Relocate the DC swamp dwellers

 

 

Chip Bok cartoon via Townhall 

Roger Kimball published a fairly long column over the weekend, “Abandon the Swamp” at American Greatness.  Here are two paragraphs summarizing Mr Kimball’s solution to the ongoing progressives vs conservatives crisis:

The focus should be on eclipsing Washington, D.C. as the seat of government. It has long been obvious to candid observers that there is something deeply dysfunctional about that overwhelmingly Democratic, welfare-addicted city. It is a partisan sinkhole. Jefferson wanted the capital moved from New York to Washington in part to bring it closer to the South, but also to place it somewhere that was officially neutral. There is nothing neutral about Washington today. The city has some impressive architecture and urban vistas. They should be preserved and staffed as tourist attractions. But the reins of power should be relocated.

The more I think about our situation, the more I believe the only hope for the republic is to downgrade the place of Washington in our public life. The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people, who pay for it, want. Legitimacy is draining out of our governing institutions at an alarming rate. Stanching that debilitating flow requires that we redirect our attention away from the greedy puppet show in Washington to the true source of legitimacy, which is with the people.

“The greedy puppet show.”  Fits right in with Sundance’s scenario that all of the DC political construct is a “Potemkin Village”, maintained to provide us plebes with the “Illusion of Choice.”  Read Mr Kimball's column here.

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Heather Mac Donald and "the Pursuit of Equity"

 

Some readers describe Ann Coulter as a flame-thrower, and her columns are always provocative, whether you agree with her or not.  However, at TakiMag she’s just reviewed Heather Mac Donald’s book, When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. And the review is excellent – and informative:

“No Biggie, Just the End of Civilisation”

. . . It seems that in the hysteria that followed George Floyd’s death in 2020, we agreed to destroy all of Western civilization — law, music, art, education, policing, science and medicine — to make up for black people not doing well on standardized tests.

Mac Donald cites not hundreds but thousands of institutions that have flung aside standards in order to more fully dedicate themselves to the sole, driving purpose of our nation: boosting black people’s self-esteem.

And her review concludes:

Luckily, learning to identify and treat disease isn’t such a big deal at today’s medical schools, anyway. Instead, the faculty are charged with teaching about “systems of power, privilege and oppression.” More than half of the top 50 medical schools now require students to take courses in systemic racism, Mac Donald notes. I’m sure that will be a huge relief when doctors miss your brain tumor.

In 2021, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would spend $2 billion … to find a cure for brain cancer? Parkinson’s disease? Heart disease? NO!!! The $2 billion would go to promoting “diversity and inclusion in science.”

In 2022, the National Cancer Institute, funded by you, taxpayer, decided to change its mission from conquering cancer — and really, who cares about that? FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! — to guess what? Yes!!! Promoting diversity! Instead of Outstanding Investigator Awards being granted solely on the basis of merit, the gender and race of the researchers would have to be considered.

All this has done wonders for the morale of doctors. Mac Donald quotes one cancer researcher: “It’s the end of the road for me as a Jewish male doctor.” A UCLA doctor told her that the smartest undergraduates in science labs are saying, “Now that I see what is happening in medicine, I will do something else.”

In response to this dystopic future, Mac Donald asked an oncologist, “When would white and Asian male scientists fight back? How much longer would they continue to allow their hard work and accomplishments to be disparaged and sidelined?”

He emailed back: “We value our jobs. We need our jobs. Our peers will turn on us. Speak out, lose job forever, be quickly forgotten and abandoned.”

That’s why, Mac Donald says, it falls to the rest of us to never shut up about the tearing down of standards, to put forth “unapologetic defense(s) of color-blind standards,” and to “relentlessly provide the data that explain the lack of racial proportionality in meritocratic institutions.”

To paraphrase Orwell: If there is hope, it must lie in the uncancelable.

Read the whole column here.

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Armed Forces Day

 

Today is Armed Forces Day.  A couple of weeks ago, Patriot Post ran a tribute to Sgt Alvin York, the World War I hero celebrated in the film Sergeant York, with Gary Cooper in the title role.  Here’s the conclusion of Mark Alexander’s article:

In January 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, in a Memorial Day address at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, York said: “Liberty and freedom are so very precious that you do not fight and win them once and stop. They are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!”

He added, “I think any man who talks against the interests of his own country ought to be arrested and put in jail, not excepting senators and colonels.”

