Category Archives: Western Civilization

Opportunity Knocks

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Joe Doakes, once of Como Park, emails:

Members of the German Parliament have been talking tough about Trumps tariffs.The tariffs will hurt Americans worse than Germans. America doesn’t make anything anymore.  There’s nothing they need from us.  
 
Excellent. High tariffs are gone. And so are our soldiers, airmen, Marines.  Germany can have those empty bases to fill with their own soldiers to stare down the Russians.
 
 Peace, friendship, and honest commerce with all; entangling alliances with none. Wise words from one of our founders. Glad we have the opportunity to get back them. 
 
Joe Doakes
 
For whatever  – I say, whatever– reason, the Euros always back away hard when we talk about bringing the rest of the troops home.  

Modeled Behavior

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Cretin who apparently was spawned from the radical campus antisemitism movement murders a couple of Israeli Embassy employees in DC:

The killer shot them both in the back, and then reloaded and finished them off on the ground as disarmed, bovine DC residents milled around like stampeded cattle.

This is not an aberration.  This is part of Big Left’s plan.  Oh, not the one they say out loud.

But…:

Soon enough, progressive politicians would attempt to co-opt this emerging trend to burnish their own political brands. “You don’t kill people. It’s abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly,” Senator Bernie Sanders told a reporter at the aptly named Jacobin magazine. Then came, as it did with every subsequent politician’s quote, the key word: But.

“But,” he continued, “what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies,” presumably for making a profit in a sector that should run on altruism alone. And apparently Mangione wasn’t just representing American emotions about health care: “The campaign finance system is broken, the health care system is broken, the housing system is broken, the education system is broken. It is broken.”

Senator Elizabeth Warren followed the same “but” rule. “Violence is never the answer,” she mused. “But people can only be pushed so far” and will “start to take matters into their own hands” when the political system doesn’t cater to their demands.

“This is not to say that an act of violence is justified,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez intoned. “But they need to understand that people interpret and feel and experience denied claims as an act of violence against them.”

Senator Chris Murphy wouldn’t condone violence, of course—“but we need to listen to what people are feeling.” The feeling Thompson’s murder exposed must be “matched by the anger over the thousands of people who die, often anonymous deaths every single day at this country at the hands of a health-care industry that mostly doesn’t give a s—t about people and only cares about profits.”

They don’t want violence, BUT if they make society so dangerous the people beg for an all-powerful government to save them, what are they supposed to do?

Ilhan Omar reacted with the states-womanly class we’ve come to expect from her:

My ongoing offer to teach any of my Jewish friends who don’t already know, how to shoot, stands.  

Notes From The Soggy Zone

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Last week, I ruffled some of the usual feathers by posting a link to this video by Ryan McBeth.

McBeth is a former anti-tank grunt who now does open-source intelligence and systems work. His Youtube and Substack channels are interesting; he doesn’t get everything right (he is still claiming Mossad figured out how to remotely blow up lithium batteries, although his reasoning for getting to that conclusion isn’t wrong), and he certainly runs in official-ish circles, but he shows his math.

I pointed this out, not to “run cover” for officialdom (wtf?) but out of awareness that all “sides” of every issue on social media are farming engagements to draw clicks, eyeballs, and of course the mother of all motivations, “monetization”. 

The real lesson?  Waiting for government to help you out after an emergency is a sucker bet.  Government may mean well but be incompetent; it may do its best but be overstretched; it might be actively undercutting you; it might be all three and then some.  But one way or another, example after example in the real world shows us you, the regular schnook, are likely to have to see to your own well-being after a disaster.  

Seeing to that well-being is either a waste of time, or absolutely vital – and you won’t know which until it’s too late.

This note comes from a friend of a friend:

“I’m in Asheville, NC right now and we were devastated by the hurricane. Day 5 of no power, water, internet, or even cell service. We are cut off from the world. Here’s what has mattered so far and what hasn’t in my particular situation:

Life saver #1 = Starlink internet. All our phones say SOS. Can’t text for help. Don’t know what’s going on. I plugged in my satellite internet and have been helping the whole neighborhood call loved ones. Everyone is offering me anything from their supplies because it’s so valuable.

