Month: December 2022

Guest Contributor – War Pig – 19DEC2022 – Natural Rights

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War Pig

It’s true, we have no natural rights. A right cannot be taken from you. We have given ourselves rights under our Constitution but they are constructs of human minds. People say you have a right to life. Try walking through South Chicago almost any balmy night, or else try living in Kiev under Russian missile attacks targeting hospitals and civilian housing areas. I am sure the so-called grizzly man protested to the bear as it was attacking and eating him.

Your right to liberty can be curtailed by government quite easily. Think of anything you would call a right and somewhere on this earth it is being violated by governments, gangs, individuals and the cosmos itself if an asteroid lands on your county. Tornados and hurricanes, earthquakes and wildfires will not listen to your protests. Other humans have proven to be just as indifferent. The holocaust, the Rwandan genocides, what Russia is doing in Ukraine, what the British did when they invented the concentration camp, slavery of all sorts for millennia.

No, the only “rights” we possess is what we as individuals or groups can defend. Which is why our Second Amendment is so important. It protects all the other rights we have claimed for ourselves here in the USA. It protects them from strangers, gangs, other groups and governments; including our own.

When Our Worlds Collide

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When a chemical engineer is tasked with designing a mixing system for insoluble liquids, he has to calculate the amount of energy needed to turn the liquids into an emulsion.  So, these liquids that completely repel each other like water and oil can be suspended in each other and thereby come in intimate contact with each other.  And in that state they can be smoothly reacted with each other by some catalyst or chemical.

Something similar has occurred between the different camps on the Right.  Michael Anton describes himself as a lecturer and research fellow at Hillsdale College, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, and a former national security official in the Trump Administration.  He became well-known for writing the “Flight 93 Election” back before the 2016 presidential election when he advocated for Donald Trump as our last chance to stop the country from sliding into leftist tyranny.

He is as far philosophically as anyone on the real Right can be from the Z-Man when it comes to beliefs about the nature of government.  And yet these two men have now made contact.  Specifically, Anton has written a (very) long post at American Greatness defending the concept of natural rights against an assertion that the Z-Man made that natural rights do not exist.  And in fact, the Z-Man’s post was a reaction to an Anton post that was itself a reaction to an essay by yet another personality on the Right the paleoconservative Paul Gottfried.  Enough agitation is occurring in our environment to bring these various species in contact with each other and the interaction is yielding change and reaction.

Now suffice it to say that what passes for debate here is more like low intensity warfare (especially in the comments sections).  But I think the fact that, at least, they are beginning to acknowledge each other’s existence is the beginning of communication.  And this communication is important.  Not so much for the writers but for the readers.  Currently the ideas of the various groups on the Right are pretty thoroughly siloed.  Having the readers get a taste of the other opinions around is all for the good.  These ideas need to be banged around against each other a good deal for some clarity to emerge.  People need to compare the words to the world around them and decide which model is right or mostly right.  Because chances are no one model is completely correct.  There could be valuable insights from more than one camp.  And it’s possible that minds could be changed on certain points if a wider consensus is formed.

So, this is just talk.  But it’s a beginning.  One thing that’s been totally lacking on the right is any kind of open discussion of the taboo subjects.  We’ve allowed the Left to control the allowable agenda for discussion on the Right for generations.  What we’re seeing is the beginning of the breakdown of that control.  It hasn’t reached the point where the establishment Right will acknowledge the relevance of the dissident opinions but the middle is starting to address them.  Once the majority of the non-Left has shifted to the edge of the dissident territory the establishment will be forced kicking and screaming to the right.  What happens after that is unknown.

It may turn out that the Left will outright win and all this will be moot.  But if the Right manages to push the country in our direction, then the establishment Right will convince themselves that they were always in the vanguard of this great movement and deserve all the praise and benefits.  And eventually the Right will overstep itself and some reaction will occur.

But that’s hardly anything for us to worry about.  It will take a generation just to stop the leftward swing of the cultural pendulum, never mind getting it back to the center.  But it is encouraging to see the center acknowledge the dissident position and even begin to give grudging approval to some of their ideas.  Let’s see what’s next.

19DEC2022 – Scrooge Reborn

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When Scrooge awakens and embraces his new life we feel the electric thrill he feels at everything around him.  He rediscovers life and the joy it contains.

“What’s to-day!” cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

“Eh?” returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.

“What’s to-day, my fine fellow?” said Scrooge.

“To-day!” replied the boy. “Why, Christmas Day.”

“It’s Christmas Day!” said Scrooge to himself. “I haven’t missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!”

“Hallo!” returned the boy.

“Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but one, at the corner?” Scrooge inquired.

“I should hope I did,” replied the lad.

“An intelligent boy!” said Scrooge. “A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?”

“What, the one as big as me?” returned the boy.

“What a delightful boy!” said Scrooge. “It’s a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!”

“It’s hanging there now,” replied the boy.

“Is it?” said Scrooge. “Go and buy it.”

“Walk-er!” exclaimed the boy.

“No, no,” said Scrooge, “I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell ’em to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown!”

The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.

“I’ll send it to Bob Cratchit’s!” whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. “He sha’n’t know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will be!”

 

 

In Hera’s Kitchen

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Today is the highest of solemnities in Camera Girl’s kitchen calendar.  I, even I, am banned from encroaching on the rituals being performed.  And I’m no fool.  Interfering with the magic going on risks the spoiling of those spells and the blighting of the baked goods being produced; a horror not to be imagined.

Today Camera Girl and her daughters and now her granddaughter will gather like a coven of witches and take their magic ingredients and hover around the stove and drink coffee (or hot chocolate in the case of Princess Sack of Potatoes) and knead dough and add vanilla extract and hand shape the grandma cookies and the chocolate chip and oatmeal cookies and whichever new variants they decide on.

And wondrous aromas will waft through the house and when they’re through there will be a pile of cookies to get us through to New Year’s Day.  Splendiferous confections that turn a coffee break into a feast.  And make watching an old movie into a special event.

But even ignoring the practical results of this activity, this is a primary ritual of our domestic calendar.  The hand written recipes are coming on fifty years.  The paper is beginning to crumble and the writing is fading from exposure to ingredients and wear and tear.  I’ve warned Camera Girl that they need to be copied and digitized, printed out and distributed to her daughters to preserve them from loss.  But if it’s going to be done, I’ll have to take on the project.

I look at some of the recipes and the notes on them and see the names of friends and relatives from long ago.  Only one or two living women are represented.  Most are from our parents’ and grandparents’ generation.  A few go even farther back.

And that’s a comforting legacy.  In these times when fools are trying to deconstruct the meaning of man and woman and sever the traditions that have given meaning to our lives, there still exist people and rituals that ground our lives and make them human and pleasant.  Baking cookies may seem to some people to be a trivial and possibly harmful activity in a world of obese people.  But it’s exactly opposite.  Christmas cookies are a special and specific part of the year.  Once they’re done, we don’t make more.  We move onto the winter months when we subsist on meager fare, far removed from the bounty of summer and fall.  Christmas is a celebration and an ending of the year and needs to be treated as such.

So, I will withdraw from the kitchen and keep myself busy with other things while the women commune with their flour and butter.  From time to time, I’ll find an excuse to walk by the kitchen and see how things are going.  And maybe my granddaughter will come visit with me for a game of Candy Land.  But for the most part I’ll leave them to their industry and their talk.  And before I go to bed there will be the hoard of golden and white and brown cookies in various cookie jars and containers.  And of course, there will be a big mug of coffee and one or two (or even three) cookies waiting for me to enjoy during a holiday movie.  God bless you Camera Girl and long may you bake.