Dawns

     I can’t imagine a reason that you “should” know Evan Barker. She’s worked in left-liberal / progressive political circles for some time. That involvement recently soured on her, with unfortunate consequences.

     You see, Miss Barker committed a faux pas. She said something that made her friends and acquaintances – all left-liberal Democrats – doubt her fidelity to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Here’s the nub of it, in her own words:

     When I decided to go to the DNC in 2024, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready to move on from politics completely, or if I’d find myself re-inspired. After I got home, I went to a dinner party in San Francisco, and when a friend asked me how the DNC was, excited to hear about it, I decided to say how I really felt about the party, finally unafraid to do so. “I’m not sure if I’ll be voting for Kamala. I hated the DNC.” I watched as a familiar expression of moral superiority began to spread across her face. “You’re saying that from a place of privilege” she chided me.
     A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life. The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted “joy”, the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech.
     I left the dinner party early too, heading straight home, where I made a selfie video airing my true thoughts. On August 24th, 2024, I hit upload, announcing to my meager following of sixty people, many of whom were former colleagues and friends in politics, that I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris.

     Please read it all. It’s both eye-opening and heartbreaking.

     Miss Barker frames her decision in terms that we’ve heard from former Democrats before this: the party has “lost touch;” it’s “left its base;” and so forth. That treats the Democrat Party a bit too kindly, but it’s understandable: it also exculpates Miss Barker for her protracted association with the party. But as a certain writer I quote far too often wrote in a similar case:

     But it occurred to [Ransom] that this was possibly the first occasion in his whole life in which Weston had ever acknowledged himself in the wrong, and that even the false dawn of humility, which is still ninety-nine per cent of arrogance, ought not to be rebuffed—or not by him.

     [C. S. Lewis, Perelandra]

     So let’s be kind.

     The title of Miss Barker’s piece is most significant: “One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life.” Ruined her life? Really? But what happened?

     In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: “fascism doesn’t look good on you”, another said “why couldn’t you have waited until after the election?” The social ostracism has trickled out into my non political life, too. I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town.

     Those are all unpleasant and unjust consequences of her decision to disaffiliate herself from the Democrats. But properly regarded, they actually strengthen her case for having done so. A party whose members treat a departing member in such a fashion is diseased. It doesn’t represent anything that could be defended with reason and evidence. It’s a specimen of what Eric Hoffer called “a compact and unified church” – and outside that church there is no salvation.

     Miss Barker will surely reflect on that in time. So should we in the Right, for it shows us a pitfall we must avoid. Any of our fellows who announces that he’s moving to the Left should be treated courteously, however much we may deplore his decision. Political positions are not faiths, and political realignments are not some kind of secular apostasy.

Our Role In Times Of Darkness

     I just encountered the following awesome statement from Tulsi Gabbard:

God is love. The very essence of God is love. Therefore, during times of hardship, sadness, pain and suffering, we naturally and spontaneously take refuge in Him — in love itself — because we know in the core of our hearts that it is only the power and light of God’s love that…

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 29, 2025

     I beseech you: please, please read it all. Reflect on it. The simple truth contained in Tulsi’s words is the weapon that has brought down tyrannies.

     Hardly the sort of emission you’d expect from a politician, is it? Yet there it is. It says much that must be said – that needs to be said – if the madness that has come close to ruining the world is to be quenched. Then compare its message to the scorn high-profile Democrats and other leftists have poured on prayer in the aftermath of Robert Westman’s mass murder of Catholic schoolchildren.

***

     From our origins to our present time, Mankind has known evil. That’s not because we’re evil; we’re not. We’re what God made us: temporal creatures with individual desires and free will. In every generation there will be some who misuse their free will to prey upon others. A great part of the human struggle is to come to grips with evil when it manifests among us.

     Some have more ability than others to confront evil directly. Those of us who aren’t so equipped must do what we can: we must safeguard our characters and those of our children. When evil strikes, we must rely upon our understanding of our fallen state, and be prepared to explain it to our children.

     Prayer is critical at such times. Character is formed from a host of influences. Prayer – regular, humble submission to the will of a loving God – is essential to it. Children must be brought to the understanding that it’s not just a way of wishing for a new pony. To pray is to recognize our limitations. To pray is to say to the One who has no limitations, “Thy will be done.”

