The Leftist indoctrination and brainwashing of our children
has intensified to the point where parents who love them and care about our
Nation’s future should seriously consider homeschooling, private or parochial
schools. Not every family can afford private or parochial schools, however, so
homeschooling may be the only realistic alternative.
Making the decision and committing to homeschooling would
represent a tectonic shift in a family’s life to say the least. Dual incomes
and $1000 iPhones has replaced living within our means, the traditional norm of
father providing for the family, mother tending the hearth and nurturing the
children, and the schools educating and preparing our youth to become
productive achievers in our society.
Homeschooling would decidedly alter the current paradigm. Your
taxes would still be paying for those teacher retirement benefits (largely),
your income would drop and costs will rise, but it may be the only way to
counteract the destructive ideology that has infused the curriculum and that is
the real driving force tearing our country apart and causing our country’s
decline.
I’ve only begun to research this topic, but virtually
everything I read about the practice, in terms of preparing children for the
world they face and equipping them with the tools they will need to survive in
their future, is positive, even laudatory.
Mom usually takes on the homeschooling challenge and not all
of our daughters and daughters-in-law are either educationally or emotionally
able to do so. But for those who are, though it may mean abandoning or putting their
careers on hold and running a different race than the one called “keeping
up with the Jones”, it could be the most rewarding and fulfilling
occupation of their lives. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to suggest that
a generation of well-taught-through-homeschooling or private schooled kids
could save the future of America.
One of the websites I found to be a useful introduction and
guide to homeschooling is Mary Ann Kelley’s The Home School Mom. It lists many
of the benefits of homeschooling, among them:
Academic flexibility. Homeschooling can work
whether a child is ahead, behind, strong-willed, creative, challenging, quiet,
gifted, or active.
Meeting current needs now. You can prioritize a child’s mental, emotional, behavioral, and physical health.
Meaningful learning. Avoid teaching to the
test, testing mania in general, and arbitrary minimal standards.
Foster less peer dependence. Less early exposure
to drugs, alcohol, sexual activity, and bullying.
Build a sense of safety. Parents can take their
own steps to keep their children physically safe, and children can feel secure.
(Grumps note: this also means safety from indoctrination and brainwashing!)
The full description of benefits can be found here.
I might add that taking on the responsibility for educating
one’s children would of course force parents to become more educated
themselves, and lifelong learning for us adults is a good thing too!
The education lobby will weep, wail and gnash their teeth,
of course, and as the homeschooling trend continues to accelerate the assault
by the Leftist-infused teacher’s unions will be ferocious. But consider these
facts taken from research done by Brian D. Ray, Ph.D of the National Home
Education Research Institute (NHERI) and published in January of this year:
“There are over 2.3 million homeschool
students in the United States. That is, there were an estimated 2.3 million in
spring 2016, and this was up from one estimate of about 2 million home-educated
children (in grades K to 12) during the spring of 2010 in the United States. It
appears the homeschool population is continuing to grow at an estimated 2% to
8% per annum over the past few years.”
“The home-educated typically score 15 to 30
percentile points above public school students on standardized academic
achievement tests.”
As I wrote earlier, I’ve barely scratched the surface of
this subject, but as a grandfather increasingly worried about my kids’ and
grandkids’ future, as well as the future of America , I urge everyone to
seriously consider abandoning the current educational rat race and provide the
second most important thing (love comes first!) parents can provide their
children: a sound education.
What is happening in our schools is beyond shocking. A whole
generation has been brainwashed to believe things we and our parents would have
written off as lunacy.
A firsthand account by a public school teacher in Gross
Pointe, Michigan of what’s going on in the halls, academic lounges and in kids’
heads these days alarmingly summarizes what we should find frightening if we
care about our children and grandchildren. The article, entitled “Worse
Than Ever: Government Schools After 35 Years“, by Lawrence M. Ludlow (American Thinker, August 15, 2019)
describes what he found upon returning to the classroom after a hiatus because
the local high school was unable to replace a retiring Latin teacher.
The first clue was the difference between the certification
process in 1982, when he previously taught, and 2018. In his own words: “The
1982 certificate only listed the courses I could teach. In contrast, the
2018 version had a 300-word “Code of Ethics” that amounted to a profession of
faith in collectivism, egalitarianism, state schools, and diversity (typically
limited to superficial things like skin color and gender, not ideas).”
His next exposure was to the students themselves, who were woefully deficient in English grammar much less ready to study Latin. In what was supposed to be a superior school system, many students didn’t bring books to class, complained incessantly about homework, expected to receive high grades regardless of proficiency and performance and the Principal was instituting a process whereby students would not be compelled to take any more than one test in a day! And this kind of education was supposed to be college preparatory!
The warping and rewriting of history, the Leftist brainwashing
on the topics of socialism versus capitalism, communism versus democracy,
globalism versus nationalism, nepotism versus meritocracy, redistributionism
versus self-reliance, moral relativism, collectivism versus individualism, the
blatant promotion of gender dysphoria, group identity, victimology and outrage
culture…THIS is what’s being taught to our children and grandchildren in
elementary and secondary schools and on college campuses today. (I will leave
for another time the attack on boys and boyhood, men and manhood.) Oh yes,
occasionally the three R’s are thrown in, but increasingly, this kind of harmful,
Leftist nonsense permeates every subject.
It’s no wonder that home-schooling is taking off. It’s no wonder the competition for private school slots is cutthroat. And despite ever increasing spending per capita, it’s no wonder “Johnny [still] Can’t Read.”
Where does the fault lie, and who’s responsibility is it to
fix this problem?
As regards fault – I chalk this up to the natural impact of
what I call the “fat and happy syndrome.” Briefly, I submit that the
Boomers, recipients of the peace and prosperity won by the Greatest Generation
and not having to struggle through a Great Depression, allowed boredom,
indolence, envy, drugs, moral depravity and many other societal ills to infect
a “fat and happy” population.
“Free Thinking”, “Free Love”, anti-establishment
rhetoric and the abandonment of God or thousands of years of right and wrong moral
yardsticks resulted in a new educational approach. The result, “New
Math” (remember?) and now, the Common Core panacea. In short, the hippies
took over academia.
Regrettably, George Bernard Shaw was right. “Those who
can, do; those who can’t, teach.” With exceptions, for example shop and
trade-school teachers who pass on truly useful skills and learning,
academicians are so caught up in complying with the orthodoxy established by
teacher union leadership, publishing or perishing the “proper”
material in the case of college professors, or crushed by the collective mob if
they try to deviate from the dogma, that there is little chance of a return to
the basics.
As for the solution. Somehow, and by smarter people than I,
we must eliminate the ability of teacher unions to impose their Leftist canon
on our system. Whether we do this by abolishing teacher unions altogether (and
ALL government employee unions by the way) or through some other means, we must
break up the monopoly and MAKE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM GREAT AGAIN.
I also suggest that those parents who can place their
children in private schools do so. If unable to do so, I urge them to strongly
consider home-schooling. Something like 2 million school-age kids are being
home-taught today, with extraordinary results as compared to public schooling,
and that figure is growing exponentially.
Finally, I urge parents to demand that their children reduce
their obsession with social media and technology and create opportunities for
them to interact in healthy ways with one another. Supervised play dates for
the youngsters, organized sports (left me emphasize here the importance of competitive
TEAM sports), participation in interpersonally engaging, non-technical social
activities like music and theater, science and outdoors clubs for adolescents.