Life saver #2 = Solar panels and 3000w battery pack. I can run satellite internet, electric kettle to purify water, charge headlamps, electronics, instant pot for cooking, ice maker for the cooler, everything I need. I’ll won’t run out of the sun like I would propane or gas if this extends a lot longer.

Life saver #3 = Gas cans and extra gas. These are sold out everywhere and are harder to get than gas itself. When power goes out so do gas station pumps. When you have portable gas you can run a generator, evacuate, drive to where the supplies are, check on family members, etc. People are stranded and sleeping at gas stations for days in their car waiting for power to come back on so they can get home.

Life saver #4 = Knowledge on how to survive without a huge stash. Some preppers spend too much on stocking up and not enough on education. None of us knew the hurricane was going to be this bad. Some people lost their entire house including supplies. Those who know multiple ways to collect water, purify it, start a fire, find food, are the ones still alive that haven’t been rescued yet. I could go for another month if I had to with nothing but my backpack and tools.

Life saver #5 = Hand sanitizer. Sanitation is rough here and the hospitals are out of power, food, and water. People are starting to smell and after you touch something you do not want to get sick and go to the hospital because it’s bad there too. The water you do find may not be safe for hand washing without purification. I wash my hands with soap and water and then do hand sanitizer after to stay healthy.

Other things I’ve relied on:

Cash. No power means no debit cards can be used

Disposable cutlery and plates

A 4×4 truck that can drive where others can’t or help tow people to safety

Solar/battery radio

Dogs for company and to alert if someone is outside

Hasn’t mattered as much as I thought:

#1 = Guns! I haven’t even thought about needing my gun and realized I put too much on this. Strangers have come together in our area and are taking care of each other like you wouldn’t believe. Each person has a surplus of something and is missing something else. We all share while still respecting boundaries and only sharing what we choose. Again, this can depend on the area but here if you are acting paranoid/standoffish of others and open carrying a gun, the nice innocent people are going to avoid you and you will be isolated without community or resources. I’m still glad to have a gun but I wish I spent more time on other skills too instead of putting so much emphasis on shooting. (And to anyone who says, “it only takes one time and you will be glad for your aim”, you’re missing the point I’m trying to make here.)

#2 = Food. This is easy to find for me but it may be due to the part of the country I’m in. I can also fish, forage, and don’t cook much because I don’t want to waste water on dishes. I had shelf stable food prepped and lll probably end up only using 25% of it in a month. As people’s freezers start to thaw we’ve had big cookouts so it doesn’t go to waste and I’ve been full most nights.

Again, this list could be based on location, type of natural disaster, weather, etc But it’s interesting to me because I’m actually living it instead of preparing and wanted to share.”

 

As the correspondent notes in the last graf, it “could” be based on location.  And it most certainly is based on the relative health of the social fabric in the area. 

Morning In Canada

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It’s a cliché of modern Western life – “youth” rebel against their elders.

Since the dawn of western “youth culture” right around 70 years ago, that’s pretty much always meant a leftward tilt – and in much of the world, it still does.

But something interesting is going on in Canada:

If an election were held today, Canada’s Conservative Party would win in a landslide and bury the Liberals, led by Justin Trudeau. This may not seem impressive after ten years of Liberal rule; most governments wear out their welcome long before then. What’s unusual here is that Conservative support is strong in all demographics—and is strongest among youth. An astonishing 47 percent of those aged 18 to 34 would vote Conservative, and only 24 percent and 17 percent would vote Liberal and socialist, respectively. This represents a complete reversal of the upwelling of youth support that brought the Liberals to power in 2015.

Why has the electorate soured on the Liberals? First, nothing has been a greater turn-off to voters than contemporary progressive activism. Think of the constant bloviating about structural racism and colonialism, the “crisis of whiteness,” and self-accusations of genocide. Twenty years ago, you might have heard such things in a sociology department or undergraduate student lounge; now it emanates from Canada’s top political leaders and cultural institutions. One of the Trudeau government’s first moves was to announce a plan to “decolonize” Canada. In their own telling, the Trudeau Liberals manage a civil service and a military riven by systemic racism and white supremacy, respectively. Everyone knows that such claims are ridiculous, but few have dared say so in public. The predictable result is that only about one-third of Canadians have confidence in the federal government, and 70 percent now agree with the statement “Canada is broken.”

