Kinda says it all when it takes a lawsuit to get the Truth

Like the proverbial junkyard dog, I can't seem to let go of anything "1st Amendment" these days.

Here's the link to the cartoon on my site where you can find the related news links plus an earlier post containing the other cartoon I did today.

Words Fail Me Dept.

     For how many years, how many decades, have we and our minor children been harangued that “the police are your friends” -- ?

     It was the baby’s fault that he was nearly burned to death in his own crib.

     Bou-Bou Phonesavanh was barely a year and a half old, just learning to walk, and unable to speak, but those limitations didn’t stop him from engaging in “deliberate, criminal conduct” that justified the 2:00 a.m. no-knock SWAT raid in which he was nearly killed.

     The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.

     Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.

     In any case, Bou-Bou, along with his parents and his siblings, are fully and exclusively to blame for the injuries that nearly killed the child and left the family with more than one million dollars in medical bills. The SWAT team that invaded the home in Cornelia, Georgia on the basis of a bogus anonymous tip that a $50 drug transaction had occurred there is legally blameless.

     This is the defense presented by Haberham County Sheriff Joey Terrell and his comrades in their reply to a federal lawsuit filed last February on behalf of Bou-Bou Phonesavanh and his family.

     This sort of self-exculpating fantasy on the part of a gaggle of uniformed, armed civil servants whose nominal charter is to protect the rest of us from predation is the direct and immediate consequence of two things:

• The War on Drugs;
• The militarization of the police and the police mentality.

     ...and we let them get away with it.

---

     The outrages have been multiplying faster than I can report on them. Particularly egregious are the many instances of outright theft by law enforcers, under the guise of “civil asset forfeiture.” Here’s a recent case:

     It happened, [Joseph] Rivers said, to him on April 15 as he was traveling on Amtrak from Dearborn, Mich., near his hometown of Romulus, Mich., to Los Angeles to fulfill his dream of making a music video. Rivers, in an email, said he had saved his money for years, and his mother and other relatives scraped together the rest of the $16,000.

     Rivers said he carried his savings in cash because he has had problems in the past with taking out large sums of money from out-of-state banks.

     A DEA agent boarded the train at the Albuquerque Amtrak station and began asking various passengers, including Rivers, where they were going and why. When Rivers replied that he was headed to LA to make a music video, the agent asked to search his bags. Rivers complied.

     Rivers was the only passenger singled out for a search by DEA agents – and the only black person on his portion of the train, Pancer said.

     In one of the bags, the agent found the cash, still in the Michigan bank envelope.

     “I even allowed him to call my mother, a military veteran and (hospital) coordinator, to corroborate my story,” Rivers said. “Even with all of this, the officers decided to take my money because he stated that he believed that the money was involved in some type of narcotic activity.”

     Rivers was left penniless, his dream deferred.

     “These officers took everything that I had worked so hard to save and even money that was given to me by family that believed in me,” Rivers said in his email. “I told (the DEA agents) I had no money and no means to survive in Los Angeles if they took my money. They informed me that it was my responsibility to figure out how I was going to do that.”

     Apparently, there are municipalities that make a practice of this sort of seizure, using threats of jail and the separation of families to coerce their targets into complying. Combine that sort of “policing” with local police departments’ steady acquisition of military-grade weaponry and the scheduling of exercises such as “Jade Helm,” and perfectly law-abiding, patriotic Americans can’t help but wonder about the real motivations of our “protectors.”

     Given Supreme Court decisions that ruled that the police have “no duty to protect,” and others that have denied the law-abiding citizen the right to resist unlawful police orders and intrusions, I no longer wonder. Indeed, I ceased to wonder quite a while ago.

---

     The edifice is rotten to the core. It has pitted us against one another, especially those of us who work for government versus those who don’t, in a multitude of ways. It cannot be saved.

     However, it cannot be replaced until it has first been demolished. How that is to be achieved, given the overwhelming preponderance of force in the hands of the State, I cannot say. More, and more ominous, there is no guarantee that the replacement would improve on its predecessor. Moralities and mentalities have changed too greatly since our Founding Era for any prediction to be sanguine –and that’s to say nothing of the hostile and alien sub-populations America has acquired these past few decades.

     Of one thing we may be sure: a man acting “under color of law,” whether he wears a uniform, bears a weapon, both, or neither, is not there to serve you. Don’t talk to him. Don’t allow him into your home or onto your property. Don’t permit any member of your family to do differently. Whatever he might do to you, he must do under visibly coercive conditions, such that the outrage will be plain to every eye. Perhaps a sufficient amount of public furor will protect you, at least a posteriori.

     When you see or hear “protect and serve,” think of the “Internal Revenue Service.” Act accordingly.

Fog or Confusion?

When a hand grenade lands in your midst, one of the surest ways to save your buddies (and become a hero), is to dive on it. The left has lobbed a grenade into our Armed Forces that no one dares dive on, no matter how much carnage it might prevent. 

That grenade rolling around in the midst of the Army nowadays is deliberately designed to feminize, neuter, emasculate and pacify our military.  The ongoing social tinkering is not designed to produce a Frankenstein – it’s designed to produce a Michael Jackson.  The left knows they can control Mike a lot easier than Frank.  And that’s their ultimate objective; “control” the military.  Control is their goal – not combat effectiveness.

The three main axis of advance for the left are; 1) force the homosexual issue, 2) force women into male roles/units, and 3) get rid of those bigoted and pesky Christians.  First axis – check, objective accomplished.  Second objective -- underway.  The third one, they can’t even admit it’s an objective.  The left knows that one who is committed to the King of kings won’t cave to their carnality. After all, it was Jesus himself who said, “But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’”

What’s the big deal about male homosexuality in the military – it requires at least one of the two men involved to act like a woman.  Here’s what the Department of Defense regulation for decades said about it:  “Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military environment of persons who engage In homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission.  The presence of such members adversely affects the ability of the Military Services to maintain discipline, good order, and morale; to foster mutual trust and confidence among servicemembers….”   So exactly what has changed about human nature or the military mission (other than liberal politicians are in power, and Generals would rather get promoted than defend morality)?  

