Remembering on Memorial Day

 

Scott Johnson at PowerLine:

In observance of Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by the late Peter Collier to mark the occasion. The column remains timely and is accessible online here. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. 

The entire column is worth reading; it begins:

Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our todays. But in a world saturated with selfhood, where every death is by definition a death in vain, the notion of sacrifice today provokes puzzlement more often than admiration. We support the troops, of course, but we also believe that war, being hell, can easily touch them with an evil no cause for engagement can wash away. And in any case we are more comfortable supporting them as victims than as warriors.

. . .

Not long ago I was asked to write the biographical sketches for a book featuring formal photographs of all our living Medal of Honor recipients. As I talked with them, I was, of course, chilled by the primal power of their stories. But I also felt pathos: They had become strangers–honored strangers, but strangers nonetheless–in our midst.

***

In my own boyhood, figures such as Jimmy Doolittle, Audie Murphy and John Basilone were household names. And it was assumed that what they had done defined us as well as them, telling us what kind of nation we were. But the 110 Medal recipients alive today are virtually unknown except for a niche audience of warfare buffs. Their heroism has become the military equivalent of genre painting. There’s something wrong with that.

Mr. Collier vividly describes actions taken by Medal of Honor recipients, and then closes his column:

We impoverish ourselves by shunting these heroes and their experiences to the back pages of our national consciousness. Their stories are not just boys’ adventure tales writ large. They are a kind of moral instruction. They remind of something we’ve heard many times before but is worth repeating on a wartime Memorial Day when we’re uncertain about what we celebrate. We’re the land of the free for one reason only: We’re also the home of the brave.

The full column is here.

# # #

 

Memorial Day

Gary Varvel's cartoon at Townhall.com

# # #

Mike Gibbons for Ohio

 

Our household just received a campaign letter from Mike Gibbons.  It’s 5 pages long, and here’s the text of the first page:

My name is Mike Gibbons, and last week I launched my campaign for United States Senate.

I wanted to take this opportunity to introduce myself. Frankly, too much of politics these days is 30-second television commercials and canned sound bites. However, this election is far too important.

The first thing you need to know about me is that I'm not a politician. I'm a businessman. (Frankly, I don't even like politicians.)

But I need to warn you: I'm blunt. I tell it like it is. That might get me into trouble now and then, but that's who I am, how I'm going to campaign, and how I'll be if you elect me.

I grew up in Parma, a working-class suburb of Cleveland. My father was a high school teacher and a wrestling coach. My grandfather was president of the laborers' union.

I went to work at an early age. I had a paper route. I worked a bandsaw on the factory floor. I poured concrete.

Sometimes people hear "Cleveland businessman" and make assumptions. Well, you might as well say, "concrete Finisher," because I've done plenty of that as well. I guarantee you that I'll be the only Senator who can finish your driveway.

I started my own company at the age of 37, working alone with a desk and a phone in a small space above a dentist's office.

Today, I've achieved success beyond my wildest imagination. I've achieved my American dream.

I'm running for Senate because I want to help more people achieve their American Dreams.

On the 5^th page, he closes:

More than anything, however, I hope this is the beginning of a conversation between concerned Ohioans.  It’s a job interview, and I hope to earn your support and your vote.

Sincerely,

Mike Gibbons

Letter is paid for by Gibbons For Ohio:  https://www.gibbonsforohio.com/ 

CTP previously blogged on the Ohio Senate race in March and April.  Some liberty groups in Ohio are supporting Josh Mandel; as I wrote in the linked April blog, it would be nice if Ohio did not replace RINO Portman with another establishment GOP – such as Josh Mandel or Jane Timken.  So far, Mr. Gibbons is looking good.

# # #

Mike Lindell vs Republican Governors and Amazon

 

From Sundance at Conservative Treehouse:

A Fired Up Mike Lindell Eviscerates AZ Governor Ducey and
GA Governor Kemp, Documents Their Fraud
Against the Republican Base

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is fired up as he walks through the events that took place in Tennessee yesterday after he was blocked from attending the Republican Governor’s Association (RGA) dinner they had invited him to attend.  [Rumble Video Link]  The RGA is lying.  Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is the Chairman of the RGA.

Incredibly, the RGA contacted Lindell with the invitation to the dinner, then gave Mike Lindell the credentials to attend the dinner, and as he awaited the transport buses with the other governors he was pulled aside and told he was no longer permitted to attend.  As Lindell notes Arizona Governor Doug Ducey is the Chairman of the RGA and Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is the head of the republican election integrity unit.  However, both of them are key figures in blocking any election audit or accountability review in their states.  Something is seriously wrong.

It’s going to get bigger… and it’s going to get uglier.  THAT MUCH is very clear.

