Posse Incitatus

The "Cold Civil War" gets warmer

I've noted before that societies do not descend into civil war all at once.  Rather it is a gradual, uneven process the moves by fits and starts, sometimes reversing, but never long enough to stop its downward spiral.

The past few weeks have given us a number of examples that future generations might call "milestones to war."

• The savage beating of journalist Andy Ngo in broad daylight in full view of the police.  Liberal apologists for the Antifa Stosstruppen are trying to claim that he's a conservative provocateur, but in fact his politics are firmly on the left - he just likes following a good story.
• Facebook's revised policy on death threats, which forbade them - except in cases where they were issued against people the management didn't like.  This illegal policy was almost immediately rescinded, but one has to wonder what kind of idiots signed off on it in the first place.
• The spectacle of CNN/Playboy "Journalist" Brian Karem taunting attendees at a White House event and then challenging Sebastian Gorka to a fight in full view of the press - and then lying about it afterwards.  It wasn't exactly an attack on the Senate floor, but it was close.  Also indicative - mainstream press lied about what happened, choosing an edited version of the tape with Karem's taunting and challenge omitted.
• The growing public knowledge of Jeffrey Epstein's predations, which happened in plain sight of the Ruling Class for years - and the fact that despite his conviction, they continued to party and socialize with him.
• The Democrat Party's full embrace of erasing US borders and it's open preference for non-citizens. 
• The US "National" Women's Soccer Team openly insulting the National Anthem and trampling the flag during one of their tasteless celebrations.

I could go on, but the sum total of each of these events is to destroy the social contract that holds the nation together.  If citizenship is meaningless and the "national team" feels it can insult the nation's symbols with impunity, what's left?

It's clear that the Democrats have no grand design or carefully crafted plan once they gain control, just a series of anti-American impulses to destroy our institutions.  When 50 million Central Americans enter the country, they have no idea how they will govern it and this doesn't seem to bother them.

It's interesting to see how much this insanity is radicalizing the center.  I've watched with great interest as otherwise moderate or non-political entities and publications have changed their tone. 

Sohrab Amadi's famous essay has struck a nerve and I'm noticing a change in both attitude and behavior among Kurt Schlichter's "normals."  No longer is there an easy-going sense that this will all blow over, or that cooler heads on the left will rein in the crazies.  Instead there is a defiance, a stridency on the part of the center that wasn't there a year ago.

It comes from a simple realization:  They really do hate us.

I don't think the left is capable of understanding where this will go, but it won't be pleasant for anyone.

Perot and Epstein

I've been taking a sabbatical from blogging over the holiday, and what strange news is waiting for me when I return!

The sudden resurrection of the Curious Case of Jeffrey Epstein has the Ruling Class shaking with fear.  Reporters who diligently looked the other way for years are suddenly shouting "Oh yeah, we knew all that and more!"

As if that's something to be proud of.

In the midst of this fluid situation, H. Ross Perot, billionaire, failed presidential contender and sage had passed away.  I'll leave others to do him the full honors, but it's now clear that Perot was correct in many ways about NAFTA and the problems facing the country, he simply lacked the charisma and political savvy to outwit The Swamp.

Perot was doing reasonably well, but then torpedoed his campaign by dropping out and getting back in - citing evil doings of the Bush family as his reason.  At the time he was widely mocked, and rightfully so.

Perot's flip-flop was not a sign that he would be a stable leader in a crisis.  His subsequent campaign seemed more of an exercise in vanity than anything else.

But with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that the Bush family was - in its own way - just as corrupt as the Clintons.  The Bush campaign used espionage against its opponents and George H.W. Bush carried on a sordid affair under the very nose of his wife, who was driven to the bring of suicide by his callousness towards her.

In a different time and place, I'd marvel that George W. Bush's administration would go easy on a Clinton crony, but it's clear that the Great Families of Bush and Clinton were able to reach a concordat on this and several other issues.

If Perot was the meteor preceding Trump, Epstein could well be the cleansing fire that follows his arrival.

In Defense of Marianne Williamson

A lot of conservatives are picking apart the aphorisms of Democrat presidential hopeful Marianne Williamson and though I initially joined in the laughter, I've since come to conclude that it's poor form.

Whether you like self-help gurus or not, a lot of what she says is good to hear and worth repeating.

It's interesting that the Catholic Conservatives on Twitter are frantically retweeting many of her items about God and spirituality (particularly forgiveness) and they seem to be doing it in an unironic way, adding positive commentary.

