The Viciousness Of The Righteous

     Don’t take the title too literally, Gentle Reader. There’s a dollop of sarcasm in it.

     I’ve ranted many times about how the Left’s assumption of moral and intellectual superiority seems to license it to do all manner of vicious, amoral things. History offers us many examples of its big crimes. Its lesser sins against honesty and decency tend to go unnoticed, except by those who are the targets thereof.

     This vignette by Jim Trageser provides us a look at one such “lesser sin:”

     In the early 1990s, I was the opinion pages editor of the Oceanside Blade-Citizen in San Diego County. We were a 30,000 circulation daily serving Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista and Encinitas. At that time, California and a few other states were pioneering new laws that required financial institutions to share with customers the files they kept on us - and to provide a process for challenging inaccurate information.
     The editorial board - publisher Tom Missett, managing editor Rusty Harris, and myself - were in favor of this development, and wrote a series of editorials in support of it. Then we went a step further, and in another editorial argued that political and activist organizations that keep files on American citizens should also have to disclose those files on request, and have a process whereby inaccurate information could be challenged.

     Please read the rest.

     There’s a curious tension in there. The notoriously brutal tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center were already well known, at least among conservatives. Yet that organization clearly felt that it had to maintain the secrecy of its operations. From Trageser’s tale, the SPLC’s masters regarded anything that might breach that secrecy to be a threat to it. Yet there could be no question about the magnitude or the direction of the SPLC’s activism; it made its accusations quite publicly.

     Would the exposure of the SPLC’s files have done it harm? Probably, though I can’t see that harm being mortal or near-mortal. Its orientation and agenda were too plain. But as Trageser tells us, it was willing to use its methods to bludgeon a relatively small and local newspaper, rather than allow even the suggestion that activist groups of its kind should be transparent about their recordkeeping.

     I must conclude that the SPLC’s masters were aware that what they were doing was wrong, despite their belief in themselves as morally superior to those they were targeting. That awareness didn’t seem to have any effect on their behavior. They went on righteously denouncing anyone to their right as purveyors of “hate.” The recent revelation of their funding of public demonstrations of “hate” and “racism” surprised few conservatives.

     Cognitive dissonance doesn’t quite cover this. I don’t know what would.

     This is one of those “How can they possibly sleep at night?” questions that arise repeatedly about left-wing organizations and activists. It’s not far from the usual run of such things, apart from its blatancy. Still, add it to the catalogue. Keep it handy for the next time some leftist blathers about the Trump Administration’s “lack of transparency.”

A Little Peace On The Side

     [The following first appeared at the old, much lamented Eternity Road site on September 12, 2006. I’m reposting it as a memory refresher, for everything discussed below still pertains to political discourse and the Left’s tactics today.
     The Left’s approach to hammering its lunacies into the public mind has been highly consistent. It’s had remarkable success, especially at inducing decent persons to self-censor. Yet all its tactics are founded on lies and vilification. We must challenge them on everything they say, especially their absurd notions about “social justice.” Nonsense has no place in serious discourse. – FWP]

* * *

     In its attacks on the Right, the Left frequently employs the notion of "code words:" phrases of innocent appearance that conceal sinister intentions. For instance, we have this from two prominent Embarrassments-at-large to the United States Congress:

     Politicians know this trick well. In 1994, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., likened tax cuts to racial epithets, saying, "It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' anymore. They just say, 'Let's cut taxes.'" Later that year, Rep. Major Owens, D-N.Y., used similar language to describe the Republicans' Contract With America: "These are people who are practicing genocide with a smile; they're worse than Hitler." [statements made during the debate over the Contract With America]

     Ann Coulter, the great conservative provocateuse, characterized such rhetoric thus:

     When arguments are premised on lies, there is no foundation for debate. You end up conceding to half the lies simply to focus on the lies of Holocaust-denial proportions. Kind and well meaning people find themselves afraid to talk about politics. Any sentient person has to be concerned that he might innocently make an argument or employ a turn of phrase that will be discerned by the liberal cult as a "code word" evincing a genocidal tendency....

     Vast areas of public policy debate are treated as indistinguishable from using the N-word (aka: the worst offense against mankind....The spirit of the First Amendment has been effectively repealed for conservative speech by a censorious, accusatory mob. Truth cannot prevail because whole categories of thought are deemed thought crimes. [From Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right]

     This use of the "code word" notion as a sword is generally understood among persons of conservative and libertarian inclinations, but less attention goes to the Left's use of code words as a shield: a screen of attractive but irrelevant concepts deployed to prevent critical examination of something they favor.