. . .

More at the link here, including lots of reader comments.  But here’s better news via The Liberty Daily:

Mike Lindell Launches “MyStore” To Compete With Amazon

Mike Lindell is fighting back!

After he was canceled by retailers, Mike Lindell is starting his own online store: MyStore.com

**Use code “TLD” at checkout and you’ll save up to 66%, plus Liberty Daily will benefit**

MyStore is going to rival Amazon, Mike says.

The rest of the report, including a video of Mr. Lindell’s interview on Steve Bannon’s show, is here.

# # #

8:40 pm in downtown Cleveland

 Need a Tea Party smile?

# # #

Crazy Times Edition from Bookworm

BookwormRoom runs a weekly illustrated gallery of photographs and memes.  Over the weekend, she ran "The Crazy Times" edition, and here are two she posted:

# # #

Sports Illustrated goes “woke”

 

Eric Utter published a piece about Sports Illustrated over the weekend at American Thinker.  I am not much of a sports fan, but his opening paragraphs offer a good summary of the cultural decline in America.  And his article is a good follow-up to my blog yesterday on the future of arts communities – if there is a future.  Mr. Utter begins:

The Left ruins everything. Television. Movies. Economies. Cities. Lives. Religion. Comedy. Sports. Everything. Literally everything.

It does so in many insidious ways. It divides us with multiculturalism and critical race theory. It makes some groups bitter, envious, and indolent by telling them they are victims of other groups’ bigotry…and that there is nothing any of the groups can do about it. It revises history, changes language, and restricts speech, all in an effort to restrict thought. It brandishes “wokeism” as a weapon and “cancels” those it dislikes. All of this has led to a more ignorant—and less fun—America.

The left has recently rendered sports less a form of entertainment that can bring all of us together and more of a vehicle to lecture and hector fans, in an attempt to hammer them into strict conformity of thought. We have all seen this with anthem protests, BLM messages, boycotts, etc., etc.

And now, even a once nearly-revered sports publication, Sports Illustrated, has completely given in to the mendacious minority mob that demands all things be seen exclusively through the prism of race/class/gender/politics. Sports Illustrated, like nearly all mainstream media, has leaned left for many years but has just recently completely abandoned all balance and objectivity in an apparently desperate—if puzzling­—attempt at virtue-signaling.

. . .

Mr. Utter then goes into specifics based on the latest issue.  Read the rest of Mr. Utter’s piece here.

# # #

The future belongs to those who show up

 

Mark Steyn has been on record for years pointing to demographics and birth rates as the primary issue facing civilization.  In his column today, he revisits the issue, quoting liberally from his 2006 book America Alone.  Mr. Steyn begins:

Happy Whit Monday to my Commonwealth cousins throughout the Caribbean and the Pacific, and to our readers in much of Continental Europe. And of course to my fellow Canadians a happy if locked down Victoria Day. Enjoy it while you can.

Front page news from yesterday's New York Times:

World Is Facing First Long Slide in Its Population

Me in my international bestseller fifteen years ago:

The single most important fact about the early 21st century is the rapid aging of almost every developed nation other than the United States: Canada, Europe and Japan are getting old fast, older than any functioning society has ever been and faster than any has ever aged... These countries – or, more precisely, these people – are going out of business.

The Times front page yesterday:

All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore.

Me in 2006:

The salient feature of Europe, Canada, Japan and Russia is that they're running out of babies. What's happening in the developed world is one of the fastest demographic evolutions in history... This isn't a projection: It's happening now. There's no need to extrapolate, and if you do it gets a little freaky, but, just for fun, here goes: By 2050, 60 per cent of Italians will have no brothers, no sisters, no cousins, no aunts, no uncles. The big Italian family, with papa pouring the vino and mama spooning out the pasta down an endless table of grandparents and nieces and nephews, will be gone, no more, dead as the dinosaurs. As Noël Coward remarked in another context, 'Funiculì, funiculà, funic yourself.'

The Times yesterday:

Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can't find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.

Me fifteen years ago:

[In Japan] the shortage of children has led to a shortage of obstetricians...

[China's] population will get old before it's got rich...

The 'experts' of the western world are slower to turn around than an ocean liner, and in Europe they were still yakking about the 'population explosion' even as their 1970s schoolhouses, built in anticipation of traditional Catholic birthrates, were emptying through the Nineties and Oughts...

One can talk airily about being flushed down the toilet of history, but even that's easier said than done. In eastern Germany, rural communities are dying, and one consequence is that village sewer systems are having a tough time adjusting to the lack of use. Populations have fallen so dramatically there are too few people flushing to keep the flow of waste moving...