The collateral damage from the left’s grenade may only now be evident.  This month the Department of Defense released its annual Sexual Assault Report .  A Military Times article about the report opened with this, “Across the military, men suffered more sexual assaults last year than women…”  The report itself said, “From 2012 to 2013, there was an unprecedented 53% increase in victim reports of sexual assault.  In 2014, the high level of reporting seen in 2013 was sustained with 6,131 reports of sexual assault. This figure represents an increase of 11% over 2013 numbers.”  DoD's Dr. Nathan Galbreath explained, "Men, relative to women, are more often experiencing multiple sexual assault incidents throughout the year. They are at the hands of multiple offenders. These occur in daytime hours in their duty locations."  Exactly whose bright idea was all this again?

In 1896, Clausewitz described “The Fog of War” as, "the state of ignorance in which commanders frequently find themselves as regards the real strength and position, not only of their foes, but also of their friends."  Politicians now use the term to excuse and mask their poor decisions; blaming their blunders on a “fog” that was really brought about by their own ideological blinders.  The newest liberal “fog” is complete gender confusion on every front.   

To advance the left’s second objective the “women in Ranger school” experiment is underway.  If they can demonstrate that a woman can pass what has been called the "toughest combat course in the world" and "most physically and mentally demanding leadership school the Army has to offer"  there will be no reason to maintain the exclusion of women from any job or any unit. 

From 2000 – 2012, the historically male-only Ranger School graduation rate was under 49%.  The results thus far for the ongoing gender-bending class:  381 males and 19 females started the course; 184 men and eight women passed the initial four-day Ranger assessment.   All eight of the women and 69 of the males then failed the first of the three phases (Darby, Mountains and Florida).  Their second chance at the Darby Phase began 14 May 2015.   

Perhaps the only two things more confused than our Armed Force’s gender policies: Bruce Jenner trying to decide which restroom to use and the left trying to figure out how he could be a Republican.

 

One day a woman may become a “Ranger” -- but she’ll never be a man.  

May the fog lift soon. 

Full disclosure.  I am a Ranger Class 13-87 graduate.  My son and I both served in the 75th Ranger Regiment.  I also served in the Ranger Training Brigade.   

GASP! Women Are “Choosing To Be Cloistered!”

     That is, according to Times writer Wednesday Martin:

     Then I met the women I came to call the Glam SAHMs, for glamorous stay-at-home-moms, of my new habitat. My culture shock was immediate and comprehensive. In a country where women now outpace men in college completion, continue to increase their participation in the labor force and make gains toward equal pay, it was a shock to discover that the most elite stratum of all is a glittering, moneyed backwater.

     ....The women I met, mainly at playgrounds, play groups and the nursery schools where I took my sons, were mostly 30-somethings with advanced degrees from prestigious universities and business schools. They were married to rich, powerful men, many of whom ran hedge or private equity funds; they often had three or four children under the age of 10; they lived west of Lexington Avenue, north of 63rd Street and south of 94th Street; and they did not work outside the home.

     Instead they toiled in what the sociologist Sharon Hays calls “intensive mothering,” exhaustively enriching their children’s lives by virtually every measure, then advocating for them anxiously and sometimes ruthlessly in the linked high-stakes games of social jockeying and school admissions.

     Please read it all, if you can stand it. No, you’re not imagining the tone of disapproval. It’s much like Linda Hirshman’s tone:

     Women who want to have sex and children with men as well as good work in interesting jobs where they may occasionally wield real social power need guidance, and they need it early. Step one is simply to begin talking about flourishing. In so doing, feminism will be returning to its early, judgmental roots. This may anger some, but it should sound the alarm before the next generation winds up in the same situation. Next, feminists will have to start offering young women not choices and not utopian dreams but solutions they can enact on their own. Prying women out of their traditional roles is not going to be easy. It will require rules -- rules like those in the widely derided book The Rules, which was never about dating but about behavior modification.

     There are three rules: Prepare yourself to qualify for good work, treat work seriously, and don’t put yourself in a position of unequal resources when you marry.

     There you have it, Gentle Reader: the anti-choice Gospel of Feminism, in glorious living color. Women must not be allowed to choose life paths that diverge from the needs of the “Women’s Movement!” The advance of feminism is what matters; its imperatives trump the desires of the individual woman:

"No woman should be authorized to stay at home and raise her children. Society should be totally different. Women should not have that choice, precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one." -- Interview with Simone de Beauvoir, "Sex, Society, and the Female Dilemma," Saturday Review, June 14, 1975, p.18

     Disagree and you’re either:

• A “gender traitor,” or:
• A man.

     I can’t help but wonder what Martin and Hirshman would say about Catholic nuns.

---

     The Left has many sub-communities, but they’re all alike in one respect: all of them are totalitarian in attitude. Either you agree with them, in word and deed, or you’re The Enemy, to be ostracized at the very least. In that regard each of them conforms to Eric Hoffer’s description of “a compact and unified church,” outside which there is only the weeping and the gnashing of teeth...at least, if the congregants have their way.

     No, that’s not news... but this is:

     Just ask National Organization for Women President Terry O'Neill. Right before Obama's trade bill cratered in the Senate last week, Obama complained that its chief Senate critic, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., didn't understand the real world. O'Neill then chalked Obama's attitude up to sexism.