Of course, there's also a little fun going on here, since I'm sure she considers traditionalist right-to-lifers to be her mortal...adversaries, or something.  Maybe enemies.  She doesn't like Trump, that's for sure.

At any rate, her qualities as a motivator may be debatable but her qualifications for executive power are not.  There is no indication that her skillset is suitable to navigate the twisted Machiavellian world of international relations. 

The funny thing is I think Trump could charm the socks off her.  A debate between them would simply be him admitting that all the things she thinks are correct and that he too wants a better world. 

Contra the Quisling Never Trumpers, one of the things that attracts evangelical and other Christians to Trump is his lack of pretension regarding morality.  He doesn't judge and doesn't claim to be holier than anyone else.  He seems genuinely in awe of observant religious people.

He's also the first president in decades to take the Right to Life movement seriously and speak openly about what abortion is in practical terms.  He's taken concrete action as well to defend religious freedoms, which cannot be overlooked.

We may admire saints, but they do not always make the best practical leaders.  Gandhi was a very spiritual man (albeit with a number of seldom-discussed oddities) but in terms of politics, he was a disaster and the party he led became a sink of crony corruption.

A less spiritually enlightened man might have served India (and Pakistan and Bangladesh) much better.

Trump visits North Korea

The critics will say the meeting was only symbolic, but that's the point.

Symbols exist because they mean something.  The left is obsessed with symbolism and much of their time seems consumed with inventing honors to bestow on one another.  Actual positive results?

Not so much.

Where this goes, no one can say, but it's clear that Trump is driving a wedge between North Korea and China.  As in so many other areas, he's refused to play the game he was offered because doing so was a sucker's bet.  Instead he's flipped the table and is doing his own thing.

Just as with the debate over immigrant, tariffs and abortion, Trump refuses to accept the old rules where conservatives play the role of noble losers while the Democrats stack the deck at every turn.

I don't even need to look, but I'm sure Max  Boot, Bill Kristol and the rest of the neocon warmongers are besides themselves with rage.  Why Trump is giving away the farm!  Kim doesn't deserve this level of respect!

Of course if Trump was full of bluster and following the same failed policies they touted for decades, they'd be insisting he was a madman bent on starting World War III, so there's a reason why such people are properly ignored.

In terms of the event itself, there is an upper limit to "firsts" in terms of breakthrough diplomacy.  On the one hand, this may all play out and stall, leaving no real change.  This is the risk Trump is running.

But the potential gain is considerable.  North Korea is built on a cult of personality.  Without the reverential awe the Kim family holds, all the security forces in the world would be useless.  He can only shake hands and embrace so many times before his people violently try to take the peaceful payoff he's dangling before them.

This might have been part of the discussion he had with his Chinese masters: put simply, he can't hold on indefinitely.  Unless China's willing to put aside the fiction of independence and send thousands of troops into to reinforce Kim's rule, there will eventually be an uprising by people tired of starving and willing to risk death for the prosperity they've been assured is already on the way.

That's the thing.  Rebellions rarely happen when things are getting worse; it's usually because there is an immediate hope that things can get better.  Seeing their leader greet the American leader and promise peace is like dangling the carrot before the proverbial mule.  It buys time for a while, but eventually the animal will need to eat.

I expect things to continue to move incrementally, lest the North Koreans lose control.  That's why there is this start-stop dynamic.  No one wants to see a border rush ala Germany.

In any event, we are witnessing historic events, even if the media would rather focus on weirdos claiming a non-rape rape in a dressing room a quarter century ago.

The Conservative Counter-Reformation

The intra-conservative debate over David French-ism has abated.  If anything, the anti-French-ist forces are building newer and more powerful arguments to assert their position.

These are moving beyond the realm of tactics and into the weeds of the entire philosophical basis of conservatism and the fundamental weakness at the core of classical liberalism.

In a nutshell, liberalism has failed because it places individual autonomy at the highest plane, making moral considerations secondary at best.

Thus, David French's claim that "sincere religious belief" has to be respect must necessarily collapse when said religion hurts someone else's feelings.  Their "right" to be free of offense supersedes someone else's "right to hate."

Indeed, we're seeing this argument already being deployed by the left.  Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel recently said that religious beliefs cannot justify "hate," and of course she's the one who gets to decide which beliefs are acceptable.

In a sense, this debate somewhat mirrors the old Catholic vs Protestant split, with non-conformists being deeply distrustful of state power and therefore blind to discrimination by non-state actors.

