A Substack protreptic.
A protreptic is an exhortation.
From the late Latin protrepticus hortatory, encouraging, from Greek protreptikos, from protrepein to turn forward, urge on, from pro- + trepein to turn. (Miriam-Webster)
A Substack protreptic.
A protreptic is an exhortation.
From the late Latin protrepticus hortatory, encouraging, from Greek protreptikos, from protrepein to turn forward, urge on, from pro- + trepein to turn. (Miriam-Webster)
Did you know that Moms for Liberty is a hate group?
At least that’s the view of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left political organization, which is drawing scorn for labeling Moms for Liberty and other parental rights organizations as “extremist organizations,” including them on the same “hate map” as neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan.
Like many SPLC critics, [Vivek] Ramaswamy dismissed the attack as “a farce.”
“The SPLC is a tentacle of the woke-industrial complex,” he told NHJournal. “I’m proud to be the first candidate to sign the Moms for Liberty Parent Pledge. Tomorrow [Thursday, June 8], I’ll be in New Hampshire hosting a Parents Rights Town Hall with my favorite ‘hate group’ (badge of honor).”
Here is what these domestic terrorists and insurrectionists look like. Call me naive, but they strike me as sweet, loving, and lovable suburban mommies who want what is good for their children and have a healthy sense of the difference between good and evil.
Just for fun check out this SPLC Hate Map. It includes a nifty search utility. Look up how much hate is in your state! Fun for the whole family. In Arizona in 2022 there were 39 hate groups, including a chapter of Moms for Liberty in Pima County. Yikes!
The SPLC calls these groups "anti-government groups." The SPLC-ers are the kind of people who think that being FOR limited government is being AGAINST government.
Are you anti-government? I'm not. I'm anti-police state. Can you wrap your head around the difference?
ComBox open. I want your opinion. Is the USA at the present time a police state? Dan Bongino says it is. Agree? Adduce evidence for and against.
Addenda (6/9)
Dan Bongino: The Police State is here.
"You have to understand what's going on," Bongino added. "The timing here is not accidental. Evidence came out today, hard evidence that the president of the United States, while he was Obama's vice president, was involved in the biggest political payoff in human history and a political scandal.
"This is all about making Trump go away and covering up for not just Biden, but covering up for Obama. Remember, Biden was the vice president. If he was paid a bribe for policy decisions, what policy decisions? He can't make them. He was Obama's vice president.
"Everything is about covering up for the Obama-Biden regime. That's all this is. The timing here is not accidental."
Rudy Giuliani: We're a 'Banana Republic,' 'Fascist'
"We have these allegations of massive bribes to Joe Biden," Giuliani said. "I mean, I've seen them. I know them. I've heard them. I've heard them on tape. To me, it's astounding. And the FBI has been investigating these for four years. And done nothing.
"Never did a search warrant. Never interviewed a witness, and now they're taking a document dispute, and trying to make it into a federal crime. I mean, there's no comparison between the $5 million bribe and a document dispute; the $31 million from China and the document dispute.
"It's ridiculous. I mean, we're a banana republic and a fascist country. If we do things like this and let them get away with it."
John Hinderaker: Trump Indictment Watch
The criminal prosecutions of Trump are thin if not entirely baseless, and they obviously are politically motivated. Nevertheless, they illustrate why Trump should not again be president.
Reader J.I.O comments and I basically agree:
No, Mr. Hinderaker. You are writing nonsense and I can prove it to anybody:Turn all that you opine around and ask: "Do you want anyone so weak towards the heat in the kitchen, in the kitchen?" I sure don't.Trump, no if's and's or but's, has the best and best enduring interests of the United States at heart, full speed ahead. And that's best for all the nations of this world as well.Now let's examine a little more the track of 'candidates' along the lines you favor. They're thinking of that brass ring out there so they are NEVER focused on the task at hand.Hence you can count on two things, 1. their work is not their best, or, 2. they fob it off on someone else, so it's not really their work, they sit as a figure head, you know, that statue on the prow of an old sailing ship, a superstitious talisman. To sum up your favored candidates self-screening process: one finger in the wind, one eye looking backwards, the other eye looking WAY down the road at their all-along real goal.
