Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It's worth it. It's a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else's rights, because if you don't there is no one to defend yours. -- MaxedOutMama

I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing. -- Kim du Toit

The most glaring example of the cognitive dissonance on the left is the concept that human beings are inherently good, yet at the same time cannot be trusted with any kind of weapon, unless the magic fairy dust of government authority gets sprinkled upon them.-- Moshe Ben-David

The cult of the left believes that it is engaged in a great apocalyptic battle with corporations and industrialists for the ownership of the unthinking masses. Its acolytes see themselves as the individuals who have been "liberated" to think for themselves. They make choices. You however are just a member of the unthinking masses. You are not really a person, but only respond to the agendas of your corporate overlords. If you eat too much, it's because corporations make you eat. If you kill, it's because corporations encourage you to buy guns. You are not an individual. You are a social problem. -- Sultan Knish

All politics in this country now is just dress rehearsal for civil war. -- Billy Beck

Friday, January 29, 2021

No Widespread Evidence of Fraud?

Over on the Book of Face someone linked to this report of the forensic examination of the Dominion voting machines in Antrim County, Michigan.  Pullquote:
We conclude that the Dominion Voting System is intentionally and purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The system intentionally generates an enormously high number of ballot errors. The electronic ballots are then transferred for adjudication. The intentional errors lead to bulk adjudication of ballots with no oversight, no transparency, and no audit trail. This leads to voter or election fraud. Based on our study, we conclude that The Dominion Voting System should not be used in Michigan. We further conclude that the results of Antrim County should not have been certified.
(Bold my emphasis.)  In this video (since deleted by YouTube for "violating Community Standards."  Here it is from Bitchute, thanks to my readers.) Fulton County, GA, Elections Director Richard Barron reported that they had scanned 113,130 votes, and adjudicated 106,000 - almost 94% of the votes cast. It would appear that the Dominion machine "problem" was not limited to Antrim county, Michigan. (Is it a "bug" when it's been designed to do that, or a "feature"?)

Where else did this occur?  I am reliably informed that there is "no evidence" of "widespread election fraud."  Apparently because no one was willing to allow anyone to look, or publicize it when some did.  Goes against The Narrative™ you see.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

I'm Moving

In today's Progressive environment of inclusivity and civility, I no longer feel comfortable that Google will continue to ignore this blog.  I am therefore migrating off of Blogger to a privately hosted server.  This requires moving to Wordpress.  The translation is not very clean.  A LOT of formatting problems, and I still haven't figured out how to export the Disqus comments from here to there.

The site needs a LOT of work, but it's up at http://smallestminority.org.  I have no plan to delete this blog, I'm just going to start posting over there (and probably copy over here for a bit.)







Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Quote of the Day - Mark Steyn Edition

 


Yesterday's mental illness is today's social policy. - Mark Steyn


Analysis:  True.

Sunday, January 24, 2021

Quora question: "Why is the United States so messed up right now in 2021?"

My answer:

100+ years of “public education” has produced the electorate we have today. Too many people can’t reason, have no coherent philosophy, have no knowledge of actual history (only “social justice” history), have been taught that Western Civilization is the root of all evil in the world, etc.

It started in the very early 1900’s, driven by the wealthy industrialists to set up a system that would produce a two-tiered output - the actually educated sons & daughters of the elite who would be managers, and the people who would be working in their factories and buying the resultant products. All the “Progressives” were in favor of it. They wanted obedient, unquestioning workers who could read, write, and do math, but not think for themselves.

Shortly afterward the “Progressives” suborned the system to create ever-greater numbers of “Social Justice Warriors,” culminating in what we have today. After more than five generations the population consists of essentially four groups - those that despite being in the public system still managed to get an education, those who were privately educated, those who the education system didn’t radicalize but instead made numb, and the radicals. (Note: a lot of the radicalized went back into the education system as teachers and administrators in a positive feedback loop.)

The private system has always been oriented towards the elites. The majority of the nation, I think, are the numb. Those who educated themselves are a minority and the radicals are too, but they - being radical - have influence far beyond their mere numbers.

"Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe." - H.G. Wells, 1920

--

"Give me a child for his first seven years and I'll give you the man." - Quote attributed to the Jesuits

--

"All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth." - Aristotle

--

"A recently reprinted memoir by Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) has footnotes explaining what words like 'arraigned,' 'curried' and 'exculpate' meant, and explaining who Job was. In other words, this man who was born a slave and never went to school educated himself to the point where his words now have to be explained to today's expensively under-educated generation.

"There is really nothing very mysterious about why our public schools are failures. When you select the poorest quality college students to be public school teachers, give them iron-clad tenure, a captive audience, and pay them according to seniority rather than performance, why should the results be surprising?