     O'Neill told The Hill she took issue with Obama calling Warren by her first name during an interview with Yahoo News published May 9.

     "Yes, I think it is sexist," O'Neill said. "I think the president was trying to build up his own trustworthiness on this issue by convincing us that Sen. Warren's concerns are not to be taken seriously. But he did it in a sexist way."

     O'Neill said Obama's "clear subtext is that the little lady just doesn't know what she's talking about."

     Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined the chorus, also suggesting Obama's remarks were sexist, and then refused to apologize. Now some are tittering over Obama's supposed "seven-year history of sexism." This caused Twitter humorist David Burge to joke: "NAACP president: NOW president's critique of Obama's critique of Elizabeth Warren is racist."

     God bless Glenn “InstaPundit” Reynolds and David “Iowahawk” Burge! The ability to laugh at the Left’s inanities might be our best shield against them, if not our only one. But the larger point is what matters.

---

     I’ve written on previous occasions that the sort of coalition politics the Left has practiced in pursuit of power is inherently vulnerable to its own success. When the coalition attains majority status, the ability of any component to threaten the coalition’s hegemony causes an internal war, as each component jockeys against the others for power, perquisites, and preeminence. Indeed, the coalition need not yet command a majority; merely a reasonable prospect of getting there in the foreseeable future will cause the first skirmishes to occur and the first shots to be fired.

     As Reynolds writes, “The Democrats' tendency to argue identity politics over policy is more awkward when it's aimed at other Democrats.” Moreover, it provides yet another flank for the Right to attack, rhetorically and electorally. But as long as the Left is committed to “Left Eclecticism” (Frederic Crews) in pursuit of power, there’ll be nothing its strategists can do about it.

     So the racialists will attack the gender-warriors. Both will find themselves at odds with the unions and the poverty pimps, who are already at war with the enviro-Nazis. And all of them and more will struggle to control what constitutes legitimately “free speech,” as opposed to “hate speech” they’ll demand to see outlawed.

     It’s a great time to be alive, I tell you...at least if you’re a curmudgeonly retired engineer who suffers an irresistible compulsion to write and is endlessly fascinated by the follies of the stupid and evil.

Terminal Illnesses: A Sunday Rumination

     Relax! I don’t have one. That I know of, anyway. The subject is on my mind for another reason.

     The current social milieu presents us with quite a lot of reasons for Christians to think of ourselves and our faith as beleaguered. Here in the United States, we have the swelling phenomenon of militant / aggressive atheism, which seeks to drive us completely out of the public square, if not entirely underground, like the Christians in the Catacombs of Rome. Add that to the mountains of derision various elements of the entertainment media regularly heap on Christians and Christianity, plus recent political developments that have made it legally hazardous to stand by our convictions in the practice of our trades, and the picture can look pretty bleak.

     Not quite as bleak as that faced by Christians abroad, of course. Nearly everywhere outside the Western Hemisphere, Christians are being persecuted, if not outrightly slaughtered, for their faith. The trend is so powerful that only the very worst aspects of it – e.g., ISIS’s routine beheadings of Christians in its region of control – make the news.

     Yet we seldom hear about apostates from Christianity. People renounce all sorts of allegiances every day: to a country, to a political party, to a spouse, to a favorite hockey team. But open renunciations of the Christian faith? There are some, no doubt, but if there’s a significant current in that direction, I have yet to read about it.

     Given that the disincentives to Christian affiliation and the hazards involved in openly leading a Christian life have mounted so steadily for so long, why aren’t we seeing more apostasy? It would appear to run counter to what we’d expect from the nature of Man.

     The answer lies in the gulf between what is seen and what is not.

---

     Life is a terminal illness. No, not in the sense in which medical men use the term, but in a more inclusive one that applies to everyone ever born: we shall all die. It’s guaranteed to us at the moment of birth.

     I allowed an immortal character to make that point to a very mortal one in On Broken Wings:

     "What can I do?"
     "Nothing."
     Louis Redmond gaped.
     "That wasn't the question you wanted to ask, was it?" An observer that could ignore the weariness of Malcolm Loughlin's face and the hardness of his eyes might set his age no higher than that of his protégé. But Loughlin's countenance showed eons of fatigue, and his eyes were chips of agate. "You want to ask if I can do anything. But the answer is the same."
     The cold fear that surged through Louis had the vitality of a tiger. It was all he could do to keep it caged.
     "Did you think your training would allow you to undo cancer, Louis? Or did you think it was just a trick I hadn't taught you yet?"
     Louis stiffened. "Don't mock me. You haven't earned the right."
     The older man's lips curved in the ghost of a smile. "That's better."
     "Defiance at all times, Malcolm?"
     "What would serve you better, now?"
     Louis scowled, irritation washing over his fear. "Malcolm, you are too damned smart, and one of these days it's going to land you in trouble." He rose, walked the length of the trailer, and stared out the tiny end window at the dozens of acres of Onteora County, New York, mostly left to scrub oak and pine, that Loughlin owned. After a moment, he returned to the table and waved an arm jerkily. "Why don't you get yourself a decent place? A man can't pace properly in here."
     Loughlin ignored it. "When does treatment start?"
     "It's already started."
     "Any nausea?"
     Louis nodded.
     "I was hoping you might be spared that."
     Louis caricatured a show of surprise. "I didn't know you cared."
     "Now who's mocking whom?"
     An awkward silence descended. Louis was reluctant to break it. Presently, Loughlin spoke.
     "What will you do?"
     Louis shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't really seem to matter."
     "Why? Because you're dying?" Loughlin's voice turned harsh again. "You were handed your death warrant the day you were born. Do you really mean to say there's nothing worth your time or energy, just because you've been told you won't make your threescore and ten?"