The Times yesterday:

The strain of longer lives and low fertility, leading to fewer workers and more retirees, threatens to upend how societies are organized — around the notion that a surplus of young people will drive economies and help pay for the old. It may also require a reconceptualization of family and nation. Imagine entire regions where everyone is 70 or older...

Me a decade-and-a-half ago:

Speaking for myself... I'd rather date Debbie Reynolds than Angelina Jolie. But even to put it in those terms is to become aware of how our assumptions about a society's health – about its innovative and creative energies - are based on its youthfulness. Picture the difference between a small northern mill town where the mill's closed down and the young people have moved away and a growing community in the Sun Belt. Which has the bigger range of stores and restaurants, more work opportunities, better school choice? Which problem would you rather have - managing growth or managing decline..?

In theory, those countries will find their population halving every thirty-five years or so. In practice, it will be quicker than that, as the savvier youngsters figure there's no point sticking around a country that's turned into an undertaker's waiting room. Not every pimply burger flipper wants to support entire old folks' homes single-handed...

Everything The New York Times finally got around to yesterday, I said in 2006. My book was an international bestseller, including on the Times' own Top Ten list. Yet it did not bother reviewing America Alone. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

 

What will happen to Ohio's cultural icons?

 

In the ancient days of my youth, I spent many years in the performing arts business.  Cleveland area theaters and other performing venues have been closed for over a year.

When the lockdowns and masks were rammed down our throats, I immediately wondered how the arts communities would survive.  Theater companies, opera companies, orchestras, etc., and non-profit operations such as Playhouse Square always have fund-raising challenges;  they depend on the goodwill and contributions of boards of trustees, and they are always flirting with deficits.  So I was concerned after the lockdowns that one of the principal sources of cultural product for, say, Playhouse Square, was the Broadway theater, and the Broadway theater was at risk.  

Broadway has always been the sine qua non of legitimate and musical theater, both essentials in our American culture.  So I was distressed but not entirely surprised to read a gloomy piece at American Thinker last week on the prospects for the Broadway stages.  Here’s Alexander Nussbaum on the subject:

Bye-bye Broadway: A grim prognosis for New York’s theaters

New York City Broadway theaters closed on March 12, 2020. The closure was supposed to be for just one month. Fourteen months later, the theaters are still closed. But now Governor Cuomo has announced New York’s theaters are cleared for reopening, starting September 14. No less than 23 plays are scheduled to open between September and November.

Theaters will be allowed to open at “full capacity,” but with “social distancing,” with “capacity limitations are only governed by the ability of people to socially distance by six feet.” Maybe this makes sense to someone who is “woke,” but it does not make sense to me. Theater seats are not exactly six feet apart. In fact, a problem with Broadway’s theaters when they were open was that, when most of the theaters were built, only a tiny percent of the population was over 6 feet tall or over 250 pounds.

Broadway’s 41 theaters range in capacity from 600 to just under 2,000, but more than 30 [theaters] seat more than 1,000. A play has to be at close to 100% audience capacity to be economically viable. Taking out seats would require drastically raising already pre-Wuhan Virus sky high prices. Cuomo has hinted all theater patrons will require proof of vaccination.

I keep hearing how resilient New York City is and that it will be back. But I think New York City is finished forever as a “world” capital; it is Karachi, Pakistan now – the biggest city and commercial, not political, capital of a populous nation.

I’ll believe the Broadway theater will be back and viable when I see it happen. 

Mr. Nussbaum looks at the demographics, the economics including the costs of a night out on the town, household income stats, and especially tourism:

Sixty-five percent of attendees were tourists. The theater thus depends on tourists.

Let’s us add that all together and see how it can not mean anything else but the death of Broadway theater.

How is New York City, with its defunded and demoralized NYPD and rising murder and shooting rate, going to attract tourists? Attacking and killing the few tourists that were still coming, is now in, in this woke BLM city. What is the difference between New York and Mount Everest? Both have no culture, no economy, no restaurants, no police, and are extremely dangerous. But Mount Everest will get tourists.

Whites and the rich have fled the city. With the economy demolished, who is left to afford the Broadway ticket price, which because of fewer seats, will be even higher than the 145 dollars the report quoted? Older people are still afraid to leave the house because of the virus, and many did not survive Cuomo.

Read the full article here. 

Those arts organizations that can survive to re-produce plays, musicals, operas, or music already created might revert to the local community-theater model, no longer dependent on huge grants and contributions from individuals and companies, and no longer committed to union contracts.  Another possible outcome, as we sink further into socialism, will be a dreaded “partnership” between the arts communities and the socialist state.  Under that model, major government and corporate grants may roll in, but at a terrible price:  a professional performance might be great, but it’s more likely to be laced with, or used to advance state propaganda.   