"Ours may become the first civilization destroyed, not by the power of our enemies, but by the ignorance of our teachers and the dangerous nonsense they are teaching our children. In an age of artificial intelligence, they are creating artificial stupidity.

"In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees." - Thomas Sowell

--

"It is only from a special point of view that 'education' is a failure. As to its own purposes, it is an unqualified success. One of its purposes is to serve as a massive tax-supported jobs program for legions of not especially able or talented people. As social programs go, it’s a good one. The pay isn’t high, but the risk is low, the standards are lenient, entry is easy, and job security is pretty good...in fact, the system is perfect, except for one little detail. We must find a way to get the children out of it.”—Richard Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian.

Tuesday, January 19, 2021

Quote of the Day - Roger Kimball Edition

 From his American Greatness piece A Party of Faction and Fantasy:

The central fact to appreciate about Donald Trump is that he was elected without the permission, and over the incredulous objections, of the woke oligarchy that governs us. 

Exactly right.  

Also this:

Donald Trump brought peace to the Middle East, Joe Biden brought war to Washington.

RTWT.

Nothing Says "Incipient Civil War" Better

 ...than "Loyalty checks" for your military

Third-World status achieved!  Sh!thole status to follow.


Sunday, January 17, 2021

Quote of the Day - Seen @ Facebook

You’ll love this.

I’m in my masters class for education (already know where this is going) and Paulo Freire and Myles Horton are mainstays for this class with their book “We make the Road by Walking.” Here is a quote by Freire “Education is not neutral and that by claiming to be neutral, we are technically siding with the powerful.” 
Paulo Friere is best known for his book "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" and is the spiritual founder of "Critical Pedagogy," which is to education what "critical race theory" is to racial healing.  Miles Horton is known for his textbook "Education for Social Change."  As opposed to "education to learn how to read, write, do math, understand science, and think for yourself."

Friday, January 15, 2021

This Makes Me Look Positively Cheerful by Comparison

 RTWT:

American ThinkerAre the End Times Near?

Pullquote:

I believed, and still believe, that every manifestation, every symptom of the sickness of our time, the self-destructive corruption, the lies and hypocrisies and weakness of spirit, the coordinated attack on the institutions and traditions that have sustained Judeo-Christian civilization, the digital surveillance project of billionaire Globaliers -- these must be resisted and fought, for there is no other choice but feckless and dishonorable surrender.

But at the same time, we need to be realistic. We are not doomsayers to acknowledge that civilizations fall of necessity, disappear or are subsumed into new syncretic entities, and that ours is no different. The conclusion is foregone, but not yet. In Michael Walsh’s terms from his new book Last Stands, manly virtue fights to the foreordained end. The issue is this: We cannot deter, but we can defer.

That's all I've been trying to do - postpone and hopefully soften the landing when the inevitable crash does come.  No way to tell until it happens, but it's not looking good right now.

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Where are We Going, and Why are We in This Basket?

Here's hoping this post makes it past the Google censors.  

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good. In area after area – crime, education, housing, race relations – the situation has gotten worse after the bright new theories were put into operation. The amazing thing is that this history of failure and disaster has neither discouraged the social engineers nor discredited them.” ~Thomas Sowell, Is Reality Optional?, 1993
Add nearly three more decades to that record.  
(C)onservatism is not so much based on ideas, but on simply observing what works, and then generalizing from there. - Dr. Robert Godwin
After the preceding sixty years, I am now an almost perfect "enemy of the Left."  I'm an old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male who drives a pickup truck and owns guns.  The only checkbox I don't tick is that I'm not a Christian, but then I am not an "anti-theist" either.  Because I'm in favor of maximum individual liberty and minimum government power - what used to be called a "liberal" - I am now labeled a member of the "Alt-Right," which (deliberately) carries with it ominous implications of "White Supremacy." And I'm a Donald Trump voter, so I am Evil Incarnate.

If not for my heresy of voting for Trump, I might be redeemed - but I would never be trusted.

I started blogging in May of 2003 after spending time in the trenches of Usenet, on bulletin boards, and as a contributor to a failed experiment known as Themestream.  Why?  Because I was pissed.  I forgot to mention that in my CV.  I'm a pissed off old(er) white cisgendered heterosexual male. 

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that this pissed-off white cisgendered heterosexual male is also a Debbie Downer.  I'm a pessimist by nature.  I've said that being a pessimist is generally a pretty good way to go through life - you're seldom disappointed and occasionally pleasantly surprised.  I've had very few pleasant surprises recently.

This post is no different.  You've been warned.  Logorrhea to follow.

Saturday, January 02, 2021

But There's No Evidence of Fraud!!!

 I wonder how they're going to move the goalposts this time.

And if you think this happened exclusively in Georgia, I have the title to a bridge in Brooklyn I'll sell you, cheap!