Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Energy, Environment, Free Markets, Freedom, Immigration, Law, Media Bias, Police, Politics, Progressivism, Socialism | Tags: Puerile Protests, Violent Demonstrations, Wretched Excess
How did we get here? Democrats have lost elections before, and engaged in some mild excess, but now they seem completely deranged. We had a brief hiatus from the dramatic evidence of the failure of our schools and universities to acquaint our students with the Constitution and the meaning of free speech, let alone manners and deportment. Faculty have exhibited themselves as instigators and the administrators have established that they are not only not the adults in the situation, but it didn’t occur to them to mete out punishment for wretched excess.
In my day, which admittedly was a while ago, miscreants were promptly sent home, and I do mean promptly. And good luck about returning.
So — How did we get here? Is this stuff contagious? In a way, it is.
Democrats have lost power in a very big way, and seeking power is at their very essence. They’re old. Their ideas are not only stale, but they don’t work. Their former president, who did massive damage to the country, is not retiring graciously to let the next president have his turn, but actively and admittedly trying to destroy his successor.
Each loudmouth, and there are many in Hollywood and on TV, oddly enough many are “comics”— seeking the limelight and an audience — readily available in the form of our very partisan media, ready to celebrate every and any disturbing word. Surely you have noticed that if you removed the “he said”, and “she said” from the news, there wouldn’t be much of anything left.
Comics get brownie points for saying something rude, which gives permission to the next person at the microphone to top that, which in turn gives more permissions and so on, and so on. So you have Kathy Griffin holding up a bloody facsimile head of the President of the United States supposedly chopped off as ISIS might do, and the poor thing doesn’t even understand that she has committed an unforgivable faux pas that will be talked about and reviled for years to come. She’s back in today’s news congratulating Kaepernick for “his activism.” They never learn.
It’s Can You Top This time. Permission has been given. Black Lives Matter, a Marxist bunch, attempts to make The Racism, Sexism, theme the top priority, and Antifa goes for violence. Even speech that disagrees with you is not “hate speech.” Invited Conservative speakers are shouted down and attacked because it is too much for tender ears to hear “hate speech” which is defined as anything conservative, because Conservatives are known to be racist, sexist, homophobes etc, etc.
The media are demonstrating their partisanship or general ignorance, I’m not sure which. Remember Ben Rhodes description of his regular contacts with the media for the Obama administration:
“Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
It is catching. Each excess gives permission to do the same only better, bigger, more excessive. So now we have corporate CEOs talking their political views as the top official of their company. Not smart. Why a business would want to offend at least half of their customers is a mystery, Stock down. Sales down. CEOs gone.Half the American people no longer interested in the business or their products. Some business reporters could not understand why any CEO would be willing to serve on an advisory council with the hated President of the United States. (Probably because President Trump was interested in cutting taxes for business and removing troublesome regulations?)
Sports teams managed to offend a large percentage of the American people. Unnecessary if they had done their homework. Real damage to their sport. In fact most of these excesses arise because of the ignorance of the people committing the error.
The remedy? Courses in the United States Constitution. Nobody seems to be familiar with the document. A familiarity with the Declaration would be in order too, after Chuck Todd proved on Meet the Press, for all to see, that he was completely unfamiliar with the “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator” line.
College administrators need to grow backbone, and administrate. That’s what the big salaries and honorifics and outrageous tuitions are all about. Sports millionaires will quickly learn about their mistakes, as many endorsements depart. Professors who are urging the miscreants on—just stop it. Try to prepare students to be decent citizens.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economics, Economy, Free Markets, Freedom, Politics, The Constitution | Tags: An Economic History, An Empire of Wealth, John Steele Gordon
I frequently say that Leftists don’t understand the free market — that’s why they are Leftists.
Kathy Shaidle remarked a while back: “None of this should surprise anyone. Contrary to what they tell you (and tell you and tell you) Progressives don’t have principles. Rather they have faddish opinions that are highly unstable and often contradictory.”
Here’s John Steele Gordon from An Empire of Wealth:
The willingness to accept present discomfort and risk for the hope of future riches that so characterized these immigrants and the millions who would follow over the next two centuries has had a profound and immeasurable effect on the history of the American economy. Just as those who saw no conflict between worshiping God and seeking earthly success in the seventeenth century, those who sought economic independence in the eighteenth had a powerful impact on the emerging American culture.
And this:
People with an economic advantage, however “unfair” that advantage may be, will always fight politicians as hard as they can to maintain it. Whether the advantage is the right to another person’s labor, or an unneeded tariff protection, or an exemption from taxation makes no difference. And because the advantage for the few is specific and considerable while the cost to the disadvantaged many is often hidden and small, the few regularly prevail over the many in such political contests.
and one more:
Masterpieces created by a committee are notably few in number, but the United States Constitution is certainly one of them. Amended only twenty-seven times in 215 years, it came into being just as the world was about to undergo the most profound – and continuing– period of economic change the human race has known. The locus of power in the American economy had shifted from sector to sector as that economy has developed. Whole sections of the country have risen and fallen in economic importance. New methods of doing business and economic institutions undreamed of by the Founding Fathers have come into existence in that time, while others have vanished. Fortunes beyond the imagination of anyone living in the pre-industrial world have been built and destroyed. And yet the Constitution endures and the country continues to flourish under it.
Filed under: Bureaucracy, Scotland | Tags: April 16 1746, English Redcoats, Highland Scots
16th of April, 1746: The Battle of Culloden Moor
The last great charge of the Highland clansmen—cut down by the volleys of the Redcoat English and Lowland Scots. The life of the clans was suppressed forever. Gaelic proscribed. Native dress (kilts and plaid) forbidden, organization banned, leaders banished.
Clearances allowed Loyalist landowners to expel the inhabitants and replace them with sheep. The result was an uninhabited Highlands which thrills tourists today and leaves more Scots in the United States than in Scotland.
The clearances combined with the two centuries old enclosure movement drove the small holders from the land in Britain and the purges deprived England of the small farmers that might have dissipated the rigid class system.
The Black Death was an amalgam of 3 diseases: bubonic plague, septicemic plague, pulmonary plague. The first two came from fleas carried by the black rat. The third was an airborne variant.
Cautious estimates suggest that 1/3 of the population of Europe perished. 1.4 million to 2 million in England, 8 million in France, 30 million in Europe as a whole. It was a decisive point in the decline of the European feudal system. By 1230 the English population was 6 million. Not until mid-18th century did the population reach this number again.as
Filed under: Politics
The rottenest bits of these islands of ours
We’ve left in the hands of three unfriendly powers
Examine your Irishman, Welshman or Scot
You’ll find he’s a stinker as likely as notThe English the English the English are best
I wouldn’t give tuppence for all of the restThe Scotsman is mean as we’re all well aware
And bony and blotchy and covered with hair’
He eats salty porridge, he works all the day
And he hasn’t got Bishops to show him the way.The English are noble, the English are nice
And worth any other at double the priceAnd crossing the Channel one cannot say much
For the French or the Spanish the Danish or Dutch
The Germans are German, the Russians are Red,
And the Greeks and Italians eat garlic in bedThe English are moral, the English are good
And clever and modest and misunderstood
Filed under: History, News, Science/Technology | Tags: Age of the Earth, Modern Times, Things You Didn't Know
Between the late 18th Century and the mid 20th Century, the known age of the earth increased a millionfold, from less than 6,000 years to more than 4.6 billion.