 

I can remember the general feeling of fatigue with what seemed like the ongoing collapse of the world that prompted so many people my age to vote for Ronald Reagan when we were in our 20s.

I can’t imagine the world doesn’t look a whole lot worse right now.

Today’s Hero Of Western Civilization

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Mad props to this bloke:

Tangentially related: anyone unironically wearing a “Guy Fawkes” mask should be a legitimate target for tasing or thrown rubbish.

Mostly for leftists, naturally. But even if I agree with you, wearing one of those gawdawful masks knocks your credibility back by two orders of magnitude. .

Let’s Stir Up Another Republic-Threatening Hornets Nest: Part I

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I saw “The Fall of Minneapolis” again last week.

Now, when I first mentioned seeing it a few months back, a few smart people whose opinions I never discount asked “is there anything new that the courts didn’t settle?”

That brings up a couple of questions.

In our society, we usually think that if a court – an impartial jury of our peers, a couple of adversarial attorneys patiently digging out the facts, a fair and impartial judge facilitating it all via “due proces” – decides something, that’s that. The truth has been found.

There’s problems with that.

The was this guy, James Fleming, a Facebook friend, shooter and criminal defense attorney. He used to snap at people who referred to “due process” by itself as a reason to trust something. Paraphrasing: due process isn’t a guarantee of fairness, much less justice. It means the proceedings all check the same checkboxes and standards. The fairness and justice is all in the details.

So – how can that go wrong?

Years ago, I was *very* tangentially involved in the case of a man who’d been accused of a fairly grisly rape and murder in 1982. He had been kind of a lowlife, a petty criminal and drug addict, the kind of guy you’ve seen on a thousand episodes of “Cops” insisting to the officer “I have NO IDEA whose gun and cocaine that is!” He was tried, convicted and sentenced to death.

The courts settled the matter.

A decade and change later, a group of people did enough digging and agitating on his behalf to get the attention of “The Innocence Project”, a group of pro-bono lawyers that works on what they believe to be unjust convictions.

The lawyers found that the original conviction had been secured via:
– A jailhouse snitch with a history of perjury whose testimony nonetheless was allowed
– A District Attorney hiding exculpatory evidence.
– An incompetent public defender.

The exculpatory evidence included forensic evidence that, with modern DNA testing, could have shed some light on who the attacker was. But it vanished as completely as whispering “due process” in the wind.

After years of legal wrangling, the lawyers found the evidence – and with more modern DNA testing, determined that the man, who’d been convicted “beyond a reasonable doubt” after “due process”, couldn’t have possibly been the murderer. In 2003 he was released, after 21 years on Death Row.

And he’s not alone. In the past 50 years, *185* inmates have been released from Death Row. Not granted new trials. Not commuted to lesser sentences. *Released* from Death Row to the world – because their “convictions beyond a reasonble doubt” were in error, due to perjury, official misconduct, incompetence, and even some honest but terrible mistakes.

So – do I think the answer to “is it true?” is “the courts have spoken?”

Let’s just say I believe in (grudging, conditional) trust but verification. Throw in a heaping dollop of skepticism about the integrity of public officials and systems.

More later this wee4

Controlled Demolition

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This past Sunday was the 34th anniversary of one of the highpoints of the entire history of Western Civilization.

Along with the signings of the Magna Carta and Declaration of Independence, VE Day, and a short list of other highlights, the literal and figurative collapse of the Berlin Wall, and the fall of the Soviet Union, was a high point in history – a time I felt divinely privileged to have witnessed and, in my tiny way, participated in.

But when Francis Fukuyama extrapolated from the fall of the Wall that “history had ended”, I figured that one would have to have an incredibly expensive education to believe something so stupid.

I was right. Go figure. .

Jon is one of the reasons to stay on Twitter – a brilliant commentator.

But he’s got one part wrong.

The lessons weren’t forgotten. They were buried by a class in our society that rooted for the rulers on the east side of the old wall – and likely believe in their heart of hearts either that they just hadn’t tried real Marxism, or that they’d be the ones in the dachas rather than the gulags.

