Don Surber on Our Would-be Rulers

 "Keeping us confused"

https://donsurber.substack.com/p/keeping-us-confused

Kristor on "Jubilee"

"Jubilee Incoming, Ready or Not; Why Not Make Ready, & Indeed Regular?"

https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2023/04/29/jubilee-incoming-ready-or-not-why-not-make-ready-indeed-regular/

KT Cat on "The Value Of Christian Study"

 https://ktcatspost.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-value-of-christian-study.html

It's a good read ... even if KT is squishy on the scientism issue.

What Women Never Hear

Here is a blog some persons may find of interest -- What Women Never Hear -- I forgotten about this blog (I never carried over my bookmarks when I last switched computers). I was reminded of it just now because Blogger reports that a page-view on my blog originated there.

'Why I'm Not a Libertarian'

Jeremy Egerer: Why I'm Not a Libertarian

Or, as I always say, when push comes to shove, when it *really* matters, the libertarians will always side with the "liberals"/progressives. For, at the root of both -isms is materialism and atheism and libertinism.

'Brutally Honest', quoting Fr. Lemieux: "This is why I am not a libertarian, but a conservative"

It's never really over ...

... so long as the citizens continue to allow and lawyers and judges to believe that they are our rulers.

Wm.Jacobson (Legal Insurrection): It’s never really over in Wisconsin, is it? Dane County Judge throws out collective bargaining reform law

Minds, Machines, and Gödel

Jim S (Agent Intellect), quoting J.R.Lucas (from 1961): Quote of the Day (it's a long quote, well worth the read; and his post contains a link to the full paper)

'Better Dead Than Red'

Back in those ancient days when I was still a tadpole, back when 'red' and 'blue' meant much the opposite of what they mean in current American politics, there was a saying amongst true-blue conservatives, and thus much mocked by "liberals" as a prime example of the the "unreasonableness" and "irrationality" of conservatism (*): "Better Dead Than Red"

But, today, when we speak of "Red States" and "Blue States", when the color historically associated with The Left, that is, the color of blood, in now routinely used to denote what passes in America for The Right, it is the "liberals", those puppets of The Left, who believe "Better Dead Than Red", even if they don't explicitly express the saying (**).

In those now remote days, "Better Dead Than Red" meant "it is better that we all, our entire nation, should die, than that we submit to communism". In contemporary leftist-run America, "Better Dead Than Red" means "it is better that we all, our entire nation, should die, than that we face/acknowledge [the 'conservative' nature of] reality".

Lawrence Auster: Our leaders apply the liberal template to the embassy attacks --

Meaning, these were not intentional acts of violence by people who oppose the United States and want to hurt it, but just the “acting out” of whacked-out individuals, the equivalent of a drunken man firing a gun aimlessly on a street. Meaning, the murders of the American diplomats have no meaning. They must not have meaning, because if they do, their meaning is that at least a significant number of Muslims are our enemies. And if Muslims are our enemies, then we must think in terms of “us” and “them.” We must be for ourselves and against them. We must negatively judge them, discriminate against them, defend ourselves from them, and even fight them. But if we did those horrible things, modern liberalism would be kaput. We’d all be Nazis. And it’s better to let ourselves all be killed by senseless violence than to be Nazis.

(*) as though it even can be reasonable and rational to compromise with he who desires of you only that you should die.

(**) Still, given the pop culture reference to red pills and blue pills, is it not utterly fitting that the "liberals", the puppets of the left, are now the blues and the conservatives the reds?

Just One More Finger

Douglas Wilson: Just One More Finger

David Lampo tries to convince us that conservatives, Republicans, and libertarians should rally around in support of gay rights. Unfortunately, in order to make this case, he does not advance a new argument, but rather doubles down on an old confusion about the "wall of separation" between church and state. So this is not the next step in our upward evolutionary development, but is rather the point where a leper has one more finger fall off.
...
I agree with Lampo that, for the most part, the Founders left religious language out of the Constitution (excepting the signing "in the year of our Lord," referring to Jesus). So they left Jesus out of it, except where they didn't, and the standard reaction to this observation shows what would have happened if the Apostles Creed had been written into the Preamble. We would then be told that they "had to say things like that back then," and besides "nobody meant it." The secularists argue from that mythical wall of separation, erected in Thomas Jefferson's personal correspondence [*], but their ingenuity would be fully capable of working around established state churches, and a monarch who is a "Defender of the Faith."

