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!
It’s tough to be courteous to vile people, and the Left are
becoming increasingly, unbearably vile.
Yet, we need to try. If we’re ever going to restore civility
and traditionalism to our country, we need to respect what our parents taught
us about courteousness.
I have a complete repertoire of lawyer jokes and have more
than once repeated the old joke about how 5,000 dead lawyers at the bottom of
the ocean is, “A start.” But there’s one thing we can learn from
lawyers, particularly trial lawyers. Watch any law-themed series on television
or better, attend a jury trial in a real courtroom, and you’ll see the
attorneys act (99% of the time) with professionalism and courtesy towards the
jury, the plaintiff, the defendant, their counsel and the judge. How they do it
in the face of the distortions, spin, deflections, etc. that are thrown around
by each side; how they can be civil when the integrity of witnesses,
particularly, are impugned so viciously albeit courteously, is extraordinary.
The performances may be part of the theatrics of litigation, but they’re
instructive nonetheless. Often, the attorney who makes the best impression is
the one who wins the case, and courtesy is an integral part of the act and how
they make that impression.
Many years ago I was recruited to serve as the CFO of an
obscure tech company. Seeking a ground floor opportunity in the post Y2K,
burgeoning tech world, I responded to the offer to talk to them. One bright,
sunny morning I visited its headquarters in Manhattan and was ushered into a
conference room to await the CEO.
As I stood looking out the window over the Manhattan skyline,
a young fellow came in and began gathering up some used styrofoam coffee cups
and arranging and stacking some coasters that sat on the highly polished
conference room table. He had on an open collar, rather wrinkled plaid shirt,
jeans, and he had hair down to the middle of his back tightly pulled back on
his head and gathered in a pony tail with a rubber band at the nape of his
neck.He went about his business sheepishly, almost furtively, without speaking.
Having turned to see who had entered the room, I offered a
pleasant “Good Morning” and then proceeded to help him gather up the
cups and tidy up the room. He held open the garbage bag while I tossed in some
of the debris from an earlier meeting, and he thanked me as he completed his
task and left.
The whole incident took no more than perhaps 60 seconds, and
I thought nothing of it. A minute or two later the CEO came in, dressed in a
suit as was I, and we sat and had a straightforward and frank conversation
about the company’s needs, my qualifications, etc. – everything you’d expect
from a standard executive interview.
And then the CEO said, “You know, I’d like you to meet
the President of the Company who is really my partner and co-founder. Do you
have a few more minutes?” I of course replied, “Certainly,” and
the CEO left, returning a couple of minutes later with, you guessed it, the man
who previously had come in to tidy up the room.
I am convinced to this day that the judgment about hiring me
to become the Company’s CFO was made in that two minute interval when the CEO
left to fetch the President. And I am also convinced that the pivotal trigger
moment which sealed the deal had nothing to do with the interview, but
everything to do with the simple courtesy I extended to the President in that
little interchange before the interview started.
A wise man was once quoted as saying, “The true greatness of
a person, in my view, is evident in the way he or she treats those with whom
courtesy and kindness are not required.” Joseph B. Wirthlin
Most of the time, simple courtesies aren’t recompensed with
a job offer, or even acknowledged. Yet, a kind word, treating others with
respect and dignity no matter what their station or role in life, is the right
thing to do.
“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.
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.”
If our goal is X, we need to aim for X+Y. If we fall short, we may still get close to X. This principle is just another way of saying we must lengthen our strides as we climb back up the slippery slope.
Many years ago I helped run a summer Scout camp in the Catskill Mountains. A few days before camp started the camp counselors, who were drawn from the older, higher ranking and more accomplished Scouts, arrived for several days of training. One of days always consisted of a team building/bonding activity. And one year we were fortunate and privileged to be able to arrange to take the counselors to West Point (The U.S. Military Academy) where the boys received scuba and riflery instruction. The counselors also had some free time to use the pool, including the diving platform and boards.
It was very interesting to see how some of the boys went straight to the top of the 10-meter platform. The more courageous (or reckless) ones didn’t hesitate to run right off the edge. Others were hesitant, and some had to steel their nerves as they looked down from way up there.
Many, if not most of the boys scurried to the other jump levels:
a 5-meter platform, a 3-meter diving board and a 1-meter diving board. Not
surprisingly, the boys who started at the bottom eventually worked their way up
the heights, from unhesitatingly bouncing off the 1-meter board, to more
hesitant jumps off the 3-meter, to very hesitant jumps off the 5-meter
platform. Some of this group, when they reached the top of the 10-meter
platform, simply but understandably chickened out and climbed back down. Others
overcame their fear and took the plunge, emerging afterwards from the depths of
the pool spluttering but victorious.
