Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains
For eight decades after the end of World War II, America’s proudest title was “Leader of the Free World.” Today, both on grounds of practical leadership and grasp of what it means to be free, we are yielding the title to Israel.
George Gilder makes the case, and a strong case it is.
The ignorance of this woman is truly astonishing, as this 21 second video shows. Cloud storage is literally in the clouds above us which, by the way, are not physical! But she cares so much, and she is not Trump. Surely these positives outweigh her ignorance of science, engineering, weaponry, history, geopolitics, economics . . . . And anyway, what does a puppet need to know?
We are in extreme danger, worse than that of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Our geopolitical adversaries are licking their chops . . . .
Giving a Latin name to the destruction of the ancient Latin rite smacks of mockery.
Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Born in Chicago
I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
I was born in Chicago in nineteen and forty one
Well my father told me
Son you had better get a gun.
True then, truer now.
And you still be ridin' with Biden? How stupid can you be? How self-destructive? How willfully self-enstupidated? And of course the scourge is not upon Chicago alone but upon every Dem-'controlled' city, county, state, and jurisdiction.
The humorous meme is now a reality: ammo vending machines are coming to stores. That's no joke.
I'm a staunch supporter of 2A rights, but this cannot be a good development. What's next? Ammo sales at drive-through liquor stores? "Would you like a box of ammo to go with your bottle of Hornitos tequila? Today's special is Federal 115 gr FMJ 9 mm hollow point."
To vote Democrat is to vote for more crime and the defunding of professional law enforcement The more crime, the more the burden of personal defense is placed on the citizen. But the average citizen is unlikely to get the proper training and to devote the time needed to become proficient in the use of firearms. The upshot is more accidental negligent discharges. In a well-functioning society, the laws are enforced and the criminal element is kept in check so that the citizen can go about his business without the need to, and the grave responsibility that comes with, 'packing heat.'
And you are still a Democrat? WTF is wrong with you?
Related: Shooting Up Chicago
Anthony Flood thinks so. Here is how his piece begins:
The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.
Four years ago, I stated my grounds . . . .
And now Flood adds to the list:
My list didn’t give sufficient attention to the open southern border of the United States, which is being invaded daily in great numbers, or the explosion of urban crime.
I was not thinking of the resurrection of Nazi-level, genocidalist antisemitism within the walls of the institutions tasked with handing on civilization’s treasures.
I inexcusably paid no attention at all to the moral depravity that acquiesces in (if not celebrates) infanticide and the gender confusion that spits on the revelation of God (Genesis 1:27, 5:2; Matthew 19:4-6) Whom the “perfect stormtroopers” hate because they love death (Proverbs 8:36). Structural instabilities have followed the culture of death as the night the day. (I’ll let others decide if the charge of post hoc, ergo propter hoc is relevant.)
The world-historical figure who may win the general election in 168 days (to which victory I will contribute) may slow the rate of decline and postpone some of its consequences, but he can’t reverse it.
On November 6, 2024, no perfect stormtrooper will say, “Well, you beat us fair and square! Better luck next time!” No, they’re prepared to “accept” such an electoral result the way the PLO famously “accepted” the state of Israel, that is, an enemy to be destroyed and whose people are to be exterminated. Their plans to destroy Western Civ in general and its American outpost in particular will be pursued.
Like Napoleon, Trump may reshape the trajectory of a post-revolutionary era and bevel a few of its sharp edges. In the offing, however, I see no counterrevolution worthy of the name. As I wrote in the cited post:
Call me a secular pessimist (although I’m an eschatological optimist), but I see no liberation in this dispensation, libertarian or otherwise, from those scourges. God will stop the wicked in their tracks:
So shall they [God’s enemies] fear the name of the Lord from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him (Isaiah 59:19).
He’ll lift it. God’s promised government is a future intervention that God, not man, will inaugurate; its blessings will be manifest to all, and delivered directly. “Thy Kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10).
Think you can cheer me up in the short run? Have at it.
Eva Vlaardingerbroek. Under 13 minutes. HT: Dave Bagwill.
Dave adds:
Elon Musk later weighed in on Eva’s remarks.
“The problem with “Great Replacement Theory” is that it fails to address the foundational issue of low birth rates.
Record low birth rates are leading to population collapse in Europe and even faster population collapse in most of Asia. Immigration is low in Asia, so there is no “replacement” going on, the countries are simply shrinking away.
If this doesn’t turn around, then any countries on Earth with low birth rates will become empty of people and fall into ruin, like the remains we see of the many long dead civilizations.”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2024
Eva’s speech already has 36.7 million views in less than 48 hours.
This speech is the reason why the Biden administration and Western elites are so desperate to control speech. They can’t allow the people to have access to free thoughts and differing ideas. Because the elites are leading Western civilization to ruin. It appears that was their plan all along.