On the other hand, maybe Ohio audiences will tear a page from Texas.  Headline from HotAir:

Two weeks ago 73,000 people watched a fight indoors in Texas.
What's happened with COVID since then?

# # #

Patrick Hampton on Medical Tyranny

 

Whether you decide to get the COVID jab or not, the vaxx-passport - - or some other proof of vaccination, is yet another wedge that tyrants use to divide their subjects (that would be us).  And it’s happening here and now.  Patrick Hampton at Patriot Post adds to the discussion:

With mask mandates lifted in most states, many Americans are enjoying their return to what they believe is normal. But we are also seeing the true faces of those in power who seek to use sensitive medical information — like vaccination status — to oppress others.

Private companies, organizations, and educational institutions announce their plans as people return to the office and classrooms — some requiring proof of full COVID-19 vaccination before walking through their doors. Some businesses plan to even segregate the vaccinated from the unvaccinated.

Not getting the “jab” is the new Scarlet Letter. Once worn as a punitive mark to label someone as an adulterer based on the American novel bearing the same name, those who are open about their non-vaccinated status will be forced to exist on the fringes of society.

. . .

It’s not even about science anymore. It’s about control and an allegiance to certain ideas — possibly totalitarianism.

. . .

Read the rest of Mr. Hampton's article here.  Previously posted and related CTP posts are here and here.

# # #

Peter Skurkiss on Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) (with UPDATE)

 

Peter Skurkiss at American Thinker asks whether “anti-Trump RINO Rep. Anthony Gonzalez [can] survive a primary challenge?”  Gonzalez represents Ohio's 16th congressional district, which includes part of Northeast Ohio including Wayne County and parts of Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, Portage and Stark Counties.  Mr. Skurkiss begins:

You may recall that Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (RINO-Ohio) is one of ten Republican House members who voted to impeach President Trump after he left office on the bogus charge that he had incited the riot in the nation's capital on January 6.  For this, Gonzalez was formally censured in early May by the Ohio Republican Party and asked to resign.

Far from being chastised, Gonzalez continued his vendetta against Trump and by extension MAGA supporters.  He next voted for the Democrat resolution to establish a commission to investigate the January 6 fracas.  Nancy Pelosi, chief proponent of the commission, says the commission will be "independent and bipartisan."  Who in his right mind could believe Pelosi on this?  Was there anything remotely fair or honest in the way Pelosi's House of Representatives held its two Trump impeachment trials? 

In reality, the January 6 commission will function as a red herring designed to advance the Democrat agenda going into the 2022 election.  The commission will be to focus media attention on the false Democrat argument that the events on January 6 constituted an insurrection.  By any objective standard, it did not.  All the ensuing kabuki theatrics will be a replay of the Russian collusion hoax, with the corporate media aggressively pushing the Democrat agenda.  This will be done with the intent to take the spotlight off the mounting failures of the Harris/Biden administration.  And for this, Gonzalez voted "yes."

It is interesting to hear Gonzalez's spurious argument as to why he shouldn't be purged from the Republican Party or primaried.  It's the usual trite blather: we need to be a big tent party; we can't chase voters away; dissent is healthy.  There is some truth in all those sayings, but they miss the point.  Gonzalez conflates his treason to the GOP with legitimate dissent.  Nobody would have thought ill of Benedict Arnold if he had merely disagreed with George Washington on tactics or strategy.  But Arnold went beyond the pale.  He gave aid and comfort to the enemy, just as Anthony Gonzalez has done.  Gonzalez seemingly lacks the wisdom to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln ("a house divide cannot stand") or Jesus (Mark 3:25: "and if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand").

Gonzalez is in survival mode.  He's throwing self-serving excuses around in the hope that some might stick.  Just as likely, he's also auditioning for a lucrative post-political career in the arms of those who first recruited him to come back to Ohio from California to run for office.  Gonzalez is angling to be the poster body purged by the narrow, mean-spirited Republican Party.  His big-money backers will lap that up. 

Skurkiss closes with a comparison to Jane Timken’s candidacy for Portman’s Senate seat in the 2022 election:

As to Gonzalez's vote to impeach President Trump, Timken was initially soft on Gonzalez.  . . .  But now that [Josh] Mandel, a MAGA man, has sharply criticized Timken for supporting Gonzalez, she has abruptly changed her tune.  She now is reported to favor Gonzalez out of office.  Some profile in courage that Timken is.  . . .

Anthony Gonzalez and Jane Timken typify all that is wrong with the established Republican Party.  The sooner they and their ilk are driven from power, the stronger and better the party will be.  To be a big tent party does not require that back-stabbers be tolerated.

That’s most of Mr. Skurkiss’s article, but click here for the entire article.

