Moral Midgets

Our moral aspirations are so low that we consider it a major moral achievement to sort our garbage or carry groceries home in a canvas bacteria bag

We have often noticed an excess of signalling virtue on the outside indicates a lack of virtue on the inside.

John Denver conspiracy

Fact: Rocky mountain high by John Denver came out in 1973, ironically predicting the legalization of pot in Colorado in 2012. 

Fact:   In 1997 John Denver was mysteriously killed in a plane crash caused by "running out of fuel".

Theory: Due to his seeming ability to predict certain future events, John Denver had to be taken out before any of his other predictions could be turned into hit songs and influence future events.

French Revolution - Root of All Evil?

As I read through history, I come to the conclusion that World War 2 was just the finale of World War 1.  The cause of World War 1 really lies with Bismarck and his desire to get revenge, through the Franco-Prussian war, on the French for Napoleon's humiliation of the Prussians in the Napoleonic Wars.  The only way Napoleon could come to power was though the excesses of the French Revolution.  The French Revolution theories trace back to Rousseau, so I conclude that Rousseau was source of evil of so many of today's problems.

Fall on the Farm

The evening is getting shorter
The light is fading fast
The birds are ready to leave
The squirrels are working hard
The first leaves tumble
The grass is wilting and brown
The monkey brains lie scattered

Big stick

We've gone from Teddy Roosevelt speaking softly and carrying a big stick to Obama bending over and taking the big stick to Trump speaking loudly about his big stick.

Modern Version of "First They Came..."

First they made victims of the Gays, I remained guilty—
Because I was not a Gay.

Then they made victims of the Blacks, and I remained guilty --
Because I was not a Black.

Then they made vicitms of the Women, and I remained guilty—
Because I was not a Woman.

—and then there was no one left to feel sorry for me.

Clickbait Propaganda

So I saw this clickbait "Do You Know Your History" test pop up on Facebook.  Sometimes, in a moment of weakness, I take the bait and waste 10 or 15 minutes taking one.

The format of the test was a picture would pop up with two names under it.  You'd select a name and then the screen would advance, telling you whether you were right or wrong.  It would then pop up a short blurb telling a little about the historical person in the picture.

The test had about 100 people and you could tell it was heavily slanted towards the Progressive view of history because, despite being about 10-12% of the population, blacks were about 30-40% of the historical figures represented. Another 30-40% were women and the rest were white men.

This wasn't really a problem, despite the incongruity of equating someone like Billy Holiday with Benjamin Franklin. The problem was every women or minority got a glowing blurb.  There wasn't a single one with a description that could in any way be construed as negative.

However, the "Dead, White Men", i.e the presidents were another story.  If they were left, they got off easy.  If they were conservative, they got a write up like this one about Ronald Reagan.

I don't know whether I worry more about this kind of propaganda garbage being fed to unsuspecting minds or whether the author of the blurb actually believes that's what happened.

Either way, it's disturbing there are people writing these tests, who are so ignorant of what really happened and that more people are going to continue to be ignorant if they read it and believe it.

Is Peace Always Better?

I've been reading a lot about WWI lately and came across this great quote related by eminent historian Alistair Horne.  The quote is from a Frenchman, Jean Dutourd deploring the more debility of his countrymen in 1940.

"War is less costly than servitude.  The choice is always between Verdun and Dachau"

It seems this is a lesson we're doomed to learn over and over again.

Dakota Pipeline Protesters

The truth never comes out when it can make a difference, but I guess it's good that it comes out at some point.

From today's WSJ in regard to the Dakota pipeline protesters causing more environmental damage than what they are purporting to fix.

The Army Corps closed the area and said in a press release that grass has been destroyed or removed from some 50 acres. The mess has to be cleared out before a spring flood sends toxic sludge into the nearby Cannonball River and Lake Oahe, the same lake the protesters said would be polluted by the pipeline. Moral grandstanding can be a dirty business

A Nice Young Man For a Small Tea Party

I was reading an interesting history last night about the Siege of Paris by one of my favorite historians, Alistair Horne, where he mentioned a French phrase, "petit creves", in reference to problems with some of the young men of Paris joining private 'medical' units and disappearing from being able to fight.

Most of the French phrases Horne uses I'm able to figure out or type into Google Translate and get the gist of what he's saying.  In this case I knew petit was small, but had no idea what creves was.  Here's the results from this particular search.