     Consider the following, found at the head of this Web site:

     Finding peace in this world we live in seems like a daunting task. We watch as our own government is unmasked to reveal it's naked aggression, it's use of torture in the name of freedom and it's unholy alliance with corporate power and right wing religious extremists. Where are they taking our nation and and do we as a people even care anymore about peace, social justice and truth?

     Ignore the strange grammar and punctuation if you can. Ponder rather the implications of the statement, whose maker is undoubtedly in favor of "peace, social justice, and truth"...by her own interpretation, anyway. Read the most recent half-dozen of her posts and try to determine for yourself what her definitions of those things would be.

     They surely sound good, though, don't they?

     "Peace" by the norms of the liberals usually means surrender to socialist and communist insurrections, which they call "reform movements." "Social justice" by their lights means the erection of ever-larger transfer programs and laws that offer preferential treatment to their favored mascot-groups. "Truth" to a liberal...well, an Eternity Road reader is more than capable of judging for himself. But the terms themselves carry so pretty an aura that virtually no one is willing to compel their elucidation. So liberals get to hide their true intentions behind them: spinelessness before the march of totalitarians and thugs worldwide; exploding government spending and the ceaseless proliferation of laws that infringe upon freedom of speech, association, commerce, and the rights of private property; and the negation of objective standards by which statements of fact might be deemed pertinent to an issue and subjected to critical evaluation.

     Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek was especially harsh about the pseudo-concept of "social justice." Justice, he pointed out, refers to two things:

• A state of affairs in which each individual has that which is his by right;
• A process invoked to investigate situations alleged to be unjust and to correct them as necessary.

     The two meanings are tied together inextricably. A justice process cannot function to any advantage unless one can determine the just state of affairs toward which it must strive. But to determine that endpoint, one must concede that it once existed in reality, or that it would have existed except for an injustice that prevented it. This is impossible except by defining the rights of Man and specifying them for the particular persons in the controversy at hand. Thus, it is inherently an individualist premise; it cannot be "socialized" except by destroying the objective basis for the very thing it seeks to protect.

     Of course, socializing everything in sight is what the Left is all about. In liberals' ideal world, every imaginable human action is either compulsory or forbidden. There would nominally be "laws," but there would be administrators and commissions -- staffed wholly by liberals, of course -- with unreviewable plenipotentiary power to interpret those laws. Elections and legislatures would become meaningless; infinite power would rest in the hands of persons whose decisions could not be challenged, and who could be removed from their thrones only by death. That's the precondition for all "progress" by these "progressives'" lights.

     But for anyone to perform that analysis aloud must be prevented. It would give the game away in a rather final manner. So rather than campaign for infinite power for liberal mandarins, they prattle about "social justice," and hope that no one notices the opposition between the first word and the second.

     The thickness of the miasma that steams from such rhetoric -- accusations of "code word" employment by persons on the Right; deployment of "code word" defenses to avert critical analysis of the notions of persons on the Left -- makes it all but impossible to find a route back to wholesome, constructive discourse. Worse, calling a liberal on it is a glove hurled in his face. The fundamentally decent ones mostly lack the insight to see what their rhetoric really means. The indecent ones cannot abide the imputation that their favorite tactic is a tip to their dishonesty. Which suggests that the Era of Code Words is likely to hang around for a long time to come.

Episodes In Intolerance

     Get a load of this:

     Back in 2006 Dan Simmons wrote a time travel story warning about the Century War with Islam. Thucydides plays a prominent role, his diagnosis being that the Sicilian Expedition failed because the Athenians were not ruthless enough, and thereby doomed themselves.
     He got cancelled for this, of course. One of the greatest literary talents of his generation smeared as a right wing crank by people who didn't know what a dhimmi was, or a jizya, and had certainly never read Thucydides, but knew damn well that Islam was a religion of peace.

     Dan Simmons was a unique, overpoweringly impressive talent. He could write anything — and he did. His books cover the whole range of the fiction genres, possibly excepting romance. More important, every one of them was a jewel. I think I’ve read most of his oeuvre, and I can’t remember ever being displeased by so much as a single sentence.