It’s been argued that our ability to influence our children
ends about the age of 8. While that’s debatable, those of us who have raised
children know that somewhere around the onset of adolescence we become the
enemy and what we say is far less important than the current “meme”.
Yet judging by what I see in college and twenty-something, even thirty-something age kids today, when reality bites and they’re forced to become increasingly self-reliant…they become receptive to guidance and influence once again. All of sudden they discover that their parents have grown up. (As an aside, there is nothing more heartwarming than hearing our own words coming out of the mouths of our older children as they instruct their younger siblings, or their children!)
I urge us to find ways of resisting the temptation to become
our children’s friends as they morph into grown-ups and, hopefully, adults, but
rather continue to set an example for them, teach them correct principles, and help
them understand what was right and what was wrong about the subject matter they
were just exposed to over the previous 12-16 or more years.
If they haven’t learned them already, teach them about
skepticism and critical thinking. Teach them the manners, decorum and civility
that they didn’t receive during their ‘formal’ education. Teach them
self-reliance and how to rise on the basis of merit, not political maneuvering
or nepotism. Teach them about determination and perseverance. Teach them thrift
and self-discipline, and teach them by example whenever possible, the
difference between Right and Wrong, and Right and Left.
I submit that the blatant Leftist indoctrination of our children and grandchildren in today’s schools and colleges (whether public or private) is the REAL DOMESTIC TERROR threat in our country. May we who believe in Traditional Values be strong enough and wise enough to arm and teach our loved ones how to fight this scourge.
Compared to “misogynist”, “racist”, “homophobe”, “angry
white male”, “supremacist, “PSM” (Pale, Stale, Male)… these days excoriating a
traditional man as a “Male Chauvinist Pig” seems kind of quaint!
Back in the 60’s, while some of us were working our butts
off, obeying the laws, seeking to get ahead, providing for our families, treating
everyone with respect irrespective of their color, creed, religion, and holding
doors open for women, others shed their steel capped shoes for birkenstocks,
grew their hair long, wore tie-dye with beads around their necks and smoked
dope. With the latter celebrated in song, dance and Hollywood, it’s no wonder that
women eventually began to look with derision at limp-wristed washouts and loser
men abrogating both their responsibilities and, well, their manhood.
Forced or at least compelled to pick up the slack, women, many
whom really were discriminated against, took what has always been a
battle – the “Battle of the Sexes” from a cold war to a kinetic one. What
started in the early 1900’s as a demand for voting rights has now turned into
vicious misandry.
Look up male chauvinist pig and you find it refers to men
who think that women are inferior, objects to be used or kept like pets. The definition
is now used by militant feminists as depicting ALL men, but particularly white
men. And while we old white guys can laugh it off much as we do all the other
Leftist hysteria and political correctness, the assault on men has now
permeated pre-K and elementary schools, where normal boy behavior is denigrated
and labeled “toxic masculinity.”
Nicholas Chauvin, of course, was a legendary soldier in
Napoleon’s army who was famously supportive of his emperor and his country.
Chauvinism, therefore, meant patriotism but in the 60’s morphed into a
pejorative label referring to bigotry or bias on the part of any man.
I believe actual MCP’s in our society are few and far
between. Of course one can always find examples of men who treat women as
inferior and exhibit truly reprehensible behavior, but the vast majority of men
whom I’ve seen and encountered throughout our country, (and I’ve traveled
widely) treat women with respect, dignity, sometimes even reverence, and
always have!
Does the row of hard-hat construction boys with open
lunchboxes ogle and smirk and occasionally whistle at the women walking by?
Yes, and it’s more than just bad manners, but it isn’t male chauvinist pigism! Do
the vast majority of them head home after work, help their wives get dinner on
the table and the kids with their homework afterword? Yes, in my experience,
that’s precisely what they do.
Boyhood is and has been under attack for some time. “All boys, especially white boys, are rebuked for their masculinity. They watch as girls are told they are special. They are told they are privileged, guilty, and must atone for their sins as if they are themselves were white supremacists. The expectation for white boys is that they should get in line behind girls, children of color, and illegal immigrants.” – Noel Anenberg, August 16, 2019, American Thinker, “Ideology, the Schools, and Murder: The McInerney/King Case“
Should women look at every man as a potential rapist or
molester? Should men never again compliment a woman for any reason? Shall men
allow themselves to shrivel up and just sit quietly in a corner while feminazis
(my preferred term for the small minority of loud, bitter, militants who have
hijacked the noble feminist agenda), foment
their warped ideology and escalate a battle that has resulted in
anti-patriotism (e.g. the Women’s Soccer Team) and, for example, female quotas
for football teams and military combat units?
I think not.
Not too many years ago I held open a door for a woman who
nastily said as she came through, “I can open it myself.” Should I
have slammed it in her face? I felt like it, but no, in fact, we traditional
men are going to have to suck it up and ride out this war, picking our battles
and alternating between fighting and diplomacy, between stiffening our spines
and quietly acquiescing, between speaking out against the male-bashing drivel
and just staying quiet and letting the feminazis spew their venom. I’m
heartened that traditional women are increasingly throwing down the BS flag on
radical feminism and pushing back with “You don’t represent ME!”
In short, if holding to traditional views of gender roles,
civil, polite and well-mannered manhood is being a Male Chauvinist Pig, please
feel free to call me one!
“If it bleeds, it leads.” Everything is a crisis! Today news
reports, tweets, Facebook posts and even conversations with friends are constantly
linked to CRISIS! The more provocative, the more incendiary the topic, the
better. Attention everyone…we’re becoming immune/desensitized to REAL crises!
The Iranians, Chinese, Russians, Venezuelans, North Koreans,
European Union, the NRA, White Supremacists, Old Angry White Men, Epstein’s
suicide or murder, the Border, Mass Shootings, lead in the water in Newark,
N.J., California earthquakes and wild fires, heat waves in the Southwest, inflation,
deflation, stocks up, stocks down, hail in Colorado, racism, fascism, xxxxxism,
melting icebergs, expansion of the Antarctic, meteors coming within a million
miles of the Earth…they’re ALL a crisis. We are receiving a constant firehose
of hysteria.
Good news doesn’t have a chance. Sure, there’s occasionally
a “human interest” segment that talks about the surprise return to his family of
a soldier from the war front or neighbors looking out for neighbors, but it’s
as if they’re thrown into the lineup just so the media can assert they also
report good news. And if that good news doesn’t have a heart-string-tugging
video associated with it, you’ll never hear about it.
If it isn’t crisis, it’s oddity, faux science, or just plain
clickbait: “DNA determines your politics” is one headline. “Cop pelted with
Chinese food during wild Bronx melee” is another. If it’s true that we are what
we read, watch on TV or listen to… THIS is what we’re becoming: a population of
paranoid, terrified, morbidly curious onlookers!
There’s no changing the info-feed. It’s going to continue like this so long as we click on the link or keep tuned to the tabloid channels (which is what virtually every cable news outlet is today with the exception, perhaps, of One America News).
My recommendation is simple…subscribe to ONE newsfeed and
only pay attention to what they cite as breaking or important headlines – mine
is the Wall Street Journal’s, and I may get one or two
“notifications” a day. Watch ONE evening newscast – I watch OANN’s 6:00
PM Report with Patrick Hussion. And for goodness sake don’t spend hours on
Social Media and tabloid sites!