It was a controlled intellectual demotion.

The Enemy Within, Around And Above

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This is this sort of thing that should send Americans to be barricades. This is ample reason to block freeways (in DC and Silicon Valley and Saint Paul’s Government Canyon anyway). This is a reason to break out tar and feathers and lots and lots of harsh tweets.

It’s a thread. Click through in Twitter.

Not that this is news – but here’s one of a wallet full of money quotes:

-EIP [Election Integrity Partnership – Ed.]“stakeholders” (including the federal gov’t) would submit misinformation reports

-EIP would “analyze” the report and find similar content across platforms

-EIP would submit the report to Big Tech, often with a recommendation on how to censor

If you’d told me 15 years ago that voting for candidates attitudes about censorship, lockdowns, mandates and enforcing top-down social cohesion would be as important as stances on spending, immigration, healthcare and foreign policy, I’d have shaken my head and wondered “what else are they going to tell me – CD8 will someday be Republican?”

Controlled Demolition, Part III

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Earlier in this exceptionally loosely linked series, I lamented that the conditions that set up the great American resurgence of the early 1980s aren’t, largely, there in our society today.

I’ll return to the example of France. The French nation and people have a culture that goes back, in one form or another, to pre-Roman times, through Vercingetorix, Charles Martel, Joan of Arc, Napoleon, a phalanx of seminal authors and artists, and centuries of stories, mythical and historical, that helped define what “French” actually meant, to the world but especially to France.

The demographic bleeding-out of World War I caused a crisis in faith in that myth – a malaise, to borrow a term that’s come up in this series before, and most certainly will again. With nearly 10% of the population dead, wounded or missing. and much of the country’s heartland devastated, it’d be fair to say France had Les Bleus

Unlike France in 1940, America hasn’t been demoralized by a great military, demographic and spiritual catastrophe in its recent past (and remember – the end of World War 1 and the invasion of France were about as far apart as 9/11 and today). In the past 40 years, America vanquished its greatest foe to date without a (non-proxy) shot being fired, followed by the greatest expansion in wealth in history. America should be stoked.

But we’re kind of the opposite today.

Every rational, sane, intellectually honest American knows our history – like the history of every nation – is full of imperfections, things that modern mores reject. That’s true of every country ever – at least, the ones that evolve positively. And for the most part, with a few extremely notable exceptions, Western Civilization has done that for the past few hundred years. The notion of “progress” in the human condition was meaningless before Western Civilization as we know it today started evolving.

And so Western culture – especially American culture – developed its own myths and legends. It was the land of opportunity, and of equality.

No, not equal opportunity for everyone at every time – but that, too, has progressed. And generations of immigrants choosing American, and disproportionally succeeding at it, are evidence that the myths have not only some basis in truth, but are in fact not merely myths of facts of American life.

But the powers that be in our culture have been working to undercut those parts of our national mythology.

Equality? In 1987, a Gallup poll showed that about a third of black Americans thought racism was a driving force in American life. In 2015, that figure had doubled. Does anyone seriously think that America got twice as racist between 1990 and the third year of Barack Obama’s third time?

Even more toxically in the long run? The notion that we are a nation of equal opportunity is being pecked away at by a league of leftist intellectual lilliputians.

I was listening to NPR a few weeks ago (so you don’t have to), a show called Marketplace, a show that tries to talk about economics.

They were interviewing Alyssa Quart, a woman whose career seems to revolve around convincing Americans that there is no opportunity. She was flogging a book, Bootstrapped: A Self-Made Myth And The Dystopian Social Safety Net It Created.

And it’s exactly as cynical as you might think:

“Boots were really important in the 19th century,” Quart said in an interview with “Marketplace” host Reema Khrais. “If you’re wealthy, you had someone who could help you put them on. If you’re a working man, you were struggling to pull them up every day. So pulling yourself over your bootstraps became this symbol of getting ahead in this country all on your own steam.”

In her latest book, “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves From the American Dream,” Quart looks at how this symbol helped create what she calls the “dystopian social safety net.”

“If we have a country where the social welfare state is much more fragile than, say, other advanced industrialized countries,” said Quart, “you have people then relying on this ragtag network of nonprofits, volunteers, crowdfunding.”

