All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
At this point does anyone honestly believe what Fauci, Biden and the idiots in the press told us? I guess the point is there were plenty of people who didn’t believe it but were willing to make believe in order to take advantage of this whole boondoggle.
Florida vs. California State COVID Data Proves Lockdowns Don’t Work
Do I ever wish I lived in a real state like Florida or South Dakota.
Here is my questionnaire and Tyler’s answers. Anyone who feels like commenting is welcome. I am interested in how other people got to where a lot of us are now. Watching as normal politics completely failed to prevent the progressives from destroying our country has been a powerful object lesson for me and probably many others.
My answers to Tyler’s questionnaire is linked at https://theportlypolitico.com/?p=7094
Tyler, here are five questions I came up with. Feel free to elaborate or even direct the questions in whatever way you think gives you scope to answer them in a way that you think is interesting. Also if any question doesn’t seem appropriate feel free to leave it out. I’m looking for this to be a positive experience.
I would describe myself as a social conservative. When I was younger, I would have been (essentially) a Christian Libertarian, but then I actually experienced life and realized that pure Libertarianism cannot work; indeed, it can only work with traditional, moral, Christian (inherently or explicitly) values to underpin it. I very much agree with Tucker Carlson’s notion that capitalism is a tool to be used to better our lives, not a god to be worshipped. I would add that the trust necessary to maintain capitalism requires Christian ethics and a high-trust society. A high-trust society can’t work without some moral framework, and the only enduring moral framework must come from God; otherwise, there’s no foundation for morality.
Essentially, live your life as you wish, but remember that you exist in a community, and your actions impact your neighbor. The family, not the individual, is the principle unit for organizing a healthy society. Also, stop killing babies.
Richard Weaver’s Ideas Have Consequences was a transformational moment for me. Reading that book was like reading prophecy that had come true–it was electric. His diagnosis of the pitfalls of modernity really opened my eyes to the shortcomings of our secular worldview, and the soul-crushing nihilism and existential crisis it has wrought.
Trump’s presidency was another galvanizing moment. Trump may have been a flawed vessel, and he was ineffective at times, but he helped drop the scales from the eyes of many conservatives, myself included. Economically I moved much more in a populist and economic nationalist direction thanks to Trump (and Pat Buchanan’s Death of the West–a must-read), questioning for the first time the dogma of unbridled free trade (which, when you talk to free trade absolutists, it really is almost an article of faith–even if America is losing in trade, they argue, it’s worth it because it pleases the god of efficiency).
Trump also made politics fun again. Notice how boring it is now? The Biden-Harris administration is a disaster, but I can barely make myself care.
The whole normalizing of pedophilia and transgenderism, LBGTQ2+ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ thing makes me scared for my niece and nephews, as well as my hypothetical future children. The whole “let sixteen-year olds vote” project of a couple of years ago served two purposes: overtly, it would have put more immature idiots onto the voter rolls, helping Democrats; covertly, it would make it easier to argue that sexual relationships with minors is acceptable. Essentially, “If a sixteen-year old can vote, she can consent to sex with an adult” (H/T to my younger brother for realizing that first). As we’ve seen with the Left, they’ll keep pushing and pushing until eventually sex with babies will somehow be okay (the argument will be, “well, a child isn’t really a person until the doctors say so, so what’s the harm?”). This sounds insane now, but mark my words: child-diddling is going to be mainstreamed fast.
The other would be the continued insinuation of progressive craziness into every institution. Even at my little country private school, I’m seeing the tentacles of social justice wheedle their way into the curriculum. That’s something incredibly difficult to fight while still maintaining job security. The Boomer admins seem all-too-happy to go along with it, too, I think largely out of cluelessness.
The preservation of the nuclear family. The destruction of the nuclear family is destroying American society. The Great Society went after blacks first, who were starting to do pretty well economically and socially until the government incentivized divorce and single motherhood. Now nearly 50% of children are born out of wedlock to mothers under thirty, regardless of race. Look, there are good single moms out there, but just plain commonsense tells us that being a single parent is harder than being part of a two-parent household. With a mom and a dad, parents can shoulder the load.
I also increasingly believe that pushing women to enter the workforce was a terrible idea. Sure, you have your high performers like Nikki Haley, Margaret Thatcher, Phyllis Schlafly, etc., but those women are, at best, the 5%. The rest–if they were honest with themselves–would much prefer being at home raising children, or maybe working a little part-time gig. But we’ve lured women into the soul-crushing atmosphere of the workforce with vague promises of “fulfillment” and “empowerment,” when really they’re just maintaining some strange man’s schedule (instead of their husband’s) and posting to social media–or, even worse, issuing edicts from the HR department.
I’m not saying we should ban women from working–that’s a bit much–but a healthy society would encourage domesticity and motherhood for the vast majority of women, while still allowing a pathway to the workforce for that alternatively talented 5%.
On a macro scale, I am always a declinist. Trump was an all-too-brief reprieve, and didn’t accomplish enough–either due to his own lack of effort or due to intense interference from the Deep State (I’m inclined more to the latter–to turn things around long-term. History does suggest that these fevered periods of revolution and upheaval burn themselves out, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do incredible amounts of damage in the meantime. I don’t think we’re the Roman Empire in the 5th century A.D., but we’re definitely the Roman Empire in, say, the 3rd or 4th Century A.D.–the glory days are over, there are more and more problems, but we’re largely coasting on the accomplishments of generations greater than our own. The ultimate collapse might not be for another 100 years, but it’s coming.
