Ripostes

Two very different men travel very different roads to arrive at the same place- recognition of the war right-thinking folk are caught up in whether they like it or not. First, I present John C. Wright, probably one of the best scifi/fantasy writers to come along in my lifetime, talking about Thanksgiving and giving thanks-

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for three reasons: first, it drives the Leftists crazy because it is a clearly and openly Christian holiday in the midst of a society they are fervidly attempting to dechristianize; second, it drives Leftists crazy because it is a holiday based on a historical fact, namely, Indian and Pilgrim cooperation, which flips the middle finger at the Leftist preferred narrative about non-civilized White men committing malign genocide on the non-savage Red men; and finally and most of all, it drives the Leftists crazy because the concept of being thankful, of feeling gratitude, of thanks for benefits never to be repaid, is utterly alien to their way of thinking and their way of life.What do you think?

One benefit that accrues to the Christian, even if all of history, logic, and revelation should turn out to be false, and God a myth no more real than Global Warming, nonetheless, is that we Christian men feel gratitude toward our Creator for the infinite gift of creation. A noble pagan can indeed receive a gift in his stockings at Christmas, and be grateful to the giver, but a Christian can feel grateful for the legs he puts into his stockings each morning, and the world on which he walks.1

The Left does not give thanks, not to anyone, human or divine, past or present, not for any reason.

Then there is Milo Yiannopoulos, a colorful Brit who writes on gamers and the gaming industry, specifically a kerfuffle called #gamergate, but which actually has ramifications far beyond computer games into the basic cultural divide that has grown up in the Anglosphere-

If you are a controversial public figure, you are going to receive threats. I am one; I do. Jack Thompson received death and rape threats on a regular basis. Prominent atheists constantly receive threats. Well-known YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who isn’t overtly political, says he receives them on a monthly basis. Most of these threats aren’t serious, and the FBI has confirmed there was never any serious danger to Sarkeesian in Utah: in fact, she chose to cancel her talk to make a political statement about that state’s concealed carry laws.
The response of most people, famous or otherwise, is to ignore trolls. They are just words on the internet. People like Sarkeesian, who drone on constantly about online harassment, aren’t doing so because they really feel threatened. If that were the case, they wouldn’t, as Brianna Wu did, advertise their precise location less than 48 hours after receiving a death threat. They are doing so because they have an agenda.
Whenever feminist groups have partnered with social media organisations, their censorship targets have been critics of feminism and not abusers. Their overarching aim is to press for government regulation of the internet, perhaps even targeting anonymity itself. That’s because anonymity is a place where cultural hegemony is challenged. With their media connections and celebrity support, social justice warriors are the cultural hegemony, regardless of how much they claim to be oppressed victims.
Your piece fails to mention that not a single arrest or prosecution has been brought as a result of alleged threats in which the GamerGate movement has been implicated—without, I should point out, a shred of evidence linking any GamerGate supporter to any threat. And it fails to acknowledge that radical far-left pseudo-academic feminist troublemakers use threats as currency online in a perverted sort of Olympics, showing off to one another and begging for funds with each round of new insults that, in many cases, observers suspect they have sent to themselves.

 

There is a war going on, and it’s far from Syria or Afghanistan. There is a war for the culture and soul of the West, heirs to the Enlightenment, that is being relentlessly perpetrated by the heirs of my old crowd- the radicals of the Sixties and Seventies, who themselves got their inspiration from the old-line Stalinists of the Forties and Fifties.

The old tropes of “peace, love, and understanding” have been twisted into a puritanical yet libertine philosophy that portrays Western culture as misogynistic, hateful, patriarchal… “anything goes” sexually but political thought must be within rigidly defined parameters or it is loudly and nastily condemned.

As a white southron male I am considered the fount of all evil, so I don’t expect my words to be heeded by any but those who already have arrived at the place I am in. But looking around at the actors in our current cultural play, from the President on down to the SJWs of GamerGate and the looters cying #ferguson, I am convinced it will come to no good end.

I suggest a little reading of history, especially of the forces unleashed at the end of the First World War. There will be a reckoning, and I suspect no one will be entirely happy with the outcome.

Or maybe just look up the Fall of Rome.

 

Bad Luck

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as “bad luck.”

– Robert A. Heinlein

 

Bad Luck in Ferguson, MO

 

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

– Rudyard Kipling

Strats’n’Mormons

Stratocaster White 1024

 

From the comments at Instapundit:

Nothing in my life produces as much cognitive dissonance as my conservative outlook and my love for rock n’ roll.

The world of popular music is populated almost entirely by people whose sounds I love but whose outlooks I find hypocritical and self-serving.

I often think I’m the only human being who both owns a Stratocaster and voted for Mitt Romney.

Well, bucko, I know for a fact there are at least two, and if the results of the last election are any guide there’s a lot more than that.

If you’re not scared you’re not paying attention

I know, they told you there would be no math. Suck it up.

How broke they really are:
JP Morgan: $78 Trillion in derivatives / $1.8 Trillion in assets
Citibank: $56 Trillion in derivatives / $1.2 Trillion in assets
Bank of America: $53 Trillion in derivatives / $1.5 Trillion in assets
Goldman Sachs (aka US Government): $48 Trillion in derivatives / $89 Billion in assets

What can’t go on forever, won’t.

Post-tsunami thoughts

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
– Winston Churchill

Truer words were never spoken. This is our Republic, if we can keep it. As my Lady said, “I didn’t vote for myself today, but for my children. My place is made in the world- but your future is still in front of you.”

(Well, maybe I polished that up a little, but the point remains…)

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

– Benjamin Franklin