Senator Josh Hawley's bill requiring online platforms to be certified as non-discriminatory as a condition for legal immunity from defamation lawsuits is a great example of this split.  The French-ist wing claims that the left will abuse this regulatory authority should they gain power - ignoring that the left already has de facto power over the marketplace.

The left can also (and has) twisted its regulatory power without provocation, so they don't require a precedent in order to abuse their authority.

It is an open question on how much of this debate is really corporate shills earning paychecks to defend their sugar daddies.  Jonah Goldberg in particular seems to argue almost entirely from a dishonest position and seems to spend his time picking - and losing - Twitter fights with actual conservatives. 

Tellingly, he's the first to make personal attacks and when they are reciprocated, runs around asking for backup against his target.  Amusingly, the reinforcements almost always accrue to whoever he's fighting.

The social conservative rebellion

Sohrab Ahmari’s frontal assault on David French seems to have been the spark that lit the powderkeg.  The pile-on from the right is reaching epic proportions.

The newly rebooted Human Events has taken up the sword, hacking away at David French-ism in general and National Review in particular.

Over at American Greatness, Julie Kelly came flying off the top rope to pin French to the mat, while her colleague Matthew Boose metaphorically swatted the stunned Pharisee with a folding chair when he tried to get up.

The response of French and his acolytes is both predictable and revealing.

Naturally, French doubled-down on his virtue, and his followers were quick to remind everyone of the things they already knew (because he keeps bringing it up) about his family life and military service.  This was the predictable part.

What was revealing was that French also began playing the “beware a Christian theocracy” card, which is a staple of the liberal left, even as it makes nuns pay for birth control and persecutes Christian bakers and florists.

Since French was making a liberal argument, naturally the liberals have applauded and the usual suspects who normally bash National Review and French are now portraying them as the “good guys” and the “reasonable” wing of the conservative movement.

So far, this is little more than a catfight among the swamp creatures who dwell inside the beltway, but out in the hinterland, something else happened.

For the first time I can recall, a Catholic bishop has formally denied Holy Communion to nominally Catholic politicians for their voting record.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield put out a public statement that the President of the Illinois Senate and the state Speaker of the House (both Democrats, naturally) were barred from Communion because of their support for legislation legalizing virtually all abortion up to the moment of birth.  The Bishop also included any other nominal Catholic politicians in his diocese who voted for the vile measures.

This hard line against “cafeteria Catholics” is a long time coming and demonstrates that the frustration of Ahmari is not unique.  For decades Catholics have tolerated politicians who profess to share their faith and then vote to undermine and persecute it at every opportunity.

All of these events make clear that social conservatives are tired of being used by the corporatist liberals who run Conservatism, Inc. 

For decades the “social liberal but fiscal conservative” recipe has been pitched as the key to a successful GOP majority.  It has failed utterly.

I think a crucial step in cracking this coalition was the failure of the GOP leadership to defund Planned Parenthood when Republicans controlled both branches of Congress and the presidency.  This was an easy thing to do, and – given the horrible news that Planned Parenthood made money selling off baby parts – utterly defensible.

But instead Congress could only rouse itself for corporate tax cuts.  Actually keeping its pledge to the Right to Life movement was too much to ask.

These people may have claimed to support conservative positions, but they were always liberals at heart.

How else to explain their sudden eagerness to hop in board the gay marriage bandwagon?  It’s telling that Ahmari’s example of degeneracy (a drag queen reading to young children) draw such a vehement defense from French, who insisted that really, there was nothing to be done to stop it other than ask nicely.

I’ve been using the phrase Quisling Never Trumper for a while now, but it’s clear the treason goes well beyond the advent of the Trumpening.  These people kept losing not because they were too principled to fight, but because they secretly internalized all of the lies of the left.

They were always liberals.

And now they've been revealed.  The super-religiousity was a blind to dupe their fellow Christians into confusing "nice" with "faith."

For example, early on, Ahmari was asked if he "loved his enemies" in regards to the liberal left.

You see, if he didn't, he was a hypocrite and UnChristian.

Note that no one asks David French if he loves Donald Trump.  Mr. Super-Christian can dump hate on him all day long and that's okay because it's righteous, liberal hate.

At any rate, the curtain has now been pulled aside and social conservatives are acting accordingly.

Right on cue: Salesforce moves against firearms retailers

The core problem with the David French Quisling Never Turmpers is that they refuse to acknowledge what is going on:  we are in a war.  It is not a war we wanted, but is a war we must fight and win.