     The ultimate lesson of life is that it will end. No effort, no advance in the medical arts, and no amount of wishful thinking can change that. Life can be prolonged somewhat; at this time, we have no idea for how long. But it will end. It’s part of the design.

     More, not only will we die, we will be forgotten. No achievement, however high is sufficient to guarantee that we will be forever remembered. Our prospect for temporal remembrance is that those who’ve loved us, and those who’ve benefited by our labors, will remember us...now and then, and for a little while. Except for the Socrateses, the Thomas Jeffersons, and the Albert Einsteins, that’s the best we can hope for.

     But while we live, we have tasks. We take them seriously. Ultimately, we do so for our own sakes. They give structure and meaning to our days. They allow us a measure of self-regard: something we need as badly as food or rest.

     Now ponder the man who absolutely rejects hope of an afterlife. Wouldn’t he logically look upon his labors, and upon the finitude of human life in comparison to the endless reach of Time, and ask “Why bother?” Yet few such men renounce their trades to pursue only temporal pleasures, which would be the sole logical course following from such a conclusion. Why not?

     Partly it’s that self-regard business. But partly, it’s because we’re hard-wired to hope.

---

     We’re hard-wired to hope, but what do we hope for? We can’t reasonably hope to live forever. Few of us can hope to achieve so mightily that our names will be remembered a thousand years from now. Of all the billions that have ever lived, we remember only a few hundred from the time of Christ or before Him...and let’s not flatter ourselves that we remember them in truth, with high accuracy. It will be the same for us two thousand years hence, assuming Mankind should last that long.

     Christian faith offers hope of two kinds. The first is the hope of an afterlife of bliss, which can be ours conditional upon having lived a satisfactory life and having repented of our moral sins before death. All by itself, that’s a powerful inducement to hope. Yet the second thing strikes me as even more attractive: the hope that when we face judgment, God will allow that we have done some good: some service to His Will for our temporal world. As the Supreme Judge, His assessment of our lives is the only one that ultimately matters...and He doesn’t give annual performance reviews.

     There you have my reasons for pitying the resolute atheist. He has deliberately rejected the only possible reasons to hope that his life will be more meaningful than that of a mayfly. His rejoinder, of course, will be that to need such hope, I must be “weak.” The meaning he ascribes to “weak” in that context has never struck me as sound – and note that when pressed to define it, he invariably makes it circular.

     Faith, like life, is a gift. It’s not given to all men. Some must stumble forward entirely on temporal ground. Yet if such a man lives a decent life, abusing no other man and abstaining from deriding others for their faith, he too will know eternal bliss, for God is just. That’s my hope for him. It’s why I pray for the atheists I’ve known: their paths have been made harder and more treacherous than mine.

     I know their trials from the inside, for I was once one of them.

     May God bless and keep you all.

The Unrepealable Law Strikes Again

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     Activists of many kinds share a common delusion that politics is invincible. In other words, they imagine that all that’s required to get whatever it is they’re striving for is an adequate degree of pressure on the relevant levels and branches of government. The concept of second-order effects – those that arise because of changes to the incentives people face – is anathema to them.

     But second-order effects do exist:

     It's no secret that Congress is dominated by men, but as women work to make inroads in the congressional boys club, some female staffers face a huge impediment to moving up: They're not allowed to spend one-on-one time with their male bosses.

     In an anonymous survey of female staffers conducted by National Journal in order to gather information on the difficulties they face in a male-dominated industry, several female aides reported that they have been barred from staffing their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with their congressman or senator, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office for fear that others would get the wrong impression.

     Follow-up interviews with other Hill aides make clear that these policies, while not prevalent, exist in multiple offices—and they may well run afoul of employment discrimination laws, experts say. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, and the fear of retribution, many of these women and some of their male counterparts spoke with National Journal on the condition of anonymity and declined to publicly name their bosses.

     "Even though my boss is like a second dad to me, our office was always worried about any negative assumptions that might be made. This has made and makes my job significantly harder to do," one female staffer told National Journal.

     Another reported that in twelve years working for her previous boss, he "never took a closed door meeting with me.…This made sensitive and strategic discussions extremely difficult."

     Male staffers said they'd also seen some female aides barred from solo meetings with the boss, and that they benefited in some instances from the exclusion of their female colleagues in high-level meetings, at receptions with major Washington powerbrokers, and just in earning a little more face time with their bosses.

     So far, a straightforward recitation of the facts: in other words, ordinary journalism. But let’s not imagine that Sarah Mimms, the author of the cited article, is any more conscious of what’s transpired than your average Newfoundland puppy:

     For these women, the lack of access has meant an additional hurdle in their attempts to do their jobs, much less further their own careers. And in many instances, it forced them to seek employment in other congressional offices.

     Poor babies!

---

     One of the downsides of high intelligence is the temptation to look down on those of lesser gifts. I struggle to resist it, though I haven’t always been successful. Yet there are times when nothing but an attitude of amusement at the stupidity of others is possible. Men’s reactions to feminism, as it’s pervaded our laws and social norms, strike me as inevitable, easily predicted by anyone with eyes that see. Thus, watching feminists become ever more stridently angry about the very conditions their activism has brought about only makes me chuckle.

     You asked for it, girls. And as H. L. Mencken would tell you were he here to do so, you got it good and hard.

     The signs are everywhere. The decline in male enrollment at colleges and universities. The increasing aversion college men are displaying toward college women. The “marriage strike.” Pseudo-scandals such as “Sad Puppies” and “Gamer-Gate.” Websites such as Chateau Heartiste, MGTOW, and The Return Of Kings. Even the independent publishing of fiction, with its emphasis on traditionally masculine adventures, bears testimony to the irresistible logic of The Law of Unintended Consequences.