Quart’s message is being spread on fertile ground, at least among Gen-Zs, who’ve grown up with the message that “Boomers” got all the money and left them the scraps (which, by the way, I also felt as an angry and under-employed GenXer just out of college).

Thing is, Quart made a good point – unintentionally, and in a way that indicts the modern Left’s sabotage of American culture. She endlessly belabors the lack of government insitutions to “support” the poor, which is the usual leftist twaddle. Because…

…of course the idea of dragging one’s self up, completely solo, “by one’s bootstraps” is rare to unheard of. Of course America had institutions that fostered that.

Family.

Church.

Communities – and by that, we’re talking social communities, not governments.

Which are the things Big Left has been aggressively demolishing.

So yeah – coming up by one’s bootstraps is hard. Never easier than in any other culture in history…

…but Big Left is going to change that.

As The Forefathers Warned

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This is a new Australian Army recruiting video.

Who are they training to fight?

Taliban?

ISIS?

The Chinese?

https://twitter.com/BernieSpofforth/status/1634933488532221952

After three years of absurdly restrictive Covid regulations met by some strenuous civil and less than civil resistance, they are not just training to fight Australians – who are officially disarmed – but they are putting that out that as a feature for recruiting new soldiers.

Who puts this kind of campaign together?

More troublingly – who do you think this sort of campaign appeals to?

From. My. Cold. Dead. Hand.

Things I Dream About

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One of mine is that one day, I get a chance to respond to a grievance pimp like Cori Bush tyhe way Alex Epstein does here (around 1:30 into the video):

Til I do, I guess I’ll just keep practicing. And eating my vegetables.

Believe In Miracles

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It was 43 years ago today that this happened:

It was one of a short series of events that blasted the US out of its post-Vietnam, Watergate-era funk, and played a role, at least psychologically, in ushering in one of the greatest eras in American history.

To paraphrase Sydney Greenstreet in that other great American moment, Casablanca, “It’ll take a miracle to bring the USA back, and Big Left has outlawed miracles”.

Which is all the more reason to believe.

Inimical

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To: Rep. Liz Cheney
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreporous Peasant
Re: It’s Not Me, It’s You

Rep Cheney,

I’m not the biggest fan of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

For that matters, I’m not the most passionate of your detractors.

But on this issue?

So let me make sure I’m clear on this; if our government is violating the Constitution you’re wrapping yourself in, how long are we supposed to go along with it?

“Our country is governed by the Constitution”

One might hope. But when the government turns the executive branch institutions – the FBI, IRS, BATFE, CDC – against the peoples freedom? When the government trashes the separation of powers and undercuts federalism, and proposes violating the contract under which small states agreed to share some of their sovereignty with big states by eliminating the Electoral College and making the Senate reflect popular rather than state votes…

…how long before dismissing those usurpations with an ofay “Well, the Constitution” isn’t by itself an answer?

“Secession is unconstitutional“

So?

So was the American Revolution.

Saying “secession is illegal” is like trying to end a moral argument with “…because the Bible said so”. It’s vapid and cowardly. Is it illegal even if the Constitution has been rendered moot? Because saying that is like saying the preservation of government is the point, not the system the Constitution establishes and the eternal rights it enshrines.

Which do you think it is, Rep. Cheney?

That is all.

Also Ran

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Secretary of State Simon wants to throw away whatever a little relevance Minnesota has in presidential elections.

No, really. He said it in as many words on Monday:

Let’s be clear about this: the Electoral College exists because smaller states realized that a national popular vote for President would essentially leave the Executive branch of government to be elected by the voters of the most populous states. All the decisions the President and his branch make – the enforcement of all laws, the spending of all budgets – would be determined by the residents of the most populous parts of the country, and those parts would be who the President answered to.

The Electoral College was part of a contract – our Constitution – by which smaller states avoided getting logrolled, and thus consented to join the union.

If they abolish the Electoral College, there is literally no reason for any states other than California, New York, California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and maybe Pennsylvania, and the de facto mono-state of New Jersey/Connecticut/Massachusetts/Rhode Island, to remain in the union, since everyone else will be vassals.