We’ve simply got to refocus on Stuff That Matters. Please America, let’s eschew nonsense and deviance and embrace substance and goodness.
Let’s say a silent prayer and keep looking ahead when we
pass the ambulances, fire trucks and wreck by the side of the road.
The hyperventilating politicians can’t help themselves. Doing
something, ANYTHING whether it makes sense or not, is not only predictable, but
to every thinking American, laughable. We see this in children desperate for
attention, except these are supposed to be adults. “Never let a crisis go to
waste.” Insidiously true!
First come the cries of “We have to have a serious conversation…”. Almost immediately thereafter comes the search for a scapegoat, “It’s the [fill in the blank]’s fault!” Then come the condescending vituperations and finally, if enough celebrities jump on the bandwagon, come the protests and sometimes riots.
For example, let’s take the current “mass shootings”. Even
though it’s been said a dozen times over that all the legislation needed to
enforce gun laws are already on the books, and nothing being proposed would
have made any difference in the great majority of the incidents, the theatrics
are omnipresent. The 2020 presidential candidates’ hand-wringing, eye-rolling,
blame-their-opponents, gnashing of teeth, weeping, wailing, demands to “do
something”… it’s all unadulterated nonsense.
Why? Because if every gun in America were eliminated on a Monday, how many guns would there be on the streets by Friday, and who would have them? Of course, the answer is hundreds, if not thousands, and it’d be the criminals and the madmen! And then we’d have to defend ourselves with baseball bats. I submit you’d have to have a hellavu swing to knock out of the park a 9MM bullet shot by a determined gunman threatening your family.
But on the Left, the rhetoric is tantamount to “confiscate all guns and America will be a safer place”. More nonsense. It’d be like giving everyone in the country a tee-shirt with a target on it and the words, “shoot here”.
“We’ve got to get the guns out of the hands of the people who shouldn’t have them,” is another familiar cry. Enacting legislation that tries to do this would create more injustice to responsible gun owners. Whether a responsible gun owner goes to jail or not would then be dependent on how good the victimhood act from the aggrieved party is. “He (or she…let’s not be sexist here) is an angry old white man who’s threatening me!” Of course, the spouse making that allegation may have just had his or her belongings destroyed by that baseball bat or some other infliction, and the threats were made by the non-gun-owner party. Who gets arrested?
No, the solution to the mass shooting problem is not more legislation. The solution is easily described but terribly difficult to achieve. It is the return to and practice of traditional values in society. Fundamental morality has to become popular again. The teaching of right and wrong has to be the norm. Heroes have to be good rather than evil, and the Golden Rule has to prevail. In the late sixties, before the pendulum swung completely to the left, it would not have been such a herculean task. Today, with the pendulum so far left it’s near the 270 degree mark, it is.
We are repeating the mistake of history. Every great civilization: Egypt, Athens, Rome, Western Europe and now America, has gone through the same pattern: growth, prosperity, indolence, moral decay, the rise of deviant, destructive hedonism and demagogues, challenges from envious nations, the crumbling of traditional family units, the celebration of evil and immorality, the eventual decline of the culture, sovereignty impugned until its demise and replacement by another civilization in an earlier stage of the cycle.
Where do you think we are in this continuum?
The rampant demagoguery we’re witnessing is the sad symptom of a great civilization that is very ill. Is our situation fatal? Absolutely not. There are many among us who are speaking out and trying to push that pendulum back the other way. We do so by word and deed. In public we no longer speak in whispers or hushed tones about the rabid and caustic influence the Left is having on our society. When we walk our dogs, we don’t just pick up after them, we take an extra bag along and collect wrappers and cans and plastic water bottles along the street as well.
Sadly, but inevitably, it takes an outside shock like a world war, a natural disaster, a pandemic or some other cataclysmic event to wake us up and propel us to pay attention to the basics again. And by basics I mean the STUFF THAT MATTERS.
But the one thing we need more than anything to turn our
civilization around is MORAL LEADERSHIP. The fact that so many would scoff at
the previous sentence is symptomatic of how great the need is.
The 2016 presidential election was a cataclysmic event and it indeed caused us to reflect on what matters. Now we need to pick up the pieces of our society broken by the events of the last 11 or so years and MAKE GOOD COOL AGAIN.
And we have to somehow get rid of demagogue politicians and replace them with serious adults who ACTUALLY care about our country and its future rather than power, influence and money – ones who will sometimes stand there and do nothing instead of making things worse.
I can’t stand it anymore! At a restaurant the other night I felt like jumping up and grabbing the two millennials at the table next to ours by the throat and screaming “Stop it!” Between the gravel in their throats and the upticks at the end of sentences that each had a minimum of three “likes” in them, my wife and I cringed. It actually ruined what would have otherwise been a very nice dinner at our favorite dining spot. (If you don’t know what vocal fry and upticks are all about, just do a search on YouTube.)
It’s everywhere, not just in public but also in the workplace. What was particularly jarring was that the girls were talking about their college experiences and their schools were two of the best in the nation! How faculties can allow their students to graduate high school much less college without an ability to string two coherent and grammatically correct English sentences together is shocking and lamentable!
In our day, the filler words were “you know”. “It was nice at the beach yesterday, you know?” “I can’t understand, you know, how she could have said that.” “You know” was annoying, but I guess we were blessed that the painful vocal fry and uptick problems weren’t so common.
There were regional accents of course: Brooklyn, Bronx and Queens; Midwest; Minnesotan; Texas; Boston Brahmin, Southern and Deep Southern. None were offensive. They were quaint. At times, incomprehensible, but quaint, not grating!
Today, however, I often feel like I’m in a foreign country.
Mind you, it’s not the actual foreigners and recent immigrants with whom I have
trouble communicating. It’s most often those born here whom I can’t understand!
Other pet peeves…
Starting a sentence with “So”. I don’t know whether it’s supposed to make the speaker sound smarter, whether it’s just another filler phrase, or whether it’s like a cat that hunches down, sticks its butt in the air and flicks its tale before pouncing, but this too is such an annoying corruption of our language!
“Right?” It’s incredibly annoying to hear people end their
sentences not just with an uptick but the word right, right?”
Oh, and there are the slightly more sophisticated but equally obnoxious phrases, “Let me be clear”, “To be completely honest”, or “At the end of the day.” You get the idea.
Perhaps it’s because my wife is English that I’m more bothered than most about the deterioration of our grammar and diction. You know the Brits… whether they’re from Chelsea and speak “frightfully” or are from London’s East End and speak like Eliza Doolittle before her transformation in My Fair Lady, or the chimney sweeps in Mary Poppins, they always sound so much more educated and serious than we. Let’s be fair, however. The way they speak and spell English can also be troublesome! But, as she constantly reminds me whenever we get into a spat about the proper way to phrase something, “Just remember, we gave you the language!” End of conversation.
Back in the stone age of 1972 William F. Buckley gave a
guest lecture at my college. The auditorium was filled with 60’s vintage,
recycled hippies and liberal academics. After laying out the ‘conservative
case’ he took questions. The showboating engaged in by the Leftists as they asked
pointed and mostly insulting questions was classic drivel. I’ll never forget,
however, the extraordinarily deft way that Buckley calmly used incisive,
fact-supported arguments, words and language to thoroughly gut each and every
one of his antagonists. His mastery of English was incomparable. He also had
that great side flick of the tongue to accompany his responses, and when the
moderator finally submitted to the shellacking being dealt out, ending the
session, the handful of us in the audience who weren’t 60’s radicals or poor
attempts at imitation thereof stood up and loudly and unapologetically
applauded!