     The Law pays no attention to political clout. Why should it? Politics can either articulate and endorse the natural laws of the universe, or it can attempt to contravene them. In the former case, nothing has really occurred; in the latter, we’ve invited our own comeuppance. God laughs at the vanity Man expresses with his notions about “law,” though perhaps only the saints and angels can hear Him.

     But feminists, who are among the stupidest of all activist communities, won’t hear any of that. They want what they want, and they want it now:

     What we are not supposed to notice is the problematic premises asserted within what I call feminism’s Patriarchal Thesis:

1. All women are victims of oppression;
2. All men benefit from women’s oppression; therefore:
3. Whatever.

     In other words, when your worldview begins with the assumption that normal human life is a system of injustice in which all women (collectively) are victimized by all men (collectively), then it is possible to justify almost anything you do as part of your effort to overthrow this oppressive system. Smash Patriarchy!

     The Patriarchal Thesis absolves feminists of any obligation to meet the ordinary requirements of intelligent discourse. Logic is unnecessary and, as for facts, they are (a) whatever feminists say they are or (b) irrelevant if they do not confirm the Patriarchal Thesis. Believing themselves oppressed, and believing that men universally participate in the oppression of women, feminists thereby justify themselves in telling blatant lies and insulting men. Anyone who dares call notice to the hateful dishonesty of feminism is presumed to be a dimwit with bad motives because, of course, feminists are the moral and intellectual superiors of anyone who disagrees with them.

     Bravo to Robert Stacy McCain. I could not have said it better.

---

     Only two climaxes are possible to such a development. One concludes with the end of the human race. The other necessitates whipping the snarling, mangy cur of feminism back into its kennel, that normal male-female relations might be restored. Which of these will prevail I cannot say, though if I cock my ear just so and point it toward England, I fancy I can hear a certain Thomas Stearns Eliot whispering to us from the grave:

     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     Not with a bang but a whimper.

     Got any daughters, Gentle Reader?

---

     UPDATE: A thousand pardons, Gentle Readers. I meant to include mention of Aaron Clarey’s comments about Mad Max: Fury Road, and of course the feminists’ reactions to those comments, but when the C.S.O. sauntered into my office in her sauciest negligee and speared me with those “bedroom eyes,” they slipped my mind. At any rate, do please enjoy the linked articles.

Making It Plain

     ISIS’s titular leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has done us that service:

     The leader of the Islamic State group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Thursday urged Muslims to emigrate to his self-proclaimed “caliphate,” in the jihadist supremo’s first audio recording in six months.

     “And we call upon every Muslim in every place to perform hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State or fight in his land wherever that may be,” he said....

     Echoing his previous exhortations, Baghdadi said moving to the caliphate he declared over parts of Iraq and Syria in June 2014 or waging jihad (holy war) at home was an obligation for Muslims.

     “Has the time not come for you to know that there is no might nor honour nor safety nor rights for you except in the shade of the Caliphate?” he said in the speech, transcripts of which were released in five languages.

     “O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war,” he said, calling for mass mobilisation on the battlefield.

     Which lickspittle political posturer or media pretender will be the first to proclaim, ex cathedra from his bellybutton, that al-Baghdadi is not preaching “true Islam?”

     Actually, that service has already been rendered us by Barack Hussein Obama, when he orated that the Islamic State “is not Islamic, and it is not a state.” Perhaps he received an advance transcript of al-Baghdadi’s speech and decide to “get out in front of it.” As Obama is the world’s supreme authority on everything – just ask him – I suppose we can all relax about it.

     Myself, I’m waiting for ISIS allegiants to commit a terrorist act here in the United States. That’s when the really thunderous denunciations will begin...but given the character of our political class and its media annex, they won’t be denunciations of Islam.

---

     Never go to a religious war without your religion – Tom Kratman

     George W. Bush, 43rd president of these United States, was a good man. He was an indifferent president, good on a few subjects and somewhat aimless about others, but the Oval Office has been occupied by few individuals of better character. Unfortunately, he was hobbled by a failing that afflicts many men of good will: he ardently wanted to see the other guy’s character as a match to his own.

     President Bush’s famous September 20, 2001 speech to the nation, in which he first proclaimed Islam to be “a religion of peace,” was probably the worst misstep of his presidential tenure. The historical record speaks clearly in the opposite direction. Ever since Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the actions of Muslims and Islam-dominated states have unambiguously shouted Islam-Uber-Alles. Indeed, Islam is the only recognized religion whose highest figures made common cause with the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

     (I’ve long suspected that the wholly unsubstantiated and unjustified odium poured upon Pope Pius XII was an attempt to deflect attention from the alliance between Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at that time the highest authority in Islam. A great many persons revile the Catholic Church, mainly because it preaches against things they’d like to feel free to do. More, they’ve noticed that Christians don’t go on a rampage when slandered.)

     But there is no truth so starkly obvious that it cannot be denied by one resolutely determined to deny it. There is no fact so plain that it cannot be obscured with a mountain of distractions and irrelevancies. Perhaps most important of all, there are few who will speak openly and plainly against a moving force that:

1. Is religiously motivated;
2. Has infiltrated one’s own country;
3. Has demonstrated lethal intentions and capability;
4. Is ready, willing, and able to kill those who dare to speak against it.

     The recent attack on Pamela Geller’s Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas should have provided a wake-up call. Yet note how many persons, on either side of the political spectrum, leaped to condemn Geller for her “provocation.” Note how many commentators spoke and acted as if utterly indifferent to the rather simple proposition that cartoons cannot and do not provide a justification for murder. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ?” Chris Ofili’s dung-festooned caricature of the Blessed Virgin Mary? These things provoked complaints, even protests, from Christians, but no violence whatsoever. But don’t you dare satirize the intolerance of Islam and Muslims; why, that could get someone killed!