Google Translate didn't help much since I don't know what the punches idiom means in French.  Luckily there was a footnote on the phrase that said a petit creves was best described by the English phrase "A nice young man for a small tea-party"

Although I thought I knew what the phrase meant from the context, it was still pretty obscure.   I did some searches for it and found the following from a book published in 1885.

What a great phrase!  It's very interesting to see dialog from over one hundred years ago describing things I've personally discussed.  It's also interesting to see that the human condition never really changes.

It also shows the richness that can be added to your reading by taking the effort to look things up you don't understand.  I can't wait to use this phrase in a sentence.

Idea of the Day

If the Democrat hacks in the Senate don't confirm Betsy DeVos, Trump  should shut down the Dept. Of Education. That's what I call a win-win situation

Socialism Truth Bomb from WSJ

From historian Alan Charles Kors’s “Can There Be an ‘After Socialism’?” for the Atlas Society, Sept. 27, 2003:

No cause, ever, in the history of all mankind, has produced more cold-blooded tyrants, more slaughtered innocents, and more orphans than socialism with power. It surpassed, exponentially, all other systems of production in turning out the dead. The bodies are all around us. And here is the problem: No one talks about them. No one honors them. No one does penance for them. No one has committed suicide for having been an apologist for those who did this to them. No one pays for them. No one is hunted down to account for them. It is exactly what Solzhenitsyn foresaw in The Gulag Archipelago: “No, no one would have to answer. No one would be looked into.” . . .

To be moral beings, we must acknowledge these awful things appropriately and bear witness to the responsibilities of these most murderous times. Until socialism—like Nazism or fascism confronted by the death camps and the slaughter of innocents—is confronted with its lived reality, the greatest atrocities of all recorded human life, we will not live “after socialism.”

It will not happen. The pathology of Western intellectuals has committed them to an adversarial relationship with the culture—free markets and individual rights—that has produced the greatest alleviation of suffering; the greatest liberation from want, ignorance, and superstition; and the greatest increase of bounty and opportunity in the history of all human life.

This pathology allows Western intellectuals to step around the Everest of bodies of the victims of Communism without a tear, a scruple, a regret, an act of contrition, or a reevaluation of self, soul, and mind.

Should We Have Gone Into Iraq?

Ann Coulter nails the answer to this one.

[Megan] Kelly [from Fox news] asked Bush: "Knowing what we know now, would you have authorized the invasion [of Iraq]?" 

The correct answer is: 

Now that we know that a half-century of Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act would result in a country where a man like Barack Obama could be elected president, and then, purely out of antipathy to America, would withdraw every last troop from Iraq, nullifying America's victory and plunging the entire region into chaos, no, I would not bother removing dangerous despots in order to make America safer.

Instead, I would dedicate myself to overturning our immigration laws, ending the anchor-baby scam and building a triple-layer fence on the border, so that some future Republican president could invade Iraq without worrying about a foreign-elected president like Obama coming in and giving it away.

Wow.  The question can't be answered better than that.

Peacniks and their motivation

Great quote from "Catch the Jew" by Tuvia Tennenbaum in regard to a Leftist Jew who heartily supported the Palestinians.

"Peace is this man's God, but I think he's an atheist"

I think this explains a lot Leftist "useful idiots" actions. 

Use your strength to do bold things....

I heard this quote from Machiavelli this morning and liked it so much I had to make a blog entry to make sure I didn't lose it. 

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.Niccolò Machiavelli

I especially liked the last line about developing strength to do bold things and not use it to stand up to suffering.  I've fallen into this trap and was happy to see the problem so artfully articulated.

I also like the statement that all courses of action are risky.  I've fought against the urge to be "safe" and giving up my ambitions.  So far, I'm happy with the result.

Why Democrats/Progressives Want to Destroy the Middle Class

I've often wondered why Leftist Democrats and Progressives hate the middle class so much.  Why do they have so much envy and work like demons, night and day, to undermine, demoralize, and destroy the backbone of this country.

My primary theory was they had a rich neighbor that made them feel bad or they grew up in a broken home, poor and wanting to destroy those they always perceived as being "better" than them.  To bring the "rich" down to their own level so to speak.

I recently read a great article in WSJ entitled "The Soccer Mom Revolt Against Common Core" that changed my mind to their motivation.

