Mark Steyn on three things we’ve lost during the past year
Here are some excerpts from a speech Mark Steyn made in late April at a Hillsdale College seminar. The topic is some things Americans have lost:
One is equality before the law, something absolutely essential to a free society. In its place, we now have politicized law…
Second, border control. Functioning societies, at least since the Peace of Westphalia three centuries ago, have borders. America has no southern border and no plans to get one…
And third, dare I bring up the fact that it is a real question whether we can go back to agreeing to have open and honest elections? And if we don’t have open and honest elections, control of our borders, and equality before the law, then we don’t have the conditions for politics or free government.
I guess Steyn didn’t list “an objective press” because we haven’t had one in ages, if ever. If an objective press isn’t possible, how about a press that’s at least honest about its partisanship and doesn’t pretend to be objective when it’s not?
I agree with this summary from Steyn:
President Macron of France is not my favorite chap—he’s a sinister globalist for one thing. But he made an admirable stand when he announced that not one French statue would be taken down and not a single French street name would be changed, because they are all part of French history. And “Bingo!” as Peter Navarro likes to say, the statue toppling and street-name changing in France went away. Why can’t American conservatives show that kind of strength? The Senate Minority Leader says he personally would not be bothered if the historical names of U.S. military bases are changed. The editor of National Review says that he wouldn’t be bothered about taking down Confederate statues. But of course it doesn’t stop there—now they’re going for all the statues. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, McKinley, and on and on. The point conservatives need to grasp is, unless you’re prepared to surrender everything, don’t surrender anything.
I’ll end by pointing out that the Left wins because it seizes language. Take the policy of letting people vote who are not U.S. citizens and shouldn’t be voting. The Left calls this policy “counting every vote.” Therefore someone who wants to make sure voters are citizens is opposed to “counting every vote.” If we don’t take back the language, we will lose the truth…
Don’t surrender the language. Reclaim the language. It’s the first step to recovering our civilization.
The first of many on a very long road.
The observation on the importance of language admits of no improvement, but the battle seems perhaps incapable of being won. One year ago, Merriam-Webster changed its definition of the word “racism” (which, in the century or so of its existence, has certainly often enough changed its meaning) solely in order to placate a single ideologically-motivated young SJW, and now, of course, the word “equity” is brandished everywhere as a weapon against the noble ideal of equality of opportunity. Most grotesquely, the word “mother” (having about it for most humans an unutterably meaningful and powerful aura) has recently been devalued as “birthing person.”
I read Steyn’s excellent speech yesterday. It is a succinct yet thorough explication of where our society is at, at present. It’s hard not to become despondent, but Steyn’s prose always leaves the door open for hope.
Steyn was always my favorite substitute host for Rush, though at times he can be a little crude. His book, “ America Alone” , was good, though depressing. And now, ultimately, out of date.
Sometimes things have to bottom out and perhaps we are seeing some of that in the more liberal cities where the ‘new way of thinking’ is not working out so well.
Meantime, back at the ranch, Texas has passed multiple gun bills increasing the rights of gun owners including Constitutional Carry, you own a gun, you carry a gun, “We don’t need no stink’n badges” in Texas after September 1. We have a border we secure a border, we are nor going to depend upon the Feds to secure our leaking border with Mexico. Our local Hispanic population like the idea of secure borders along with the rest of us folk in Texas. We ceased to be a lot of various people and became Texans some time ago, if you live in Texas and are a citizen of Texas you need no other words to describe who you are other than Texan.
Pretty simple, we are Texans and we like to work hard, own stuff and take care of each other no matter what origins racial or ethnic we come from, we are brothers and sisters and love our children. Most all the mask stuff is gone down here most everywhere except for the hard core liberals and we still have a few of them.
We ceased to be a lot of various people and became Texans some time ago, if you live in Texas and are a citizen of Texas you need no other words to describe who you are other than Texan.
OldTexan:
Not to be quarrelsome, but how does that work for Austin?
OldTexan, Many things of interest in the signing of the bills by Gov Abbott the other day. One that I appreciated was a firearm suppressor made in TX that stays in TX can not have a federal tax applied.
