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  This illegal policy was almost immediately rescinded, but one has to wonder what kind of idiots signed off on it in the first place.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.

Trump's Persian dance

The question of how the US should respond to Iran’s increasing provocations has two components: strategic and political.

From a strategic perspective, the US holds almost all the cards.  Iran’s economy is collapsing, its people seethe with rebellion and its military might is incapable of causing significant harm to the US homeland.  A series of terrorist strikes would – at – simply enrage the American people to the point of delivering even more devastation on Iran.

The only way Iran can prevail would be to provoke a US ground invasion ala Iraq in 2003.  This is the one option American planners are determined to avoid.

With this option off the table, the Iranians can only resort to constricting oil traffic through the Persian Gulf.  Here again, though, the damage will primarily land on everyone but the United States.

The US is far less dependent on Arab oil than it was only a few years ago.  At the same time, China is much more dependent, thus Iran’s closure of oil traffic would inflict the greatest harm on the strategic rival of Iran’s enemy. 

Even the Mad Mullahs would have to think twice about inflicting more pain on “the enemy of their enemy” than the do on their enemy.

This brings us to the political question.  The Democrats are totally at a loss on this.  Having started disastrous wars in Libya and Syria while achieving nothing but a bloody stalemate in Afghanistan, they’re in no position to play the “give peace a chance” card.

The Obama administration’s rapprochement was also a highly publicized failure.  Americans have an instinctive hatred of paying tribute and the Dems arguing that the US should bend the knee and beg for Iran’s forgiveness is a non-starter.

Yesterday Trump was poised to launch a retaliatory strike, but very publicly claimed to have an 11-th hour change of heart.

This is not – as the Quisling Never Trump Warmongers would have us believe – proof that the president is irresolute.

Far from it, the highly publicized nature of this decision makes it clear that it was a psy-op, designed to scare the Iranians, as well as other potential adversaries.

The Trump strategy team is highly capable and understands the interrelatedness of diplomatic moves.  When the US retreats against Iran, it looks weak everywhere else. 

This is in direct contrast with the neoliberal perspective, which divides each nation or region into a discrete and separate theater of operations.

We saw this early on, when Trump ordered a missile strike on Syria while having dessert with the Chinese Premier.  The president as simply making an object lesson.

That’s exactly what’s going on here.  As the US continues delicate trade negotiations with China, Trump is letting the world know that next time he might push the button all the way down – and blow up their economies in the process.

Thus the Dems are either damning Trump for almost launching a strike while curing the bad luck that he didn’t.

At the same time, they worry that he might undertake a short, successful punitive strike that will boost him in the polls.

This puzzle is particularly problematic for front-runner Slow Joe Biden, who voted for the Iraq War, claimed it was a success, and of course was involved in the Libya and ISIS fiascoes.

This is why Trump held his fire.  He can keep all of his enemies twisting in the wind while still putting the screws to Iran.

The Dems and Neocons screaming “Iran called his bluff!” can easily be shut down by asking how many dead Americans they want to see in this new shiny war they advocate.

Once again, Trump calls the tune and everyone dances.

Oberlin college gets smacked for $44 million in defamation suit

Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.

Folks who haven't been following the case closely  may not know that Ohio's ultra-liberal Oberlin College got in to a bit of hot water when its administration decided to weaponize the students against a local bakery.

Legal Insurrection has provided exhaustive coverage, which I will not bother repeating.  

What's significant is that a liberal-dominated institution did its usual thing: insult and try to destroy honest, hard-working people with an onslaught of lies.  When it failed, they figured they could just walk away.

The jurors disagreed.

For too long the people who style themselves the elites have treated individual reputations like toilet paper - something to be smeared with feces and then flushed away.

Part of the problem is that the US Supreme Court gravely weakened libel law, making it hard for the little guy to defend himself.

All that seems to be changing, and the ruling class has no one to blame but themselves.  Read through the link I gave and ponder the combination of arrogance and incompetence at work here.  These people should be asking if you want a shot of whipped cream on your latte, not boasting of their academic achievement.  It is a mark of the terminal decline of higher education that these people somehow achieved positions of prominence.

I'll be watching the Covington Kids cases with great interest, because here too, the rich and powerful will finally find themselves held to account by the commoners.

 

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.

 

More Christian push-back against Quisling Never Trump theology

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that actual conservatives are getting tired of the useless preening of the Quisling Never Trumper like David French.

The title says it all:  Against David French-ism.

I have to say that the piece is actually too gentle.  It gives French far too much credit for good intentions and the author bends over backwards to say nice things about him.  Naturally French's allies aren't nearly as polite, which is funny since they're always the ones tut-tutting about "civility."

The fact of the matter is that we are engaged in a war not just of ideas, but also over practical things, like whether babies will continue to murdered wholesale for fun and profit.

Hitherto, the left has used every tool at hand, fair or fowl, but social conservatives have handcuffed themselves, insisting that virtue alone will win the day.

It hasn't.

The David French's of the world are content with an unrelenting tale of defeat because they believe that their hands are clean.  The deaths of 60 million infants and the impending mutilation and sterilization of countless confused adolescents is fine with them so long as their hands are "clean."

But they aren't.  The problem with Protestant theology is that it focuses too much on intention and not enough on execution.  When Catholics seek absolution, they do it not just for what they have done, but also for the things they have failed to do.

David French is personally moral.  His values are impeccable.  Military service, adopting children - surely he is one who has earned salvation.  He didn't vote for the awful Trump, nor did he vote for Hillary - therefore he carries no guilt.  

But it is not enough to stand aside and claim non-involvement.  The world is a flawed, messy place and sometimes people of conviction have to put their souls at risk - to do things less than optimal - to prevent a greater evil.  This requires judgement, conviction and especially humility.  One's garment will no longer be spotless, but the cause of right and good sometimes requires a little dirt.

One would think that as a soldier, French would understand this.  But French wasn't a trigger-puller, in fact his job was to prosecute trigger-pullers for their transgressions.  His military service was abstract and antiseptic.  He was only concerned with the law, and his task was to determine the guilt of others.  He was never called on to act in the heat of battle.

I think this explains why he thinks one can wage a war and also remain as pure and clean as the wind-driven snow.

Those of us who live in the ranks and serve on the firing line of the culture war know otherwise.