While we’re trying to take back our country from Leftists, let’s try to restore American English to its proper, beautiful state…the English as written by our Founding Fathers. The English we heard spoken by the likes of Lincoln, Reagan, and William F. Buckley. And let’s try to restrain ourselves from wringing the necks of the valley-talk kids around us!
I pray it is not too late. I pray there are still places in our country where traditional values still prevail. But the other day I read an article in American Thinker: “When the Left Snatches our Kids” by Sally Zelikovsky, to whom all credit is due, that so closely reflects my fears that I’m going to “retweet it”, i.e. reproduce it in full. It is precisely the kind of alarm I’ve been trying to raise for my own children and grandchildren. It isn’t so much prescriptive as a call to arms. It succinctly rifles to the crux of all that’s going wrong with our society.
While I’ve been careful to distinguish between Conservative and Traditional in my writings, one could do a cut and paste, replacing the word Traditional with Conservative in the article and it would remain spot on. The italics are mine.
“I am skeptical that our efforts as conservative parents to produce conservative offspring will materialize. Even with the best of intentions, the odds are not in our favor to successfully counter the Democrat-Media Complex, the educational system, and pop culture. That doesn’t mean there aren’t success stories (some in my own family), but I hear more about the failure and the disaffection it engenders in conservative families.
Conservative parents have learned the hard way that how your kids turn out depends on a host of factors that, at some point during the maturation process, are way beyond our control — friends, personal experiences, a particular book or documentary, brain chemistry, friends, a teacher/professor/boss, personality, a romantic relationship, college activities, pop culture, hobbies, and…friends. Usually, it’s not one but an amalgamation of several factors and presto chango! The kid who was once the lone conservative arguing at the lunch table, now thinks David Hogg and AOC are bitchin’.
We see them everywhere — the emaciated college-age vegans working at Starbucks, hysterical young girls pounding on Supreme Court doors, attractive anti-Semites leading the charge in Congress. I’m sure some of them had conservative upbringings — you cannot assume they were all raised by liberals. Yet, in her reporting about out-of-control liberal college students some time ago, I heard Laura Ingraham link their behavior to their upbringing. Only a parent whose children hadn’t yet attended high school could make such an absurd connection. We can try but we cannot guarantee what our children will believe.
Once again, I find myself referencing Red Scare movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It resonates. We have to be vigilant, stay informed, understand the arguments of the other side and how to combat them. If we don’t, eventually the pods take us over. I graduated high school a Reagan Republican whose political arguments were admittedly my Dad’s. When I arrived at a competitive college filled with smart, often private-school educated Merit scholars, I lost every political debate. I just didn’t have the breadth of information and understanding of history to counter their arguments. Thus, I graduated college…a Democrat. In time, I fell back on those critical thinking skills my parents instilled in me. A desire to understand more as I graduated from law school and entered the work force, led me to self-educate and, eventually, return to my conservative roots.
That was also in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when life was simpler and more balanced: when “gay marriage” was still an oxymoron; before triggers and safe spaces, the internet, social media, doom and gloom “climate change,” and legalized pot; before we had an alphabet of sexualities to choose from and the ability to change sexes; before blended families became the norm; before hatred became the quintessential reason for all of society’s ills.
Not all teachers and professors were proselytizing progressives, the media was less corrupt, and your politics were not a factor in getting or retaining a job. Because of the deep societal changes since then, not every Millennial or Gen Xer has the wherewithal, the background, or the backbone to recognize and then punch back against the forces of propaganda, fess up to and toil with their own ignorance, or simply engage in respectful debate with those who have another point of view — no matter how steeped in conservatism their childhood.
I am not suggesting we stop lecturing our children about competing points of view, stop teaching them to be skeptical about what they learn in school or from their peers, or stop challenging the false orthodoxies they are barraged with on virtually every topic from sexuality to climate, energy to food, and national security to border security. We should continue to bang the drum. We must. And we must remain hopeful that someday those we lost will return to the conservative fold because they see the wisdom of conservative principles. But for all of you young parents out there who think you’ll do better than those before you, be prepared for disappointment.
The conservative path is littered with the bodies of well-intentioned parents who are devastated when their formerly straight kids come out of imaginary closets, transition to the opposite sex, or demand to be called “they”; when their Jewish Day School educated children announce their support for the BDS movement; when their evangelical children support blatant infanticide; when their happy, well-adjusted kids go off to college and return believing weed is innocuous, struggling with drug addiction, or suffering from mental illness.
These cultural maladies affect liberals and conservatives alike, but are unusually bitter pills for conservatives to swallow because they are packaged in a lifestyle and value system antithetical to everything we teach our children — resilience, pride, integrity, honesty, open-mindedness, self-reliance, individuality, taking responsibility for our actions, doing right when we screw up, and teaching a man to fish. Liberals cast us as hypocrites whose principles clash with reality, but what they don’t understand is that we believe in taking responsibility for and learning from our missteps so we constantly evolve into better beings (and don’t get mired in unbridled, misplaced hatred and lifelong victimhood).
Secondly, conservative parents are treated by their children with a level of hostility that doesn’t seem to afflict liberal parents with conservative children. Loving, nurturing conservative parents find themselves catapulted to Holocaust-denier status and demoted to homophobic, intolerant, racist, privileged, religious zealots. Relics of an oppressive past. It is painful when your kids reject everything you raised them to value. Despise you. Scoff at you. Turn against you. Align with your political foes. Resent you for brainwashing them with yourhateful, 1950‘s agenda.
Now, some of that is typical teenage/young adult angst and rebellion. When frontal lobes are soothed by the right combination of hormones and our insecure little monsters segue into more confident adults, those nasty side effects often dissipate. But much of the antipathy they are exposed to is encouraged by “the man” in the liberal camp — we’ll call him “the burning man.” He instructs us to hate authority, hate anything established, hate tradition, hate the moral code you grew up with, hate anyone who is white or successful, and hate those who embrace any of this. Hence, hate your parents. Hate your old neighborhood. They are the problem. And while today all you have to do is oppose them, someday you might have to actively go against them, even “turn them in.” The burning man says this is okay because you are right and the end justifies the means. I’m not being paranoid. Our entire educational system is based on appropriating the minds of our children and undoing all they have learned at home, turning them into weapons of mass societal destruction in the burning man’s toolbox.
We have all participated in holiday dinners and family vacations ruined by dissension and door-slamming. Family harmony devolves into family discord, function into dysfunction, and closeness morphs into estrangement. Parents are instructed to just shut up already! Politics and religion are off the table. Dinner conversations revolve around silly cat videos and trivial drivel. Soon there is little left to discuss. After all, everything is political now — from your sneakers to your bus commute during Pride Month.
Once upon a time, we could fall back on cultural interests like music, movies, theater, travel, and sports to avoid potentially explosive conversations at family gatherings about politics and religion. Now, virtue signaling is so ubiquitous that everything seems to fall into the Realm of the verboten. It becomes more and more difficult to find common ground. Constructive input I like your haircut and simple questions Did you decide on a major? What are you doing for break? How do you like your job? are potential triggers. Family get togethers are so contentious there is an increasing tendency to minimize interactions. Even life’s big “hatching, matching, and dispatching” events are often fraught with tension — relatives who couldn’t be seated together because of some family squabble are now separated because one has a worldview the other finds detestable.
