A Saturday Smorgasbord

     I haven’t done one of these in a while, and my collection of “must write about this” links is near to bursting, so it’s time. Pour yourself another cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy the madness.

---

     First up, an absolutely marvelous eight minutes on why “modern art” absolutely sucks:

     (The word salad from the gallery brochure had me in stitches.)

     This gentleman speaks for me...with a quibble. Art that genuinely commands admiration does require effort and skill; no argument there. But a third element is required as well: the perceptible intention to communicate something. For example, a painter might expend a great deal of effort and display supremely exacting craft on an oil painting that exactly reproduces a photograph – but why? It would amount to an exercise, nothing more. There must be a message, and as with great fiction, it must tell us something transcendent, something eternal about the human condition, or about Man’s relationship to God.

     Now, few are the painters of great dedication and consummate skill who’d expend months on reproducing a photo in oil paints. So I’d imagine that my quibble is widely understood and endorsed...but like many such truths, it’s important to say it out loud now and then.

---

     Catholic monk Aurelius Moner has written an important essay on certitude: i.e., whether we can have full confidence in what we perceive. The subject is filled with difficulties, owing to the snipes from those skeptical of humanity itself. I’ve known a couple of people like that: the sort that claim that “our so-called knowledge is too theory-laden” for the sort of confidence Brother Moner argues for. The ultimate refutation of the skeptics is simpler than you might think. Highly recommended.

---

     The mighty Ace of Spades is still on fire. His subject today is the sort of pseudo-Randianism that dismisses loyalty to Americans – that’s not a typo – in preference for corporate interests. Here’s the haymaker:

     Can I ask a question of the people who keep telling me they are Really Good At Politics(TM)?:

     If you're basically telling American workers you plan to simply replace them with cheaper imports and they can move to Mexico where prices are cheaper if they don't like it- -

     um, how exactly do you get them to vote for you?

     Please read it all.

---

     Daniel Greenfield can be repetitive, on occasion even trite, but not this time:

     In the last election, Obama told Americans that they weren’t responsible for their accomplishments. “You didn’t build that,” was his message to his slaves. They didn’t build that. He did.

     But they did build that.

     Slaves built the Obama lifestyle. Slaves who struggle to get by. Who scrimp and save to have a few hundred dollars on hand in case of an emergency. That’s the cost of a single dish at a dinner to their masters in the White House. Slaves who fear losing their jobs and being unable to provide for their families watch their hard-earned money being squandered on another vacation and another party....

     Government, like slavery, is an institution. Like slavery, it claims to civilize its dependents. In reality it exploits them. It promises them security in exchange for freedom. It takes away the products of their toil and then tells them that they didn’t build that. It claims a false moral authority to exploit them.

     Michelle Obama is a slave-owner lecturing her slaves about slavery. And Michelle and Barack are the tip of a very large institution which is built on depriving Americans of their political and economic freedoms.

     The congruency between being a slave and being the subject of an unlimited government is more than merely rhetorical – and that’s something our indispensable political class does not want you to know.

---

     Our British cousins have suffered the plague of “multiculturalism” (“societal Stockholm syndrome” – Mark Steyn) even longer than have we on the west side of the pond. However, first begun may also be first done:

     If ever you’ve worried that parts of Britain now resemble some hideously corrupt, Third World Islamic basket case hell hole then you’re going to love Sir Eric Pickles’s gloriously robust report on electoral fraud....

     The languages spoken in polling stations (and other places such as the count) has recently become an issue with concerns that promoting the use of non-English languages could disguise coercion or influence within the polling station. This has not been helped by the Electoral Commission facilitating what it calls “community languages”. Such an approach undermines integration and leaves the door open to fraud. These are not ‘community languages’ – they are foreign languages.

     Here is a bloody-minded Yorkshireman being about as blunt as you possibly can in an official report. The reason Muslim communities get away with flouting and corrupting British values, he is saying, is because the relevant authorities are turning a blind eye. In this instance, he is referring to the practice of “booth capturing”, explained here for Breitbart last year by Jonathan Foreman.

     Few people in the UK have heard of “Booth-Capturing”. In India and across South Asia it is a political phenomenon that is all too familiar. It is one of the most visible and outrageous illegal methods that are used to undermine democratic elections in the region.

     Essentially, thugs working on behalf of a political party physically take over polling stations and use the threat of violence to prevent supporters of opposing parties from voting. (It helps that many parties have youth wings whose real purpose is the supply of necessary muscle).

     In Britain, it’s mainly Muslims. In Philadelphia, it’s the New Black Panthers. Remember them, Gentle Reader?

---

     Finally, a squib that warms the cockles of my ossified sexagenarian heart: a British bar owner who’s had it with customers who won’t put down their cell phones:

     The owner of a cocktail bar in the UK has turned to physics in an attempt to force his customers to actually talk to other instead of just staring at social media all night. Steve Tyler, who owns the Gin Tub in East Sussex, has built his very own Faraday cage around the establishment to block mobile phone signals from entering the building....

     "It's not the perfect system, it's not military grade," Tyler explained. "I just wanted people to enjoy a night out in my bar, without being interrupted by their phones."

     "Rather than asking them not to use their phones, I stopped the phones working," he added.

     If Mr. Tyler has posted a sign to this effect outside his establishment, I’d dearly love to see his patronage figures before and after the event. In any case: Bravo, Mr. Tyler!

---

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. It promises to be a fun-filled day, replete with all manner of home maintenance. See you tomorrow...I hope.