I do wonder how TX will survive the liberal madness of Austin, Dallas, Houston, etc. and the influx of more and more of those folks from CA and other locations. It’s strange that many/most of them bring those “blue” carpetbags with them.
TX border? Close it yourselves. Looks like they might actually do that. Maybe the Portland Riot Squad that just quit en masse will just relocate to border duty in TX. I would love to see that happen.
I keep hoping that the AZ governor, a McCain clone, will starting imitating Abbot.
Here are some excerpts from a speech Mark Steyn made in late April at a Hillsdale College seminar.
Americans don’t hear nearly enough from Mark Steyn on governance. He’s even better at clearly addressing the corruption of democracy, which our ‘political leaders’ in government are allowing to happen, than Donald Trump did in 2016 – and Trump stirred up enough agreement from voters to win his primary and his election.
Someone just noted that the wokist garbage in government and schools should be plenty for Republicans to run on and run the table – if any Republicans have the brains to understand this situation, and the guts to apply it in campaigning.
Something someone suggested on another blog and I never respond on this one, just was we need to hope Biden keeps his “presidency” because if he doesn’t before 2024 Kamela will be in and the Dems will pick the VP and who knows from there what will happens. Someone never elected may be the president. That is the scariest thing to me right now!
The more politicized the law, the more fully it removes blinders.
Open borders ensure corruption, rampant crime and in the modern world, terrorist attacks. Islam has a long history of biding its time.
The 2022 and 2024 elections will reveal whether we can regain open and honest elections. Personally, I’m highly doubtful of the likelihood of that possibility eventuating. No way is the Left going to accept a defeat so close to conquest.
“Oppressors can tyrannize only when they achieve a standing army, an enslaved press, and a disarmed populace.” James Madison
Well the Left has an enslaved press, Sec. Def. Austin and the entire upper echelons of the military are working on achieving a standing army that will obey orders to kill “domestic terrorists” and they’re working toward a nationalized police force. Plus, it’s a safe bet that Xiden’s puppet masters and Congressional democrats are working on finding a way to disarm the populace.
Ideological fanatics always envision a final solution. Their utopia requires it.
a McCain clone
One of them was a temperamental and idiosyncratic retired navy pilot. The other one got to the top of the corporate heap through sales-and-marketing and seems like the sort of Republican who caves to the big business lobbyists as a matter of course. Am I misunderstanding something?
The Capitol Hill / K Street aspect of the Republican Party is composed of men-without-chests fellating the Chamber-of-Commerce lobbyists. McConnell and McCarthy are wholly inadequate. However, they’re in the positions they have because wholly inadequate is what most Republicans in Congress want.
Americans don’t hear nearly enough from Mark Steyn on governance.
Tells you something that Richard Lowry allowed his managing editor to cut Steyn from the magazine’s list of contributors consequent to said managing editor’s dainty little hobby horses. National Review cannot go under soon enough.
I expect we will end up as in the Middle Ages, with a few monasteries like Hillsdale. Please contribute to that remarkable island of intellectual, ethical sanity.
Elko County Nevada just passed a law that prevents any local enforcement by Federales of federal law which violate Elko’s understanding of our Constitutional rights. The Federales will be arrested for violating county laws.
So we will have some sanctuaries, despite Geoffrey Britain’s horrible but quite correct prognosis. It is better to die standing than to live crawling.
As to the influx of “blues” to TX from CA, they will all end up in Houston, Austin, Dallas, or San Antonio, which they will gradually convert into ratholes, like NYC, SF, Chicago and LA. Did you know NYC is only 32% white? And Philadelphia, 34%?
S. Allen (7:27 pm) was concerned that “Someone never elected may be the president.”
Been there done that. Gerald Ford (served 1974-1977) was never elected. He was selected to be Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned the Vice Presidency in 1973, and he ascended to the Presidency when Richard Nixon resigned less than a year later.
Of course, Gerry Ford turned out to be a more or less acceptable caretaker President. (He was then succeeded by Jimmy Carter.)