Update from David M. Drucker at the Washington Examiner:

Republican Max Miller is poised to ride an endorsement from Donald Trump to victory over Rep. Anthony Gonzalez in a GOP primary in Ohio, a contest unfolding as a clear test of the former president’s influence with grassroots conservatives.

Miller, a 32-year-old former Trump White House aide, was endorsed by the former president soon after announcing for the Cleveland-area 16th Congressional District. Trump was intent on getting revenge on Gonzalez, a second-term congressman among the 10 Republicans who voted to impeach him in the waning days of his administration for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Trump’s swift endorsement of Miller has, so far, kept other Republicans who might want to challenge Gonzalez, 36, out of the race. Party insiders are skeptical that will change, setting up a one-on-one contest between pro-Trump and anti-Trump candidates on track to reveal how much punch the former president has in GOP primaries post-White House.

More here.

# # #

 

Coercive Control: Fauci Speaks

 

We’ve all noticed (read: we are unable to avoid seeing or hearing) ads promoting COVID-19 vaccination.  Ohio’s Governor DeWine added million dollar lotteries to vaccinated Ohioans in order to bribe encourage people to get the jab.  Why are federal and state governments trying so hard to promote an experimental vaccine?  It would seem that they might be pushing too hard.  

And Megan Fox at PJ Media has a column on “The Age of Coercive Control:  We’re in an Abusive Relationship with Our Government Now.”  The full article is here, and it considers government over-reach on COVID-19 and other matters.  But here are two headlines that reveal some of the carrots and sticks to force people to get the jab. 

At The Blaze:

Dr. Fauci: Expect cruise lines and airlines to require proof

of vaccination before you can travel 

At Breitbart: 

Anthony Fauci Predicts Airlines, Universities

Will Require Proof of Vaccination

Ms. Fox looks at other ways that Americans are now being controlled, including by “Monitoring Activities” and surveillance, isolation, financial restrictions, and other controls.  This blog linked to information on vaccination passports here. Tea Party people want to get the information and then make up their own minds. 

# # #

Independence Day fireworks: they’re on

Marc Bona at Cleveland.com reports:

The Fourth of July fireworks are coming back to downtown Cleveland for the first [time] since 2019. Light Up the Lake – Downtown Cleveland Alliance’s annual free, family-friendly fireworks show – is scheduled for Sunday, July 4. The 2020 display was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Folks can head downtown with blankets and chairs between 8 p.m. and midnight. Fireworks are slated to go off from Dock 20, which is just southwest of FirstEnergy Stadium.

The location offers a variety of viewing vantages downtown. Suggested viewing areas include the Flats – both East and West banks - and North Coast Harbor.

 # # #

Vaccine Passports: a bad idea

 

Although author Janet Levy is drawing on some California statutes, her analysis on vaccine passports applies to all of us. From American Thinker:

. . .digital records can be used to track people. Cyberattacks and data glitches could reveal private medical information. Worst of all, vaxxports create a two-tiered society. Those who choose not to be vaccinated – for religious reasons or because the non-FDA approved vaccines are of dubious safety and efficacy – won’t be able to move about freely and lead normal lives.

Peggy Hall, a community leader who runs the website The Healthy American, exposes the duplicity of the county’s Board of Supervisors. She says that by not formally mandating vaxxports, the county can affirm adherence to the California civil code (CIV Sec 51), entitling every individual free and equal access to “all services in any business establishment of any kind whatsoever, regardless of their medical condition.” The true fight, she says, is to get the Board of Supervisors to state on record that they will prosecute businesses for discrimination should they demand vaccine passports from customers.

Ms. Hall also draws on another California law – the Protection of Human Subjects in Medical Experimentation Act – giving individuals the right “to determine what is done to their own bodies” and “the right to decide or consent or not to consent to a medical experiment without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, coercion or undue influence on the subject’s decision.” Since all anti-COVID vaccines remain unapproved, they may be deemed experimental. Therefore, individuals have the right to refuse and should not be penalized in any way for doing so.

Ms. Levy’s full article is here.

# # #

The Tyrants Among Us

The Editorial Board at Issues and Insights gives us fair warning on returning to normalcy:

 Of course they’re not going to let a crisis go to waste.

   . . . 

There’s a natural progression from the pandemic lockdowns to restrictions on freedom in the name of saving the sky from global warming. But the tyrants among us won’t stop there. We find it useful here to quote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s international affairs analyst, who realized more than six months ago that “the virus of tyranny has already found itself in the bloodstream of liberal democracies.”