Where we differ is why the Founders did this and, regardless of motive, whether it was wise or prudent to do so. When the Constitution was ratified, 9 of the 13 states were explicit Christian republics. Establishing a Church of the United States was problematic when the varying states had established varying denominations as their state churches. At the time, it was a federalism thing, not a secularism thing. But I have written on this enough elsewhere (e.g. here).
...

[*] And, keep in mind, Jefferson not only had nothing to do with the drafting of the US Constitution, for he was in Paris at the time, but he actively opposed it as it was being drafted, and actively worked against its ratification afterward.

Moreover, being the despicable weasel that he was, after Ratification and the election of Washington as first President under the Constitution, and Washington's appointment of Jefferson as first Secretary of State, Jefferson worked behind the scenes (*) to twart Washington's policies and to discredit Washington himself.

It is Jefferson who set the course the Department of State has followed ever since -- either to work against the policies of the current President or to work against the long-term interests of the United States.

(*) Jefferson knew he could not attack Washington directly, for all the nation loved him; to directly attack him would have been political suicide.

Son of Bork

Douglas Wilson: Son of Bork

... Now I have no problem whatever granting that Romney, considered in isolation, is far, far better than Obama. Dubya was far, far better than Gore or Kerry. Herbert Walker was far better than whoever it was he ran against the first time. But is that the only comparison, the names on the ballot at a given point in time?

No, the story is bigger than that. I grant that Obama is terrible, and another round of him would be double terrible. But how did we ever wind up with Obama anyway? We got Obama because of the big government conservatism, the compassionate conservatism of Bush.

Clinton was gross and bad, and during his administration conservatives were fit to be tied. Now, having had a taste of Obama, conservatives are looking back at the Clinton years longingly. But remember how we felt at the time. So, how did we wind up with Clinton at the time? That happened because George the First raised taxes despite his "read my lips pledge." In other words, squish conservatism opens the door to that which is far worse than itself. That is what squish conservatism does. That's its job.
...
So I grant that Obama is bad and that double Obama will be double bad. Got it. And I grant that Obama will be far worse than Romney if you placed them side by side and kept them there. But who is going to follow Romney? Will it be eight years of Romney, then eight years of Ryan, and then the millennium? Come on. Republicans will do what Republicans do, which is to say, they will screw it up somehow. They always seek to propitiate the gods of bipartisanship. But those gods never answer with fire, even if the Speaker of the House and the members of his caucus dance around the altar, cutting himself with knives. ...

The Chocolate Milk Test

Douglas Wilson: The Chocolate Milk Test

In talking about gay rights, we have to distinguish between different kinds of rights. If someone tries to ramp up the stakes by saying that he is talking about human rights, then we have go on to distinguish between different kinds of human rights.

The first kind of right is a liberty right -- the right to be left alone in certain specified areas. ...

Now in this sense, I absolutely believe in gay rights. Homosexuals are people and habeus corpus applies to them as much as to anybody else. They have a right to a fair and speedy trial. They have a right to not be convicted of a crime on the basis of stupid rumors. In fact, I cannot think of a single genuine right that I have that homosexuals do not have together with me, and for the same reasons.

At this point in the proceedings, someone clears his throat and says, "Umm, marriage? You have a right to marry, and they do not." But "marry" is not an unspecific verb with no direct object. I have the right to marry a woman, and so do they [male homosexuals]. A man and a woman together is what marriage is. The fact that they don't want to marry a woman is their look out. I have a right to own a gun and so does your spinster Quaker aunt. The fact that she doesn't want to own a gun is perfectly acceptable. But what she is not free to do is redefine everything, and say that gun ownership is very important to her, but that for her, gun ownership means owning a quilting rack.
...
But there is more. Liberty rights mean that other entities (like the government or your meddlesome neighbor) have a corresponding duty to respect that right. They respect it by leaving you alone. You buy a gun, and they do not attempt to take that gun away from you. They respect your rights by doing nothing. All they have to be is "not a busybody." In this sense, such rights are negative rights.

This leads us to the other conception of rights, which are not rights at all. They are "positive" rights, in the sense that something must be given to you. These would be things like the right to "affordable housing," or a "living wage." With the gun, you buy the gun and other people leave you be. With the affordable housing, you provide the lack of a house, and somebody else has to buy the house. You provide the need for a job, and somebody else has to pay the wage. Your "rights" understood in this way amount to an obligation on the part of someone else to provide it.