     Simmons passed away only a few days ago. I could go on a long, effusive dithyramb here, extolling his numerous virtues as a writer and storyteller, but that’s not why I’ve chosen this subject. It’s because of a single short story he wrote, which he posted at his website. It’s a monitory tale; its focus is the war between Islam and civilization itself. And it is unsparing of anyone’s notions or preferences. If you haven’t yet read it, please do so before continuing on here.

     I know of only two other writers, the inimitable Tom Kratman and the mighty John Ringo, who have been equally blunt about the peril Islam poses to the First World. (No, I shan’t number myself among them. I haven’t earned the right to sit in that company.) But Kratman, Ringo, and Simmons share something else as well: They’re savagely reviled by the Left and the bien-pensants of all Establishments. Consider this vacuum-skull’s denunciation of Simmons:

     These days, Dan Simmons is mostly known as a hard-right Islamophobe who thinks that moderately progressive social policies will destroy America and tries to keep himself relevant by scolding climate activists. But in ye olden days, he was famous for a series of weird, genre-bending novels that made readers say either “wow, that’s deep” or “the heck did I just read?”

     Mustn’t offend the Left! Their claws come out immediately. Never mind that none of them are worthy to tie Simmons’s shoelaces. That’s the tactic they’ve embraced: vilification and unrelenting denunciation of anyone who dares to disagree with them. “Racist! Sexist! Ableist!”

     (Yes, those denunciations have lost a lot of their force. I’m a proud racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic-American. Being up-front about all that hasn’t hurt my bank balance. Perhaps that’s because those positions are well supported by the evidence. But I digress.)

     Perhaps Simmons is just one more casualty of our contemporary political divisions and the fusillades they’ve occasioned. After all, there are some other big names on that list, including Dr. William Shockley, co-developer of the transistor, and Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of the DNA molecule. But it’s still worth noting that there is no writer on the Left whose stature compares even remotely to that of Dan Simmons. And of course, now that he’s gone, those pygmies will cluster around his grave to piss on it again. It’s approximately all they can do.

     Remember when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies came out? Leftist scum were quick to denounce both Jackson and Tolkien for being racist, sexist, et cetera. “Why aren’t there any good Orcs? Why aren’t there women warriors other than Eowyn?” And on and on. Of course, to anyone familiar with pre-technological socio-anthropology, such criticisms appear idiotic, but what of that? “Racist! Sexist!”

     Gentle Reader, the idiocy is so extreme that it’s all I can do not to erupt in wild laughter. Yet I feel a great sympathy for Dan Simmons and a great revulsion toward those determined to besmirch his memory. For there will be some potential readers and admirers who will be deflected from enjoying Simmons’s works because of the Left’s scurrilities. And that is a terrible shame.

     Rest in peace, Dan Simmons. Know that you are missed.

Crossing Them Up

     In most eras, women’s choice of accessories and jewelry hasn’t been considered a political topic. Well, these aren’t most eras, are they? Still, when this rolled around:

     … it struck me as on the silly side. What, political appointees aren’t allowed to wear religious icons? Why not? Don’t they have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else? Are the leftists in the media making noise about this for lack of anything else to hector the Administration about?

     It does have a hint of the flavor of a thrust against Christianity and its symbols. But the attention on these two women has made me think it might be a more focused attack than the usual broadsides against the Christian faith. Karoline Leavitt and Pam Bondi have been important agents for the Administration’s initiatives, and therefore important targets for the Left. Being women, they’re presumedly more vulnerable than men would be. Bringing them down would hurt the Trump Administration. Attacking their religious jewelry is just the latest stroke.

     The Left and its boughten allies have been hostile to Christianity for some time. They persistently strive to accuse professed Christians of hypocrisy. The arguments hardly matter. Some of them have been so absurd as to be impossible to parody. Yet they persist, perhaps out of desperation.

     Remember John Ashcroft? Hell, remember George W. Bush! It wasn’t that long ago. They were openly Christian; never mind what you thought of their performance in office. It displeased the Left no end. Even leaving the Left’s hostility toward an alternative source of moral guidance aside, they could not bear to have respected men in high office share a belief system popular with the majority of Americans. It was a political asset the Left, whose distaste for Christianity had become open, could not overcome.

     Bondi and Leavitt look more vulnerable than Bush and Ashcroft; therefore, they’re drawing fire. It has nothing to do with a religious bias within the Administration, nor with the many underhanded accusations of “hypocrisy,” nor with the notion that Administration appointees being openly Christian somehow disenfranchises part of the American populace.