     Such...persons are unlikely to acknowledge al-Baghdadi’s plain words, either.

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     “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     Among a Left that has enshrined tolerance as the supreme virtue, the irony of their passive acceptance of violently intolerant Islam stands as one of the marvels of our time. It could be cowardice, of course; many persons animated by fear will do anything not to admit to it. It could also be tactical, for what does the Left hate more than Christianity and Christian ethics? In either case, there is no better demonstration of the fatuity of Leftism than its celebration of homosexuality and abortion united to its angry defense of Islam on the grounds of “religious tolerance.”

     The political class, the media, and the educational establishment – the three major bastions of the Left in American society – are setting us up for a terrible calamity. They’re complicit in the continuing importation of adherents to this seventh-century murder cult. If it’s out of ignorance, it’s inexcusable. If it’s willful blindness – an insistence upon seeing in Islam a benevolence that is not there and never has been – its ridiculous. If it’s tactical, it’s vile and wholly to be condemned.

     The best service a President Cruz or President Perry could do for this nation is to reject President Bush’s “religion of peace” error and publicly recognize the facts as they are. Indeed, one of the criteria for selecting a Republican nominee should be the requirement that he announce his hostility to Islam and the immigration of Muslims to these shores, openly and without compromise despite any and all opposition. Americans – people who love this country – would love him for it.

     Let’s close with an old favorite:

The Urgent Need To Discriminate

     I’ve written about this before. I meant it then, and I mean it now. In light of some recent developments, it’s acquired overwhelming force.

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     A couple of weeks ago, Ashe Schow wrote about the current feminist pogrom against college-aged men:

     If a student has been wrongly accused of sexual assault on their college campus, how are they supposed to prove their innocence?...

     After what [Emma] Sulkowicz claimed was a brutal rape in which she was pinned, beaten and choked before being raped, she sent [Paul] Nungesser numerous messages asking to hang out, even telling him she loved him. Nungesser tried to get those messages introduced as evidence during his Columbia University hearing, but was denied. Nungesser, who has since become the victim of a public campaign of defamation by his accuser, was exonerated anyway....

     A similar situation played out at Vassar College when Peter Yu introduced Facebook messages showing his accuser apologizing to him for the evening. She apologized for leading him on and said that she had "a wonderful time" with him. But a year later, when Yu produced these messages for the disciplinary panel, his accuser claimed they "did not correctly reflect her feelings" because she was in a state of "shock and disbelief" about the encounter. The disciplinary committee bought her claim and expelled Yu.

     Clearly, these “disciplinary committees” exercised no discipline over their own procedures. To steal a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter, they had the sentence of death in their pockets, and they were going to pass it regardless of any and all developments. Nor are Nungesser and Yu outliers; when it comes to accusations by women of sexual assaults by men, the trend on university campuses is exactly as they experienced it.

     Meanwhile, universities are experiencing an accelerating imbalance of young women in their enrollees. Marriage-minded young women complain that eligible young men are avoiding them. Employers are finding new and ingenious ways to avoid hiring young women, regardless of their credentials. And Friday nights find quite a lot of young single women sitting at the bar surrounded entirely by...other young single women.

     In other words, young men are learning to discriminate against young women.

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     Discrimination works when it’s tried. Here’s a case where it badly needs to be tried:

     It just got surreal. George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf filed a human rights complaint to the D.C. Office of Human Rights against Catholic University for hindering Muslim students’ free exercise of their faith due to the “excessive” amount of “Catholic imagery” on the campus. It seems that this man – who teaches at a different school across town – thinks that Catholic University’s adherence to the cultural aspects of Catholicism (we have a lot of artwork, Crucifixes, and statues in every nook and cranny) keeps muslim students from praying the required five times a day.

     Banzhaf, who already has a pending lawsuit against the university over ending its policy of allowing mixed-gender dormitories and has a history of filing civil rights suits on such topics as childhood obesity and smoking, filed the complaint alleging that Muslim students are not given their own prayer rooms.

     He alleges that the university, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to the Tower, Catholic University’s student newspaper.

     Let’s leave aside this idiot Banzhaf’s obvious hatred for Catholic institutions and the Catholic faith. What makes allegations of his sort possible at all? That there are Muslim students at Catholic University! And why, pray tell, is that?

     A number of Catholic institutions have succumbed to the lure of increased revenue by admitting non-Catholic students. Some have even hired non-Catholic faculty and staff. As an example of arrant insanity, this would be hard to top – and given current trends in labor law and nondiscrimination law, it will be very hard to undo. But monetary considerations aside, it will require Catholic University and similar institutions to brace themselves for a necessity that will no doubt pain many: the need to say to a non-Catholic applicant for enrollment or employment that “You don’t qualify.” Upon being asked why, the sole adequate answer will be the one all of America has been inhibited against uttering:

“We discriminate in favor of Catholics.”

     And there must be no exceptions granted.

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     Riots in Ferguson. Riots in St. Louis. Riots in Baltimore. Massive looting and property destruction. And all the participants, to within the limits of measurement precision, have been black.

     Whites don’t riot. Even the highly disruptive “Occupy” demonstrations were never riots. Whites don’t assault random passers-by on public streets. Neither are whites inclined to rally around a convicted murderer because of his race. (See also this recent case.) In just about every situation where distinctions on the basis of race occur, those distinctions operate in Negroes’ favor and against Caucasians, regardless of any and all other considerations.

     At this point, even the most diehard, race-is-a-social-construct / I-don’t-see-skin-color leftist is aware that concentrations of Negroes are highly dangerous to non-Negroes. When the black population of a district passes a certain level, crime rates rise, conditions for ordinary commerce deteriorate, and white flight begins. As this happens even in left-liberal-dominated coastal cities – indeed, it’s most pronounced in exactly such cities — the claim that it’s only “racist conservatives” doing the flying is ridiculous on its face.