You have a right, and they have a corresponding duty, not to respect what you bought, but rather to buy you something. Your right is purchased with corresponding duties from them. The more freedom you have under this definition, the less somebody else has. So not everybody leaps to do their duties in this regard -- enter the government in order that we have somebody to make them do their duty. The government takes money from them in order to pay for the "right" to an affordable house, a living wage, or a hot lunch.

This notion of positive rights is therefore the intellectual framework of slavers. The former, the idea of liberty rights, is the theological framework for a free society. With liberty rights, you pay for your own gun, and other people leave you alone. With the positive rights, under that definition, say that you had the right to gun ownership. This would means somebody else would have to buy you a gun . . . with a gun pointed at them in case they didn't want to.

So what does this have to do with gay rights? All we have to is ask whether or not anybody is going to have to be coerced in outlandish ways order to establish, say, the right of homosexuals to marry. ...
...
So say that homosexuals are given [by government, rather than by God], the right to marry [others of the same sex], as has occurred in a number of states. Do Christian photographers have the right to turn down the job of shooting the wedding? Do Christians caterers get to say "No, thank you. We don't do gay weddings."? Do the Christian owners of a bed and breakfast have the right to decline being the scene of the honeymoon? No? Well, then, there's your answer. Those driving this particular agenda are no friends of liberty.

I sometimes describe the mentality of soft despotism that surrounds us on every hand as the "free chocolate milk for everybody" mindset. So let this be your litmus test. Do I have a right to buy chocolate milk if I want? Or is someone else being obligated to buy me a chocolate milk whenever I want?

So, after they denied God three times, the cock crowed

The Anchoress: Cleverest Remark on DNC[onvention] and Clinton -- "So, after they denied God three times, the cock crowed; what next?"

Democratic Presidents Produce More Combat Deaths, Too

... or, it is logially impossible reason with "liberals" --

Senator Blutarsky: Democratic Presidents Produce More Combat Deaths, Too -- "Personally, I reject both factoids due to their shared reliance on an assumption of Presidential omnipotence. But I would challenge anyone accepting the jobs claim to offer logical grounds on which to reject the casualty claim."

The point is that the very same logic which attributes pro-Democratic partisan significance to a factoid about "jobs creation" also attributes anti-Democratic partisan significance to a factoid about the filling-up of military cemetaries. Most people, and especially "liberals", won't give the "reasoning" a moment's critical thought when applied to the former circumstance, while utterly regecting it when applied to the latter. -- And this is the essence of intellectual dishonesty; this is what 'being a fool' is all about.

Does anybody else miss the good old days ...

Kathy Shaidle: Romney entertains spectacularly stupid questions from reporters re: 9/11 embassy attacks (a.k.a. acts of war) -- "... Does anybody else miss the good old days, when journalists were just good old fashioned alcoholics and not downright crack heads?"

One of these days

One of these days, you (you know who you are) may finally figure out, or admit, that I'm always right (*). Of course, what you really need to do is not just admit that you erred about a politically manufactured controversy, but that you erred in relying on personal insult to "debate" me concernting an earlier iteration of the same.

(*) There was that one time when I thought I had been wrong, but as it tuned out, I was mistaken.

I was actually able to listen to most of it

There is something about rap or hip-hop "music" -- no matter what its agenda -- that grates on me; I just can't listen to that merde. But I managed to sit through most of this -- Who Knew Conservative Rap Existed?

This also is funny

... and everything sports and sports-related is boring to me.

Bob Parks: Video Of The Day

Now this is funny ...

Now, this is funny when one understands and recalls the public posturing (*) of the Fourth Estate.

Bob Parks: Bonehead Of The Day

(*) recall also that most of them subscribe to the dictum laid down by Mike Wallace that they are reporters first, and Americans someplace after that, such that if a reporter knows of an ambush laid for American troops, he is 'duty-bound' to not warn them. Though, at the same time, the troops are morally obligated to save his worthless ass when the so-called enemy turn on him.

Liberalism 101

Alan Roebuck: Liberalism 101 -- "... If you have the insight and wisdom to doubt at least some of the liberalism that people all around you believe, and the courage to maintain your beliefs in the face of the unremitting scorn and ridicule that the left directs against even the most mild apostasy, then you certainly have what it takes to go all the way, and uncover liberalism in its essence. If you are a conservative, I encourage you carefully to examine the liberalism you oppose. If you oppose the effect (mass immigration, same-sex marriage, socialism, etc), you should oppose even more the fundamental cause that makes the effect what it is. ..."

The Irredentist

The Superversive: The Irredentist