But what was notable was how the boys who had started with
the 10-meter platform easily and unhesitatingly jumped or dived off the
successively lower boards. Even those who hesitated at the top of the 10-meter
platform behaved as if the 5, 3 and 1 were just no big deal.
What we adults observed and concluded was that the boys who
initially set their sights at the most challenging and difficult goal, once
achieved, found attainment of the less ambitious goals easy by comparison.
Those who worked their way up from the bottom had a much tougher time of it.
The Left are very skilled at employing this principle. They
know very well that a single-payer, Medicare-for-all, government-run healthcare
system is a bridge too far, but if such a system represents the 10-meter
platform, having for years set their sights on this their highest goal, look
how readily they were able to achieve the intermediary goal represented by
Obamacare. Similarly, the decibel level and sheer outrageousness of the Left’s
rhetoric on so many other issues, amplified by the media megaphone, now make
Bernie Sanders appear the moderate!
Today the Left is touting the Green New Deal. It is
audacious beyond reason, no, beyond sanity, but they know that if they fall
short, they will nevertheless hit intermediate targets that, figuratively, will
‘move the ball forward.’
Examples of their success are all around us. Look what’s
happened to education, to law, to morality, to art, to just about every aspect
of society. The setting of X+Y goals together with a relentless,
ends-justify-the-means attitude has indeed fundamentally transformed our
country.
We Traditionalists need to do the same. But once again, it’s
difficult for us to adopt the same tactics as the Left. We’re too busy working
hard, caring for our families, running Scout camps or coaching soccer teams,
attending church functions, volunteering in our communities… to coalesce like
the Leftist mob and “protest” and “resist”. But the
thousand cuts we’re receiving are turning into a hemorrhage, and it takes an
organized, determined force to stem the bleeding and heal.
We need 10-meter platforms of our own, and need to overcome
our fear and be just as determined as the Left. We must change the meaning of
“progressive” to what it should be, not how the Left is defining it.
We’ve got to stop and reverse this ‘fundamental transformation’ before it
really is too late.
We must speak up. We must speak out. We need to gather with
others who feel as we do and become “community organizers” ourselves.
Except our “community” is comprised of those who are extremely
uncomfortable at organizing in this way. But it may be the only way we can lay
the groundwork for a better path for our children and grandchildren than the
one the Left has us on now.
I used to be cheerful and friendly with everyone I
encountered, not just my friends and family. But now I find it far more
difficult, especially being friendly to those with whom I vehemently disagree.
It’s hard to be friendly to hypocrites who are constantly
virtue signaling. They drive hybrid cars and only drink organic, humanely grown
free range coffee or fully rain forest alliance certified tea (this is a real
label I saw on a box recently!) from their local barista. They gather in
klatches in their yoga pants with oversized sunglasses griping about what
they’re having to pay for their childrens’ tutors and piano teachers while
squeezing lemons over their avocado toast.
It’s hard to be friendly if you’re an old white guy, thus
automatically the beneficiary of white male entitlement and by extension, immediately
viewed with suspicion as the enemy. In the bastions of the politically correct
you’re the product of white privilege and therefore what you have wasn’t earned
but confiscated from minorities and various victims. Oh, and did I mention
you’re also a racist, by definition?
It’s hard to be friendly when everything you believe in and
stand for is constantly trashed and all the drivel spilling forth from people’s
mouths is accepted by so many around you with understanding nods and agreement.
It’s hard to be friendly when so much of what Hollywood
produces celebrates aberrant, uncivilized or downright evil behavior, behavior
which viewers slow and gawk at like the accident by the side of the road but
can’t help themselves, and then wonder why their children’s language is what we
used to call that of a drunken sailor!
It’s hard to be friendly when you hear Leftist sound bites
and talking points repeated continuously, no matter how outrageous the lies and
deceit. From an educated but typical Leftist neighbor in our community I
recently heard repeated the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “concentration
camps” label given to the southern border detention centers. As much as I
would have liked to pleasantly smile and gently try to explain how ridiculous
that charge is, I stifled my revulsion and maintained a blank expression. I
regret not speaking up.
But that’s the problem. Traditionalists care about being
friendly. The Left doesn’t care what labels they apply to others with whom they
disagree, how condescending, how insolent, how rude, how impolite, how uncivil,
how discourteous or disrespectful. They don’t care about being kind at all. They
revel in being rebellious – they actually think it’s cool (!) and even those who
don’t overtly engage in unkind behavior are complicit by their silence and
tacit acceptance of such behavior.