In the last paragraph of the article, discussing the Obama administration's troubles implementing Common Core, it states exactly what drives the enduring hate:

Prof. Greene thinks the administration’s education agenda has crossed the wrong voters. “They’re going to lose,” he said, citing White House hubris and overreach. “You can’t beat organized upper-middle-class people. They will fight back and you will lose.”

The Democrats and Progressives are always and forever about gaining power.  The upper middle class is one of the few bastions of power left that can stand up to them and thwart their final takeover of the culture.  For this, they must be destroyed, because nothing must come between a Leftist and power.

Classic Propaganda from Washington Post

I recently came across this story about a CDC study on the gay population.  In the article it states that 1.6 percent of adults say they're gay.  

The party line has always been that the gay population is about 4 percent.  So what does WashPo have to say about that?  Their analysis is that it's "a slightly smaller assessment".  

When an estimate is cut by more than 50%, I wouldn't say that is "slight".  I would say it's massive and just another example of how the people driving the narrative manipulate perceptions.  

One obscure article in itself doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme, but a steady drip, drip, drip, multiplied by thousands of years will grind even a mountain into dust.

The National Health Interview Survey, which is the government’s premier tool for annually assessing Americans’ health and behaviors, found that 1.6 percent of adults self-identify as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent consider themselves bisexual.

The overwhelming majority of adults, 96.6 percent, labeled themselves as straight in the 2013 survey. An additional 1.1 percent declined to answer, responded “I don’t know the answer” or said they were “something else.”

The figures offered a slightly smaller assessment of the size of the gay, lesbian and bisexual population than other surveys, which have pegged the overall proportion at closer to 3.5 or 4 percent. In particular, the estimate for bisexuals was lower than in some other surveys.

Things I Learned from Call of Duty

• You can't outrun a machine gun. 


• Never hide behind a car when people are shooting at you. 


• Teamwork always beats the lone wolf. 


• Cleverness and tactics can compete with raw speed. 


• It's important to mute the other players, otherwise you'll lose all hope for the future of this country.


• There is no perfect weapon. Just the right one for the right job.


• Enemies always show up at the worst possible time.

Is Communist Manipulation Still Occuring

Over the last several years I've been excited to see the fracking energy revolution in our country.  It's been a great benefit to the US by raising the standard of living and increasing energy independence.  It's also giving me the personal satisfaction of once again seeing the Doomsday Prophets and the Peak Oil magpies proved wrong.

Despite all the benefits to individuals and our country, the Left has been rabidly opposed to fracking. I've been a bit baffled as to why, other than they can't stand to see people become independent and our country do well.

The hammer the Left has used to beat against fracking has been the usual Luddite environmental arguments,  but the link between more, cheaper energy and global warming didn't seem strong enough to justify the zeal they have for shutting fracking down. 

I've recently read a couple items that have made the reason more clear.  The first is an excellent book by M Stanton Evans called, Stalins' Agents, about Soviet infilttration of FDR's government.
The  second was an article I read in the Wall Street Journal this weekend which was about how Putin is running diplomatic circles around western politicians despite having a country on the decline.  In the article it states:

 But time isn't on Mr. Putin's side. Russia's failure since 1989 to build an effective economy keeps his reach short. U.S. diplomacy may be wobbly, but U.S. development of shale oil and gas attacks the core of Russia's strength. With the U.S. out of the gas-importing business, a lot more natural gas is on world markets, and Gazprom's OGZPY +0.82% customers are demanding better terms. Fracking hurts Mr. Putin in the wallet, and Russia has never had much cash to spare.

 As I read this, the gong went off in my head that this sounded exactly like the tactics the Communists used in the 30's and 40's, when they used NGO's (front groups) and government infiltration to influence US policy to favor the USSR.

The article also states:

The Edward Snowden caper was a stunning Russian success—and an embarrassing U.S. failure. An old KGB hand, Mr. Putin knows that intelligence and propaganda were among the Soviet Union's greatest assets—and now, Russia's spooks and spinmeisters are back.

 Is it a far stretch to believe that Russian intelligence, agents in the US, and fellow travellers are once again actively manipulating credulous and sympathetic government officials in subverting our own best interests in favor of once again propping up Russia?  In light of the rabid attacks on fracking by the Left, it doesn't seem too far fetched.