Our present national and world affairs situation is dire (to say the *very* least), and we-all get to contemplate the ongoing prospect of Biden, Harris, or whatever leftie steps in. As S. Allen points out, “and who knows from there what will happen.”
Did you know NYC is only 32% white? –Cicero
This confused me until I realized the number does not include White Hispanics. Otherwise NYC is ~44% white.
Looking up White Hispanic in wiki I discover the term is defined:
_______________________________
a White Hispanic is an individual who self-identifies as white and of Hispanic descent.
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I’m 1/4 Mexican, so I could be a White Hispanic, if I chose to identify with both categories. This is so screwed. I hate all this self-identification nonsense. There are now young people self-identifying as unicorns.
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History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.
–James Joyce, “Ulysses”
@Huxley:
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur- nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.
Ain’t no waking up from that.
Cicero:
Have you ever read A Canticle for Liebowitz?
Ain’t no waking up from that.
Zaphod:
Unless you’re trying to read “Finnegans Wake”… My favorite quote about the Wake is:
I looked at every single word!
However, the internet has come to the rescue. There’s now a hyperlinked version so one can click on every problematic word or cluster of letters — i.e. every third or fourth word — and a gloss appears below explaining or broadly hinting at what Joyce packed in.
https://finwake.com/01-sep2010-free-android/01.htm
For years I’ve been saying I would wait for the brain implants to read the Wake. Maybe the web version is good enough.
Re: A Canticle for Liebowitz (by Walter Miller Jr.) …
Walter Miller’s daughter was in my high school class. At the time I was big on science fiction and not so big on Catholicism.
Just my luck, I thought to myself, a prize-winning SF author is within my reach and he’s the only one who writes Catholic science-fiction.
@Huxley:
Thanks. That’s news I can use. Now if only we could persuade the Chinese to disappear down the FW Rabbit Hole.
huxley:
The definitive guide to Joyce is of course FT, “How Can You Be In Two Places At Once When You’re Not Anywhere At All” At the end of side one. But you knew that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Can_You_Be_in_Two_Places_at_Once_When_You%27re_Not_Anywhere_at_All
om:
I’m pleasantly surprised that Firesign Theatre is not an arcane reference in these parts. Speaks well of neo’s readers IMO.
But did they inhale? I wonder. I suspect so.
Re: White hispanic etc.
Back in the 80s, when I picked up interesting-looking hitchhikers, I was driving home north on PCH just past the Bixby Canyon Bridge and I stopped for a young boots-leather-and-spikes punk.
However, he didn’t look dangerous. I was a curious fellow, so I asked him about being a punk. He told me his story.
He started off as a white-nationalist punk. He and his droogs would beat up non-white mongrels and laugh about it.
Then one day he confided to his friends that he was half-Italian. That didn’t make the cut in his circle. So they beat him up!
After that he was still a punk, but he gave up the white-nationalist part.
__________________________
Here’s a song about the Bixby Canyon Bridge. I just like it. “Death Cab for Cutie” is an allusion to a fictional band appearing in the Beatles’ film, “Magical Mystery Tour.”
–Death Cab For Cutie, “Bixby Canyon Bridge”
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOcIaTmWJW4
The Bixby Canyon Bridge was constructed in under 14 months.
Does anyone seriously believe that could happen today?
No Can Do.
@art+deco
Tells you something that Richard Lowry allowed his managing editor to cut Steyn from the magazine’s list of contributors
Steyn actually engaged Michael Mann and his ‘hockey stick’ from within National Review, giving them a chance to legally shoot it out with him and likely win. But NR isn’t in this war to win, so Mann (and the hyper-corrupt ‘justice’ system in Washington DC) has been able to drag the court process vs Steyn alone out for nearly ten years without resolution. It’s a spectacular example of the abolition of swift justice, and with it justice itself.
Really enjoyed Canticle. It was published in 1959. Not sure when it made paperback, but I was in high school–grad 62–when I first read it.
Those were the days when surviving the nuclear exchange was of much interest. Remember the Conelrad carats on your AM dial? And the PSA on television about how and why it would be used.
It seemed that practically any hard sci-fi had to refer to such in the fictional past, and some mainstream–sci fi that sold well–like Alas Babylon were practically an instructional manual.