On the other hand, yesterday I saw a segment on Fox News
remembering Tony Snow, the former journalist and White House Spokesman for President
George W. Bush who died from cancer eleven years ago at the too young age of
53. He was quoted as saying something that immediately resonated. I quickly
tried to look up the quote but while I found lots of great things Tony said, I
couldn’t find the exact words I had just heard, so I’ll paraphrase them as
closely as I recall.
“You don’t have to donate a million bucks to change
the world. A smile and kind word will do just fine.”
Once again someone said it far better than I ever could.
In the face of withering Leftist fire, it’s hard to be
friendly, but “a smile and kind word will do just fine”.
It used to be so straightforward. The Scout Slogan is “Do a good turn daily.” And many a Boy Scout has lived up to that slogan, not just when the whole troop was engaged in a community project, but In individual acts of kindness and service.
In today’s self-absorbed society, however, we’re told we should help others because it benefits us! Research “helping others” and you’ll get an array of articles citing the psychological, physical, spiritual and career-enhancing benefits of undertaking what should be a fundamental human activity.
Ayn Rand devotees will recognize this immediately. Objectivists argue that helping others is motivated by selfishness – that the positive feelings and benefits one derives from doing so are and should be the driving force behind acts of compassion or support for our fellow human beings.
Those with religious beliefs will, however, be motivated by
the teachings of their canon. I know of no religion that doesn’t preach some
form of the Golden Rule, even those the doctrines of which involve destroying
anyone who doesn’t believe as they do!
A business associate of mine had the privileged responsibility of heading a centi-million-dollar foundation that was charged with improving health around the world. Explaining what it was the foundation did in that regard, my colleague pointed out, “Do you know how hard it is to give away money?” He went on to describe how difficult it was to identify legitimate opportunities to put the foundation’s money to work doing real good. He recounted story after story of how seemingly valid situations to fund potential health-improving initiatives in third world countries exposed corruption that delegitimized the opportunities. Not all, but way too much of the money would have lined the pockets of politicians, intermediaries and administrators.
We as a society face the same problem as my foundation chairman friend, both as organizations as well as individuals. It’s often difficult to assess whether the cause we wish to support is legitimate. That’s why we have websites and companies that undertake that assessment for us, promising to score philanthropies and causes objectively, while skimming just a wee bit off the top for their service.
As we walk down the streets of our major cities and are
accosted by panhandlers it’s hard to know who are truly needy and who have the
ability to work and care for themselves but choose not to. As we listen to
pitch after pitch on television and on our phone answering machines asking for
“just X$ per month”, it’s hard to know for sure how much is really going to the
cause and how much is paying for the supporting bureaucracy.
In short, doing good and serving others today has been institutionalized. An array of honest and legitimate on one hand and dishonest and illegitimate organizations on the other have made helping others into an industry. Think about what “I gave at the office” means. It means we’ve abrogated responsibility for doing good to others to organizational intermediaries, or worse, to politicians and officials who with our tax dollars dole out money in return for support and votes.
I recall getting off a commuter train one day among a hoard of people racing to move along the platform and up the stairs to the exit. Suddenly there was a commotion ahead of me. Someone had, heaven forbid, failed to keep up the pace! In fact, uncharacteristically for this time of day, a mother with a stroller, clearly not a commuter, was struggling to fold it while hoisting her toddler into her arms, swing her bag over her shoulder and preparing to climb the stairs. Scowls and under-breath “take the elevator ______” accompanied the rush of people navigating around her.
As I got closer to the scene, having decided to offer my
help, a suit-cladded businessman had already stopped to assist the mom and her
child. By the time I got to the spot where the human flow had been stalled they
were on their way up the stairs.
As it happens, I knew the businessman who stopped to help.
He was the multi-millionaire chief executive of an insurance company, but you
wouldn’t know that from his outward appearance or countenance. But I knew that
the “good turn” he had just done was typical of him, and as I passed by him at
the top of the stairs I caught his eye and smiled, saying, “I thought that was
you!” and to myself said, “You beat me to it.”
A simple act of kindness. Service to another that cost
absolutely nothing, where no recompense was needed or wanted. An example of
helping another person not for the benefit it provided the good samaritan but
simply because it was the right thing to do.
What would the world be like if everyone sought to help one
another as a default state? Each and every day we are presented with multiple
opportunities to help others, often in small ways.
May we strive to recognize those opportunities and live up
to the Scout slogan.
Stand by while I put on my ballistic vest. This topic is a
lightning rod and even many Traditionalists won’t like what I’m going to say
here. But I’m old and on this subject, grumpy, so I’m going to call it like I see
it.
