It’s Hard To Rant And Rave When I Feel This Good...

     ...but “My station and its duties,” as someone or other said.

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     1. No Salvation In A Green Card

     The “green card” issued by the Department of State to immigrants who have met the requirements for permanent residence is a treasured possession...among some of them, anyway:

     In September 2009, for example, the FBI and NYPD uncovered a plot to stage simultaneous suicide attacks on the New York City subway system to coincide with the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The ring-leader was Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born Green Card holder who lived in Queens. He and his two fellow conspirators had been trained in bomb making at an al Qaeda camp in Pakistan. Senior al Qaeda commanders had overseen and directed the operation, which was linked to another set of attacks planned for April 2009 in Manchester, England.

     So a “permanent resident alien,” who had won the treasured Green Card, had it in mind to slaughter a few thousand of us! Of course, it’s an article of faith among Muslims that a Muslim can have no allegiance other than to Islam – that all non-Islamic, non-shari’a governments are inherently invalid and are to be fought by any and all means expedient. Challenge a Muslim apologist on that point and he’ll dance around it with the skill of a Baryshnikov. It’s called taqiyya.

     America’s original immigration controls existed to preclude this sort of immigrant, among others.

     Ask yourself this: Why is it that since 9/11/2001 there he have been 30,209 terror attacks in the name of Allah? There have been 38 in the last six days alone, resulting in 425 killed and 419 injured. There were also nine suicide bombings during that time frame.

     So I repeat, why is that? DNA? That would be racist. Poverty? But most of the terror masters are rich. How about an ideology that urges you to do these things, just as it always has since the seventh century? Could that be the reason -- just possibly?

     [Roger Simon]

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     2. Where The “Free Speech Movement” Was Born...

     ...there’s no longer any free speech:

     A protest at UC Berkeley over a scheduled appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos turned fiery and violent Wednesday night, prompting police to cancel the event and hustle the Breitbart News editor off campus.

     This is becoming de rigueur on the Left, and San Francisco “educational institutions” are as far to the Left as you can get without leaving Earth. But wait: There’s more!

     But even after the event’s cancellation, hundreds of protesters spilled off campus into the city streets, where the violence continued as they confronted drivers, engaged in fights, smashed storefront windows and set fires.

     Protesters decried President Trump’s policies as much as they did the visit by Yiannopoulos, a gay conservative who has been making the rounds at college campuses across the country with his “Dangerous Faggot” talks, specializing in remarks meant to insult, offend and disgust liberals who disagree with his ideas.

     Violence unchecked appears to have an addictive quality. A taste begets a desire – really, a need – for more. And like most addictive substances, the need for it escalates over time.

     Yiannopoulos himself has noted that the Left is terrified of free speech. Nor is this a new development. The Left is totalitarian – never mind the supposed “anarchists” involved in the rioting; if there were a fine for using words inappropriately, it would bankrupt them – and totalitarians brook no dissent.

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     3. The “Social Media.”

     I’m not a participant in Facebook. I once had an account there, simply for the purposes of maintaining contact with a few friends, but I was chased off. Facebook has been purging conservatives and libertarians quite systematically and for some time now. If more broadminded alternatives exist, I’m unaware of them. But there’s no denying Facebook’s scope and reach. Many millions of persons worldwide use it as their primary interpersonal communications technique.

     Likewise, Twitter has become hostile to right-of-center political views. It’s less clear why that should be, given the limitations of the medium, but all the same it’s undeniable. In this case there’s a viable – indeed, a superior – alternative: http://Gab.ai, where I participate now and then. But although its limits are less constraining than those of Twitter, Gab is no more likely to be broadly influential.

     This morning, Warden at Ace of Spades HQ gives us something to think about as regards the political influence of Facebook:

     Where before the voters on the left were mostly passive receivers of Cultural Marxism, they had now become active participants via propaganda, slander, social shaming, and otherizing. This meant that conservatives were now being assaulted on two fronts, both from the institutional left and the soft left.

     Every conservative who is active on Facebook knows what I'm talking about. After decades of Americans keeping their politics mostly to themselves, suddenly our feeds were jammed up with political invective.

     It wasn't just directed at politicians. It was personal--a relentless litany of insults and abuse, first at the Tea Party and then Trump supporters. Most of it was generalized, but the message was clear. They held our kind in contempt and didn't care who knew it. In fact, they seemed to be in a contest to see who could broadcast it the loudest.

     Most conservatives were hurt by this. We tend to keep our politics relatively private, both out of decorum and respect for our relationships with people whose politics differ from ours. The message that these public posts sent to us was that our "friends" on the left didn't respect or value us enough to avoid giving offense.

     As someone who has been following politics since high school, I tend not to trust my own instincts what the average voter thinks. I'm simply to close to the subject. My wife, however, is a fairly low-key traditionalist who doesn't care to immerse herself in that world and so I use her as my political weather vane.

     And so I knew that there was a storm brewing when she snapped down her phone over breakfast one day after reading Facebook and told me how sick and tired she was of her friends' political posts.

     "When they say those things," she fumed, "they're talking about our family."

     "I'm so sick and tired of being told that I'm a bad person because I disagree with someone's position on abortion or transgender bathrooms. Who do they think they are to tell everyone what they're required to believe?"

     The hurt had turned to anger and quiet resolve.

     As long as the excerpt above might seem, it’s only a taste of Warden’s essay. Please read it all.

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     4. A Heartfelt Thank You.

     This morning, Mike Hendrix alerted me that several of my Gentle Readers who’ve delved into my fiction have commented at Mike’s dithyramb to my Spooner Federation novels. Those comments, like Mike’s praise, have left me feeling unworthy. It’s always good to know that one’s efforts are appreciated, and I am truly grateful for the reinforcement...especially since I’ve managed to do BLEEP!-all since releasing Statesman. Perhaps this will get me back into my fiction-writing harness.

     Thanks again to Mike for his kind words. Writers live for that, even more so than we do for sales revenue. Ask any of us.