Assorted

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. I’m rather weary, have a lot to do that’s not (gasp!) Web-related, and have a lot of material in the “Future Columns” collection that really needs to be addressed. So once more, with feeling: Have a smorgasbord of interesting tidbits and brief commentary thereupon.

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1. “Political Correctness.”

     Kurt Schlichter is one of the most popular contemporary columnists in the Right. A great part of the reason is his humor, but an even larger part is his directness. Here’s a particularly salient example:

     This PC leftist garbage is simply about power.

     You can’t prove your innocence or change their minds because actual facts are beside the point. The point is to generate a narrative that results in you being deprived of the moral capacity to assert your own rights and interests. You are disenfranchised, totally, by the moral failure that is your race or your sex or your religion or your sexual preference or whatever has been designated as bad this week. That is why we get evil concepts like “white privilege,” “mansplaining” and “heteronormativity” tossed around as if they are conceptual trump cards that instantly silence you merely by being asserted.

     Indeed. If the Left were interested in ideas, and open to the possibility that some of its ideas might be wrong, we wouldn’t see, hear, or suffer BS such as Schlichter excoriates. But there’s a larger point – one that almost no one has addressed squarely and fearlessly:

You cannot fight power-lust with logic and evidence.
You have to kill it.
There are no alternative methods.

     So it has always been, and so it shall always be.

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2. “Great Men.”

     “Great” is not a synonym for “good.” A “great man” is one who has had large and sweeping effects upon the world or his part of it. The great monsters of the century past were all “great men.” That, of course, doesn’t keep us from reviling them.

     The recent passing of former Federal Reserve Board chairman Paul Volcker provides an example:

     [A] table of a dozen guests were arranged around [Volcker.] The dinner was clocking along amicably enough, when, suddenly, a spat erupted between Volcker and the person seated next to him, our older daughter, aged 15. It flared so fiercely — the topic was baseball — that the rest of us sat and gawked. Then it blew over.

     After dinner, we helped our eminent guest on with his coat and gave him a copy of a book of the Sun’s editorials on the gold standard. He put his hand on our shoulder as we walked him to the door. “Just remember,” he said, “you can’t go back.” It was the closest we ever got to a policy prescription from the great man.

     In the morning, our 15-year-old descended for breakfast. “Do you know who Paul Volcker is?” she demanded. Yes, we exclaimed, he’s one of the great central bankers of all time. “No, no,” she said, “that’s not who Volcker is.” So we asked who he was. “He was on the baseball blue ribbon commission!” she exclaimed — nailing the fact that one of the reasons Volcker will be so widely missed is that was a man of many parts.

     The editorialist considers Volcker a great man. There’s an argument to be made for it; his policy decrees certainly did have large and sweeping effects upon others. But he was not someone I’d have chosen for the role he played in the Carter and early Reagan Administrations. He was a dedicated ideologue of central banking and politically controlled currency. He reacted negatively to contrary views, despite his admission that the historical record of such systems was uninspiring. His successor, Alan Greenspan, demonstrated far greater penetration into problems of money and currency.

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3. Feminism.

     I have been of the opinion for quite some time that the degeneration of equality before the law feminism into gender-war / gender-privileges feminism accounts for much of our social malaise. Concerning recent reports that “liberated” women are far less happy than their supposedly oppressed predecessors, Suzanne Venker provides some thoughts:

     In fact, it isn't surprising at all when you consider that women have been lied to for decades about what constitutes a happy life. Academic and elite feminists, who reside in our universities, in the media, in politics, and in Hollywood, have told women all kinds of things that just aren't true. Things that make women (and by extension, men and children) very unhappy.

     Such as the idea that women don't need a man and that children don't need fathers: "Women are realizing more and more that you don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have that child," noted Jennifer Aniston in this 2010 interview about an upcoming film.

     Or that men and women must make the same life choices with respect to work and family to be deemed "equal": “An equal world will be one where women run half our countries and companies and men run half our homes. We will not rest until we reach that goal,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in 2018.

     Or that staying home to raise a family is less important, valuable, or satisfying than earning a living: "These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit." now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said in 2006.