     The presence of Valerie Jarrett in Barack Obama’s inner circle made a lot of conservatives uneasy, as did Obama’s own Islamic background. But no one suggested that Jarrett was unfit to be an Administration advisor on the grounds of her faith.

     The tempest may be loud, but the import is small and easily confined to its teapot. Who was it who said when you get to some city or other, “there’s no there there” -- ? This is much the same sort of fracas.

Making It Clear

     Every now and then, someone will post a rendition of the following sort, somewhere on the Web – typically, these days, at X:

One year ago, I publicly came out in support of President Trump.

I had absolutely no idea how severe the backlash would be.

The Left tried to destroy everything good in my life.

My job. My family. Our safety.

We lost more friends than I ever could have imagined.

Politics is…

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) February 15, 2026

     Please read it in its entirety, Gentle Reader. It’s worth your time.

     The story isn’t a new one, of course. We’ve heard similar accounts before this. The commonalities among them are striking. But the differences among them are just as important. It’s worth noting them for general consideration.

     Matt Van Swol describes himself as “Former Nuclear Scientist for US Dept of Energy.” So we must suppose he has a few working brain cells. Despite that, it came as a surprise to him when those that he regarded as friends before he announced his support for President Trump turned against him as a person. Hadn’t he noticed the pattern? Or did he think it wouldn’t apply to him?

     Then there’s this part:

     There’s a specific kind of grief that comes from realizing people didn’t just disagree with you… ...they re-categorized you as "unsafe." Someone once told me that, in person. "We don't feel safe with you." Like you became a different species overnight.

     Now, in point of fact, Matt’s former, left-leaning “friends” don’t feel “unsafe” around him. They’re not worried that he might hurt them, steal from them, or kidnap their children. As an intelligent man who consciously changed his opinions, the threat he presents is to their assumption of righteousness. That’s the core of the Left’s appeal to its adherents: “Just adopt this political posture and you can preen yourself as being smarter and more moral than those Neanderthals in the Right!”

     This too is part of the pattern. It’s been on display throughout the Twenty-First Century… but one must see it to acknowledge it. And it speaks volumes… but one must hear it to comprehend it. Many people, including some highly intelligent ones, fail to do those things.

     This is not a major new revelation. Thomas Sowell covered it in detail in his masterpiece The Vision of the Anointed. Nearly every other significant aspect of the Left-Right divide flows from it. On June 28, it will be thirty years since the publication of that book, yet far too few people have read it.

     But I don’t mean to make heavy weather of that facet of things. Rather, allow me to note one more thing about Matt’s “transition:”

     We went to church for the first time ever, with our kids.

     Just twelve words. A simple declarative statement. But it says more than one might think upon first reading it.

     Conservatives tend to be practicing Christians. Religion of any sort mixes dubiously with politics, but the correlation between conservatism and Christianity among persons in the Right cannot be denied. Note that Matt and his family went to church “for the first time ever.” That’s a haymaker… but for the full impact one must ask “Why?”

     Allow me a snippet from an old Heinlein story, “The Man Who Sold the Moon:”

     "Ever read Carl Sandburg, George?"
     "I'm not much of a reader."
     "Try him some time. He tells a story about a man who started a rumor that they had struck oil in hell. Pretty soon everybody has left for hell, to get in on the boom. The man who started the rumor watches them all go, then scratches his head and says to himself that there just might be something in it, after all. So he left for hell, too."

     I have no doubt many of Matt’s family’s friends were practicing Christians. But he’d had no interest in such things… until he noted the correlation between conservative opinions, decency and courtesy in treating with others of divergent views, and Christian faith. He saw, and he wondered. Maybe he thought that there just might be something in it, after all.

     It’s happened before, hasn’t it?

     Spread Matt’s tale around, Gentle Reader. It has more punch than many thousands of my own words.

War News

     I could write about any of many things today, but the envelope into which the most recent events fit is the Second American Civil War.

     Minnesota and California have practically declared themselves to be in insurrection. Excuse me, what did you say? President Trump cut a deal with Tim Walz? That’s nice. What’s been happening since then?

     The insurrectionists are largely organized, though some are responding spontaneously. Some are native to the districts they trouble; others are bused in. They’re young and old, armed and unarmed.