     But as Tulsi said in the tweet above, politicians and hangers-on who denigrate prayer will have none of that. They cannot defer to God without admitting to their own fallibility and limitations, which is anathema to them. Why else would the very idea that others are praying for love and understanding upset them so? What are they really saying in their scorn? “Don’t trust God; trust us!”

     Their vision, however misty, is of themselves on the throne of the universe. Their will, not God’s, as the determinant of all things.

     Once more, with feeling: Put not your trust in princes. (Psalms 146:3) Trust God. Trust in your conscience, for it is He who speaks to you through that channel. And trust in the words of the Redeemer:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

     I’ll probably be back later. Have a nice day.

Whither Britain?

     The courageous Mayah Sommers, who has been called “The Young Queen of Scots:”

This brave young lady was chasing off Muslim attackers from her sister.

Her name is: Mayah Sommers "Queen of Scotts"

Share it and let the world know. pic.twitter.com/0jh1jkbmAF

— Cynthia Holt (@Ghostofcynthia) August 26, 2025

     ...is still very much in the news. Mike Hendrix has some thoughts about the matter. So does el gato malo. Both are worth reading. And of course there are these irrelevancies immediately below.

     My thoughts this morning run in another direction: How did Britain fall this low? It’s worth a lot of thought, though I doubt it will get even a fraction of the thought it deserves.

     From anyone else, that is.

***

     Let’s have a little music before we proceed to the analytics – no, wait; I think the thoughts expressed below deserve to be part of the analytics:

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the walls
We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all the suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take

     Many miles away
     Something crawls from the slime
     At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch

     Many miles away
     Something crawls to the surface
     Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in the headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

     Many miles away
     There's a shadow on the door
     Of a cottage on the shore
     Of a dark Scottish lake
     Many miles away...many miles away...many miles away...

(Sting, “Synchronicity II,” 1983)

     Yes, I’ve used it before. It’s potent. It’s penetrating. It asks the same question I posed above: How did Britain fall this low? And it asked it forty-two years ago.

     Forty-two years before Synchronicity was released would be 1941: the year of The Battle of London. Britain was still in decent shape before the Nazi bombing campaign. It wasn’t as well off as the United States, but its economy wasn’t yet dismissible and its men included a fair number of actual men. The American-British alliance that won World War II’s Western European Front was powerful. It suggested that British men were still masculine, a force to be respected.

     But appearances can deceive. Britain was already sinking into the Slough of Despond. In part, that was because its economy hadn’t progressed as far as the American and German economies. In another part, it was because of the deaths of so many British men in World War I, up to then called “The Great War.” And in a third part, it was because of the sense that the ineptitude of His Majesty George VI’s government was responsible for Britain’s involvement in the new war that was devastating their homeland.

     The sense of having been battered by events and bad governance was already at work on the minds of the British. Popular will had begun to wane. When socialist Clement Attlee took the reins from the Churchill government, it received further “humiliating kicks in the crotch:”

     Attlee led the construction of the first Labour majority government, which aimed to maintain full employment, a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act 1948, the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system.

     There was no disguising the direction of Attlee’s program. He aimed to make Great Britain – soon to be renamed United Kingdom – into a socialist state.

     Nothing enervates a people as swiftly, or as thoroughly, as socialism.

***

     Other things must be sketched in for a complete picture: the rise of the trade unions and the accompanying violence; the deterioration of Britain’s “public services,” especially the NHS, from the administrative bloat and underperformance characteristic of a socialized system; the flowering of the various “rebel” movements: “punks,” “skinheads,” “rude boys,” and the like; the decline in marriage and fertility; the retreat from Christianity; the “brain drain;” the opening of Britain to unlimited immigration from the Third World; and so forth. Many causal threads are intertwined there. Suffice it to say that none of the trends that emerged after World War II favored the development of a masculine, self-reliant British man. He was being transformed into a villein.

     Villeins seldom rebel against their masters. They depend on those masters for far too much.

     Today, Britain’s “law enforcement” targets Britons who dare to resist the forces of depredation and degradation. Mayah Sommers was arrested for her courage. As for the multitudes of rapists and despoilers The State has allowed into the Sceptered Isle, they’re under official protection. Their numbers are still increasing, despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that immigration be slowed. The Muslims among them have become arrogant, publicly assertive, and impossible to discipline.

