When American Greatness starts quoting the Z-Man by name the apocalypse can’t be far behind. The Z-Man has often made the point that the Progressives of today are the direct descendants of the “vinegar drinking scolds of New England hell bent on making sure nobody is enjoying life at all. Christopher Roach quotes a chunk of his Puritan origin argument and then amplifies his own opinion about how this will prevent a peaceful separation of the United States into separate Left and Right populations.
It’s getting harder and harder to believe that some of the predictions of the Dissident Right are not correct. The normies are waking up. The Overton Window is way over to the right.
Let’s face it, inaction by the Trump Administration to clean up the nightmare in the Justice Department (Mueller, Rosenstein, FISA Courts and the whole FBI in general) has been a discouraging debacle. But Julie Kelly lays out why she thinks that will now turn around with installation of William Barr as the AG. Read it and see what you think. It sounds good but two years of this nonsense has worn down my optimism.
The subject of this post may seem slight in the scheme of things but in my opinion it gets to the heart of how a Conservative Supreme Court can reverse some of the worst of the damage done by unconstitutional judicial overreach.
Karin McQuillan describes how in 1984 the Supreme Court decided that the experts in the federal government could decide on regulations that not even the courts could challenge. This was called the “Chevron deference.” This has allowed EPA scientists to dictate all manner of restrictions on private citizens and businesses for completely fraudulent reasons. Fake frogs and mythical mice have been used to punish land owners and restrict them from using their own land to satisfy the spite of misguided naturalists. Now the new Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have joined with Justice Thomas to take the lead to reverse the use of the Chevron deference and free the American people from their bureaucratic tyrants. It’s only a first step but it sets a precedent that can have bigger consequences. Progress.
The title of the post is deceptive. Kelly is making the case that using the National Emergencies Act when there is an emergency is already a routine situation that and if it isn’t going to be used when an actual emergency exists then they might as well eliminate it altogether.
The worry many on the Right have is that it will be used by Democrats when they have the Presidency again for everything from Global Warming to Snowflake Bullying. To my mind that is hardly a reason to disarm ourselves against the one truly existential threat to America in our time. Grow up Republicans, you can’t win without fighting.
It seems everyone on our side of the fence was impressed with Tucker Carlson’s video monologue on what’s gone wrong in America. But in Julie Kelly’s post she finds the reaction of NeverTrump folks like David French and Ben Shapiro to be decidedly negative.
Well, I’m not surprised. Tucker must be doing something really right to have the friends he does and the enemies also. Let’s hope he can help President Trump get his message out and start reversing some of the damage that Carlson has highlighted.
Ken Masugi has a post on resurgent nationalism and uses as a proof that even “reliable liberal E.J. Dionne, … makes apologies on behalf of nationalism.” in an article that Masugi quotes.
Well at least we don’t have to click on Dionne’s post. This tells you that the 2020 Dem candidates will be touting themselves as populists. Hah!
Here’s my retrospective on 2018, completely subjective of course and whenever I can’t make up my mind or I don’t want to leave something out I’ll cheat and provide more than one choice. And that’s one of the wonderful things about being the boss, you get to break the rules and do what you want.
Best Quotes of the Day
Some are political, some philosophical and some just human nature. The order is just chronological of their appearance on the site.
“In the many forms of government which have sprung up there has always been an acknowledgement of justice and proportionate equality, although mankind fail in attaining them, as indeed I have already explained. Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.”
Aristotle
“No state will be well administered unless the middle class holds sway.”
Aristotle
“When there aren’t any smart decisions, I suppose you just have to pick the stupid decision you like best.”
Orson Scott Card
“No one likes the fellow who is all rogue, but we’ll forgive him almost anything if there is warmth of human sympathy underneath his rogueries. The immortal types of comedy are just such men.”
W. C. Fields
“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
H.L. Mencken
Carpe diem! Seize the day! Rejoice while you are alive; enjoy the day; live life to the fullest; make the most of what you have. It is later than you think.
Horace
“And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”
Soren Kierkegaard
If civilization had been left in female hands we would still be living in grass huts.