     They’re unified in one thing only: their opposition to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency’s attempt to locate, detain, and expel illegal aliens. President Trump has given ICE carte blanche to fulfill its duties. Some of what’s happened has struck even conservative observers as excessive. The insurrectionists have capitalized on the two deaths to date by shouting “Nazis!” at peak volume… mostly at ordinary private citizens.

     There’s little point in trying to change the label. The American Left has gone to war against the Administration, the immigration laws, and the electoral system. What more is required to deem the Left in a state of insurrection?

     The Left has gone “all in.” It has fully mobilized its financial and personal resources for the conflict. The Democrat Party, while giving lip service to “the rule of law,” is aligned with the insurrectionists. Indeed, its hope of political survival rests on their success.

     There are only two ways to quell a rebellion: by surrendering to it, or by defeating it. Don’t expect President Trump to surrender to it. But defeating it will require more dramatic action than merely having ICE agents detain suspected illegal aliens and deport the ones who can’t establish that they’re here legally.

     Blood has already been spilled. There will be more.

     I hope the National Guard need not be dispatched to the loci of insurrection with free-to-fire rules of engagement. But it’s a real possibility. Were President Trump to federalize them and send them forth, would they be willing to obey his orders as Commander-in-Chief? It might require them to act against people they know, their neighbors.

     This isn’t Armageddon yet. But things are not looking good. Stay tuned.

     (For my views on the illegal-alien crisis, see this Baseline Essay.)

Uncorrectable

WARNING!
The following piece will contain a common profanity.
For today, I found that profanity unavoidable.
Read on at your own risk. * * *

     There are two kinds of people: those who believe that there are two kinds of people, and those who don’t.

     Yes, yes: it’s an old gag. But I’m an old man; what do you expect from the likes of me? Anyway, I got up humming an old song, one that everyone has heard but is light-years distant from “the charts” in our time: this one. Being analytically inclined and surrounded by people desperate for an explanation for our current state of FUBARity, I gave it some thought.

     What’s that? You don’t understand FUBARity? Aw, c’mon! FUBAR is older than I am! FUBAR is a companion concept to SNAFU: “Situation Normal: All Fucked Up.” That droll assessment is commonplace these days:

• We know things are fucked up;
• We also know that fucked-upedness is “normal;”
• So we relax.

     But we’re not supposed to relax when things are fucked up. We’re supposed to fix things. Common though it may be, fucked-upedness is an undesirable state. So let’s get to work!

     Wait: there’s a missing step in the above: We can’t just blindly “get to work;” we must first understand why things are fucked up. Where is the error, the mistake, the wrong turning that led us away from acceptable conditions into the land of the fucked-up? We must isolate that first and foremost.

     So we try, and are repeatedly thwarted. Our search leads us to people much like ourselves, except that… well, they aren’t. They don’t respond to citations of that essential ingredient in all investigations of fucked-upedness: reality. We shower them with actual data drawn from the experiences of men and nations, and they dismiss it! They talk around it; they shrug it off; they change the subject, hurl imprecations, or both. There’s no getting them to live in the same universe as we do.

     Some of them counter-shower us, sometimes with inane platitudes, but at other times with “studies.” The conclusions of those studies strike us as perverse. But given our inclination to respect systematic investigations of any sort, we trace those studies back to the people and institutions that emitted them, and we find… more fucked-upedness!

     There’s an enraging circularity about it all. It can drive a sane man mad, a peaceable man violent. We resist those inclinations and try again. After all, we’re talking to people much like ourselves. They must be reachable! But nothing changes.

     Presently we give up. We accept that though we may have found the problem – indeed, we most certainly have found it – we cannot fix it without violating the “rights” of those people who, after all, are much like ourselves. We shy back from the required means. We look for other measures, but in vain.

     For what we have found is FUBARity: that condition of being which is “Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”

     There’s a small dissonance in there. We recognize the fucked-upedness; it’s those who suffer it that don’t recognize it. But fixing the condition is what matters. Fixing it eludes us because of our respect for their “rights.”

     Our frustration knows no bounds.

* * *

     It’s time for a quote. This is one for which my source is hearsay. I’m told that the person who emitted it said it at a public appearance that I did not attend. I trust the person who repeated it to me, so I’ll give it to you as he did:

     “Savages have no rights.” – Ayn Rand

     Enormous dismay ensues. No rights at all? Not even the right to life? That can’t be right! Surely there’s some escape clause here.

