With the world falling apart in front of us and Leftists assaulting every sacred and historically treasured traditional value while asserting that the dismantling of our culture is “progressive”, what if we challenged the notion that “there’s no going back”?
What if we were to withdraw our troops from all of our
foreign bases and let Russia and China fight it out for hegemony and see what
it’s like to be the world’s policeman, getting bogged down in endless wars and,
unlike us out of largesse, squandering their resources on attempted world domination?
What if we were to perfect Reagan’s original Star Wars
Strategic Defense Initiative, i.e. reproducing the Enterprise’s “shields up”-
and photon torpedoes capabilities so as to negate or obliterate anything our
adversaries could throw at us?
What if we were to withdraw to secure borders and become
completely self-reliant and self-sufficient as we have with oil? Suppress the
horror and revulsion that leaps to mind when a 55” flat screen television
suddenly but temporarily costs $3,000 again instead of $500. Instead, imagine
“Made in the U.S.A.” instead of “China” or “Mexico” on just about everything we
buy and consume. And Bass Weejuns were once again made in Maine.
What if we were to withdraw from the United Nations and establish
a new organization of free, democratic countries and emerging nations that
subscribe to our federalist-constitutional-‘meritocratic’ approach to government and society?
What if we were to roll back the welfare/nanny state and
restore an “everybody needs to pull their weight” culture? What if we were to
dismantle the safety nets and nanny protections that have made all of us
soft-in-the-belly and turned Millennials and Gen Z into snowflakes? How bad
would it be if they had to actually work hard and produce things of real value?
What if we were to reduce the size of the Federal government
by half? Would we miss having six different departments massaging the same
numbers and producing meaningless (and misleading) reports that cast them in 6
x 6 different ways?
What if we were to eliminate abortion-on-demand, restore
marriage to what it is and has been for thousands of years, and truly
“eliminate welfare as we know it”? Would families matter again? Would “taking
care of one’s own” be so bad as they, and their communities, came together to
help one another out of necessity because the government handout offices would
be closed?
What if continence and self-control, a restored respect for
one another in male-female relationships were restored. What if the natural
consequences, including stigma attached to divorce, abortion, broken families,
of immorality were to come back? Would these constraints on our “anything goes
so long as it feels good or doesn’t interfere with what I want at the moment” approach
toward life be destructive or beneficial?
What if were to eliminate tenure and
“retire-after-twenty-years-with-rest-of-life
pensions-and-100%-healthcare-benefits-coverage” and restore the teaching
profession to the noble one it once was? What if we taught kids to read using
common sense phonics instead of “whole word” recognition. What if we
went back to teaching arithmetic and insist there are right and wrong answers
rather than “good tries”? What if we only gave real winners trophies?
And what if we could once again celebrate victories instead of falling over
backwards to ensure that losers’ feelings weren’t hurt? What if we were to show
the movie “Rudy” to kids instead of some documentary on turning algae
into fuel?
What if we once again started the school day with the Pledge
of Allegiance, and allowed assemblies and the start of sporting events to be
opened with prayer? And allowed the Star Spangled Banner to be sung at public
events?
What if we didn’t reprimand kids for sitting “indian
style” on the floor instead of “criss cross applesauce”?
What if we were to celebrate nuclear families again instead
of “non-traditional” families? And what if we were to put the
“boys” and “girls” or “men” and “women”
signs back on bathroom doors?
Would that be so bad?
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts numerous times, our
society seems so hell bent on meeting the needs of the few that we overlook,
neglect and harm the many.
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!
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.
In 1966 two radical, Leftist sociologists from Columbia University: Richard Cloward and Frances Piven, put forth a strategy for overloading the welfare system to the point where it would precipitate a crisis and cause the government to collapse. It was to be replaced by a socialist system of guaranteed annual income, under the guise of eliminating poverty. Sound familiar?