The denial of distinctions is the subversion of thought.
A Substack quickie.
One distinction the wokeassed cannot process is that between hate and dissent. To dissent from what you say is not to hate you. Failure to grasp this simple distinction is predicated on a further failure, that of failing to grasp the distinction between a proposition and a person.
'Wokeass' is appropriate invective because an ass is a donkey and the home of the 'woke' in the USA is the Democrat Party the symbol of which is the jackass. Communists could not win here under the Hammer and Sickle but they are winning under under the sign of the Donkey.
Astride the Jackass at present is a man multiply defective: feeble in body, non compos mentis, morally corrupt to the core, devoid of principle, a traitor in dereliction of duty, and the mere puppet of hidden masters. Our geopolitical adversaries are licking their chops and preparing to pounce.
When you vote Dementocrat you are voting for the suicide of the West.
Did you throw away your useless made-in-China COVID face masks? Yes? Too bad. They now have a use in places like New York City.
If someone is firing a shotgun at you it would be futile to take cover behind a chain link fence. But if you are being pelted by baseballs, the fence would prove barrier enough.
Smoky places unsought are the problem; those sought not so much.
One mistake we sometimes make is to confuse a memory of a decision to do something with a memory of having done it. "I thought I did that! No, my man, you merely thought of doing it."
One morning I wasted time searching for an article I had printed out the day before. But I was searching for a nonexistent object. I hadn't printed it out; I had merely resolved to do so. I confused resolve with result.
Memory, then, is fallible. But it is via memory that we know this. The non-veridical memory of having printed the document is known to be non-veridical by comparison with the veridical memory of having intended to print it. So while fallible, memory is a source of knowledge, and generally reliable, although its powers vary from person to person.
Veridical memory of wholly past events gives the lie to presentism, the view that the present alone exists. For if the present alone exists, then the wholly past does not exist. But what does not exist cannot be known. Given that some memories are veridical, presentism is false.
"So what are you saying, man? That the past is real?"
Here:
Antifa members who showed up outside a public meeting for the Glendale, California school system on Tuesday got beat down by the Armenian parents who showed up to voice their opposition to LGBTQ+ curriculum in the classroom.
Andy Ngo comments:
Local sources tell me it was this use of Armenian colors/symbols mixed with LGBTQI+, pup play pride in the shape of a Christian cross that incensed Armenian-American families in Los Angeles & caused them to mobilize against the school boards.
Historical comparisons are tricky and in any case I'm no historian. Are we in something like a Weimar period? You know what came after that. Or are we in something like the waning days of the imperium romanum? You know what came after that too.
Is there an historian in the house?
One thing is clear: we have a government that gives aid and comfort to anti-civilizational elements. At the head of this government we have a man who is not only morally corrupt personally, but also in dereliction of his constitutional duties. A little south of this entry I quoted David Horowitz on Joe Biden:
He began with a brazen lie that he would unify the country and represent both those who voted for him and those who did not.
Then he issued a series of executive orders that illegally and unconstitutionally nullified our immigration laws, and welcomed a flood of unvetted illegals from 200 countries to invade our country. This was the greatest crime ever committed by our government against its own people.
The fish stinks from the head as the proverb has it, and in this case it stinks to high heaven.
Headline from a fairly high-level conservative publication: RFK Jr. Breaks Down His Stance on 2nd Amendment.
Surely that is bad writing. I don't object to the use of 'breaks down' to mean 'analyze,' although the overuse of the former expression by journalists is becoming tedious and all-too-indicative of what language lemmings they are. But what the headline reports is not analysis but explanation. 'Explains' is the word. Or one of them.
No wonder journalists can't think worth a damn: they can't write worth a damn. The worst, of course, are the leftists. I deprecate them as 'journos.' The conservatives I call 'journalists.' They are a couple of cuts above the journos, but that is not saying much. Neither term is approbative in my book.
The visage of 'Walter' above signals a language rant, so that you may bail if such is not to your taste.
Substack latest. More on David Horowitz.
“Woke” has become a term to describe the enemies of our country who have colonized our schools and taught our next generations to hate America, hate white people and trash our history and national pride. How to explain this travesty? It began fifty years ago when the anti-American, Marxist left set its sights on taking over our schools.