Some parents give in. They don’t want politics or values to stand in the way of their relationships with their kids, so they re-visit their Weltanschauung. Constant pressure from your 20-year-old bubelah goes a long way towards re-educating Mom and Dad. Senator Rob Portman was against gay marriage until his son came out and then… he evolved. I’d rather fight than switch is a paean to another time.
This is nothing new. Many parents drank the Kool-Aid and became part of the 60s counterculture their children brought home. Ironically, many of their hippie children became yuppies and did the unthinkable — morphed into their conservative parents. Hmm. I suppose we can be clear-eyed about the transformative societal and political forces pulling our children away from conservatism, at the same time we cling to the hope that our liberal progeny will switch and fight for conservative principles and maybe even cling to their bibles and the Constitution, too.”
Wish I could have said it like that!
Comment by DOC DURACOAT August 3, 2019: “All you people should move to Boca Raton, Florida! Our public high school has been rated A for the last 10 years straight. We have a very active ROTC program, and it is routine to see these kids in the halls wearing military uniforms. The flag is respected, everyone stands for the pledge of allegiance, even the minority students. Graduation rates and college acceptance rates are very high. Discipline is enforced, disrupting class is not tolerated. My kids and their friends all graduated as sports playing, modest dressing, great conservative kids. Come on down and bring your guns and bibles! Your kids will graduate with a great education and strong conservative moral values.”
The Left assiduously and furiously manufactures, celebrates and loudly publicizes victimhood. This gives them a pretense to extort money they can use as currency to gather power, influence and advance their agenda. Meanwhile, the majority of Americans keep their heads down and continue to do their jobs and their best for their families, their friends, their community, their country, and themselves.
In her exhaustively and incisively researched seminal work, “The Forgotten Man” (Harper Collins, New York, 2007) Amity Shlaes argues conclusively that the Great Depression was man-made and completely avoidable. She borrowed the term “Forgotten Man” from William Graham Sumner’s use of the term in his 1883 speech of the same name. The Left has always equated the Forgotten Man with those who stood in the bread lines during the Depression. However, Sumner and Shlaes used the term to denote the regular guy who had to pay for all the promises that politicians, both before, during and after Roosevelt made to garner power and control.
I submit that today, the Silent Majority is the Forgotten
Man, comprised of similar salt-of-the-earth people who have had to pay for all
the promises made by Roosevelt’s intellectual progeny, including today’s
Leftists.
It used to be just the snail darter. Remember them? It’s
tiny a fish that bleeding-heart enviro-fascists manufactured victimhood for in
1973 to halt completion of a dam in California. The controversy went all the
way to the Supreme Court. Long story short, the dam was built, the snail
darters relocated all at a cost no doubt of hundreds of thousands of dollars,
if not millions to taxpayers. It, however, lined the pockets of the Defenders
of the Snail Darters Brigade (I made that up but I can’t help but wonder if
money could have been made on a tee-shirt run with that emblazoned on it!) and
Leftists were left (.sic) to feel good about how they’d saved a species. As a
side note, the environmental shamans themselves assert that 150 species A DAY
(!) become extinct. But the snail darter became the cause célèbre du jour and
the money, when followed, led right into the wallets of the enviro-fascists, their
cohorts and allies.
Today, pick whatever Leftist drivel you wish, on whatever
topic you wish: border protection, religion, free speech, 2nd amendment,
abortion, gender confusion, climate change, taxation, law and order, national
defense, public education, etc. etc. The economic price, the damage to our
society and culture, the frightening impact on our children and grandchildren of
what the Left has concocted and viciously squeal…the burden will be carried
by the hardworking Forgotten Majority who always pay the price, just as they
did during the Depression.
When the Left professes to worry about some minority victim being offended, or potentially offended (think Colin Kaepernick and Betsy Ross Nike sneakers) and seek to punish the offenders; when they rewrite history and seek to “fundamentally transform” our nation according to their warped ideology (think the painting over of the George Washington school mural in San Francisco), let’s not forget the majority, The FORGOTTEN Majority.
Attributed to the American author Samuel R. Delany is the phrase “Words mean things.” Hijacking words and phrases is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the demagogue. And the twisting of usage and meaning into pretzels has always been a favorite device of politicians and pundits. With this in mind, I thought I should explain what I mean when I refer in my writing to Traditional Values, Traditionalists and Traditionalism.
Look up Traditionalism and you’ll receive a panoply of descriptions and definitions. One of the first articles that comes up from a search is: “a school of thought promulgated by a group of 20th and 21st century thinkers who believe in the existence of perennial wisdom, or perennial philosophy, primordial and universal truths which form the source for, and are shared by, all the major world religions.” Look further and one goes through the looking glass and into a rabbit warren of definitions in the context of societal norms, religion, philosophy, economics, culture, etc.
In 1964 Supreme Court Justice Potter Steward famously described obscenity (or rather, what it is not) as follows:
“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that.”
Jacobellis v. Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964)
Borrowing on that phrase, I will suggest that Traditionalism may be defined in a variety of ways, but in the end, Traditionalists know it when they see it.
However, a shortcut to how I define Traditionalism is: that body of ideals, values and mores that we were raised on by the Greatest Generation.
Speaking of the Greatest Generation, one of the definitions of Traditionalists refers to those who were born between 1900 and 1945. I believe it is precisely because of their espousal of Traditional Values that they were Great!
We Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 on the other hand, are split into two camps: a) those of us who listened to what our Greatest Generation parents taught us, who were grateful for the peace and prosperity they bequeathed to us and who have tried to live our lives by their example and rules; and, b) the prodigals, the “Me” generation of the sexual revolution who grew up to be the radicals of the 70’s and the yuppies of the 80’s, a few of whom have come home to Traditionalism and the balance of whom have become today’s Leftists.
So what do I mean by Traditional Values? Often the term is conflated with “Family Values.” They are similar, but Traditionalism goes beyond Family Values. To me, Traditional Values include support for:
individual freedom to live as we wish within the basic constraints of Judeo-Christian principles;
the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights as they were intended for then and all future generations;
fundamental patriotism, including honoring our Flag, national symbols, anthems and emblems;
a strong military and national defense and protection of our sovereignty;
the right of self-defense and to keep, bear and utilize arms to ensure that right;
obeying the Law and supporting those who serve in law enforcement;
marriage defined as between one man and one woman (including acceptance of the biological fact that men and women are different!);
support for nuclear families consisting of a father and mother and their children;
freedom of worship and expression;
the Golden Rule;
support for and defense of free-market capitalism;
equal opportunity, not equal outcomes; and,
separation of powers within a limited, and republican government.
Traditional Values also include opposition to:
social engineering and bad (many wouldsay EVIL) social, economic and political ideologies such as socialism and communism;
crony capitalism;
‘free love’ and promiscuity;
abortion on demand and in lieu of contraception;
gender confusion;
LGBTQ militancy;
fascism masquerading as liberal or progressive free expression;
violent protest; and,
collectivism, globalism, cultural marxism and so-called “progressivism”.
The Greatest Generation didn’t have to think about or debate these principles – they lived them. They were part of the fabric of their society.
Today, these principles are under constant assault.