I’ll begin with an anecdote. Some years ago I was attending
a church picnic held at a park not far from our home. Families of all shapes
and sizes came with their picnic accoutrements and the food, music, games and
fun were typical of raucous church picnics.
As my family and I drove toward the area of the park where
the picnic was being held, I slowed the car to a crawl as kids and pets were
running all over the place. Off in the distance I could clearly see a boy,
about 11 or 12, riding his bike straight towards us on this roadway/quasi
pathway. I could see even 30 to 40 yards away that the boy wasn’t paying
attention to what was in front him but looking from side to side.
So I stopped the car altogether, but on he came, straight
for the hood of my car. I thought of beeping the horn but now he was within 20
yards and I didn’t want to startle him. “Surely he’ll look up and see
where he’s going,” was what went through my mind, but he never looked up
until the very last 5 yards whereupon he slammed on his brakes. It was too
late.
He was barely moving, thank goodness, when he crashed head
on into the front of my car and fell off the bike. I immediately jumped out to
make sure he was alright. He was, but the front wheel of his bike was slightly
bent, not enough to prevent it from turning, but enough to make riding the bike
wobbly. So my wife and I changed places, she now behind the wheel, and I
started walking with the boy, whose family I knew well, towards where they were
set up in the park.
As I approached the family with my arm around the boy his
father approached us, took one look at the bike, dropped to his knee and put
his hands on his son’s shoulders asking if he was hurt. “No,” replied
the boy who had gone sullen. Then the Dad asked, looking at me, “what
happened?”.
I could see the little guy was fearful that he was going to
get into trouble and so I chose my words carefully, explaining not how reckless
he was, but rather how he was slowing to pull to the side of the road when it
appeared his hand slipped off the brake and he couldn’t stop and ran into the
front of my car.
How unprepared I was for the father’s reaction. It would be
a huge understatement to say that he overreacted. He practically threatened to
sue me for reckless endangerment of his son! Meanwhile, the look on the boy’s
face was a combination of astonishment, bewilderment, embarrassment, and
humiliation not at what happened, but for how his father was behaving!
I said little to nothing, and began walking over to where I
could see my wife had parked our car and had started to take our picnic
paraphernalia out. I had to hide my shock and disbelief of how obnoxious and
affrontive my neighbor and church acquaintance had been.
And then I thought to myself, “What did that father say
to his son after I left? And, what did the whole episode teach him?
Another example. I’m walking through the grocery store one
day and a mother is desperately trying to reason with her pre-adolescent son.
He is demanding she buy him candy from the shelf predictably placed at the
checkout counter. The child is quite literally yelling at his mother saying the
most appalling things while mom looks furtively around her obviously worried
about what people are thinking.
Practicing tortured restraint, mom says to her son:
“Alright, I’ll get you the candy just this once, but you must not speak to
mommy that way.” The boy doesn’t even wait for his mother to pay for the
candy, and she doesn’t intervene when he tears the wrapper off, throwing it on
the floor and begins to chomp down.
What have these parents both taught their children? I’ll let
you, the reader, answer this yourself. In both cases, however, I’ll venture a
guess that you’ll agree the parents taught them something wrong.
But this is what has happened to discipline in the new
millennium. My parents would have hauled me out to the car if I behaved like
that in the store, pulled down my pants in front of the whole world, and given
me a couple of good swats on the behind. In fact, I’m sure something like this
DID happen to me when I was young, but truthfully, I don’t even remember the
incidents. Why? Because it only took a few times for me to learn that there are
right and wrong ways to behave.
Today, my own kids face situations like those above with
their own children, but they are TERRIFIED of meting out ANY discipline, except
for time-outs and toy confiscation, even in the confines of their own home! Because
if word got to a teacher or school administrator of a spanking, they’d be at
risk of “child protective services” showing up at their door. We’ve
all heard horror stories of government intrusion in the parenting/child-rearing
process.
While the current limp-wristed approach to parenting may
work in some cases, I firmly believe the swift swat on the butt I received was
far more effective in teaching me right and wrong, and much more lasting.
And right and wrong is what children need to be taught.
Unfortunately, in the current environment of moral relativism and
permissiveness, the impact of families where these are not taught has a
devastating effect on the community at large. Just look at Antifa or, almost as
bad, various skinhead groups for examples. Do you think their parents taught
them to behave that way, or was it the absence of parental guidance and moral
teaching that created them?
We thought OUR generation was spoiled and undisciplined?
Just look at the next two after us!
What we teach our children, and our grandchildren, matters!
TODAY IS
Thursday April 24, 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?”