[. . .]
Many of you may have thought that the takeover of our educational system by anti-American Marxists happened overnight. It didn’t. It was five decades in the making. But conservatives and Republicans chose not to notice it. And when they did notice it, they were reluctant to fight.
If you want to understand the disasters that have befallen our country, you have to begin with the failure of Republicans and conservatives to aggressively wage the political war necessary to defend it.
The anti-American left attacks patriotic Americans as “white supremacists,” “racists” “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” And we respond by calling them “liberals.” There is nothing about them that is liberal. They are vindictive bigots, determined to demonize and destroy us.
[. . .]
The Democrat Party is no longer controlled by a liberal left but by Marxist zealots who willfully disregard the Marxist atrocities and failures of the past. Democrats no longer respect the sovereign individual, the rule of law, or the primary values of the Constitution –the equality of races, the spirit of compromise or the decentralization of power.
Instead, Democrats regard the Constitution as a white supremacist document written by rich white slaveowners, designed to oppress all other genders and races. Its mentality is that of European fascism and Soviet communism, and its immediate goal is a one-party state.
{. . .]
January 6th was the date set to certify the electors. On that day Trump gave his famous “Stop the Steal” speech, which has been maliciously described by Democrats as a criminal “incitement to insurrection.” This was absurd on its face, since Trump had offered the Capitol Police and Nancy Pelosi 10,000 national guardsmen to control the crowds. Trump’s offer was duly noted by the Inspector General who attended the meeting. Pelosi and the Democrat-controlled Capitol Police rejected the offer.
[. . .]
Biden’s inauguration was January 20. He began with a brazen lie that he would unify the country and represent both those who voted for him and those who did not.
Then he issued a series of executive orders that illegally and unconstitutionally nullified our immigration laws, and welcomed a flood of unvetted illegals from 200 countries to invade our country. This was the greatest crime ever committed by our government against its own people.
[. . .]
Read it all and propagate it. Do your bit. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Study the many works of David Horowitz to understand the depredations of communism and its latest incarnation as 'wokery.'
Who destroyed the Nova Kakhovka dam?
Mark Tooley. I think one ought to be very skeptical of 'post-liberalism.'
They have this much in common: they don't understand their respective clienteles.
Who drinks Budweiser? Connoisseurs of the brewer's art? No. Different sorts, but mainly country folk, rednecks, Hillary's deplorables, and Barack Hussein Obama's "clingers" to guns and Bibles. So what were the head honchos thinking when they enlisted Dylan Mulvaney to promote their swill? You know, that cute little narcissistic sweetie-pie who wants to grow up to be a girly-girl.
Beats me. Apparently, drinking Bud makes you none the wiser. The 'suits' seemed shocked by the predictable boycott and backlash and have reversed course with an appeal to Harley riders. They should have gone 'whole hog' with an appeal to outlaw bikers.
As for the RCC, I have vented my spleen and blown my stack over at the Stack:
People who take religion seriously tend to be conservatives and traditionalists; they are not change-for-the-sake-of-change leftist utopians out to submerge the Transcendent in the secular. The stupidity of the Vatican II 'reforms,' therefore, consists in estranging its very clientele, the conservatives and traditionalists.
The church should be a 'liberal'-free zone.
This is a re-post from 21 September 2011. I dust it off in dedication to my friend Dr. Vito Caiati, historian and old-school scholar who is excessively worried about typographical errors in his missives to me. He is not alone; he has recently been joined by long-time blogger buddy Tony Flood who shares Vito's worry. I forebear to mention still others. We scholarly types are punctilious, and rightly so; but this here's a blog, and a dedicated blogger maintains a pace that allows for stumbles and falls.
Don't get me wrong: love and respect for our alma mater, our dear mother, the English language, mistress and muse, enabler of our thoughts, demands that we try to avoid errors typographical and otherwise. But let's not obsess over them.
Transmission of sense is the name of the game, and if that has occurred, then communication has taken place.
…………………………..
An old friend from college, who has a Masters in English, regularly sends me stuff like this which I have no trouble understanding:
Continue reading “Why Typos Don’t Matter Much and the Musical Watershed of the ‘Fifties”
The Stoic method of division. At Substack.