Quote of the Day

As often happens with the Democratic Left, it is difficult to tell just where the insincerity ends and the fanaticism begins.

But either interpretation implies that this is not a party fit to govern.

Democrats just purged white party staffers, and it's a bigger deal than anyone wants to admit

Today is Milton Friedman's Birthday

He would have been 107 today.

On May 13, 2010 at the Cato Institute's Milton Friedman Prize dinner, pundit George F. Will gave the keynote speech.  I transcribed it back then.  I recommend you read it (or watch it) if you haven't before.  Hell, if you have, I recommend you do it again.  It's every bit as valid today, if not more, than it was then.

It's entitled Learned Feudalism.

Quote of the Day - Stephen Green Edition

The Two Minute Hate was always ginned up, and the Left is now in its third year of never-ending two-minute hate cycles.

Rachel Maddow Will Know What to Do

ANOTHER recaptioning of the Hitler scene from "Downfall" Give it a watch.

Two+ Years and No Results

Is Rachael Maddow melting down?

I've gotta replay this:

Civil War

America will never be destroyed from the outside.  If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves. - Abraham Lincoln

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Peace - the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity.  Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration.  And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story. - Javier Perez de Cuellar

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Conflict, like poverty, is the normal condition of Man.  Instead of seeking the causes of conflict, one would be better off studying the causes of peace and the prosperity it makes possible. - Anonymous

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We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace. - Jeane Kirkpatrick

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Revolution, n. - In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment. - Ambrose Bierce

A recent Pew poll indicates that a majority of the population believes that political violence is imminent.  A February 2019 column from the BBC asked Are We On the Road to Civilization Collapse? Sara Hoyt wrote in March a piece entitled We Are Dancing on a Powder Keg.

These are not isolated examples, oh no:

It’s Time For Conservatives To Choose: Fight Back Or Surrender

The Battle Isn't Right vs. Left. It’s Statism vs. Individualism


Georgetown University poll: Nation at edge ‘of civil war,’ but voters reject compromise

The Civil War

America's Second Civil War Has Already Begun

Which way to the revolution

Democrat Congresswoman To Conservative Teen: “You’re Right To Be Afraid Of Us”

America’s Cold Civil War

Eric Holder: Democrats Should Consider Packing SCOTUS

America Is Over, But I Won’t See It Go Without An Epic Fight

That's an even dozen, and I didn't have to work hard to compile them.

The concept of the "meme" was coined by anti-theist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. It's not just those humorous images that make up a significant portion of Facebook postings, though they're an exhibit of the general concept. Merriam Webster defines a meme as "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." Dawkins himself said:

Memes (discrete units of knowledge, gossip, jokes and so on) are to culture what genes are to life. Just as biological evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest genes in the gene pool, cultural evolution may be driven by the most successful memes.

This is a mega-überpost, but if this interests you (or frightens you) get a snack and a beverage, get comfortable then please click below and continue. 

50 Years Ago Today

Man first landed on the Moon:


Here, fifty years later I have become convinced that the United States peaked on this day, fifty years ago. The decay had already begun, but we as a nation carried off the single most difficult, incredible effort in human history. I'm blessed to have been alive during that time.

More

Bigger

Higher

Faster

Taller

More powerful

Happier

...Better

More.  It's a concept that defines human nature, makes us what we are.  We want more.

More of what?  That's one of the defining attributes of unique individuals - the what that we want more of.  The what that drives our own personal pursuit of happiness.  But now a growing contingent of The Anointed™ is telling us and the rest of the world, "You can't have more."

Fuck 'em.

(Another early draft dusted off and polished a bit.)

"We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us."

The immortal words of the comic-strip character Pogo.

(Perusing my blog, I noticed that I had a half-dozen started essays that I'd never completed and published.  This is one of them from back in early 2016.  I thought I'd dust it off and hit "Publish."  Comments?)

Here we are in the early stages of the Run for the Presidency, 2016, and the most likely candidates at the moment are a lying, incompetent carpetbagger from Arkansas and a blowhard billionaire whose only principles seems to be "make money" and "promote myself."  The Vermont Socialist could still pull it out if he could get the Democrat Superdelegates on his side, but that seems unlikely at this point.  The Republican elite is shitting itself over the possibility that The Donald® might win the nomination, and the only other candidate with a chance is Ted "No Compromise" Cruz.  They could defeat The Donald® if they united behind Cruz, but as Rush Limbaugh keeps repeating, they hate The Donald®, they FEAR Cruz.

How the fuck did we get to this point?

Political commentator Henry Louis Mencken, an early 20th Century Cassandra wrote in 1920:

The larger the mob, the harder the test. In small areas, before small electorates, a first-rate man occasionally fights his way through, carrying even the mob with him by force of his personality. But when the field is nationwide, and the fight must be waged chiefly at second and third hand, and the force of personality cannot so readily make itself felt, then all the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

So a low opinion of politicians and the electorate both is nothing really all that new, but I wonder if Mencken really believed what he was saying, or was he instead writing a warning?  Doesn't really matter now, though, because instead of electing a moron, we're looking at electing an entirely different kind of disaster.