On a micro scale, however, I am optimistic. We still enjoy many freedoms. We still have a window of opportunity to learn to grow our own food, to stockpile our weapons and preserves, and to build our own institutions outside of the mainstream. I always rejected Rod Dreher’s “Benedict Option” as cowardly, but I see some wisdom to it–rather than waste our time trying to fight an unwinnable culture war, let’s build our own culture. I can’t do much about Biden’s senility, but there is much I can do to improve my land, my neighborhood, my town, my county, and even my State.
Ultimately, God is in control. I believe He is, or will soon be, visiting a judgment upon us for our wickedness. Sodom and Gomorrah look like a weekend at a Free Will Baptist Bible college compared to the United States in 2021. Prayer is our greatest weapon, and we need to be on our knees daily praying for some relief.
CAESAR: What sayst thou to me now? Speak once again.
SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of March.
CAESAR: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.
We don’t have a Caesar. What we have is much worse and much uglier. The question is do we have a Brutus?
What is bettre than wisdom? Womman.
And what is bettre than a good womman? No-thing.
Geoffrey Chaucer
I remember finding a copy of the novel Kim in my home when I was a kid. Not knowing much about colonial India at the time some of the references were obscure to me. But the story was engaging. Many years later I saw the motion picture and enjoyed the story all over again. Errol Flynn and Dean Stockwell carry most of this movie on their shoulders with Stockwell as the title character, an orphan son of a British soldier living as a native boy in the streets of India and Flynn as a spy for the British Intelligence Office known as Mahbub Ali, The Red Beard. And in the Flynn’s affable relationship with the boy, it reminds me of his performance in the 1937 movie “The Prince and the Pauper” where his character befriends and ultimately saves the Prince of Wales from his misadventures.
This story is a cloak and dagger spy story of the “The Great Game” between England and Russia in Asia and also a coming-of-age story for the boy. He discovers his roots and makes some valuable friends. He learns different lessons about himself from sources as different as a Tibetan Lama and a British Intelligence Officer.
And along the way he shows himself to be brave, resourceful and reliable to all those he befriends. The story is one of Kipling’s best and has a fantasy feel to it that belies the 19th century time frame it exists in. Stockwell and Flynn and the supporting cast are excellent in this tale and it is a throwback to the 1930s and 40s when movies of this sort were more common. And the portrayal of life in colonial India with Europeans enjoying their white privilege would be completely unacceptable to woke viewers so of course knowing it would outrage those losers makes it that much more amusing to watch.
Read the book if you haven’t and then watch the movie. Both are highly recommended.
The Soviet Union was an abomination. It tortured and killed its most loyal citizens on an industrial scale that had never before been seen. And then it exported the formula abroad to places like China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba and Venezuela. Up until recently the legal apparatus in the United States specifically forbade the techniques and tactics that the Soviets used. But with the passing of the Patriot Act and the weaponization of the Judiciary we have the ingredients needed to institute the purges that Stalin perfected in the 1930s and unleashed on his people to such devastating effect during his long and nightmarish reign.
As an example, look at the techniques used by the FBI and the Justice Department in conjunction with federal judges like the vicious thug Emmet Sullivan who persecuted General Michael Flynn even after the Justice Department admitted that they had no case against him and dropped the prosecution. Or look at the recent imprisonment of the harmless protestors who were involved in the January 6th “riot.” Here is the federal justice system imprisoning without bail harmless Americans who are much less dangerous than all of the Antifa and BLM criminals who are still rioting and destroying federal property in Portland, Oregon with impunity.
The Soviet Union finally reached a point after seventy years of torturing its citizens that it could not continue. Decades of terror and insanity had finally killed off all belief in the system among the populace and this was terminal for the vitality of the state. After all, once even the stupidest of the people know it’s all a sham, they stop caring about anything but getting through the day. It finally reaches the point where life is characterized by the saying, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” When a dispirited population that is barely kept alive on the meager output of their own slave labor is the basis for a supposed world power it doesn’t take forever before the whole thing just falls apart of its own accord. The upkeep of nuclear weapons and the fighting of foreign wars requires dedication and morale. Terrorized slaves lack those qualities.
The United States and the Soviet Union are very different places. And even granting that the power of the federal government augmented by its alliance with the tech companies like Google and Facebook is a frighteningly powerful force to wield against private citizens and even state officials. But I still believe there will be a reaction to this attempt to subjugate the free people of this country by the thugs who are attempting to use the Stalinist playbook against us. Americans are not Russian serfs. They have a history of being free.
I have no proof that there exists a base of people in one of the red states that will stand up against these thugs. But I think it will happen. And if it happens at all it will inspire a groundswell of the same resistance in a thousand places. And that will put an end to these creatures. Because if the American people ever get their freedom back again, they’ll take steps to put an end to the laws and individuals that have allowed this tyranny to exist. They’ll cancel the Patriot Act. They’ll shut down the FBI and start from scratch. They’ll put every one of the FBI and CIA and media hacks who lied and persecuted innocent men during the whole Russiagate witch hunt on trial. Comey and Brennan and the rest of the Obama cronies will be thrown into prison and left to rot. And then we should empty the federal judicial bench all the way up to the Supreme Court and replace them with citizens who have worked for a living and even if they’ve never been inside a courtroom, they would be better judges of their fellow citizens than all these ivy league intellectuals who let us suffer under the current regime.
For me the only question is who will light the match? Will we have to wait until our country is falling apart at the seams before we get our Gorbachev? I hope not.
Here are the questions I sent to Tyler over at the Portly Politico. I’ll post his answers tomorrow (Tuesday 3/16 at 6:30 am). Tyler came up with a similar set of questions that I answered and he will post my answers at the same time tomorrow on his site the Portly Politico.
If you would like to give your own answers then attach them to the post tomorrow.
Nature, the vicar of the Almightie Lord.
Geoffrey Chaucer