     Or that there's no such thing as the biological clock: "Be cautious about metaphors like the 'biological clock'— don’t take them literally," writes Catherine Aponte Psy.D. at Psychology Today.

     These are all lies.

     Please read it all, especially if you’ve had a more than glancing acquaintance with contemporary feminists and feminism.

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4. The Point Of “Public Education” Is Not Education.

     Have a recent, quite appalling demonstration:

     A Mason [Michigan] High School student turned to the police alleging a teacher assaulted her during school hours because she supports President Donald Trump.

     Sadie Earegood told NEWS 10 that the teacher involved was Paul Kato.

     Paul Kato is the media technology teacher at the high school. Students say that he has not been in school since the alleged incident on Dec. 5, but Mason Schools has not confirmed that.

     Earegood claims she was assaulted by Kato when he ripped her "Women For Trump" pin from her shirt.

     Earegood is 16 and a junior at the school. She said Kato, started off by saying he didn't like the pin she was wearing.

     "I was just really shocked that a teacher would especially do that," she said. "He's talking about the 'Women for Trump' pin and I said, 'that's fine you don't have to like it, we can have our opinions.'"

     Earegood described a struggle between herself and the teacher where he tried to take the pin off her.

     "He grabbed it and I pulled, I tried to push his hand away and he grabbed my shoulder," she said. "(He) just kind of put his hand there, and then he started pulling more and more and I just started backing up."

     She said the teacher then put the pin upside down on his shirt and stated that it belonged that way.

     Imagine if that had been an Obama pin. Imagine the national outcries from the media. Oh, and apropos of nothing, the teacher, Paul Kato, is a Nigerian immigrant. Draw what conclusions you will.

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5. Impeachment: Why?

     You’ve probably seen the following graphic:

     We offended the political class by choosing a Chief Executive from outside their ranks. That’s been obvious for quite some time. RedState’s Kira Davis concurs:

     No, impeachment isn’t about impeaching Donald Trump…it is about impeaching the American voter. It’s a punishment. The Democrats and the ideological Left have been angry at the rest of the country for three years now, and it is their intention to make us pay for daring to buck their rules.

     Trump’s presidency is a direct repudiation of the elitist class, as bizarre as the whole thing sounds. A Manhattan billionaire becoming a symbol for the little guy? Weird. But that’s where we are. The Democrat party (and some Republicans) will never forgive us for circumventing their power structure and playbooks and taking a wildly different path. The American people are only supposed to feel like we have some measure of control at the top. In reality, there is an entire class at the top who set the rules for succession, who deserves our support and how elections shape up.

     Trump’s election spit in the face of the conventional wisdom they’ve forced on us for decades and now we’re all paying for it.

     We must suffer through this farce as penance for our “sin.” Mustn’t ever defy the “experts,” kiddies! They know stuff, don’t y’know.

“The people have lost the confidence of the government...Would it not be simpler to dissolve the people and elect a new one?” – Bertolt Brecht, during the 1953 Berlin uprising.

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     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. With luck, the trials of the day will release me to you for further blatherance on the morrow – which, come to think of it, is Gaudete Sunday!

Chorus:
Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete
Gaudete, gaudete, Christus est natus
Ex Maria virgine, gaudete

[“Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born,
“From Mary the Virgin, rejoice.”
“Rejoice, rejoice, Christ is born,
“From Mary the Virgin, rejoice.”]

Tempus adest gratiae, hoc quod optabamus
Carmina laetitiae devote redamus

[“The time of Grace has come, which we have waited for
“Let us devotedly render Him joyful songs”

Chorus

Deus homo factus est natura mirante
Mundus renovatus est a Christo regnante

[“God has become Man, and Nature is astounded
The world has been renewed by the reigning Christ”]

Chorus

Ezechielis porta clausa per transitur
Unde lux est orta salus invenitur

[“The closed gate of Hezechiel has been crossed
“From there the Light has risen, Salvation has come in”]

Chorus

Ergo nostra cantio psallat iam in lustro
Benedicat domino salus regi nostro

[“Therefore, our congregation, praise Him in brightness!
Bless the Lord! Greeting to our King!”]

Chorus

     Therefore, rejoice. I’ll see you later.