Simon is calling for Minnesota to become irrelevant to Presidential politics. .

Let’s be clear: abolishing the Electoral College is, i’ll be charitable, at least as great a threat to American democracy as January 6. And that’s being charitable and meeting the Sixers halfway.

And before anyone responds in the comments with “Hahaha that was settled in 1865” – no. It was settled in 1776.

It’s About Suburban Maryland…

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…but Jude Russo’s description of a train ride from his home into the District of Colombia may as well be about the Twin Cities, from the post-Covid pathologies of the drivers on the freeways…:

I rarely leave the greater D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, so I cannot speak to the case in other parts of the country, but here the drivers have simply become worse since the pandemic shutdowns.

In particular cases, it is clear what is happening—a 20-year-old Camry in the passing lane, going ten under the limit and reeking of the botanicals that the people of my state last year voted to legalize, holds no mystery. But we have also added speed demons and weavers and those inscrutable drivers who insist on going the exact speed as the cars in the lanes next to them, making passing impossible. The etiology of these pathologies, whether chemical or spiritual, is unknown to me.

…to the state of the state (or, I guess, district) overall:

It is difficult not to feel that something has come loose these past few years. Public standards for everything from dressing to doing your job to maintaining infrastructure have slipped. But the Maryland government ran a surplus last year, and may repeat the feat with the help of gambling tax revenue; Alstom is in the black, as is SP Plus.

Everyone has more money but is poorer; things are more profitable but worse; there are more legal ways to have fun than ever, but everyone is miserable. “The purveyor of rare herbs and prescribed chemicals is back. Will we never be set free?”

It’s worth a read…

…assuming you haven’t been living it,here or there.

The Tytler Spiral

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A quote:

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler

In completely unrelated news, Governor Klink proposes a budget that is 21% larger than the previous budget.

As predicted by yours truly, it turns the entire “surplus” [1] into permanent spending, giving a pittance back to those earning less than $75,000 – in other words, the ones that didn’t pay the taxes – and calls the payments “Walz Checks”.

I’m a little amazed they’re not called “Walz/Flanagan Checks”.

Not sure why I thought those two things at precisely the same time.

[1] Which is not only the usual overtaxation, but heavily comprising one-time federal money, and spending driven by federal stimulus and inflated a solid 8%. Only the inflation is going to remain.

Flailing

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Hamline University – my neighbor here in the MIdway, a university with almost as much hamfisted woke cred as Saint Thomas and Macalester, recently fired an art professor for showing an artistic representation of Mohammed.

Here’s a quick rundown:

López Prater, an adjunct professor, showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in an art history class-causing an uproar back in October. Since, many Muslims viewing visual representations of the prophet are prohibited, some thought the professor’s actions as highly “Islamaphobic”. Take a look:

Despite a “trigger warning”, it appears the student was triggered when Dr. López Prater, showed the classroom a medieval depiction of Muhammad, an “incident of hate and discrimination“, apparently. Hell, even the university’s associate vice president of inclusive excellence (AVPIE) found it to be “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic“.

It sent the message for all to hear: “triggered students are more important than academic, or really all, freedom.”

The story got some national play – which couldn’t have helped the struggling little university.

Of course, Hamline’s concern for diversity of academic opinion, or for that matter the less fashionable consitutional rights, is just as dismal.

But let’s stick with today’s controversy. Hamline is trying to back-track. Ellen Watters, chair of Hamline’s board of trustees, wrote:

In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed…It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students — care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist.

But it may be too late. Lopez Prater has filed suit:

The lawsuit filed on behalf of López Prate states the professor suffered loss of income from her adjunct position, emotional distress and damage to her professional reputation and job prospects.

David Redden, a lawyer for Dr. López Prater, says the university’s change of heart on the “islamaphobia” accusations does not change the lawsuit and that he, and his client, will pursue legal action against the university.

And other academics have risen to the defense…

…of their fellow academic.

So the good news is, even some academics have reached a point where they won’t spontaneously erupt into a Maoist struggle session on command. Provided it’s their freedom at stake.

It’s a tiny, tiny start.

