on the system’s employment or largesse. Too many are in thrall to a corporation that actively supports the system, such that their livelihoods inherently feed the beast. And too many are too frightened by the possible consequences of defying the Omnipotent State.
Could the remainder do anything effective? Unclear. What is clear is that should such a movement arise, the Establishment would be swift to act against it – probably in the “IRS style” of offering rewards to those willing to betray their neighbors, friends, and acquaintances for a cash reward. In our “post-moral,” “post-ethical,” “post-Christian” era, what degree of fidelity to friendship and community could we reasonably expect?
The alternative of armed revolution seems unlikely. We have degenerated too far, and the State has risen too high and become too rapacious. Were such a revolution to begin, the death toll would dwarf any war in the history of Mankind. Nor would what follows necessarily be better than today.
That’s all I have the stomach for at the moment. Any thoughts, Gentle Readers?
“If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always gotten.” – Michael Emerling
Jun 22 2022
As I’ve written before, some of our most urgent problems are “connectedness problems.” Andrea “Bookworm” Widburg comments on one in her latest American Thinker essay:
[The Senate compromise ‘gun safety’ bill] promises to expand mental health services, including in schools; open juvenile records for gun customers under 21; stop illegal trafficking in firearms; etc. The ability to review juvenile records, which are sealed, before allowing a person under 21 to buy a weapon is probably useful.
As for the rest, I’m inclined to believe that our mental health and violence problems stem from a broken culture that sees politicians, the media, and educators encourage racial hatred; flood the country with illegal aliens, who bring with them illegal drugs, guns, and sex-traffickers; destroy the economy; create a culture of death with unlimited abortions; legalize marijuana, a drug strongly associated with psychosis and violence; ignore existing laws, including those against illegal guns and gun crime; and sow confusion about biological sex.
All these things break a culture, and broken cultures produce broken, violent people. No additional mental health funding or red flag laws will change that.
Utterly indisputable. The tidal wave of irrational, counterfactual influences in which our young people are being drowned was bound to have bad psychological effects. A young man can only endure so much counter-reality propaganda, all antidotes to which are hysterically shouted down as “racist” or “hateful,” before his mind snaps. The form his induced lunacy takes might not be healthful for children and other living things.
Reducing and eliminating outbreaks of savagery, whether or not the savages are gun-equipped, will be impossible de facto without first correcting the pervasive ambient lunacies: first in the schools, thereafter in the enveloping culture. I maintain my “traditional” position that the proper way to reform the schools is with mass hangings and high explosives. As for the wider culture, perhaps after we’ve publicly drawn and quartered the first few propagandists for “systemic racism,” “capitalist patriarchy,” “gender fluidity,” “undocumented immigrants,” “oppressed brown people,” and so forth, the rest will “get the message.”
Jun 22 2022
If you don’t watch Tucker Carlson’s nightly “openings,” you’re missing some of the best and most entertaining commentary available:
Ridicule, Alinsky tells us, is the unanswerable weapon. Ridicule of a self-described comedian who no longer even tries to be funny – the last time Stephen Colbert even made an attempt at humor was well before the election of Donald Trump to the presidency – is devastating.
Tucker isn’t just more successful than “comedian” Colbert, he’s funnier. Let that sink in for a moment. It portends well for the future, though perhaps not for the future of televised comedy. And with that, it’s back to my fiction labors.
Jun 22 2022
In my current state of screaming, frothing fury, the following graphics speak more eloquently than I can manage:
I may be back later, but don’t bet the rent money on it.
Jun 21 2022
Would any Gentle Reader care to suggest that it’s white African migrants perpetrating these horrors on Italy and Europe generally?