Trying to adhere to the old rules and hope that by presenting an example of civility and decorum we will motivate our enemies to a higher morality is a path to sure defeat.

A cynic might observe that the David French faction is fine with that.  They already serve as the controlled opposition and will have to do so indefinitely.

But those who actually take their rights and beliefs seriously cannot accept such a state of dependent servitude.

Salesforce's move against gun retailers is the latest example.  In a truly free marketplace, Salesforces' decision to bar its clients from selling certain items would cause it to look marketshare.  Other competitors would move in and their revenue would suffer.

But we no longer have a free marketplace.  In each tech sector, monopolists or oligarchs openly band together to crush the competition and limit customer choice.

And the David French faction praises them for this.  Government intervention would be the cure that is worse than the disease to these useless, self-righteous tools.

But that is a proper exercise of government.  These are unelected and increasingly unaccountable private entities that use their market power to restrict trade and limit the civil rights of others.  

Now one might ponder the irony of the left deciding that government by vulture capitalists is now suddenly a good thing, but the left has never let consistency or morality get in the way of what it wants.

The David Frenchists would have us believe that to effectively fight back with the tools at our disposal - specifically government regulation and anti-trust actions - would make us no better than our enemies.

This is of course utterly wrong - those laws are in place for precisely this purpose.  Their use is essential to maintaining the liberty that the David Frenchists insist is their lodestar.

What makes this even more hilarious is that French was once a soldier (a fact he reminds us of all the time) and as such, he should be fine with the concept of returning incoming fire.  Of course he didn't serve in a combat arm - in fact his job with to nitpick the soldiers doing the actual fighting.   It's interesting that Kurt Schlichter, who was a real no-kidding line officer - is on the opposite side of this issue with French.  That's because French knows nothing about how to win a war, only a court case where the rules are strictly enforced for both sides.

Schlichter knows that the battlefield isn't a courtroom, and the enemy will constantly create new weapons and tactics.  Battles aren't supposed to be fair.  In fact, the more lop-sided they are (for your side) the better.

The left is fully exploiting this.  They are changing the rules on the fly and refuse to accept that any ground is neutral.  People who believe the personal is political have no regard for anything.  Appealing to the humanity of ghouls who demand the "right" to kill children at the moment of birth and happily call for the murder of high school students wearing red hats cannot be reasoned with or placated.  

They aren't even interested in converts, they want their enemies destroyed.

This is why David Frenchism must be declared anathema.  It is a Fifth Column, sapping our resources and will to resist.

 

The Democrat panic over declassification

Being a Democrat means never having to say your sorry.

It's funny how the same people who were demanding that grand jury testimony be (illegally) made public are now in a lather over Attorney General Robert Barr obtaining full declassification authority from President Trump.

Which is it, Dems, do you want the truth or not?

Old and busted:  "WE NEED ALL THE THINGS MADE PUBLIC!!!"

New hotness:  "NATIONAL SECURITY SOURCES AND METHODS!!!  KEEP IT ALL SECRET!1!"

The current Dem drive for impeachment can best be understood as a spoiling attack to muddy the waters.  It may get some headlines, but ultimately it will fail because the votes simply aren't there and criminal convictions speak louder than spin.

And that's what worries them.  Barr is a seasoned, shrewd lawyer.  He's going to build air-tight cases that likely won't even need to be prosecuted.

As I've noted before, there is zero loyalty in the modern Democrat machinery.  None of these people are going to jail to cover for someone else.  The public finger-pointing between James Comey and John Brennan is merely a glimpse of the deal-making going on in private.

I'm not one of those demanding life imprisonment for those involved.   It's not necessary.  Even a couple of months in prison will spell personal and professional ruin for these people.  They are lifelong bureaucrats with no other skills.  Having their security clearance pulled and a felony in their record will wreck them.

That's why they are desperate to cut a deal - and so shrill in their attempts to change the subject.

May finally out - UK's worst prime minister ever?

Theresa May has finally announced her resignation, ending one of the most sordid and disgraceful governments in British history.

I say this as a student of UK government.  When people think of awful prime ministers, Neville Chamberlain frequently comes to mind, but while Chamberlain's foreign policy was disastrous, he didn't undermine the core values and rights of the British people.

May has done exactly that.  Her nominally "conservative" government has turned a blind eye to rape gangs, stood helplessly as violent crime has surged and instead wastes police resources on censoring people's social media accounts.