For instance:

• President Joe Biden and his party hope to saddle Americans, through undisciplined spending, with debt and a de facto tax (inflation) that can be repaid only by mortgaging the future and bondage to the federal monster.
• There is a core on the left, not even the hard left, that is resisting a return to normal. It wants liberty-shackling rules in place in perpetuity.
• Our freedom to speak will continue to be abridged.
• Our ability to make independent and individual health care decisions will be curtailed further.
• Second Amendment rights will be in danger of being rolled back because of “public health” needs.
• Expect to be forced out of our fossil-fuel-burning automobiles and herded into mass transit.
• Protests and rallies will be put down as insurrections – unless they are in service of the “right” groups, such as Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

Once lost, freedom is difficult to regain. “Be warned,” says author Michael Walsh. “If you think the petty tyrants currently making your lives miserable are going to willingly relinquish their illicit powers, think again. They’ve got a taste for it now.”

So intoxicated from their deep swig of power are they that they no longer see boundaries, just opportunities to subjugate. Fight back, or lose in a few years what has made America unique and great for more than two centuries

The entire editorial is here.

# # #

A columnist’s heroes: David Horowitz and Donald J. Trump

 

Bruce Bawer is a regular contributor to Front Page Magazineonline.  In his view, David Horowitz and Donald J. Trump are not “principled conservatives” – except that the opposite is true.  Here’s Mr. Bawer:

In their article, [Ronald] Radosh and [Sol] Stern contrast David Horowitz to what they call “principled conservatives.” This is a term we see often these days. It is used by never-Trumpers to describe their own wonderful selves. It is premised on the notion that before Trump came along, the GOP was a party of perfect dignity and decorum, seemliness and respectability, ethics and honor. Well, let me put in my own two cents here. Nearly four decades ago, I began my career writing for conservative publications – mostly about cultural topics (novels, poetry, movies), rarely if ever about politics per se. At first, it didn’t matter that I was gay. Homosexuality wasn’t a frequent topic in political magazines in those days. A few years later, however, as gay-rights issues heated up, it began to matter quite a bit.

Even back then, there were many gay writers at conservative publications. But some weren’t out to their editors, fearing that they would be fired if they revealed themselves. (One of them told me at the time that his editor looked upon him as a son, but if he knew he was gay, “I’d be dead to him.”) Many others were out to their editors, but, knowing the unwritten rules, didn’t mention their sexual orientation in print. One friend of mine was an exception: not understanding those unwritten rules, he published a book in the early 1990s in which he referred in passing to his homosexuality. As a result, he was, to his everlasting shock, given the boot by the editor of the conservative magazine to which he was a frequent contributor. His offense, the editor made clear, wasn’t being gay – the editor had never had a problem with that – but mentioning it in print. Anywhere.

It was a different time.

In 1993 it was my turn. In that year I published a book, A Place at the Table: The Gay Individual in American Society, that argued for the full inclusion of openly gay people in American society while also criticizing the “queer” left for its far-left radicalism, hatred of America, and love of its own marginality. I saw it as a deeply conservative book. But it made many conservatives, especially members of the pre-boomer generation who still held the reins at the magazines and journals, uncomfortable. Over the course of a year or two, I found myself estranged from all my conservative outlets – an estrangement that would last two decades, until (in most cases) a younger generation of editors took over. Some of those publications closed their doors to me; others I walked away from, recognizing that, for the time being at least, my continued presence there made both me and my editors uneasy, and that my hours there were almost surely numbered anyway.

And it was at precisely that point that David Horowitz – a virtual stranger to me, but aware of what I was going through – reached out, inviting me to write for his magazine Heterodoxy. It was a gesture – dare I say a principled gesture? – that I have never forgotten.

My feelings about David Horowitz are in many ways mirrored by my feelings about Donald Trump. As noted, self-regarding conservative veterans like Radosh and Stern tend to write about the pre-Trump GOP as if its leading figures were amalgams of Edmund Burke and St. Francis of Assisi. For my part, I cast my first presidential vote ever for Gerald Ford and my second for Ronald Reagan. But after that, the party’s presidential candidates, whether they won or lost, held little appeal for me. (This is not to say that their Democratic counterparts were any better.) They all used ugly, malevolent gay-bashing to win votes, implying that gay people were the greatest threat of all to American values. Trump – “vulgar” Trump – never stooped that low. He never came close. During the 2016 campaign I kept holding my breath waiting for it to happen – it had to happen; he was a Republican – and it never happened.

Vulgar? Nasty? No, in thunder. He was nothing less than noble. Not just in the way he talked to gays, but also in the way he addressed blacks, women, Latinos, Asians, Appalachian coal miners, Midwestern farmers, the military, the police. There was not a hint of Democratic identity-group pandering, and none of the awkwardness of a George H.W. Bush, say, trying desperately to pretend to relate to people about whose lives he was utterly clueless. Yes, Trump was a billionaire, but he had spent his adult life on construction sites rubbing shoulders with plumbers, carpenters, welders, roofers, glaziers, electricians, and other working stiffs; and he had hired and promoted – and fired – on the basis of excellence and nothing else.

