Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

  • Populism Reload: An Interview with Steven K. Bannon

    Steve Bannon talks sense. See if you don't agree: 

    Mark Granza: Let’s talk about the “Deep State“. The term is widely used by people on the Right to describe the network of bureaucrats and organizations secretly running the country behind the scenes. Is this in your experience an accurate description of what’s going on in Washington?

    Steve Bannon: I think the nomenclature is important to get right. I would rather call it the “administrative state”, which is really a fourth branch of government never intended by the founders and, quite frankly, the American people. The Administrative State’s purpose, and really the Progressive Left, is to take over all functions of government through these agencies. Up until now they could issue their own regulations and laws, and now they control even their own law enforcement, whether it’s 87,000 IRS agents or these jackbooted FBI or the EPA, with armed security and guards. So our big focus should be its deconstruction. It needs to be taken apart brick by brick. You saw how out of control this was with the CDC and FDA when the pandemic hit, with Tony Fauci as the face of the administrative state that ruled without permission to be questioned. And it’s not that we don’t need an FDA or CDC, but they definitely have to be heavily repurposed. I would say the national security and the intelligence apparatus and part of the legal one are what we would more traditionally think of as a “deep state”, probably best personified in the first Trump impeachment. If you remember all that kind of fetish about the interagency process and the sacramental nature of the way those things should work when Trump was President, that was really the Deep State saying that Trump was unacceptable because deeply he did not believe in those processes. He did not believe in their function, nor their policies.

    You can tell this now with Ukraine, these groups have their own goals. It has captured the American national security and foreign policy apparatus, and it needs to be defeated. They don’t believe in the Constitution, they don’t believe that a commander in chief should be able to make his own decisions. You know, I’ve advocated from day one that we need another Church Committee. In the 1970s, after Watergate, after Vietnam, after the assassinations and all the turmoil in the streets, it was determined that the FBI and the CIA had crossed the boundaries of what their mandates were on both surveillance of Americans, infiltration of groups, and all of their tasks really. And so you had the Church Committee set the modern structure for the FBI and CIA as a consequence. But I think that’s been blurred over time. You clearly still have a lot of nefarious activity going on and a lot of stuff that needs to be reviewed. I think we need to get back to that; a total revamping, rethinking and rejuvenation of these apparatuses, whether it’s the NSA, CIA, FBI, DOJ, the military or the armed forces. I’ve spent eight years as a naval officer. My daughter went to West Point. She was with the 101st Airborne Division and deployed to Iraq. So we are all big patriots and huge believers in serving in the military. But things have gone way off track and we definitely need to, not just take a hard look, but have massive reform at those levels.


  • Slavery, Abortion, and ‘Skin in the Game’

    Substack latest.


  • The ‘Equity’ President

    'Equity' is wokespeak for equality of outcome without regard for merit or qualifications. In Joe Biden, the demented have finally a representative at the highest level of government in the greatest nation the world has ever seen. Who can deny that this is progress? To question it would be discriminatory and ableist.


  • A Reason for Reserve

    The less I know of you, the more highly I can think of you.


  • The Melting Pot

    A melting pot can't do its job if unmeltable ingredients are thrown into it.


  • Takes a Lifetime

    It takes a lifetime to get used to a world one must soon quit.


  • Dreher on Douthat on the Curse of Vatican II

    Excellent. And here is the internal reference to Peter Hitchens. 


  • Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour

    Episode Thirty Two: Moon.  The harvest moon is big and bright these October nights.  

    Informed commentary by a lover of and major contributor to musical Americana. Hear how much you've missed and how much young Bobby Zimmerman sopped up through long and cold Hibbing nights listening to the radio.

    Around 50:00 Dylan commences reading  the Slim Gaillard passage from Kerouac's On the Road and then cues up a Gaillard number.


  • Another Reason to Limit Socializing

    Avoid unnecessary socializing lest you inadvertently reveal what it would be imprudent to reveal. As we sink into a Sino-style surveillance state, it is probably best for most of you, especially the young, to lay low and go gray. I've made mine so I run less of a risk in speaking my mind. The little civil courage I display I cannot in good conscience demand of others who are not as well-positioned and have much more to lose. 

     


  • Why Tulsi Gabbard is Leaving the Democrat Party and Why You Should Too

    Here at Substack. HT: Anthony Flood. Full text follows. Please propagate. Do your bit to restore some sanity to this country and to the world. 

    Why I'm leaving the Democratic Party

     

    I love our country. Our God-given rights of freedom, life, and liberty enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights are my inspiration. I answered the call to duty and took an oath, dedicating my life to supporting and defending those freedoms, both in uniform and in public office.

    Growing up in Hawaii gave me a special appreciation of our home, water, and precious natural resources.  So when I was 21 years old I decided to run for Hawaii State House so that I could be in a position to protect our environment.  I wasn’t politically affiliated before that, but as I was about to file my election papers, I had to choose which party to affiliate with. 