I used to teach a lesson in Sunday School using a glass of water and a dropper full of black ink. The water represented our souls. In the context of this article, it represents the reservoir of societal values. The black drops of ink I slowly added to the water represent, for purposes of this article, Progressive/Leftist ideas, norms, habits, values. Add one drop to the water and nothing seems to happen. As successively more drops are added, however, the water starts to turn grey, then greyer, murky, and finally black.
The metaphor aptly describes what’s happening to our country.
I hope and pray I’m joined by the
Silent Majority of our Boomer generation and budding Traditionalists of succeeding
generations in fighting for a return to the Traditional principles that made us
the greatest nation on earth and in the history of the world.
The headline screams, “National Debt Reaches $22 Trillion!” Another warns, “The Deficit is Expected to Reach $1 Trillion in 2019”. The problem with this shrill alarmism is the deceptiveness of these statements. They are of course intended to shock us. To attach sanity to these numbers, we need to set aside our common understanding of the terms ‘Debt’ and ‘Deficit’ from Accounting 101. They simply don’t apply in the same way to the Federal Government as they do to business, or to us mortals for that matter!
Economists and Accountants attach a variety of labels to financial statements. So, for example, a “Balance Sheet” is also known as a “Statement of Financial Condition”. An “Income Statement” is also called a “Statement of Operations”. Economics and Accounting are really boring, so forgive their practitioners for occasionally making up new terms just to keep things spicy.
For purposes of this article, I’m going to use Lemonade Stand accounting labels. With that, the two most fundamental equations are:
Assets
– Liabilities equals Equity, referring to the Balance Sheet; and,
Income
– Expense = Profit, referring to the Income Statement. (And if Expense is
greater than Income, Profit becomes ‘Loss’ or, ‘Deficit’).
We all know pretty much what Assets are. Liabilities, on the other hand, are technically “claims on assets” but set that technicality aside for the moment. We often use the term DEBT interchangeably with Liabilities, so another way of writing the equation is: Assets – Debt equals Equity.
Another way of saying Equity is “Net Worth”. Very simply, if we add up all our Assets: bank accounts, the cash value of our life insurance, our cars (not the leased ones but the ones we own), our house and everything in it – that’s our total Assets. If we subtract what we owe on our mortgages, our car loans, our credit cards, and any other debt we may have, from our total Assets, the number we’re left with is our Net Worth. Another way of looking at it is: if we sold everything and turned all our assets into cash and used that cash to pay off our debt, the cash we have left over is our Net Worth.
Analogously, our salary or the top line of our paychecks is Income, while taxes, our mortgage or rent, our car payments, what we spend to live, represent Expense. What’s left over isn’t Profit, per se, but it represents cash we can spend on other things, so in a way that’s “profit”.
As an aside, what politicians have been adept at over the years is getting us to think of our “Income” as our net paycheck, i.e. the amount that goes into our bank account each payday. We rarely think about our Gross Income…we always think about our Net Income. When the government takes our money in the form of income tax, we don’t feel it because it’s withheld from our paychecks. If we actually received our full paychecks and had to immediately fork over the taxes we’d sure feel it a lot more wouldn’t we?
And let’s not forget the government taxes on goods and
services!
Q. Do you know how much per gallon of gas is TAX??? A: As much as $.58 in North Carolina! Think about how much money that is!
If we add up income tax PLUS all the excise and other taxes and fees we pay government on a daily, weekly, monthly and annual basis, and received our Gross Income and had to fork over all that tax in dollar bills instead of just ignoring them as we are wont to do, we’d likely get indigestion at least, or more likely, throw up.
These are easy concepts to understand when we’re talking
about lemonade stands and our personal budgeting. The confusion (often
deliberate) arises when these same terms are applied to the Federal Government.
Some terms are analogous, but many aren’t.
Politicians and pundits speak of the government all the time as if it were a business, and it is not! The National Debt that everyone frets over, for example, is not the same as business debt. And since the government doesn’t have an “employer” (yes, we’re supposed to be its employer, but it doesn’t really work that way does it?), Income for the government is the Taxes they extract from us.
Expense for the government, on the other hand, is everything from roughly $67 Billion for 200 F-22 fighters to $3.1 Billion on vacation pay for federal employees placed on administrative leave (really!), oh, and studies on what bugs do around lightbulbs, and subsidies to put solar panels on breweries so beer can be “greener”, etc. (really!)
The National Debt isn’t like our debt. Take our car loan and consumer debt. We owe money to a bank or credit card company. Who does the Federal Government owe money to? Well, yes, the Japanese and Chinese have loaned us a lot, each about $1 Trillion, but guess who the government owes the most to? US!
What is so often ignored when the alarms are sounded is the other side of the Balance Sheet! When talking heads shriek about the Debt and Deficits, you never hear anything about the Assets on the other side of the “Balance Sheet” do you? What comprises the Assets of the Federal Government? Well, yes, it owns land, and it owns equipment and it owns lots of financial securities and other monetary assets, but who has claim on those assets (remember the technical definition of Liabilities, above)? WE DO!
The reality is, the Assets of the United States of America DWARF its debts. And the vast majority of our assets don’t appear on the Balance Sheet! That’s because the Assets include the unmeasured value of things like our natural resources, the innovation of our people, our work ethic, our FREEDOM!
It’s the Assets on the other side of the equation from the
National Debt, and it’s the income, and income potential of our national
Income Statement that render the Debt and Deficits far more benign than the
alarmists want you to believe.
Do they matter? Of course they do. The Debt CAN affect borrowing costs, but look at the past ten years and it’s evident that rising debt doesn’t necessarily mean rising interest rates. And some will argue that the National Debt “crowds out” business and consumer borrowers. That too, is a fallacious argument. Business and consumer debt have never been higher. And the Deficit is good for chicken-little headlines depending on your political point of view, and no doubt that affects sentiment, and sentiment affects spending and investment behavior. So yes, they matter.
But the ability of the U.S. Treasury to borrow money against the (my guess) QUADRILLIONS of dollars of Assets we have means deficits are just an arithmetic exercise. If we had to spend money to dig California out of the ocean if the really Big One were to hit, for example, could the Treasury print more money, and would it still be valuable? Of course it would, because what matters is not the arithmetic, but that we have the ability to pay it back, and we and the rest of the world (everyone but those who profit from whining about it) know it. Hell, we could always sell Alaska to the Russians, the Chinese or the Canadians and retire our National Debt in a heartbeat! (Don’t worry citizens of Wasilla, we’re not going to do that.)
I’ve vastly simplified the intricacies of our country’s finances here, of course, but what I’m advocating is to take what the alarmists on both sides of the political aisle say with a grain of salt. Rest assured that we are, and so long as we are free, will remain, the greatest and most financially sound nation on Earth. We aren’t in any danger of going bankrupt any time soon.
For a really substantive, plain-language read on why the
National Debt and Deficits matter less than everyone thinks, I commend to you three
articles written by people far smarter than I:
University of Georgia economics professor William D. Lastrapes’ article entitled “Why the $22 trillion national debt doesn’t matter – here’s what you should worry about instead” here;
John Tamny’s article in Forbes’ magazine entitled, “Ignore The Endless Talk Of Doom, Budget Deficits Really Don’t Matter” here; and,
Neil Irwin’s New York Times (!) article entitled “How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Deficits and Debt”, here.