In 1971 Saul Alinsky wrote “Rules for Radicals” wherein he
too advocated overloading the system, except he went beyond Cloward and Piven to
advocate “organizing the world”, going so far as to violently overthrow
governments if necessary to create the Leftists’ utopian dream.
We have only to look around ourselves to see that Acorn, Antifa, Occupy Wall Street and the myriad other radical “organizations” are manifestations of this “organize the world” strategy. It is the Leftist demagogue’s goal to ensure that the individual, and individual freedom and merit, are eliminated and supplanted with “one world order” that will bring egalitarian peace and prosperity to all.
In fact, history has demonstrated time and again what should be patently obvious: that Leftist/Utopian/One World Order visions only accelerate the destruction of great civilizations.
We see many more examples of this cancer in institutions around us today: in totalitarian regimes such as China, North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Russia (yes, Russia is still totalitarian despite feigning democracy); in globalist organizations such as the United Nations, Organization of American States and European Union that constantly promote collectivism and wealth redistribution; in so-called philanthropic and policy entities like the World Federalist Movement, the Clinton Foundation/Global Initiative and many similar “one world government” promoters, and in countless Leftist/Social Justice societies, clubs and associations on college campuses and in communities throughout the country. And, astoundingly and regrettably, in courts and schools, and most visibly, in today’s Democrat Party.
How did these beyond-fringe-lunacy to mainstream elected
representatives’ rhetoric get a foothold in our great country?
Here’s the crux of the matter. Traditionalists and Conservatives celebrate the individual, self-reliance, independence, freedom and meritocracy. The desire to be left alone, to care for ourselves, our families and loved ones compels us to resist “organizing” the way the Left has. To say the least, way down on our list of priorities is trying to create a collectivist, Utopian society!
Leftists use our value system against us by goading not just the poorer and less fortunate among us but now the entire working middle of our society to protest, to “resist”, thus fomenting class warfare, covetousness, envy and ultimately, to lay the groundwork for extortion. Alinsky’s approach, and that of virtually all “community organizers”, seeks to brain-wash and indoctrinate self-reliant individuals using airwaves saturated with propaganda, and with increasing frequency, to compel compliance with their dogma through the actions of organized mobs inciting violence and mayhem. What’s particularly insidious about this is that the Left couches their rhetoric in emotional appeals to charity and caring for others, of rooting for the underdogs, the “victims”. The hypocrisy is breathtaking!
It’s not complacency that’s allowed this to happen. Ask any hard-working middle class adults whether they see what the Left is doing and whether they care and you’ll get a resounding affirmative answer. The problem is that the productive in our society are too busy being productive and caring for themselves and their families to spend time countering the verbal diarrhea delivered by community organizers in fireside chats at the local library. Thus, Leftist dialogue, what the vast majority of the media spouts and what our eyes and ears a filled with, with the exception of a few conservative/traditional print and media outlets, goes unchecked and unchallenged.
Yes, the majority at our southern border are seeking better lives for themselves. But they are there in large part because of Leftists with sinister objectives, including, obvious to anyone with eyes, the objective of overwhelming the system. Leftist “saviors” predictably swoop in to offer anything and everything while condemning every person or action that would discourage or disallow the wholesale trampling of our sovereignty.
Why? Is it because the Left really cares about these refugees? No, it’s because the Leftists, in a move that would make Cloward, Piven and Alinsky proud, want to overwhelm the system, bring down traditional and conservative economic and societal values so they can create a permanent voting bloc that will allow them to assert control over the compliant masses, and advance their utopian agenda.
Right before our eyes the Leviathan is thus growing, and is moving ever faster to destroy our country’s values – to overload the system. Let us not be frogs in lukewarm water with the flame turned up under the pot. We simply have to carve out more time, more money and more commitment to traditional candidates, agendas, and initiatives, and we must vote at every opportunity even when we think an adverse outcome is certain, or we will end up being boiled alive.