I was raised Catholic so I was a step or two into the Catholic aspects of the book. What I found agonizing was the priest and the mother talking about euthanizing the horribly burned daughter. The implication was that, for all its horror, it would be an issue by the millions.
WRT the MIddle Ages, I would remind the folks that a Pope tried to outlaw the crossbow. Common thought is that the crossbow, usable by peasants–unlike the longbow which needed dedicated professionals–could be used to upset the order of things, if a farmer could take a knight off his horse. Is the AR-15 today’s crossbow?
Huxley: Death Cab for Cutie was a song in Magical Mystery Tour but it was performed by the nonfictional Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band.
I will assume that the fact that it wasn’t mentioned means it isn’t known, and point out that Death Cab for Cutie is also the name of a Bonzo Dog Band song.
Oops, cross-posted with Gregory above.
Gregory+Harper:
You’re right. I thought the Bonzos played under a fictional name.
They’ve cleaned up the film. It’s watchable. “Magical Mystery Tour” isn’t entirely terrible, but it is amateurish and for the Beatles that hurts.
Even worse, the first time it was shown, it was shown on television in black-and-white!
Does Can Do! know that much of the Cant Do! in this country is a direct consequence of Environmental Impact Statements and Endangered Species Act lawfare that originated in the 1970s. Not like it is a new thing. But it is out of control for at least 40 years now.
CCP strip mines the oceans and gives the world some of the worst “air” to breath that there is, and of course the CCP may have Can Do!’d the world the WuhanFlu. His Can Do! means you eat the costs of their incompetence and criminality. Tragedy of the Can Do! commons.
“Does Can Do! know that much of the Cant Do! in this country is a direct consequence of Environmental Impact Statements and Endangered Species Act lawfare that originated in the 1970s. Not like it is a new thing. But it is out of control for at least 40 years now.”
Well, No @#$^ Sherlock. Plus a bunch of other late stage decline accretions. Good chunk of those polluting Chinese factories got exported to China or MFN’ed into being by your filthy rotten partially alien totally Bug Men Ruling Class.
And at the end of the day, fact remains that you can’t build a bridge in a year. Take more like 5-10 years and end up 5-10x over budget whilst those Goddamn Chinks build out 10,000km of high speed rail and 50 boomers or God knows what.
So you have both hands tied behind your back but you could absolutely definitely shoot hoops with the best of them if someone would just untie your hands. Well that’s cool.
Or could just make nostalgic movies retconning a bunch of Smartypants Negresses into the beating heart of the Apollo Program. It’s enough to make a man weep and long for more Nazi Rocket Scientists… Oh… wait…
Goddamn Vandal Savages… We were building aqueducts when they were scratching fleas off their asses in the frozen steppes…
*gets decapitated by a Goddamn Vandal Savage*.
“How Many Divisions does the EPA Have?”
(You don’t want to find out. The Education Department has an armed wing, FFS.)
S. Allen,
“Someone never elected may be the president. That is the scariest thing to me right now!”
The 1970s seeing Agnew resign as VP, replaced by Ford and the Nixon resigning and Ford becoming President made this a possibility and a left leaning Sci-Fi writer penned a story that had the Left doing it their way. The story is called “Sierra Maestra.” And if you want to look at the Ford elevation to President consider too that there were two attempts to assassinate him that failed by flukes and that Nelson Rockefeller would have become President if they had succeeded.
How many Can Do! things fall down when the earth goes shakey, shakey?
More than a few Can Do! No shoot Sherlock, who would solve the mystery!
Who rescued you from the Heidelberg Tun? You must have spent hours in the shower to make yourself presentable and chipper.
Keep you social credit score on the positive side, beeblebrox. LOL
Probably wasted on you, Om.. but what I’m attempting is to hold up a mirror.
It’s a time-honoured thing. One best analyses Civilization A by comparing it to Civilization B. Voltaire and the rest of the Philosophes did that using (you guessed it) China and its Mandarinate as a mirror to Ancien Regime France with in all its sclerotic corruption. V also pulled a similar stunt using the relative openness and freedoms of the Ancient Enemy, the English, as a contrast to his native Land of a Thousand Cheeses.