Over the course of 2018 I read and reviewed all eight of the volumes in the main series (first volume linked above) and they only got better as the series went along. It was good old mil-sci-fi space opera. I assume I won’t live long enough to see the end of the series but so far that isn’t a problem. I look forward to the next installment soon and am in no way tired of this particular universe. Kudos to Anspach and Cole. Long may they stoke their dumpster fire at the Edge of the Galaxy!
Vega is an acquired taste for me and as I’ve written about him, “It’s for those who like gritty crime dramas with a staccato, post-modern, minimalist writing style.” Even though my tastes are a little more conventional I appreciate that there is an audience for the more unusual so I look around for interesting stuff. As I’ve said before, your call.
Non-Fiction
The two books listed below provide two different takes on the way to interpret the results of ancient DNA analysis.
“The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution” by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending
“Who We Are and How We Got Here; Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Past” by David Reich
David Reich being an academic embedded in the politically correct culture of the university system treads ever so gently around the edges of how the science of human genetic history should be interpreted. Cochran and Harpending are much more direct and sometimes possibly presumptuous in the conclusions they draw from the evidence. Both books together tell a fascinating story of how much we now know about the complex and diverse origins of the various human populations.
This is a kids’ movie but it far exceeds any of the other “superhero” movies for just plain entertainment value. I won’t say it was as original as the first installment but it mostly kept to the spirit of the original and provided a fun vehicle for parents (or grandparents) to enjoy a movie with their kids.
This is a twofer. For younger folks I’ll only recommend the new version by the Coen Brothers. For people who grew up on the John Wayne movies of old I recommend they view both movies back to back in chronological order. They each have facets to its advantage. Each differs slightly from the source material. But each is a fine movie. And I’ll also recommend the novel that is the source for the movies. It also has facets that aren’t available in either movie.
Music
Country Music
Album of the Year
Colter Wall by Colter Wall
Song of the Year
Pan Bowl by Sturgill Simpson
My music choices are very idiosyncratic so I won’t try to justify them. To paraphrase a recent annoying politician, they just reflect who I am Pan Bowl is an older song from Simpson’s 2014 album.
TV
The only truly notable television I watched in 2018 was the State of the Union address by the president. Everything else was at best just okay.
On – Line Articles
Here are the articles that I thought were informative on our political situation. There were many others that were intersting but these seem to encapsulate the developments in the political thinking this year. Basically it’s the red-pilling of the normies.
American Museum of Natural History, New York City, Sony NEX 5N, Sony 24mm F\1.8 APSC lensmacrophotography with Sony A7 III, Minolta 200mm f\4 macro lens and extension tubes, long horned beetleMonotropa uniflora, Indian pipe, ghost plant, corpse plant, Sony A7 III with Minolta 200mm f\4 Macro lensSony A7 III with the Sigma MC-11 Adapter and the Sigma 180mm f\2.8 APO Macro EX DG HSM OS for Canon
Professor Gunnar Heinsohn provides a primer on how explosive population growth in moslem middle eastern countries makes employing small groups of American soldiers as peace keepers tantamount to suicide with no possible useful outcome as an offset. Once again Trump is the realistic grown-up in the room.
Roger Kimball has a very nice article on the Wall Funding / Government Shutdown intersection. Remembering the G H W Bush, Read My Lips fail is very instructive. This is could be a decisive moment in the Trump presidency.
Chris Buskirk runs the American Greatness website. Chris is a civic nationalist who believes in restoring the American project. But in his post, he sounds a lot like the folks in the dissident right:
“But the Bushes killed the Reagan legacy and rather than capitalizing on his victories abroad to achieve his goals at home, they instead embraced the social democratic impulse that replaces core human institutions like the family and the church with the government. This was the point at which institutional conservatism lost its way and slowly became a shadow of the progressive Left—following always just a few paces behind wherever it led.”
That line about “following always just a few paces behind wherever it led,” could have been in a post by Vox Day or the Z-Man. To my mind, the information that has been percolating around the dissident right has finally become completely mainstreamed. That is very good news. I tell some of my friends who get discouraged that knowing the truth about the Fake Right is more important news than anything else. The sucker punches we took from the Fake Right did more damage than the direct attacks from the Left. Uniting the people on the right will make us much stronger whereas having false friends among the rich and powerful is an enormous negative.