Christopher Rufo has her number.
The new CEO of NPR, then, is a left-wing ideologue who supports wide-scale censorship and considers the First Amendment an impediment to her campaign to sanitize the world of wrong opinions.
Maher is no aberration. She is part of a rising cohort of affluent, left-wing, female managers who dominate the departments of university administration, human resources, and DEI. They are the matriarchs of the American Longhouse: they value safety over liberty, censorship over debate, and relativism over truth.
Here, Rufo interviews Larry Sanger about NPR CEO Maher. Excerpt:
Sanger: The fact that she is not immediately hounded out of her job—and she won’t be, I’m sure—shows you how profoundly and how quickly the culture of not just the Internet, but of the United States and the West in general, has changed.
The fact that you had to do some research and surface these videos, that they weren’t immediately caught as smoking-gun evidence of how bad things have gotten, shows you that the attitudes that she expresses are what we expect these days.
Poor Maher! She suffers from both TDS and Truth Decay.
I am just getting warmed up. But I'm sure you've caught the drift by now. Each of these bullet points can be nailed down with numerous references which I have supplied elsewhere in many a post.
It is now your turn to do something in defense of civilization.
Rather than submitting to sensory assault, your time would be better spent quietly preparing in three separate senses I will explain later. I won't be seeing the movie, for reasons given by my Alypius and the Gladiators.
Addendum: Why bother watching a fictional civil war scenario when the first phases of hot civil war are unfolding right before our eyes on the nightly news? We have an advantage over St Augustine: we are able to watch the collapse of civilization on television. The big disadvantage for us is that the collapse may take a nuclear turn.
So what do our pollyannish friends and neighbors do? They piss their lives away gaming, golfing, drinking and dancing, willfully oblivious of danger, feeling no responsibility to preserve the civilization that made it possible for them to live good lives up to this point, and irresponsibly ignoring the obligation to preserve it for future generations.
The worst of this bunch are those who brazenly deny the impending disaster.
Victor Davis Hanson, historian and classicist, can help you understand the gravity of the situation. Can you pay attention for eight and a half minutes?
A successful urologist I know told me that he and his colleagues want to do well by doing good. An excellent formulation, but inapplicable to Joe Biden. He wants to do well whether or not he does good. He wants such trappings and results of worldly success as power and position, money and property, even if he must destroy the country to get them. Good old Traitor Joe, violator of sacred vows, brazen liar, serial plagiarist, slanderer of decent people, threat to the peace and stability of the nation and the world. If you support him, you are as despicable as he is. You might also consider that a vote for him is a vote for Kamala Harris.
You say you don't like Donald Trump? I don't like him that much either. But politics is a practical pursuit. It is not about perfect versus imperfect but about better versus worse. I invite you to give some thought to the question whether you and your family and the nation and the world will be better off with another term of Trump or another of Biden. I invite you, for your own good, to inform yourself and exercise whatever critical faculties you possess.
Should a state university add "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" to its curriculum?
This is an undoubtedly interesting time to be alive. How could anyone be bored?
Should I rename my Academia category, Academentia?
Demented POTUS, demented polity. Madness spreads and the fish stinks from the head.
Update (3:39 pm): More academentia at UCLA medical school. Unbelievable, but you'd better believe it.
Here (HT: Catacomb Joe):
Famed atheist and self-styled intellectual Richard Dawkins shared in a recent interview that he was “horrified” to find that Oxford Street in London had lit up its public signs and displays to celebrate the Muslim fasting period called Ramadan, just days before Easter Sunday. “I have to choose my words carefully: If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I’d choose Christianity every single time,” Dawkins declared, expressing concern over the thousands of Muslim mosques being constructed across the U.K. He added, “It seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion, in a way that I think Islam is not.”
I hope to say more about this later. Now I have to prepare for a meeting with Brian the Calvinist. First lunch and casual conversation about the events of the day and the latest outrages of the depredatory Left, then intense philosophical conversation about Jesus and the Powers, a stimulating albeit flawed book, and finally two or so hours of battling over the 64 squares.
That's the kind of socializing I like. Otherwise, solitude rules.
That's right, Catatonia.
Are things really this bad, or does the author exaggerate?
The former comments on the latter's recent speech. Dreher:
It is so very, very, very difficult to wake up people to what is happening, what has been happening, and what is probably going to happen. I have experienced in my personal life how the Everything’s Fine™ mentality can destroy everything, and I see it everywhere in our culture and society.
Quite so. People need to wake up. Wake up and 'woke' down.
It's astonishing how fast we are collapsing. Second Amendment rights for illegal aliens? Elimination of the bar exam in Oregon and other states?
My Substack article, The Conservative Disadvantage, is relevant.