     Popular will is supposedly being expressed by Operation Raise the Colours. Yet those flags are being ripped down as fast as they’re put up. Who stands against that counter-movement? Who will stand against it? One might surmise that the flag-raisers are waiting for Mayah Sommers to do it.

     Talk is not enough to save Britain. Neither are flags.

     It’s been suggested, by Larry Correia among others, that American arms makers go to emergency production levels, and their output be airdropped over Britain. Yet British hoplophobia is so advanced that it’s likely that the airdropped weapons would remain untouched until “trained firearms officers” should arrive to “safe” them.

     A recent email from my dear friend Margaret Ball contained this gem:

     I've been reading a lot of British mysteries lately. The cultural differences are sometimes amusing. Recently, for instance, I read one which started with 3 chapters of the cops agonizing because they've learned that in a certain house in Leeds there may exist...
     A GUN!
     Leads me to suspect that if a bunch of British cops were suddenly transported to the US they'd have a collective nervous breakdown.

     Britain needs men. Have any survived Britain’s century-plus of degeneration? Or are they waiting for Mayah Sommers to lead her sisters and her neighbors’ daughters to save them?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Chronicles Of The Death Cults 2025-08-28

     It’s been a while since I last touched on this subject. However, the processes in motion have remained in motion. They won’t stop politely to allow us to catch our breath. To misquote Robert A. Heinlein, since they don’t take long lunch breaks, neither should we.

     My dear friend and frequent commenter Pascal, in referring to yesterday’s emission, sent this:

     That Mayah was immediately arrested for brandishing a weapon is the most important lesson to be driven into thick, sheepish human skulls of the subjects of that decadent realm. The most influential seats of UK law-makers are occupied by even more deadly death cultists than the Islamists they continue to import and protect. These rulers are so passively evil and cowardly they don't bother bloodying their own hands. Instead they simply continue to write laws that are not only quick to condemn those who defend themselves or the vulnerable, but consistently remove all obstacles to, and any fear of facing justice by, active psychopaths.
     When the justice system is officially turned on its head in this manner, how much more proof is needed that the country's law makers are even more evil than the common criminal?

     This is an indirect swipe at a phenomenon that was once commented on by someone whose name I’ve forgotten. The essence of it was as follows:

The State demands a monopoly on violence.
Yet violent criminals are seldom prosecuted,
While persons who defend themselves violently
Often face The State’s wrath.
Therefore, the criminal is an agent of The State.

     In the United Kingdom, which seemingly grows less united with each passing day, this appears incontrovertible. It also applies to parts of these United States.

     Give that some thought while I fetch more coffee.

***

     This is a few weeks old. It’s on my mind today because of the “death cults” theme:

     This is not a parody. Two bioethicists have argued in the prestigious professional journal Bioethics that we should breed ticks to cause more infections of a condition that causes an allergy to red meat. Seriously.
Why would anyone want ticks to become more dangerous? Meat-eating is wrong, and so anything (apparently) that causes fewer of us to eat meat is “beneficent“:

1. Eating meat is morally wrong.
2. If (1), then eating meat makes people morally worse and makes the world a worse place.
3. So, people would be morally better and the world would be a less bad place if people didn’t eat meat.
4. If an act makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place than it would otherwise be, then that act is morally obligatory. [Corollary of consequentialism]
5. Promoting tickborne AGS [a tickborne syndrome that causes a meat allergy] makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place.
6. So, promoting tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

     “Bioethicists” -- ? How much would you be willing to bet that these... persons’ ethics stop short at ethical mandates such as “Thou shalt not kill,” eh? When “bioethicists” make statements such as “Life should end at seventy-five” (Ezekiel Emanuel) or “The elderly should not receive medical care” (Daniel Callahan), they forfeit any claim to being dispensers of “ethics.” They are death cultists, pure and simple.

     I could go on about this, but as I’ve done so before, and at length, I’ll spare you. Allow me one quick mention of my collection of essays on this subject, and I’ll allow us both to pass on to happier thoughts and climes.

     I may be back later. Stay tuned.

A Glimmer Of Hope

     A couple of days ago, something unusual happened Across the Water: A Briton dared to defend another Briton against the threat of rape by an immigrant.