     What are we to make of this? Yes, there’s a strong argument that left-liberal policies give rise to the sort of cultural accretions that correlate with local deterioration...but so does race. Given that the politicians are elected by the local populace, the only credible responses are to disperse the populace or to confine it behind an impassable fence. Both constitute discrimination -- discrimination in defense of life and property. If this is forbidden, our rights to our lives and our property are shams. But then, the very people doing the forbidding are also working to deprive us of the instruments of self-defense, aren’t they?

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     Discrimination has become a moral, social, and political imperative. Sorting among one’s personal associates isn’t yet illegal, thank God. But most other forms of discrimination are either banned outright or have been made torturously difficult. Indeed, with its “diversity” programs the federal government, which now controls approximately one-third of all spending in the United States, has added financial incentives to the maintenance of a “diverse” work force.

     Yet it must be so. There remain ways to do it. Some of those ways are gaining adherents by the day. And they are finding that their lives, their states of mind, and often their fortunes are being improved thereby.

     Discrimination isn’t bigotry; it’s a response to conditions. And it works.

Bizarre Discovery of the Month

     This might not appeal to everyone. Indeed, I’ll be surprised if it appeals to anyone but me. All the same:

Put a chunk or two -- about 2 ounces -- of freshly cut pineapple into a highball glass,
Add 4 ounces of Harvey’s Bristol Cream,
Top off the glass with crushed ice.

     It was an accidental discovery, but so were penicillin, the microscope, and vulcanized rubber.

     (Retirement is proving to be a fertile medium, as long as you don’t care what you germinate!)

Conversations

CSO: Don’t forget there’s a lot of fruit in the fridge.
FWP: What did you buy?
CSO: Lots of stuff.
FWP: You could be...more specific.
CSO: Well, there’s the clementines, and the grapes—
FWP: Whoa. Tweak that a bit and it’s a title for a historical novel: “The Clementines and The Greeks.” Political intrigue and assassinations in fourth-century Asia Minor!
CSO: Naah, keep it the way it is. In fact, you could add something: “The Clementines, The Grapes, and The Cherimoyas!” Now there’s a title!
FWP: Going for a global conflict, eh?
CSO: Think big, I always say.

Fine Lines Or Battle Lines?

     It’s gratifying to note how much attention Patrice Stanton’s short piece on “Free Speech & Fine Lines” has received. Truly, the ability to depict a conflict in a visual form has more impact than any number of words. But for some of us, your humble commentator most emphatically included, words are all we have...which might be a good thing:

     I damn sure didn’t go to war for this country twice to come home and be told by a bunch of homely chicks with daddy issues, effete literary fops scandalized by the notion of resistance to Third World pathologies, and nimrod sons of politicians playing at journalism what I can and can’t say. And I don’t think most Americans are ready to have everything they speak, write, or think perused for possible hate criminality by these same goose-stepping creeps.

     We’d rather die than “live” on our knees, begging permission to exercise the right God gave us to say whatever we damn well please, whenever we damn well please, and in the manner we damn well please. And those who want to shut us up better be equally committed if they want to succeed.

     After Garland, they went too far. They showed their hand and their goal, a world where they decide who gets to say what. Imagine the same hysterical social justice drama queens who shriek about microaggressions getting to decide what you can and can’t say. Just understand, you fascist bastards, that if you want to be Nazis, you’ll need to do what the Nazis did and find some armed thugs – yeah, I’m using the word “thugs” whether you like it or not – to come stop us. Tell them to wear Kevlar.

     Please read the entire column. Then multiply it by 100,000,000. That’s roughly the magnitude of the reaction against the sort of vilification that’s been heaped on Pamela Geller...for holding a cartoon-drawing contest.

     The Left’s cat’s-paws in the media may have finally gone too far. But let’s not leave it there, shall we? Let’s take a broader look at the “progressive” campaign against freedom of expression.

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     “You got to use all your weapons.” -- Jim Bouton

     The Left understands Bouton’s insight. The Right does not...at least, we don’t often behave as if we do.

     The Left’s attack on freedom of expression is multi-pronged:

1. Legal: By “lawfare” suits against persons who express views inimical to its aims.
2. Financial: Through boycotts and threats of boycotts against the representatives of viewpoints it disapproves.
3. Ostracism: Through thunderous media denunciations of such representatives.
4. Deceitful: By slandering or libeling those whose statements it disapproves.
5. Tendentious: By carefully choosing words and phrases that misdirect one’s attention.
6. Physical: Through actual campaigns of destruction and physical intimidation.
7. Victim-Blaming: By recasting atrocities as somehow the fault of those attacked (e.g., the attack on Pamela Geller as “her fault” for “baiting” radical Muslims).

     Not every tactic works on every occasion, but the multiplicity of them is sufficient to intimidate, even paralyze, quite a few people with important things to say – things that must be said. If you can be made to feel that all of society’s “big guns” are aimed at you, you can be induced to self-censor, and those must-be-saids might just go unsaid.

     However, if they continue to be said, even by a tiny minority of the un-cowed, anger at the Left’s suppressive tactics will build. So the Left’s agenda depends on achieving total success...and fortunately for these United States, that has proved impossible.

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     A few months back, the following sequence of simple drawings was used to dramatize the Left’s attack on our right to keep and bear arms:

     I submit that the Left has sought to apply a similar progression to freedom of expression, albeit not principally by legal means. Yes, their mouthpieces – including the evil bastard in the White House – have railed against the Citizens United decision, but short of a Constitutional amendment effectively repealing the First one, they’ll get nowhere with that. Their campaign against freedom of expression has mainly used “political correctness:” an attempt to get us to self-censor by disapproving of us so stridently that we become convinced that we’re being naughty.