Now the thing about V’s ideal image of Qing Dynasty China at its apogee is that it was useful for bringing into relief societal faults IN FRANCE. It didn’t have to be scrupulously correct. It just had to be accurate enough to get the job done.
The point is not that Chinky Can do. And it is kind of stupid, too, to go running for Copes (Chinky makes junk or Chinky pollutes). The big giant screaming contrasting point is that Whitey Can No Longer Do. It’s worse than that. Whitey not just Can Not Do.. Increasingly Whitey is becoming incapable of even *conceiving* of doing. It’s a kind of senile lassitude. “Well we can’t do this or that because of this or that and the other and… so why even think about it. In fact thinking about building stuff is ‘Problematic’, doncher know?”
Whitey is becoming like Post Collapse Romans living in the shadow of aqueducts and hippodromes. They saw these giant achievements but had only the dimmest notion that they were built by their ancestors. Maybe contemporary Whitey drives to work every day across some big ass bridge or his water supply comes from a gigantic hydroelectric dam — but it’s more than a generation and getting on for two since anyone has actually built one of these.
It’s not a good enough argument to say “Well it’s only because of the Progressives that we’re no longer capable of building stuff”. That’s like saying “I’d be perfectly healthy if it wasn’t for my Stage IV Cancer”.
You really think I waste all this time typing because I have nothing better to do than dump on the West? It breaks my heart to see the future turning to #$@% in real time.
And when I read whining about China unfair this or China bad that.. It’s just baby talk. Of course they are. They’re Chinese being Chinese. And until Westerners rebel against their own travesties of governments and do some truly terrible things to put Wokeism back in its box (six feet under), well the Chinese and every other culture which is not Pozzed is going to keep on keeping on having their ways with you. But it’s easier to bitch about China than it is to face the horrifically hard job needs to be done on the home front.
that failed by flukes
No flukes. Squeaky Fromme’s grip strength was so poor she couldn’t get a bullet in the chamber. Sara Jane Moore’s shot didn’t get within five feet of Ford and missed everyone else milling about him; it ricocheted off a building and hit a cab driver on the rebound (who wasn’t wounded).
Something Michael Kinsley pointed out a generation ago. The President and others travel with a big clanking security entourage that makes their presence obvious wherever they go. The prime minister of Israel hasn’t anything like it, because his public movements are not broadcast in advance.
Prior to 1906, no American president ever left the country while in office. Harry Truman, who presided over some of the most consequential diplomacy in this century, took three foreign trips: courtesy visits to Canada and Mexico (to which he could have traveled overland) and the Potsdam Conference. Even though we have instantaneous communications technology and embassies all over the world, we still send four plane loads of personnel and equipment abroad so the President can ‘meet with’ foreign leaders. (It was pretty funny when Secret Service agents doing advance work for a stupid presidential visit to Colombia in 2012 were caught using the services of Colombian hookers during their down time. Evidently, only one public employee on this advance trip failed to avail himself of their charms. A number of them then stiffed the girls, which is just tacky. Just in case you were wondering about the institutional culture of the Secret Service was).
Construct a bridge in under 14 months? It would take you a decade just to get the environmental and cultural impact statements passed!
Can Do! writes a tome laced with melanin about how good it was then when men were men. His heart is breaking for all the non making of all he sees that’s not CCPs.
Sorry, beeblebrox, not buying your Mock Turtle tears.
How’s that Can’t Do! nuke doing? The USSR gave the world Chernobyl, will the CCP give Hong Kong the “China Syndrome?”
Keep that social credit score on the “right” side of the line.
The fact that two people got close to a President with weapons and intent to kill him but didn’t succeed because they weren’t able to properly handle the gun is the fluke. Same for Reagan not dying when he was shot, that too was an assassination avoided by a fluke, aka luck.
beeblebrox is so modest to point out the downside of the out of control regulatory state. Who knew? Just conservatives since 1980. But they didn’t link it to melanin, how stupid they were (and are).