Her political prosecution of Tommy Robinson is a national disgrace to the Sceptered Isle.

Electorally, he's wrecked her party and undermined public faith in the government itself.  She lied about holding a snap-election and then lost it.  She lied about implementing Brexit and then lied about its timetable.  

The Tories have lost their way and Nigel Farage's Brexit Party may be the only hope to rebuild British liberty.  

Set against these follies, Chamberlain looks pretty good by comparison.  When he reluctantly stepped aside, his successor faced a dire strategic situation, but at least could look with hope and confidence at the core institutions and society of the United Kingdom.  May's successor won't have that luxury.  Virtually every institution stands discredited.

Good riddens.

BONUS ANGLE:  Her ouster will likely free Donald Trump of any reluctance to expose British involvement in Spygate, particularly collusion between CIA and CGHQ.  I can't help but wonder if Trump's declassification order might have been a factor.

The progressive pharisees of National Review

It’s pretty well established that much of the left substitutes politics for religion.  What they lack in faith they make up for in ideology, which is why someone who disagrees with them on an issue is not merely wrong but objectively evil.

A leftist who urges a policy change flirts with heresy.

All of this has been true for a long time.

What is not as well known is that a certain brand of conservative has likewise substituted religion for politics.  Just as leftists see policy preferences as a path of secular salvation, these conservatives see religious preferences as a path of policy guidance – and people who disagree are (as in the above example) not merely wrong but objectively evil.

Similarly, those on their own side who don’t share their beliefs are heretics to be chastised and burned, not reasoned with.

I was too busy last week to write about this, but National Review-sponsored Quisling Never Trumper David French (and his wife) have been on a roll lately, denouncing their nominal political allies and co-religionists for supporting Donald Trump instead of (wait for it) Mitt Romney, that paragon of defeatist virtue.

The increasingly indispensable American Greatness has an excellent summary and rejoinder to French and his fellow Calvinist scolds (no really, French has used John Calvin as his Twitter avatar – no pretension there!) by Chris Buskirk.  It’s very much worth a read, but Buskirk misses the essential basis for French’s argument, which is that actual results are immaterial, what is important is the purity of one’s beliefs.

This is the mirror image of the left’s obsession with virtue-signaling.  For example, the left doesn’t care if gun control works, it is a moral imperative – or as they like to say: “Who we are.”

The same goes for open borders, tolerating violence (and excrement) on the street, and dozens of other policies that harm the people they are supposed to save.

Again, this has long been known, but it’s not until now that I realized why the Quisling Never Trumpers are equally indifferent to the suffering of the people they are supposed to be helping.  This is why Kevin Williamson’s infamous response to rural decline was to tell people to learn to code, or give up their good-paying manufacturing or mining job to be a greeter at Wal Mart.

Williamson’s callousness is essential to his moral conception of himself because virtue-signaling is all that matters.  Just like Hillary, the Never Trumpers regard the working classes as “deplorable,” whose individual well-being is less important than their salvation through suffering.

Another similarity between the FredoCons and their erstwhile enemies is their use of identity politics. 

Just as a progressive has to list all their qualifiers (gay, trans, ethnic, sexual) before speaking, David French likes to remind everyone that he’s an “Iraq War veteran” and that one of his three children was adopted.

Frankly, I think it’s pretty low to run around bragging about an adopted child as if it’s a trophy or resume item.  I’ve also noted many times that French was no Audie Murphy – he served as a lawyer, not an actual soldier.  (Indeed, JAG officers don’t even have to go through basic training.)

Now a cynic might also note that like his progressive counterparts, French figures he personally will never suffer hardship for his policies.  That’s for the impure.

One might further note that someone is paying French and his co-religionists a lot of money to hector their erstwhile allies.  Again, like progressivism it is a grift, but one that makes the recipients feel good about themselves.

Certainly Jonah Goldberg has been banging this drum for three years, demanding that people name Trump’s virtues and then ignoring the answers.  There’s a point where this repetition crosses the line from willfully obtuse to simply cashing a paycheck for hectoring religious people.

Perhaps the biggest indictment I can levy against these would-be pharisees is the fact that for all their moral sermonizing, they’re not only comfortable with putting far worse sinners in charge, but have zero problem spreading lies and slanders of their own in pursuit of the cause.

None of these people hesitated at all to spread the obviously fake dossier and they spent years passing taking hits from the same RUSSIA conspiracy bong that the Democrats were hitting so heavily.