And that was only a small part of what he did. He effected changes in the GOP that I had been dreaming of my whole adult life. His love for America, and respect for Americans, high and low, were palpable. He made most of the GOP presidential hopefuls before him, and most of the Republicans in Congress during his own tenure, look like wimps, hacks, careerists, phonies, cowards. Unlike all those “principled conservatives” whom Radosh and Stern celebrate, Trump was a Republican presidential candidate whom I could cheer without serious reservation. He knew what the real issues were. He knew who the real enemies were. He knew the real America, and was fully on its side. And through it all, he was never afraid to speak the truth, loud and clear.

Just like – yes – a certain American hero named David Horowitz.  

Full article is here.

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Mark Steyn on post-constitutional America

 

Mark Steyn concludes his column “America’s PoliticalPrisoners”:

In post-constitutional America, there is no equality before the law: If you riot violently in Minneapolis or Portland, you'll be cheered on by the media and Democrats, and bailed out by Seth Rogen or a Kamala Harris staffer. If you're let into the US Capitol by its so-called "police" and leave the statuary et al untouched, you'll be charged with trespassing, and, despite having no criminal record, will languish in prison (for over four months so far) until trial begins.

Those jailed for the events of January 6th are what we would call in other countries "political prisoners". Mr Chansley is in the slammer to concentrate his mind: right now, it's trespassing, but we see you used an ATM en route to DC, and you wouldn't want us to throw in "disrupting interstate commerce", would you?

As I've said for a long time, "federal justice" is an oxymoron - and, if you get a whiff that you're attracting the attention of this dirty rotten stinkin' evil system, flee the country. Meanwhile, I'm thinking of making a complaint to the UN Human Rights Council about the detainees of January 6th: If nothing else, it'll give the Cubans and Sudanese a laugh.

Mr. Steyn’s full column is here.

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Socialism's seductive appeal

 

Roger Kimball has good history and philosophical lessons for us at American Greatness. He concludes:

For centuries, prudent political philosophers have understood that the lust for equality is the enemy of freedom. That species of benevolence underwrote the tragedy of Communist tyranny. The rise of political correctness has redistributed that lust over a new roster of issues: not the proletariat, but the environment, not the struggling masses, but “reproductive freedom,” gay rights, the welfare state, the Third World, diversity training, and an end to racism and xenophobia. It looks, in Marx’s famous mot, like history repeating itself as farce. It would be a rash man, however, who made no provision for a reprise of tragedy.

Such attitudes are all but ubiquitous in modern democratic societies. Although of relatively recent vintage, they have spread rapidly. The triumph of this aspect of Enlightened thinking, as [philosopher David] Stove notes, marked the moment when “the softening of human life became the great, almost the only, moral desideratum.”

The modern welfare state is one result of the triumph of abstract benevolence. Its chief effects are to institutionalize dependence on the state while also assuring the steady growth of the bureaucracy charged with managing government largess. Both help to explain why the welfare state has proved so difficult to dismantle. The governments that support the welfare state, Stove points out,

are elected by universal adult franchise; but an electorally decisive proportion of the voters—in some countries, approaching a quarter—either is employed by government or is dependent to a significant extent on some welfare programme. In these circumstances it is merely childish to expect the welfare state to be reduced, at least while there is universal suffrage. A government that did away with free education, for example, or socialised medicine, simply could not be re-elected. Indeed it would be lucky to see out its term of office.

Is there an alternative? Stove quotes Thomas Malthus’ observation, from his famous “Essay on Population,” that “we are indebted for all the noblest exertions of human genius, for everything that distinguishes the civilised from the savage state,” to “the laws of property and marriage, and to the apparently narrow principle of self-interest which prompts each individual to exert himself in bettering his condition.”

“The apparently narrow principle of self-interest,” mind you.

Contrast that robust, realistic observation with Robert Owen’s blather about replacing the “individual selfish system” with a “united social” system that, he promised, would bring forth a “new man.”

Stove observes that Malthus’ arguments for the genuinely beneficent effects of “the apparently narrow principle of self-interest” “cannot be too often repeated.” Indeed. Even so, a look around at the childish pretended enthusiasm for socialism makes me think that, for all his emphasis, Stove understated the case. Jim Carrey and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (not to mention a college student near you) would profit by having a closer acquaintance with the clear-eyed thinking of Thomas Malthus.