     But there isn’t. The problem lies in the meaning of that term savages.

     A savage, in Rand’s lexicon, is someone who doesn’t recognize or honor rights as such. His ethical metaphysic is “What can I get away with?” Dangerous as individuals, savages are genocidally lethal when they band together. And there are bands of them ravaging our land even now.

     Savages yield only before overwhelming force. But we shy back from using force against them, because… well, they have rights! The right to life, at least. So running one over is out.

     But that yields the street to the savages. Unacceptable! What, then? Drive around them? Well, if possible… which it often isn’t. To get to where we must go, force will be required.

     You cannot concede rights to others who don’t concede yours.

* * *

     As you can surely tell by now, I’m not talking about the stereotype of a savage. That “black Sambo” figure in a loincloth with a bone through his nose blocks a lot of people’s thinking. I’m talking about people much like us in appearance and overall conduct, but who are willing to do anything and everything to get what they want politically. It doesn’t matter to them whose rights they must trample, or whether the end they seek is fatally unstable. They get their satisfactions from their political stances and those who share them. That’s the sustenance they seek: acknowledgement from their sort that they’re “good people.” Compared to that, what relevance has reality?

     There’s the core of FUBARity: it cannot be corrected by reference to reality. Those people who look like us and (mostly) dress like us yearn for acknowledgement that they’re good people much too strongly to be deflected by reason or evidence. Reality is, for them, an obstacle rather than a reference point. It must be defeated, and it will! Surely older and wiser heads who share their views are already working on it.

     I could go on, but I don’t think there’s a need. In closing, please have a look at two tweets: This one, which fancifully compares those people just like us to “large language models;” and this one, which invokes a term from systems theory for the self-referential defensive behavior of an institution that resolves to ignore reality to the extent it threatens the internal logic of the institution itself. Yes, they’re a bit fucked-up themselves, and they complicate something that’s really quite simple, but they illustrate how far reasonable people will go to explain the impenetrability of FUBARity.

     Have a nice day.

“Both Sides,” Now?

     The world of Internet acronyms moves much faster than I can track it. Just a few days ago, I learned about DARVO: “Deny And Reverse Victim and Offender.” It’s easier to pronounce than many of the others, which is a blessing. The tactic to which it refers is a strictly Leftist thing, well exemplified by Leftists’ insistence that the murdered Charlie Kirk was a “fascist” and that assassin Tyler Robinson is merely a “troubled kid” who needs “help.”

     Owing to the rise of popular fury over that assassination and other attempts to gun down Republicans and conservatives, the DARVO gambit isn’t getting much traction lately. So the Left’s spokesmen are trying another, which – so far as I know – doesn’t yet have its own acronym. The new mantra is “Both Sides Are Responsible.” (BSAR, anyone?)

     Given the reported acts of violence of recent years, that’s more than a little disingenuous. At least, I can’t name a conservative who’s targeted a Leftist. While the initial attempts to characterize Tyler Robinson as a MAGA fan failed miserably, the attempts themselves are a giveaway of the Left’s rhetorical desperation. “Racist,” “fascist,” “homophobe,” “Islamophobe,” and “xenophobe” haven’t been carrying their weight lately. The first two have been brutally overused, whereas the other three simply haven’t gained traction.

     Political polemicists have to work with what they’ve got. On the Left, that’s precious little. They’ve striven to equate the murder of a popular conservative by an AntiFa-aligned killer to an intemperate statement from the chairman of the FCC. If that doesn’t suggest desperation, I can’t imagine what would. Still, the chant has gone up that “both sides are responsible” for political violence in the Twenty-First Century United States.

     As the major channels of communication continue to be far more friendly to the Left than the Right, there haven’t been many prominent slapdowns of the BSAR assertion. One must stand for many: Greg Gutfeld’s evisceration of Jessica Tarlov yesterday night. A choice snippet:

     The left calls Trump a hate monger. They’ve called me a hate monger because I ridicule the left. I ridicule protesters. I ridicule academia, Hollywood, the news media. I make fun of The View every day. I make fun of the UN. Guess what? No one acts on the things that I say because my side doesn’t do that!
     We say people are stupid, we say people are wrong, but we don’t say they’re evil. That is YOUR game!
     And then you come and you say, ‘This is a mentally ill loner.’ Well, who do you think does this stuff? It’s not Ben Affleck, it’s not Tom Brady…People who do this stuff are always that way.
     The question is, who points them in that direction? Why pick ICE? Why pick Charlie Kirk? Why target TV stations and put bombs under FOX trucks? Why vandalize memorials? Why kill kids in Catholic schools?”