     If you aren’t familiar with the details of the event, the defender was a 14-year-old Scottish girl named Mayah Sommers. The intended victim was her 12-year-old sister. The would-be rapist was from... somewhere else, probably the Middle East or Africa. Mayah protected her sister by brandishing a large knife and a hatchet at the immigrant. Apparently that was enough to daunt him, and thank God for that.

     The story is resounding throughout the U.K. I have no idea how much currency it’s achieved here or elsewhere. Young Mayah is drawing comparisons to Boadicea, to Joan of Arc, and to other courageous women known to history. She deserves as much praise as she’s received, and more.

     However, her courage has had other consequences, not all of which were easy to foresee.

     The one that’s drawn the most cries of outrage was Mayah’s immediate arrest for brandishing a bladed weapon. In emasculated Britain, that’s a criminal offense, and never mind the wherefores. The probability is high that popular sentiment will compel the dismissal of that charge, but as in all such things we must wait and see.

     After that comes the dawning recognition that the U.K.’s laws against even the most minimal personal armament – even carrying pepper spray is outlawed, barring specific police permission – are utterly insane. They amount to a license for the would-be predator to do what he likes to less aggressive and weaker prey. Horror at the idea that innocent Britons – men and women both – are forbidden to possess and carry the means of self-defense has taken a long time to ripen, but today it’s fully upon the Sceptered Isle.

     Third is the de facto position of The State: protect the predator from the consequences of his deeds, especially if he’s an immigrant, a Muslim, or both. Put baldly, it seems incomprehensible. Yet U.K. governments maintain that posture so consistently that one must infer that it was deliberately chosen. It lends weight to the suggestion that The State values the immigrants above the lives and well-being of native Britons.

     Fourth and last is the rising hope that some measure of masculine courage and native pride might be kindled in the larger British populace by Mayah’s actions. I must admit that I hope for that as well. Britain deserves better than to be Islamicized and removed from the brotherhood of Western civilization. But the odds are against it, for a simple reason.

Britons fear weapons more than their invaders.

     The technical term for a fear of weapons is hoplophobia. It seems endemic in the U.K. The suggestion, made by Larry Correia among others, that we should mass-produce and air-drop handguns to beleaguered Britons has been met with rejection by Britons themselves. They fear the consequences of mass armament more than what’s being done to them by the invading hordes.

     Robert A. Heinlein was adamant that a slave must free himself. What of the slave who prefers slavery to freedom?

     This saga may have a few more stanzas to run. Mayah Sommers is being hailed as a symbol of reborn British courage and defiance: a Mockingjay, if you will. Her example may yet galvanize what masculinity and defiance remain buried in the British soul. If it’s simply too ironic that a young teenage girl must teach those things to British men, then so be it. The Sceptered Isle needs her example too badly to quail at the disgrace of it.

Crimes Against Clarity

     Perhaps a few of my Gentle Readers will be familiar with this classic bit of George Carlin:

     Carlin and I share that particular dislike. However, he doesn’t address the most flagrant insistence on euphemisms today. It’s an understandable omission, as he “passed away” in 2008. That insistence is promoted almost exclusively by the Left.

     We turn thence from a great comedian to a vital essay by a professional editor:

     Words are code for the mind. Change the word, and you change the thought; change the thought, and you change the action that follows.
     This was the logic behind the “person-first” language that emerged in the nonprofit world. A disabled person became a person with a disability. A homeless man became a person without shelter. At its best, this reminded us that individuals deserve dignity. At its worst, it twisted language into unwieldy shapes. But even in this early form, the seed was planted: words were not just descriptions, they were instruments of perception.
     From there, the seed grew into something else entirely. What began as a courtesy metastasized into a strategy. Illegal alien became undocumented immigrant — later even person without papers. Crime was reframed as a clerical mishap, trespass as missing paperwork. The reality did not change, but the story around it did.

     Please read it all.

     I’ve written about the importance of clarity so many times that I’ve lost count. But perhaps the most powerful statement about clarity – let’s be quite clear about that: Clarity is the attribute of the man who says exactly what he means in a way that guarantees that he will be understood – was an indirect one made in a mighty work of fiction:

     “Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington. You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”
     “What things?”
     “You understand what I mean.”
     “No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
     The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”
     “What is?”
     “You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”
     “As what?”
     “Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”
     “Which way do I want you to say them?”
     “Why do you want me to?”
     “For the same reason that you don’t.”
     The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You know, Mr. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go by rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to adjust to the reality of the day and act on the expediency of the moment.”
     “Run along, punk. Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles, on the expediency of the moment.”