This day has great meaning for me. I moved to Paris, France in 1961 and lived there with my parents through the turbulent 60’s until I came home for college in 1970. During those years I had the opportunity to walk the beaches and streets of the towns that constituted the battlefields of the allied invasion on June 6, 1944.
I attended the commemoration in Normandy on June 6th, 1964, only twenty years after it occurred, when what happened there was still fresh in the minds of many. At that time there were still Frenchmen and Frenchwomen who remembered the Americans coming ashore in Normandy. My own French teacher at the American School of Paris was a member of the French Resistance.
As is true here, the attitude of those in the French
countryside is vastly different from that of the large cities. I’ll never
forget one trip we took to Normandy by car sometime in the mid 60’s. It was one
of those foggy, grey days, and around lunchtime, we found ourselves somewhere on
the backroads trying to find a place to have a quick bite to eat before heading
to our next destination.
Fast food hardly existed in France in the 60’s generally,
and in the French countryside, it was unheard of. Seeing a sign on a byway that
simply said “restaurant” with an arrow pointing up a country lane towards what
looked like a modest chateau on a hill, we shrugged and followed the unpaved
lane to the entrance.
The restaurant didn’t appear to be open. There were no cars
in the courtyard, no sign of activity. We were about to turn around to leave
when suddenly an elderly gentleman came out the door and approached us,
beckoning us to come in. In our broken French we explained we were looking for a
spot to have lunch and he assured us that they would be happy to serve us. So
we went in for a quick bite to eat.
Several hours later we left having had one of the most
memorable meals and experiences of our lives. For we were welcomed into the
proprietor’s home and ‘restaurant’ not just with open arms, but with a
reverence and respect that I had never before encountered in France, just
because we were American. In Paris “Ugly Americans” were treated with disdain
and disrespect, an attitude I had thought was ubiquitous.
The husband and wife who owned the chateau and restaurant
were there on D-Day. Paratroopers landed on their grounds the night of June 5th
and subsequently, as the invasion moved inland off the beaches, they housed
American, British and Canadian soldiers. Their home was a makeshift hospital at
one point. They remembered vividly and clearly every facet of that first 72
hours of the battle as they recounted story after story with deep sincerity and
moist eyes.
We had ordered the standard steak and fries fare for lunch.
After all, we were looking for “fast food” and that was usually the menu item most
quickly produced in most french cafés and restaruants. However, our hosts
insisted on bringing us appetizers, a leek “potage” (thick soup), fresh-from-the-oven
“pain de campagne” (hefty country bread), and, anxious to ensure we were happy
with our meal, madam and monsieur spent so much time around our table we
invited them to sit down and join us, which is when the stories about D-Day
emerged.
I’ll never forget that after more than two hours of eating and talking and toasting, for our hosts offered numerous toasts to the Americans who fought for them in June 1944, , to America in general, to the Brits, to the allies, and even to us who were seated at their table…there must have been a dozen toasts and mini speeches, madame emerged from the kitchen with a fresh-made apple tart the size of a medium pizza which she had surreptitiously baked specially for us while we were eating our main meal. With ceremony she presented it as a gift, an emblem of her gratitude that we had deigned to visit their home and restaurant.
Never before had I witnessed such profound respect and admiration of America and Americans as I did that day. And notwithstanding the obnoxious teenager that I was, I couldn’t help but tingle with pride as these good residents of Normandy repeatedly thanked us, as if we had stormed the beaches or dropped from planes on their lawn ourselves.
So as I watched the ceremonies for the 75th
anniversary of D-Day on tv today, I was reminded of the pride I have for our
country and the force for good it has been since its founding. And I was
reminded of my own experiences in Normandy, and of my profound gratitude and
reverence for the sacrifices made by those who fought and died there 75 years
ago.
May God bless their souls and notwithstanding its faults and
many problems, may God forever bless the United States of America.
TODAY IS
Wednesday May 15, 2024
Quips & Quotes
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?”