     And indeed, both the vicious rhetoric and the consequent violence are emitted solely by the Left. The Right has produced no James Hodgkinsons or Tyler Robinsons. But even one act of violence from a conservative against a popular Leftist could provide BSAR the grounding it seeks. The Right must be careful not to provide even the slightest substantiation for the Left’s calumnies against us. Else BSAR’s ceremonial tune will resound from coast to coast. The Right, with its far lesser media presence, will be hard pressed to counter it.

The Left’s Model Of History

     Long, long ago, in a suburb not too far away, I had a teacher for American history who started the year with a striking proposition: specifically, that American history education has been forced into a “good guys versus bad guys” model. (Henceforward, the Model.) He could have named names, but he didn’t. Instead, he presented the Model to us and asked us whether it accurately summarized the way we’d been taught to view American history in our earlier school years.

     It did. It does. It continues to dominate the teaching of American history to this day. It will come as no surprise to my readers that the Model proposes that the “good guys” are on the big-government / international-interventionist left.

     Now, that teacher had a screw or two loose. He thought compound interest on mortgages (especially his) was “unfair.” He felt it was entirely acceptable to belittle those of us who sought careers in science and technology. And he was an ardent, evangelistic political conservative, one of the very few I encountered in my school years. I shan’t describe his idiosyncrasies any further than that. But he did capture the prevailing Model of American history accurately. (Needless to say, he taught from the opposite perspective.)

     One of the implications of the Model is, of course, that those administrations opposed to big government and international meddling are therefore bad. A teacher presenting American history to his students under the Model faces certain challenges. For example, he must reconcile the admiration of the administrations of Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, and Grover Cleveland – three Democrat presidents – with the Left’s disapproval of limited government / noninterventionist sentiments. Preserving the Democrat label from association with limited government and noninterventionism can be a chore, especially when the first genuinely “progressive” president, in the contemporary sense, was Theodore Roosevelt, a Republican.

     To that end, American history before the Wilson Administration is glossed over rather than treated as a serious subject worthy of detailed attention. When the teacher presents details for study, they’re the ones that run counter to the sentiments that prevailed in those years: Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase; Jackson’s support for slavery; Cleveland’s intervention in the Pullman strike. The rest is wrapped in murk, lest the young mind be drawn to the limited government / noninterventionist way of thought.

     The Model can follow the young person into his adult life, and often does. It can warp his perception of social and political developments. It can predispose him against public figures identified with the small-government / America-First ideology. That the big-government / globalist model is antithetical to the principles on which the country was founded doesn’t get his attention, much less serious study.

     This comes to mind this morning for reasons disconnected from most current events. However, it does explain the Left’s sanctification of Democrat administrations starting with Woodrow Wilson, America’s first openly globalist president. It also explains the Left’s vilification of the administrations that have run counter to the big-government / globalist pattern. If the former is Good, the latter must be Evil, regardless of any other considerations.

     A little while ago, I encountered a poster on X / Twitter who claimed, quite barefacedly, that it’s been Republican administrations that have been responsible for America’s involvement in foreign wars. I couldn’t quite believe my eyes, as that poster has said many intelligent and observant things. But she had not paid attention to the details of history since 1900:

• World War I: entered by Woodrow Wilson.
• World War II: entered by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Korean War: entered by Harry S. Truman, concluded by Dwight Eisenhower.
• Vietnam War: entered by John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, concluded by Richard Nixon.

     Only the grip of the Model can explain that degree of historical ignorance in an otherwise intelligent, generally erudite person.

     If you’re the parent of a young American in high school today, watch for the effects of the Model. Chat with Junior about what he’s being taught about the history of his country. If you sense the Model in operation, do what you can – gently, of course – to correct its influence. Introducing your child to the facts, and to other historical perspectives, is critical. In this regard I heartily recommend the late Clarence Carson’s six-book series A Basic History of the United States, which is suitable for teenaged readers.

     Historical literacy is among the things the Left fears most. Consider only the effects of the Model on contemporary left-inclined Americans. How many fewer would there be, were it not for the tendentiousness of juvenile education in American history?