     Mind you, these are the same people who praise “art” such as “Piss Christ” and “plays” such as The Vagina Monologues. These are the same people who celebrated Andrea Dworkin. These are the same people who adore homosexual-activist parades that feature all manner of “transgressive” dress and conduct. These are the same people who lionize Emma Sulkowicz. When the “naughtiness” supports their agenda, they have no problem with it.

     A full-throated, utterly courageous counterattack is the only credible response. Moreover, it, too, must be multi-pronged:

1. It’s not “reproductive choice;” it’s killing babies in service to irresponsible promiscuity.
2. It’s not “transgressive sexuality;” it’s perversion on public display.
3. It’s not “social justice;” it’s demands by good-for-nothings for what they refuse to earn.
4. It’s not “environmentalism;” it’s a back-door attack on capitalism by closeted socialists.
5. It’s not “anti-racism;” it’s black hatred for and violence against whites.

     ...and so forth. Take especial note of what Peter Berkowitz said in his recent essay on the subject:

     Nevertheless, most of the elite media—overwhelmingly left liberal—have largely neglected to cover the left's crusade against free speech. Operating out of newsrooms, as Powers observes, in which "there is nobody to push back on their biases," reporters seem unable to detect anything amiss on campuses, in the media, and in the political arena where, after all, the draconian regulation of speech is intended to serve avowedly left-wing causes.

     That deliberate averting of the eyes by the media will only break down if we resolve to break it. Now that there are alternative conduits for the news, the Main Stream Media are losing credibility, specifically because people have noticed that they won’t cover certain subjects, and will only cover certain others in a deceitful fashion. That makes it possible for us to bring them to heel, if only we’re willing to be loud enough, numerous enough, and persistent enough.

     Once the Left has lost its control of the media, all else will follow, for without media protection, its various initiatives cannot be sustained. Decent persons, heartened by the crescendo of sentiment against their schemes, will mass to wipe them out.

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     There’s a “potential well” to be dealt with here. Until enough persons find enough courage to speak openly and stridently against Leftist attempts to silence us, there won’t be enough persons to speak openly. That’s part of why I’ve kept on with this drivel for eighteen years now. Someone has to take the early risks. Someone has to expose himself, and at least act as if there’s nothing to fear. Someone must say what must be said.

     The battle lines have already been drawn. Which side are you on?

The Coming Constitutional Clash

America is headed for a train wreck…you can see it coming if you look far enough down the tracks.  There was a small sampling of this coming wreck earlier this month in Garland, Texas.  The locomotive powering the American experiment – the US Constitution, has been chugging along for well over two-hundred and twenty-six years.  That freedom train is headed for a clash with Islam.  Not just radical, militant Islam, but “American” Muslims as well.

Our Constitution, in the very First Amendment, guarantees “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech.”   Every member of the US Military takes an oath to “support and defend” that right and all other rights enshrined in that sacred document, “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Our Christian founders knew these rights had to be enumerated to keep the federal government, and others, from dictating the manner in which people could worship, and to prevent the establishment of a national church like the Church of England. 

When someone exercises their First Amendment free speech rights in a way that offends Christians, Biblical response is to, as Jesus half-brother James said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”   Jesus put it this way, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

How have some Muslims responded to something that offends them concerning their “Prophet”?  We’ve seen it in Denmark, Paris, and most recently Garland, Texas.  Those groups were only exercising what the US should consider, constitutionally protected, First Amendment free speech. 

Wenzel Strategies conducted a poll of six-hundred American Muslims (with a margin of error of less than four percent.)  When asked, “Do you believe criticism of Islam or Mohammed should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment?” 57.8% said, “No.”  A clear majority do not believe the Constitution protects free speech with regard to Islam.  Perhaps because, in the same poll, over 32%, nearly one-third, said Shariah law should be the supreme law of the land in the US.  Is it confusion about the Constitution, or an underlying belief that Sharia trumps the Constitution?     

It’s one thing to have a philosophical or theological disagreement, it’s quite another to believe you should be killed over it.  When those same American Muslims were asked, “Do you agree or disagree that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death?” 11.5% of the American Muslims surveyed either agree (4.3%), or strongly agree (7.2%), that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death. 

Given that a majority of American Muslims don’t think criticism of Islam or their prophet is protected, and more than eleven percent thinks that offensively exercising one’s Constitutional right deserves death, just how big is the impending train wreck going to be?  Let’s use the study titled, “The American Mosque 2011″ by Ihsan Bagby of the University of Kentucky.  

Bagby reports there are 2,106 mosques in the US, more than double the 962 in 1994.  This doesn’t include groups not considered Islamic, e.g. Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  According to Bagby’s work, the states with the highest number of mosques are: New York (257), California (246), Texas (166), Florida (118), Illinois (109), New Jersey (109), Pennsylvania (99), Michigan (77), Georgia (69), and Virginia (62).  Based on his work Bagby projected 2.6 million “mosque participants,” up from 2 million in 2000.  Bagby extrapolates that if non-affiliated adherents were included the total “should be closer to the estimates of up to 7 million.”  

Using a conservative figure of three million American Muslims, there are roughly 1.73 million Muslims (57.8%) here that believe your First Amendment right does not allow you to criticize their religion.  That would also mean there are some 345,000 American Muslims (11.5%) that think Americans who do criticize or parody Islam should be put to death.  

The Center for Immigration Studies reports, “Immigrants from the Middle East are currently the fastest growing immigration demographic coming into the US” and predicts, “the immigrant population from the Middle East will double in fifteen years and triple by 2050.”  

The coming Islamic train crash is not with Christians, it’s with the Constitution.