A cartoon to start the week

Another excellent A.F. Branco cartoon, this one seen at The Patriot Post:

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VDH: Totalitarian Wokeism

 

Victor Davis Hanson knocks another one out of the park. His “Wokeism is A Cruel and Dangerous Cult” at American Greatness begins:  

Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. 

Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. 

Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist twist. Wokeism’s hysteria also invites comparisons to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. 

But few have described wokeism as the cruel creed that it is. 

Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda. It is nihilist and destroys everything it touches. It tears apart foes and friends alike, whether by fueling media-driven hatred of Donald Trump or faux-deification of the disaster that is now Joe Biden. 

One of the take-away quotes: "Equity in our Orwellian world is not equality, but payback." The full article is here. Recommended.

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Mark Steyn: "not a serious country"

 

Mark Steyn is my favorite author and columnist.  I used to enjoy his appearances on Fox News, but since I crossed Fox off my list many months ago, I have to be satisfied with his written commentary.  Yesterday, his commentary was decidedly pessimistic, but I could not see where he was getting it wrong.  Here are some excerpts:

. . .

The biggest-selling book with American conservatives right now argues that the answer to all of the above [litany of government-caused problems] is "constitutionalism". On the other hand, the radio host Jesse Kelly says:

We're not a serious country and we're not a country that will be around much longer.

I incline to the latter view myself.  At this point, conservative complaceniks tend to trot out Adam Smith: "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation." But not this much - not Covid lockdowns and open borders, Afghan "translators" and Haitian "refugees", Big Tech and Big Trans, BLM and CRT, ID for the IHOP but not for the voting booth, China as America's manufacturer and America's loan shark...

. . .

To go back to that Jesse Kelly line, "we're not a serious country": A nation where a pasty privileged pajama boy can demand the ruination of his professor because he traumatized the class by making them watch a Laurence Olivier performance is too unserious to survive, and doesn't deserve to.

If the Constitution is the bulwark against madness, then it has already failed; if "capitalism" is the bulwark against express-elevator descent into full-blown madness, the only thing holding that up is the chimera of the US dollar's status as global currency.

. . .

"Land of the free and the home of the brave"? Both are conspicuous by their absence.

The full column is here.  Grim, but highly recommended.

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Martin Luther King Jr. and Critical Race Theory

 

MLK memorial in DC

A report at Big League Politics presented some information about MLK and Critical Race Theory – information that was news to me.  Here’s an extract:

A popular talking point from conservatives is that critical race theory (CRT), the racist pseudo-historical doctrine being pushed throughout society by the Radical Left, would be rejected by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. if he were alive today.

However, King’s own daughter vehemently disagrees with that assessment.

. . .

Conservatives may be triggered by Bernice King’s comments but they are historically accurate. The facts show that MLK Jr. was a communist-affiliated huckster who paved the way for blood libels like CRT to take root in America and destroy the country. What few people understand is that many of MLK Jr.’s seminal speeches and writings were either plagiarized or written by Soviet pawn and Communist Party USA organizer Stanley Levison. Levison knew that the notion of civil rights for minorities would eventually be expanded by left-wing attorneys to tear at the Bill of Rights and make America completely unrecognizable. His vision has now been realized.

. . .

“There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask the question, “Why are there forty million poor people in America?” And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy,” King Jr. said in an Aug. 1967 speech, demonstrating his incredible ignorance on basic economics.

. . .

Before conservatives stopped trying to understand the truth behind issues, they understood that MLK Jr. was a communist figure promoted by the globalist establishment to undermine American unity. This is why former president Ronald Reagan had serious reservations about creating MLK Jr. Day as a national holiday in the 1980s.

. . .

In recent years, MLK Jr.’s lascivious exploits have been revealed to the public as well, showing him as being involved in countless orgies with prostitutes, coercing his own parishioners into illicit sex affairs and laughing as a colleague raped a woman in a hotel room. The fact that this individual has been deified by conservatives, most of whom refuse to address any of the facts about MLK Jr.’s true character, shows exactly why the movement has failed to conserve much of anything over the years.

Read the full article here.  (I added the link to the Wikipedia page for Mr. Levison and silently corrected the spelling.)  

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