The Drawing Board

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An anonymous lawyer friend (who is not Joe Doakes) writes:

I’d get in so much trouble if I posted this, but when I see people say that 70% opposethe overtruning of Roe v. Wade, my first thought is that no more than 2% even know what it says, much less what overturning it would mean.

And they also have no idea what the Mississippi law, challenged in the current case, says.

In terms of what it means?

I’m looking forward to explainingi this to pro-choicers: it means you’re going to have to do what we Second Amendment people have been doing for about the past fifty years; convincing people, one at a time, nationwide, of the rightness of your cause and case.

35 years ago, the same polls of uninformed and largely disinterested people said that 85% supported gun control, including a majority that supported banning handguns completely. That number is under 50% for the first time in a couple of generations.

And that’s because 2-3 generations of people have spent a lot of time, treasure and shoe leather convincing their fellow Americans that a constitutional right of the people is, in fact, a constitutional right of the people.

The terror the pro-choicers seem to feel about that concept tells us that while 70% of the people may respond to “Do you support women’s ‘reproductive rfights'” with “yes”, when you change it to “how are you with the thought of killing a gestating human?” it’s going to drop way off.

Paper Tigers

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Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Richard Fernandez writes an uncomfortable column about Ukraine, and the United States.

Joe Doakes

As with pretty much everything Fernandez has ever written, it’s worth a read; in this case, a pull quote:

In a counterfactual world where the Russian president agreed with this site and continued to feint, where NATO was still in awe of the supposedly unstoppable Russian army and Putin still hitting Biden up for nickels and dimes to keep him from unleashing it, the Kremlin might still be the capital of a great power. But it would be no more substantial than a fleet-in-being that is nine-tenths shadow and one part solid is; a thing powerful only in narrative. For in truth, Russia fell a long time ago with its crashing demography; its uncompetitive, oligarch-ridden industries; its incompetent autocratic leadership. Ukraine was a mirror into which Putin dared look when a man of his mien ought not. But whether he looked or not he was ugly just the same.

If there’s any lesson in this for Washington, it must be to ask: how much of America’s power is a myth, like Russia’s? Dare we collapse the wave function? If too much is spin, then put it not to the test, but keep on bluffing until the reality is restored. You can’t live in the narrative forever.

I’m going to suggest you read the whole thing anyway.

Speaking Of Munich

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After reducing the size of the German military by 85% in the face of a resurgent Russia, decommissioning all of Germanys nuclear power plants and actively making the German economy in effect entirely dependent on Russian natural gas (as the German “green energy program” – could could have seen this coming? – ignominiously flopped), and essentially setting Germany up to be a commercial patsy of the oligarchs, could we stop referring to Angela Merkel as a political genius?

And by “we”, I mean the Western “intelligentsia” and pseudo-intelligentsia?

Dudley Do-Fus

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The backpedaling has begun. Politicians throughout the U.S. are winding it all down and hoping (against hope) that the blowback won’t be anything approaching what is happening in Ottawa.

Mind you, it’s been peaceful thus far, despite the increasingly manic sputterings of Justin Trudeau, who didn’t think much of those who would suggest a course correction:

“Individuals are trying to blockade our economy, our democracy and our fellow citizens’ daily lives, it has to stop,” Trudeau said in a speech to Canada’s parliament on Monday evening. “People of Ottawa don’t deserve to be harassed in their own neighborhoods. They don’t deserve to be confronted with the inherent violence of a swastika flying on a street corner or Confederate flag.”

Are there actually swastikas flying in the streets of Ottawa? Here’s a recent photo:

Updates: Officials condemn 'desecration' of monuments, hateful signs on display at trucker convoy protest - The Globe and Mail

Looks like a maple leaf to me, but one never knows.

Trudeau, like many other politicians, senses a reckoning is nigh. And perhaps there will be violence. But don’t count on it coming from the maple-flavored C.W. McCalls currently deployed in the streets of Ottawa. 

Culture Is Everything

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Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Is this a clever public relations ploy to divert attention from Ukraine, is it a mere prank tweaking the Left’s nose, or have Russians actually become more sensible than Democrats?

Substitute “America” for “Russia” and I could sign up today.

Joe Doakes

It’s all three.

And I suspect most conservatives already have signed up – to the private sector initiative, at least.