    As I did my research, I was inspired by Democrats who stood up against the war in Vietnam, and those who fought for Hawaii’s plantation workers who were being abused and exploited by wealthy landowners. I was inspired by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy and drawn to the ideals of a big-tent Democratic Party that stood up for working men and women — the little guy.  In contrast, the Republican Party seemed like one that stood for the interests of big business and warmongering elites.  So I became a Democrat and remained one for over 20 years — an independent Democrat to be sure, but a Democrat nonetheless. 

    I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution, are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonize the police and protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.

    Here are some of the main reasons I’m leaving the Democratic Party, in brief. I’ll be tackling each of these in more depth in the coming weeks.

    (more…)


  • Negativity: The Spirit of the Left

    Substack latest.

    The spirit of the Left is the spirit of negativity. Any intellectually honest person following current events can see that the tendency of leftists is mindlessly to destroy for the sake of destruction what it has taken centuries to build. Transgressive of tradition and its wisdom, these 'progressives' are both hobbled and enabled by their presentism. Hobbled, because they know nothing of the past. Enabled, because their ignorance allows them to imagine themselves to be free of the moral limitations of humanity. Punks and know-nothings for the most part, they are unwitting agents of the demonic.


  • Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice

    Before you even think of getting married, make sure you have plenty of money.

    Then shop around.

    Consider who will become your mother-in-law.

    If you want to be happy,  don't worry too much about physical beauty. 

    If she has a cheatin' heart, hit the road, Jack.

    But then again you might be better off without a wife.

    ………………………..

    Bonus cut: Lauro Nyro, Wedding Bell Blues


  • Leftist Omni-Politicization

    For the Left, everything is either political or to be politicized, including that which is non-political. Take this to its logical extreme and you end up with 'woke' mathematics. This reductio ad absurdum will cause a sane person to reject the premise. The sane will point out that some things, by their very nature, cannot be politicized. There is nothing political about the Poisson distribution or Rolle's theorem.
     
    Will the leftist back off? Hell no, he will deny that anything has a nature, and affirm that everything is subject to social construction. For example, a typical leftist will state that a conservative black is a traitor to his race. Now that makes no sense. 'Traitor' is a political notion; 'race' is not. Race is not like political affiliation. You can quit your party, and if you are a Democrat you should; you can't, however, quit your race. Not even Rachel Dolezal could pull it off.
     
    Being a leftist, however, means that you don't have to make sense. Herewith, a case of 'leftist privilege,' to give it a name.
     
    You say you've forgotten who Rachel Dolezal is is? Too much Twitter! A weapon of mass distraction. Soon you'll be a tweeting twit with a mind fit only to flit.  The Left is all about the erasure of memory, collective and individual, except for what serves their agenda. To refresh your memory, see Rachel Dolezal, The Black White Woman.
     
    I make a mistake at the end that I will now correct. I represent Elizabeth Warren as the author of Pow Wow Chow when in fact she is merely a contributor to that by-now-famous recipe book. Her contribution, however, a recipe for lobster bisque — Cherokees were into haute cuisine? — was plagiarized!

  • Maxims and Meta-Maxims

    1) Live now: resist the tendency to bring the past into the present.

    2) Beware of viewing yourself through the belittling eyes of others.

    3) Avoid negative and weakening thoughts.

    4) Avoid comparisons with others.

    5) Keep socializing to the minimum necessary to maintain one's sanity and humanity.

    6) Do not associate with those beneath you except as duty and necessity require.

    7) Guard the mind, the tongue, the heart.

    8) Abide in the here, the now, the self.

    9) Aspire.

    10 Strive and persevere.

    11) Begin the day with a review of these and other maxims.

    12) Maxims ought to be part of one's 'everyday carry.' Don't leave home without them.

    13) Age quod agis!

    14) Indulgence weakens; resistance strengthens.

    15) Coin new maxims.

    16) Carpe diem et noctem! 


  • A Reason to Live Long

    There is work to be done, and it may be that it can only be done here. It may be that at death soul-making stops and one is stuck at the moral, intellectual, and spiritual level one has attained in the precincts of the sublunary. This could prove problematic if one survives one's bodily death.  Are you sure that you don't? 



Latest Comments


  1. It’s unbelievable that people who work with the law are among the ranks of the most sophists, demagogues, and irrational…

  2. https://www.thefp.com/p/charles-fain-lehman-dont-tolerate-disorder-charlie-kirk-iryna-zarutska?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

  3. Hey Bill, Got it now, thanks for clarifying. I hope you have a nice Sunday. May God bless you!

  4. Vini, Good comments. Your command of the English language is impressive. In my penultimate paragraph I wrote, “Hence their hatred…

  5. Just a little correction, since I wrote somewhat hastily. I meant to say enemies of the truth (not from the…

  6. You touched on very, very important points, Bill. First, I agree that people nowadays simply want to believe whatever the…

  7. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/peace-has-been-murdered-and-dialogue?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=841240&post_id=173321322&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1dw7zg&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email



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