It is well he is not witness to the disgraceful state of leftist “leadership” today, which disparages our nation and the American Liberty he and so many others have fought to defend.

Read the rest here.

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Every state is now a border state

 

Douglas Andrews at Patriot Post reports that

Governor Greg Abbott and his fellow Texans are under siege. So much so that he’s written an urgent letter to his 49 fellow governors to ask for their help. The letter begins:

President Joe Biden’s negligent disregard for America’s national security hit another devastating milestone last week when his Administration ended Title 42 expulsions. Since taking office, President Biden has willfully refused to enforce our nation’s immigration laws while systematically dismantling every effective border security policy that previously led to the lowest number of illegal border crossings in decades. The resultant surge in illegal immigration and transnational criminal activity is a direct consequence of these misguided actions, and yet President Biden further jeopardized our nation’s security by ending Title 42 expulsions on May 11, 2023.

Abbott then notes that while the flood of illegals hits Texas first, it doesn’t stay in Texas. “Emboldened Mexican drug cartels and other transnational criminal enterprises,” he writes, “profit off this chaos, smuggling people and dangerous drugs like fentanyl into communities nationwide.” Synthetic opioids including fentanyl, as the CDC reported Wednesday, killed 75,000 Americans in 2022.

Abbott’s message has apparently taken hold, as 24 Republican governors have responded.  . . .

Ohio’s governor is one of them.  Support includes human assets, equipment, vehicles, and the like.  The full report is here.

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Davos on Steroids

 

Jordan Schachtel at The Dossier reports:

The world’s most powerful and influential geopolitical voices are meeting from Thursday to Sunday in Portugal to navigate several global crises (many of which they’ve helped to facilitate), and oddly enough, the corporate media has no interest in reporting on this secretive gathering of powerful figures.

The attendees list for this year’s infamous Bilderberg Meetings has just been released, and just like years prior, global heavyweights inundate the 2023 roster. The list includes America and Europe’s top spy chiefs, several heads of state, and some of the world’s most powerful business executives.

. . .

If you are familiar with the names on the participants list, you will find that they largely subscribe to a globalist, hyper-interventionist worldview, making the annual Bilderberg confab an echo chamber of ruling class ideologues. . . .

Among the participants are CEOs or top officers of Pfizer, Microsoft, Google, ChatGPT, and the President of the World Economic Forum.  Read more about the participants and some of the agenda here.

There’s more background on Bilderberg here.

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AF Branco: the Russia hoax and the corrupt media

A F Branco cartoon via Townhall:

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George Washington's Mother

 

For Mother’s Day, Paul Kengor at American Spectator reviewed a biography of George Washington’s mother, and below is an extract from it:

Mary Ball Washington, America’s First Mother [Harper, 2019]

Craig Shirley’s biography is a character study
of the strong woman who raised our first president

“My great age, and the disease which is fast approaching my vitals, warn me that I shall not be long in this world. I trust in God that I may be somewhat prepared for a better.”

So said a weak Mary Ball Washington, mother of America’s first president, George Washington, to her son in March 1789 as she lay dying from cancer at roughly age 80 (her exact age unknown). Her son had come to bid America’s first mother a final goodbye. He told her about this significant new office that he was assuming for his country — to which all 69 electors had unanimously chosen him on Jan. 7. The only president ever selected unanimously.

“But before I can assume the functions of my office,” he told the frail old woman, “I have come to bid you an affectionate farewell.”

The 57-year-old Washington continued, “So soon as the weight of public business, which must necessarily attend the outset of a new government, can be disposed of, I shall hasten to Virginia, and—” Here, the mother interrupted the son: “—and you will see me no more.” . . .

Mr Kengor closes his review:

And as Shirley shows, the relationship between the two was “laden with difficulty” for both of them. It was a struggle for anyone to have much affection for Mary. Shirley describes Mary Ball Washington as “self-centered and acquisitive,” “tutoring and fashioning” her son but also “driving and admonishing” him. She was not a warm lady and, frankly, was hard to feel warm about. She was not easy to like. She was a cold woman, austere, and herself quite a character — an odd one. And Craig Shirley’s book provides far more than a history of her and her son. He provides a character study that fascinates.

But whatever her personal shortcomings, this woman raised a president, our nation’s first. He was our first president and Mary Ball Washington was our first mother — one who needs to be remembered, and perhaps particularly so for America’s annual celebration of Mothers’ Day. Get this book and read and learn and remember.

Read the entire review here.

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