It’s the same lessons that gave America its first Thanksgiving;  when collective socialism failed, the settlers learned that freedom, incentive, and private property harnessed self-interest to the greater good.

Read Mr. Kimball’s entire essay here.

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Energy independence: gone

 Usual fun and satire at The Week In Pictures at Powerline, including this meme:

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Police Officer Memorial Day

From the National Police week website: 

Washington, (March 10, 2021) - Host organizations of National Police Week, which include the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum, the Fraternal Order of Police and Auxiliary (FOP), and Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S), have made the difficult but necessary decision, due to the ongoing pandemic, to postpone in-person events of National Police Week to October 13-17, 2021, in Washington, D.C. The rescheduling of the originally planned events to be held May 11-16, 2021, is due to the inability to secure necessary permits in time for in-person gatherings due to the ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.

The National Police Weekend will offer the same honor, remembrance, and peer support as the extended National Police Week, while allowing law enforcement, survivors, and citizens to gather and pay homage to those who gave their lives in the line of duty.

Today was the originally scheduled day for Police Officer Memorials.

A few years ago, we visited the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum in DC.  Here are some photographs of police memorabilia, exhibits, and by happy chance, some displays showcasing police work in northeast Ohio.  Images by Pat Dooley photography (no Facebook page any more, so ignore the byline on one of the photos):

Click to embiggen.

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The Three Faces of the Republican Party?

 

At American Thinker, Patricia McCarthy comes close in her title:

The Three Faces of the Republican Party

…

Thanks to Donald Trump, we can all clearly see who among our officials actually represents the American people who elected them; which members of Congress are interested only in keeping their seats; and those who passively align themselves with the Democrats to push our republic into a version of communist China with a social credit system, struggle sessions, and mandatory submission to an all-powerful government that would make Mao and Stalin proud.  Far too many of them are sitting still for this.

The Republican Party is in serious disarray; it's fractured.  Yellow-bellies like Kevin McCarthy are the majority, and the open NeverTrumps are traitors to their constituents.  Where do they all seem to work together?  When confirming Biden's dismal appointees to high office within his illegitimate administration.  They are all awful!  William Burns for CIA has numerous links to the Communist Party of China; Susan Hennessey to the DOJ is a confirmed rabid Russia hoaxer.  Lisa Monaco probably ordered the raid on Giuliani.

On this one score, their three faces meld into one insipid like-mind that cravenly submits to the most radical administration in U.S. history.  Republicans never fight as the Dems do.  They capitulate.  The Democrats never capitulate; they fight like the thugs they are.

Under the Biden administration, those of us who continue to embrace Trump's America First policies that engendered the best economy for all demographics, who support securing our southern border, who were thrilled by the energy independence that Trump brought about and the de-regulation that energized so many small and large businesses, are even more deplorable to the left now than we were in Hillary Clinton's view.  Wanting a free and economically powerful America is anathema to the left.  The left means to indoctrinate our kids rather than educate them.  Leftists' totalitarian agenda demands "equity" rather than equality; skin color reigns supreme.  They mean to cripple this nation; no more oil exploration, no more secure borders, no more law and order, no more freedom of speech or assembly, no more Second Amendment.  The left means to destroy America as founded, and, though interrupted by Trump's presidency, the Soros-Obama plan is back in play.  China owns Biden, and he is speeding up America's decline in service of the communist nation and the globalists.

The left is by nature miserable.  Leftists will not rest until everyone is as miserable as they are.  And because our ruling class is thoroughly removed from reality, they believe that their prescriptions for the rest of us will never affect their oh, so privileged lifestyles.  The left suffers from dissociative identity disorder, too: "a mental illness that involves disruptions or breakdowns of memory, awareness, identity and/or perception."  That pretty much sums up too many members of our political class, left and right.  Think Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer.  Think Joe Biden.

When the right does not fight back against the left's anti-American grand plan — its absurd erasure of biological sex, its primacy of criminals over law-abiding citizens — the right is as certifiably mentally ill as the left.  That the Republicans are not, as a whole, standing up against the pandemic nonsense — mask mandates and lockdowns — is so disappointing.  They should be fighting for the essential "my body, my choice" when it comes to vaccines!  Why are they not, as a cohesive group, opposing the very notion of vaccine passports?  Why can't the Republicans in Congress learn from governors like DeSantis?  They don't.  They are cowering in the corners of their congressional offices, terrified of the left media.  God forbid they be criticized by a mindless hack at the NYT or on CNN or MSNBC.

The Republican Party is suffering from an identity crisis.  What is a Republican?  For what principles do these people stand tall?  We know who the good guys are, but they are a minority.  Why aren't all of the elected Republicans on the same page?

The easy explanation:  Most of them belong to the Uniparty-R.  (Full article is here.)

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