Otay, buckwheat. 🙂
“A number of them then stiffed the girls, which is just tacky. Just in case you were wondering about the institutional culture of the Secret Service was).”
But did they? That’s making some mighty big and charitable assumptions about the Institutional Culture of Colombian Hookers.
Not that I’ve got much faith in the Institutional Culture of the Secret Service either.
We did finish the rebuilt World Trade Center in 2014 for $3.9 billion (up from an estimate of $3 billion). One may argue about how long the rebuild took depending on when one marks the start of construction.
Granted, not as impressive as the Empire State Building constructed in 18 months, but not peanuts either.
I was just happy we didn’t put a crescent moon on the spire…
(The initial winning design for the Flight 93 Memorial was a crescent, titled “Crescent of Embrace.” Fortunately this inspired sufficient criticism that the crescent was an ancient Islamic symbol and the shape was changed to a circle.
I still wonder about the designers. It’s their job to know about symbols and understand how graphic designs communicate, isn’t it?)
Again, it’s not unusual to survive a gun shot wound and it’s not unusual for people with minimal training to miss their targets. The real oddity was Hinckley, who was quite hopeless, managing to penetrate layers of security and hit four people with four bullets. The Secret Service agent in question and the DC police officer in question got lots of good press. For a sub rosa opinion, see that of a schoolteacher of my acquaintance, who said at the time, “Gee, it looked like McCarthy just turned around to see what was happening and got shot and Delahanty was looking at the President when he should have been looking at the crowd and got shot”. I think Ofc. Delahanty, who was perfectly ambulatory after the shooting and whose bullet was removed by emergency surgery only when it was discovered that Hinckley’s ammo had exploding tips, was able to retire on disability with a handsome pension within a few years. Your government at work.
Here’s a suggestion: for the most part, the problem in each case was unnecessary travel and / or broadcasting the President’s movements beforehand.
We did finish the rebuilt World Trade Center in 2014 for $3.9 billion (up from an estimate of $3 billion).
I’m betting you that Larry Silverstein could have replaced all of the lost office space with new construction years earlier if the politicians, the professional and avocational preventers, and the bloody starchitects had’nt manufactured so many impediments. They needed a memorial obelisk with a modest courtyard and a small plaque for each of the deceased. That settled, ordinary 40 story buildings and reconstructing the streets torn up to build the original would have done.
I still wonder about the designers. It’s their job to know about symbols and understand how graphic designs communicate, isn’t it?
I’m operating under the assumption they knew bloody well what they were doing, which amounted to an upraised middle finger directed at the rest of us. I’m never sure who is worse, the generators of contemporary architecture or the numbskulls who commission their awful work.
I’m operating under the assumption they knew bloody well what they were doing, which amounted to an upraised middle finger directed at the rest of us.
My question was somewhat rhetorical. Rock bottom, that’s how I see it. The title, “Crescent of Embrace,” made my blood boil.
What drove me out of the left was the post-9-11 question, “Why do they hate us?” So ignorant, so chock-full of self-loathing. I was pretty dumb back then, but not that dumb.
Turns out Mark Steyn, the guy quoted at the top of this post, had a smoldering article in “National Review” about the WTC and the Filght 93 Memorial. He didn’t see the “Circle of Embrace” as all that much of an improvement to “Crescent of Embrace.” Neither do I really. Points scored for Zaphod too.
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But let’s not get into the weeds of what the “circle” means. To wind up chasing these guys through the circles in their circles and the wheels within their wheels is to lose sight of why “Let’s roll!” wound up as a Crescent roll. There shouldn’t be any effete circle of abstract hand-wringing in the first place. It’s not what this thing was about. As James Lileks wrote here a couple of years back:
“If 9/11 had really changed us, there’d be a 150-story building on the site of the World Trade Center today. It would have a classical memorial in the plaza with allegorical figures representing Sorrow and Resolve, and a fountain watched over by stern stone eagles. Instead there’s a pit, and arguments over the usual muted dolorous abstraction approved by the National Association of Grief Counselors. The Empire State Building took 18 months to build. During the Depression. We could do that again, but we don’t. And we don’t seem interested in asking why.”