     [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

     Have a nice day.

Quote Of The Day

     From the great John Hinderaker:

     If you are going to share a country with fellow citizens [with] whom you disagree on important policy issues, it is vital that both sides believe their opponents are acting in good faith. When good faith disappears, no written document can preserve a republic.

     I could not have put it better myself.

The Globalist Reach And Grasp

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are already aware of British media regulators’ attempt to bend 4chan to their will, under the aegis of Britain’s Online Safety Act. I’m sure you’re also aware that 4chan has “given the Brits the finger.” It was delightful to see the 4chan response, defiant in the face of a threat from an essentially powerless foreign entity. Other American companies threatened by the European Union have bent the knee almost at once. You don’t have to be a fan of Internet porn to applaud 4chan’s boldness.

     While I hope 4chan’s reply will embolden other American companies threatened by foreign busybodies, my main interest here is in whether the episode will teach said busybodies the limits of their ability to assert power. The globalist agenda is to eliminate all such limits. But limits are inherent in all human undertakings, from the septuagenarian desperately straining to thread a needle to the superbillionaire aiming at establishing a human colony on Mars. They’re imposed by our finitude and the laws of Nature.

     Baldly speaking, some people have to be clouted across the chops before they realize that they’ve gone too far. This is demonstrably the case with globalists and political forces. Our reluctance to administer such an update is one of the reasons the national and world situations are as they are. Yet it appears that while they may be late in arriving, appropriate clouts are being delivered to persons who need them. A look at the explosion of patriotic displays among Britons in recent weeks provides powerful evidence. American enterprises that refuse to bow to pressures to “conform” to the “norms” proclaimed by the globalists provide additional support.

     It’s no accident that the “norms” proclaimed by the globalists are virtually identical to the demands of the American Left. The aims of the two are highly compatible, at least in the near term. Were they to succeed in achieving those aims, they might then slug it out for supremacy, but for the moment they’re “fellow travelers.”

     But there’s a larger point to be made in this connection: The “norms” purveyed by those groups require the surrender of individual and national sovereignty. The individual must forfeit his independent power of judgment and decision. The nation must forfeit its jurisdiction – remember the etymology of that word – to supranational bodies unconcerned with national traditions, cultures, and preferences. In that context, the drives for a universal “right” to abortion and the elimination of national borders become comprehensible.

     The Westphalian nation-state was supposed to put an end to such nonsense. Clearly, there’s still some work to be done.

If You Yearn To Understand RussiaGate

     Sundance at The Last Refuge has produced a penetrating capsule analysis of the maneuverings and machinations that constitute the “prequel” to that extraordinary episode. It’s worth reading slowly and digesting in its entirety.

     To many American patriots, still reluctant to believe that even a Democrat would have stooped that low, the RussiaGate scandal can seem incomprehensible. To put it as briefly as possible, they don’t want to believe that a sitting president and a former First Lady could have been that vile. Yet the behavior of other Democrats has made it plain that there is no lower bound to their perfidy. For them, power is everything. Therefore, no tactic is too scrofulous to be considered.

     Mind you, many Republicans are no better. It’s in the nature of a political system that the worst, in Friedrich Hayek’s phrase, will rise to the top. In the United States, a nation steeped in Christian ethics, that dynamic was curbed for many decades by the restraint imposed by conscience in both its forms: i.e., both the inner awareness of wrongness, and “the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.” (H. L. Mencken)

     Put not your trust in princes. (Psalms 146:3) The letter after a politician’s name should be taken only as a guide to the direction of his villainy. Don’t allow exceptions such as Donald Trump to blind you to the general rule.

Still Sick

     I’m still laboring with bronchitis, and unlikely to be eloquent today, so allow me a brief commentary and a day of rest.

     I’ve long admired Canadian “public intellectual” Jordan R. Peterson. He has a talent for expressing fundamental ideas in penetrating ways. Also, he doesn’t shy back from the distasteful conclusion, which is something I cannot say about most opinion leaders today. In the video below, he makes a basic point without flinching. It’s a point that must be hammered home, for today, owing to “progressive” historical forgetfulness, we face a resurgence of one of the most evil ideas that any people has ever adopted:

     In this connection, see also this baseline essay.