At least browse through them. You’ll sleep
better.
TODAY IS
Wednesday May 14, 2025
Quips & Quotes
April 20, 2025 "There’s a price to pay when you go all-in on DEI—and the piper always comes calling. You can’t lower standards, abandon merit, and inject politics into everything, then act shocked when the results go straight into the toilet. Life doesn’t work that way. Businesses don’t work that way. And elite universities certainly don’t work that way.
Once the gold standard of higher education, they’ve become a punchline—rotting from the inside out thanks to progressive nonsense and DEI disasters. It’s gotten so bad, they’re now offering high school-level math to students who can’t keep up—students who have no business being at Harvard in the first place. These aren’t academic standouts—they’re DEI charity cases, picked because of the color of their skin or their sexual fetishes.
Let’s be honest—you don’t need a Harvard Ph.D. to see what’s going on here. When you stop choosing the best and start choosing the most diverse, you don’t get excellence. You get mediocrity, decline, and total embarrassment.
That’s exactly what former law professor Jonathan Turley is sounding the alarm about.
Turley took to X and pointed out that since 1636, Harvard has prided itself on admitting only the best students with the highest scores. And shockingly now, it only took one generation of woke ninnies to wipe all of that greatness out." Revolver, April 19, 2025 "The Mayo Clinic just tried to pull a fast one on the Trump administration, but social media busted them…"
April 4, 2025 "American families have been strip-mined, plundered, and debrided of healthy tissue, that essential primordial ooze from which happy parents and children spring. Americans have been forced to soak in sterilizing solvent—liberal feminism, K–12 school indoctrination, toxic social media, and four years at woke finishing schools formerly known as “college.” How could anyone escape with their morals, identity, and mind intact? Many don’t.Some manage to make it through the gauntlet intact, but their children aren’t so lucky; their budding hopes and dreams are blown apart or mangled by landmines buried in the ground. These landmines include infinitehorizon dating, the abortion industry complex, the failure to marry or stay married, unwanted childlessness, careerism, opioid addiction, pornography, “finding yourself,” and the temptation to sell your eggs, your sexuality, your identity, and your soul to the highest bidder—among many others. All that’s left is a cohort of young people unable to form meaningful relationships, raise children, and otherwise perpetuate the species into the future. Loneliness, depression, drug abuse, infertility, and generalized despair have taken hold." Peachy Keenan, (2003) "Domestic Extremist", Regenery Publishing, New York
January 2, 2024 "As we enter 2024, there is widespread public agreement about two things: (1) something big is about to happen, and (2) whatever that something is, it sure as hell won’t be pretty! While it may get pretty ugly pretty fast, though, there is an upside to what’s coming: as a country, we can finally pull this disgusting Band-Aid off, face reality for what it is, and stop pretending. However bad this year might prove to be, it might also be tremendously liberating.
Why? Because, one way or another, things will soon change. For too long, those who “run” America have had two things in common: (1) a hatred for individual freedoms, and (2) an even deeper hatred for the one country on the planet explicitly founded on their protection. As a national security surveillance State superseded the U.S. Constitution, leftists have controlled academia, journalism, the legal system, and entertainment. They have shoved anyone with a working brain out the door while assuring themselves that they deserve their privileged social positions and unearned accolades. They tell themselves that they are smart and enlightened, but anybody capable of self-examination knows this not to be true. Leftists are not happy people. They have not figured out any special meaning to life because, to them, life is meaningless. In other words, for too many years, a collection of the most depressed, least curious, morally relativistic, and intellectually homogenous people on the planet have been given pampered positions in exchange for acting as nihilistic and narcotic-dependent sea vessel captains willing to steer America into an iceberg of decline and failure." J.B. Shurk, American Thinker, January 2, 2024 "Do We Hit the Iceberg or Finally Change Course?"
November 3, 2023 "There’s a subtext to nearly all American political trends today. It’s hardly ever spoken about overtly and explicitly. But the topic is nonetheless always there. All insiders know about it. It’s also the central and critical debate concerning America’s future.
The question is as follows. Will the United States continue the present system whereby representative democracy persists as a mere veneer to keep the public distracted and defocused on the real rulers in the nation? Or will something dramatic be achieved whereby the swamp is truly drained, the administrative state gutted, the agencies disempowered, and we return to an actual constitutional system in which the people truly rule themselves through their elected representatives?
These are the two paths. It’s one or the other. They’re mutually incompatible." Jeffrey A. Tucker, November 3, 2023, Epoch Times, p A22, "Are You an Institutionalist or Anti-Institutionalist?"
October 30, 2023 "If you want an indicator of how lost Western civilization has become, go to your kids’ school and check their rules on fighting. Most likely, you’ll find out if two kids get into a fight, both get suspended, regardless of whether one was a punk bully who started it and the other was simply defending himself or some little kid. This is a moral disaster, of course – violence in the defense of what is right is a moral obligation and a symbol of a greater rot within society."
"The world's true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil."
"We must learn again to be ruthless in defeating our enemies. The big lie that Western civilization tells itself is that there are no real enemies, that there are no bad people – except the people of the West themselves, who bear some sort of original sin for not being corrupt and inept Third World barbarians."
"We have forgotten our strength and our courage. We have forgotten that we survive not through gentle hugging but through sword-swinging.The idea that Israel should somehow give these Hamas barbarians food, water, and electrical power even if it surrounds Gaza and prepares to attack is mind-boggling insanity. The moral illiteracy of expecting Israel to care more about the Palestinian people than other Palestinians do is simply bizarre."
"The hard truth is that the world contains bad people who must be crushed through ruthless violence, which shocks and horrifies modern sensibilities. But it is reality nonetheless. When people want to kill you, you are at a decision point. You can either let them kill you or stop them. But stopping them often involves aesthetically displeasing actions, such as blowing them into little bits with bombs or shoving a bayonet into their guts and watching them die in agony. And it necessarily means inflicting death and damage on the noncombatant camp followers around them. That’s why they say war is hell. And that’s why starting one is probably not a good idea. But when someone else starts one, you have to choose them or you. Someone’s going to die badly, and you know, I propose it is those other guys."