In 2006 I pulled a Quote of the Week from an Orson Scott Card book I was reading:

(America) was a nation created out of nothing - nothing but a set of ideals that they never measured up to. Now and then they had great leaders, but usually nothing but political hacks, and I mean right from the start. Washington was great, but Adams was paranoid and lazy, and Jefferson was as vile a scheming politician as a nation has ever been cursed with.
...
America shaped itself with institutions so strong that it could survive corruption, stupidity, vanity, ambition, recklessness, and even insanity in its chief executive.

A couple of years later, I pulled that quote again for my post Restoring the Lost Constitution, and asked the question:

But can it survive enmity?
I don't have an answer to that question yet, but it may be coming sooner than anyone would like.

The United States - a Non-European Country

We are not yet what George Orwell termed a "state broken people."

We Need More Killdozers

I'd Like to See That Venn Diagram

So Iran threatened to name Western politicians who took bribes to create Obama's nuclear deal.

It has been strongly suggested that the Justice Department bent over backwards to not pursue the Hillary Clinton over her private email server and possible pay-to-play abuse of her Secretary of State position because of the political fallout.

Now billionaire Jeffrey Epstein - a major Clinton and Dem contributor - has been arrested on child trafficking charges - and major political fallout is expected. 

You have to wonder what the Venn diagram of all those corrupt swamp-dwellers looks like, don't you?

Quote of the Day - Charlie Martin Edition

From his PJMedia column We May Consent to be Governed but We Do Not Consent to be Ruled:

...a whole wing of American politics right now is dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal; that the clerisy, the lettered, those with Ivy-League degrees and the right family connections, form a distinct and natural aristocracy that should by rights not just govern, but rule.

I wish I had written that.  I've been trying to get a piece out for weeks now on this.

Whoops! They Did It Again!

2002: Venezuela passes its first version of the Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law

2012: Venezuela bans private gun owners Version 2.0

2014: Disarmament Law in Venezuela Yields Near Zero Results

Not exactly:

Since the Control of Arms, Munitions and Disarmament Law came into force in June 2013, authorities have seized 12,603 illegal weapons, while only 37 guns have been voluntarily handed in, reported El Nacional.

Which still isn’t much from an estimated pool of perhaps *six million*, but still...

2017: Socialist Venezuelan Leader Steps Up Arming of Supporters After Outlawing, Confiscating Civilian Guns

2019: Venezuela's army death squads kill thousands

We were warned 100 years ago:

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: *"Stick to the Devil you know."*

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: *"The Wages of Sin is Death."*

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: *"If you don't work you die." *

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The Gods of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling, 1919.

A Blast from the Past

From July 4, 2012, Walter Russell Mead's re-imagining of the "woke" Declaration of (In)Dependence:

The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen Post-Colonial, Multi-Racial Societes of North America

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to strengthen the political bands which have connected them with the Global Community, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the cooperative and deferential station which a careful review of the relevant peer reviewed literature suggests is most appropriate for long term win-win outcomes, a decent and rigorously equal respect to the opinions of woman- and man- and transkind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the ever deeper union.

We hold these views to be consistent with the evolving cultural consensus, that all humans are equally obliged to the performance of certain Duties, that among these are the Participation in the Struggle against Racism, Economic Injustice, Genetically Modified Organisms, Homophobia, Nationalism and the Excessive Emission of Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gasses. That to secure the performance of these Duties, Governments are instituted among humans, deriving their just powers from the considered Opinions of the Educated Classes, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Duty of the Enlightened and Credentialed Guardians of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect the Unquestioning Performance of their Duties by the Less Enlightened Members of the Public. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Change cannot come too quickly to suit the Convenience and the Predilections of an Enlightened Minority; Governments long established should be changed the Moment a Sufficient Number of Well Regarded Contributors to the New York Review of Books have determined that such Change is Morally Incumbent; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that intellectuals who have never run anything in their lives are the Fittest of all Living People to remedy virtually any evil by abolishing the forms of Government, Laws and Customs of Society to which the brutish and unreflective Common People are accustomed. And when a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same Failed Dogmas of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy evinces a design to allow said Common People to evade all obligations to the Global Community, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide New and Expanded Regulations for the future better restriction of the Lower Orders as they deem Meet for the Purpose.

Why do Some Gun Owners Frown On Open Carry?

I'm still answering questions over at Quora, and - like blogging - it seems that you never know when a post is going to strike a nerve.  Right now, this answer has over 175k views, 1.5k upvotes, 10 shares and a shitload of comments.  It's currently the second-most popular answer I've given over there since I signed up.  Interesting.

Your Moment of Zen

Been too long since I posted one of these:

Hamnøy in Lofoten, Norway

Nice view, huh?