9/11 was Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid on the same morning – Flight 93 serving as the latter. If the stone eagles aren’t an option, I’d rather see Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and the other forgotten heroes of 93 in the pose from that Incredibles poster below with “LET’S ROLL!” chiseled in ka-powie Marvel Comics Jack Kirby lettering. Their story is one of action, not limp enfeebled passivity. Which says more about America today? What those guys did? Or how our culture chooses to memorialize them?
–Mark Steyn “Windmills of your mindlessness” (2009)
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/windmills-your-mindlessness-mark-steyn/
Fortunately, we have NOT lost our sense of humor:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/georgia-secretary-state-outlines-100000-names-be-cut-voter-rolls
Key graf:
‘ “Making sure Georgia’s voter rolls are up to date is key to ensuring the integrity of our elections,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said in a statement.’
And this, hot of the press (such as it is)…from the “FOR THE PEOPLE” party!!
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-big-business-ends-supporting-regime
(Actually, this one may not be that funny. Well, can’t be funny all the time, I guess…)
Etc., etc.
OK, we’re back. Humour (well, Canada-style):
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/cbc-turns-facebook-comments-protect-fragile-journalists-mental-health-and-protect-free
In the meantime, who says that the “Biden” administration isn’t a success; isn’t achieving its goals?
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/market-could-get-cut-half-charles-nenner-warns-geopolitical-chaos-pearl-harbor
But enough of that…
Let’s eat!!
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/food/articles/make-your-own-gravlax
…and a very happy Father’s Day to you all!!
}}} If an objective press isn’t possible, how about a press that’s at least honest about its partisanship and doesn’t pretend to be objective when it’s not?
Not sure we have for quite a while ourselves. Lots of evidence for a partisan press since the 1940s, after the war, probably before it.
We’re only just now waking up to the lies, in the last 20-odd years.
You yourself have noted the lies about Vietnam. There’s plenty of evidence about the lies about the USSR dating back to the 40s, as well as lies about Russian spying after WWII. And yeah, I think the press had lots of lies to say about McCarthy, too. The lies about race have been in play since the race hustlers of the late 80s and early 90s.
There was a time when the press at least was patriotic, which has not been the case for a good 25-odd years…
But yes, a press we ack is biased is acceptable. Britain seems to manage just fine with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGscoaUWW2M
One could describe the American Left as Totalitarian. Quoting Michael Burleigh from The Third Reich, p 14, on Totalitarianism,
” the “total” part captures most strikingly the insatiable, invasive character of this form of politics, which regarded the individual, freedom, autonomous civil society and the rule of law with uncomprehending hatred”.
And from Richard II: “Throw away respect, tradition, form and ceremonious duty”.
Nuff said.
We lost our real President and faith in the integrity of our elections and government. I’m guessing it’s irreparable. People will talk about this Presidential Selection as the turning point…
Hi, Cicero. Your note @ 19-Jun 8:11 pm mentioned the potential for a sort of new Dark Age dotted with occasional ‘monasteries’ like Hillsdale. As it happens, I got a fundraising appeal from there in the mail just the other day, which I intend to fulfill. But I would also point out that the land is not devoid of real monasteries, a couple of the notable ones in my book being Holy Trinity, Jordanville; Holy Transfiguration, Brookline, MA (their liturgical publications are outstanding); St. Anthony’s in Arizona (I forget where exactly); and even smaller, less popularized ones such as Dormition Monastery in Rives Junction (I mention it partly out of home-state bias, but by no means only on that account).
As far as secular havens of real learning go, I wonder if one could, to a first approximation, focus on places that rest on the Great Books curricula.
On the flukiness of not assassinating Ford, there was one dark cloud obscuring the silver linings of their failures – gun restriction laws.
Neither one of which would have deterred either woman if they had been in place prior to their attempts.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_assassination_of_Gerald_Ford_in_Sacramento
If you have any trust left in the Federal Law Enforcement Agencies, think again.
https://justthenews.com/accountability/watchdogs/feds-accused-seizing-85-million-safe-deposit-boxes-without-any-legal-basis