October 16, 2023 "Though around the world sociopaths stabbed some folks, the Day of Jihad fizzled in America – how many bummed patriots slammed in a mag hoping some mutant was going to choose his small town to prove Jason Aldean right? But it is only a matter of time. When you allow millions of military-aged males to come unvetted into your country, including many from bizarre hellholes where hatred for Americana is more common than food and indoor plumbing, there is a non-zero chance that some of them are part of sleeper cells waiting for the signal to murder Americans here at home." Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall, October 16, 2023, "We Are Sitting Ducks And Our Leaders Do Not Care"
August 22, 2023 "When arguing in federal court in HI in 2020, I had to get permission from the governor to enter his precious state to argue that his silly COVID lockdowns violated the Constitution. I lost. This same state, in real life, has shown how little respect for life its leaders really have. My perfectly healthy clients were not allowed to travel from one island to another to visit their own property. American citizens were turned away at the airport because they got the wrong COVID test on the mainland. The hotel gave me “parole” from the one way card key rule only to do my legal business and leave. I could not call an Uber or take a taxi at the airport. The National Guard met me at the gate to escort me to Hawaii COVID immigration to provide my information, which they verified with the hotel. I was to keep my phone on at all times so that they could track my location. This same police state didn’t turn the water on in Lahaina, didn’t have sirens, can’t begin to tell you how many children died from their incompetence. Or begin to explain it. Remember all this the next time you are asked to comply with farcical, unjust “laws” made by dictators. They are lying when their lips are moving about how much they care about you and your little life and your paper constitutional rights. Americans are beginning to realize how much we are on our own. Such a betrayal." Harmeet K. Dhillon, on "X", 8/22/23 12:44 AM
August 17, 2023 - A MUST READ!!!! The following is a transcription of Newt Gingrich's comments on Hannity last night. "“I think what you’re seeing tonight is one tree in a forest, and I think we are drifting towards the greatest Constitutional crisis since the 1850s, uh, and the rise of secession and the Civil War. I don’t mean that as hyperbole. Uh, if you read Andy McCarthy’s remarkable book, Ball of Collusion, which came out in 2019, he makes very clear that it is Barack Obama who corrupts the Justice Department, it is Hillary Clinton who routinely breaks the law and gets away with it. And now we have Joe Biden who’s learned, he’s learned from Obama that is doesn’t matter what you do, if you’re a liberal Democrat, you will not be prosecuted. He learned from Hillary that a person in high public office can get millions and millions of dollars. And they learned from watching Donald Trump that a true outsider, willing to take on the entire system, could destroy their entire machine. So what you’re seeing across the country, is a desperate, last-ditch effort by a corrupt machine to destroy their most dangerous opponent in a way which not only breaks the Constitution, destroys the rule of law, and establishes a moment of bitterness, uh, which I think will last for a generation or more. I think this is gonna be a horrendous period and we just need to understand: The people who want to control America and dictate to the rest of us will break any law, lie about any topic, and manipulate the system any way they can, and that includes a lot of the elite news media.”
August 10, 2023 "The fact that young men are getting more conservative is a cause for optimism. Remember, if you grew up male in the last ten years or so, every institution has been deployed against you. You’ve been told you are bad and horrible and evil and worthless. In contrast, every girl is an empowered girlboss ready to take her rightful place at the pinnacle of society. And to facilitate that, they must displace the dudes. And it’s no secret – that displacement, that consignment of men to second-class status, is not merely admitted but celebrated by our trash ruling class." Kurt Schlichter, August 10, 2023, Town Hall, "Angry Young Men Are Going To Disrupt The Garbage Paradigm"
Articles/Writings We Think Are A Must Read
Who Will Say No More to the Current Madness?
Once again, Victor Davis Hanson has nailed it. In his article there is a list of the most egregious crimes and failings of the Left and this Administration. Stronly urge readers to read the whole article. Here’s an excerpt of the most salient points:
“America is in existential danger.
The Biden administration has utterly destroyed the southern border — and immigration law with it.
Biden green lighted 7 million illegal aliens swarming into the U.S. without legal sanction or rudimentary audit.
China spies inside and over the U.S. with impunity. Beijing has never admitted to its responsibility for the gain-of-function COVID virus that killed a million Americans.
President Joe Biden printed $4 trillion at exactly the wrong time of soaring post-COVID consumer demand and supply shortages. No wonder he birthed the worst inflation in 40 years.
In response, interest rates tripled, gas prices doubled.
Our military is thousands of recruits short. It lacks sufficient munitions.
Following Biden’s humiliating pullout from Afghanistan, vast troves of arms were abandoned in Kabul. Billions more in scarce weapons were sent to Ukraine.
The Pentagon’s woke agenda trumps meritocracy in promotions and advancement.
Our enemies — Russia, China, Iran, North Korea — are on the move, while the U.S. seems listless.
The Biden renegade Department of Justice, CIA and FBI have become weaponized. Ideology, politics, and race — not the law — more often guide their investigations, intelligence operations and enforcement.
The downtowns of our once majestic major cities are becoming unlivable.
They are mired in refuse and trash, violent crime and homelessness. Stores and businesses leave. Millions each year flee the blue urban coasts to the red west and south.
To even say there are still two biological genders, that global warming may not be entirely manmade or necessarily destroying the planet, or that class, not race, is the proper barometer of inequality is to face ostracism and career cancellation.
The public assumes that Biden is severely cognitively challenged, likely corrupt, and a serial fabricator.
Most know what must be done, but few will tell the truth: Balance the budget. Return to legal only immigration. Restore a well-funded, but unwoke Pentagon.
Insist on racial unity. Curb the overweening administrative state. Enforce the rule of law.
Produce more gas and oil. Reestablish civic education. Insist universities protect free speech and due process — and stop proselytizing.
In other words, restore what until recently made America the strongest, most prosperous, and freest nation in the world. And quit undoing all the great good that eight generations of prior Americans bequeathed to us.”
Victor Davis Hanson saying it better than anyone. Perfectly describes the childish, impetuous behavior of the Left. A quick and incredibly accurate take on everything we see before our eyes.
An excerpt:
“Cry-baby tantrums won’t win over the public. These nonstop puerile meltdowns have turned off most Americans who tire of whiny narcissistic hypocrites.”
Strongly recommend the artful summary of what the Left is trying to do with the Disinformation Governance Board canard written by Michael Walsh in “The Pipeline”, May 2, 2022. You’ll find the whole article here. Some excerpts:
“So now the mask has dropped and, for the first time, the American people can see the modern Left in all its hateful, unadorned, vituperative, spiteful glory. Case in point: the announcement last week that the Department of Homeland Security—one of the excrescences of the Bush administration, cobbled together in its panic over 9/11—has created the “Disinformation Governance Board” in order to combat what it has, via its hitherto little-known Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, already dubbed “mis-, dis-, and mal-information.” Otherwise known as alternative points of view, but shut up, citizen.”
“Let us now remind ourselves of the late historian and Soviet scholar Robert Conquest’s third law of politics: “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” At this point in American history, that is not only a theory but a fact. Having narrowly “won” the 2020 election by stealing it fair and square, the Left is putting pedal to the metal to accomplish as much of its anti-foundational agenda as it can before the clock runs out on its tiny congressional majorities this fall.”
On the Subject of “Things happening in the background to purge the illicit Biden administration“
The article in American Thinker by Dr. Brian Joondeph entitled: “Nothing Can Stop What is Coming. What if Nothing is Coming?” lays out the case for the increasingly skeptical that anything is going to halt the Leftist Leviathan. Strongly recommend this article not to throw cold water on all the hope so many of us have of there being some justice on the horizon, but to lay out the stark possibility that it’s all wishful thinking and we’re stuck with what we’ve got at least until January 2023.
On Climate Change Fraud
One of the best debunking articles/videos I’ve seen recently on the revolting fraud being perpetrated by the climate alarmists. In very calm, easy to understand terms the author shows how graphs and picking the right starting point for data visualization is being used to create the narrative that they rely on for their funding, their power, their nefarious attempts to alter society and our world. This same manipulation occurs with ALL kinds of data and the Left is expert in obscuring truth, altering perception and brainwashing a lazy, non-thinking mass of sheep to believe what they want them to believe. Strongly recommend watching this…12 minutes long and a must see!
Featured Friends
Straight Line Logic
Robert Gore’s blog. I put Gore up there with Victor Davis Hanson, Jordan Peterson and Thomas Sowell. His theses are chock full of substance.
The Burning Platform
Unabashedly conspiracy-theory driven, but thoughtfully so and well-written. Makes one think, “could this really be what’s happening?”