A Declaration Of War Part 2

     Though I strive for clarity, the associated virtue of concision often eludes me. I know the reasons, but my efforts to overcome those weaknesses have had only indifferent success. That’s a great part of why I admire writers and commentators who succeed at concision... when they do so.

     A fellow who describes himself as a “Dem strategist” posted this to X:

In the middle of Kirk’s memorial yesterday, Donald Trump held a press conference and called Democrats scum. I am not going to be lectured by the modern-day Republican Party about rhetoric.

— Mike Nellis (@MikeNellis) September 15, 2025

     I didn’t see that press conference. Let’s stipulate that President Trump actually did call the Democrats “scum.” He has earned my regard, so I’m inclined to think well of him, especially in his dealings with the increasingly vulpine press. If he said it, he had his reasons. At any rate, by my lights various Democrats in public office have behaved “scummily” in recent months.

     The redoubtable Kurt Schlichter responded to the above with brilliant concision and penetration:

See there’s your mistake. No one’s lecturing you. We’re not interested in convincing you of anything. When your side lies about obvious truths, there’s no point in argument. We’re just going to use our legitimate power to prevent your friends from murdering us. If that makes you sad, that’s a fringe benefit. https://t.co/HIyz3uz49t

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) September 15, 2025

     Kurt has gone to the heart of the thing. The Left is at war with us. Its public figures wield language as a weapon rather than as a means of conveying information or opinion. That includes the deliberate denial of objective truths, as if observers were incapable of seeing the reality.

     Argument has been taken off the table. What remains is combat.

     Rhetorical combat can be as vicious as any other kind. While words alone cannot do damage to others, they can induce some persons to use actual weapons with which to do so. The recent murder of Charlie Kirk is only the most recent demonstration.

     Rhetoric can also be used in defense. The Left’s numerous attempts to defame Charlie as a fascist, racist, misogynist, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam are desperate attempts to blunt the impact of his assassination. The intent behind them is perfectly clear: “He deserved it.”

     But let’s not stray from the core of the thing: Argument with the Left is impossible. The Left has made it so. If there was a time when Leftists were willing to debate rather than defame, it’s come and gone. The implications for us in the Right, if I may use a disfavored word for its dictionary meaning for once, are obvious.

     But if argument is impossible, what remains? Reciprocal defamations? Fisticuffs? Counter-assassinations?

     None of the above. While the Right must acknowledge the reality, it’s enough that we take an active stance. There’s no longer any point in William F. Buckley’s approach of inviting the adversary to sit down and reason with us. He tried it; he had some successes; but that era is over. The hour for an all-out attack on Leftists’ deceits, distortions, deflections, and defamations is upon us.

     Make them appear like what they are... what they have become.

     In combat of any kind, a tactic that succeeds will be reused. The reuses will continue until its enemy discovers a counter-tactic that defeats it. In other words, success breeds failure. When you hear someone deride military planners for “fighting the last war over again,” that’s what they’re saying.

     The tactic that defeats lies is truth: the presentation of unadorned facts and their immediate implications, including the plain import of the deceits being proffered in their place.

     No, the truth will not persuade the committed Leftist. He’s sold his soul. But the unaligned political middle of America, the approximately twenty percent of voters who decline to become partisans, are reachable. Moreover, my sense is that they’re growing weary of being lied to.

     It’s our time. Use it for all it’s worth.

     UPDATE: Braden Langley has gone the extra mile for all of us:

     Ponder. And pray.

"A Man To My Wounding"

Have a "think" video:

The Shelter Problem

     Yes, yes, I know you’re tired of hearing about Charlie Kirk’s murder and what’s followed. Sorry; it’s on my mind, and I write about what’s on my mind. You see, there are parallels between the situation that produced Charlie’s murderer and the ones that make both black predation and Muslim violence so rampant.

     The explanation starts with an insight from Brigitte Gabriel:

     I think I’ve embedded this video before, but never mind. Gabriel’s explanation of the sheltering character of a population that protects and enables its violent fraction is on point. When Mao Tse-tung wrote that “The people are the sea in which the revolutionary fish swims,” he had the same idea in mind. The larger mass of that population need not be violent. It needs only to provide concealment, protection, and sustenance to its violent members. That greatly increases the willingness of the violent to go forth and slaughter.

     When black or Muslim violence erupts, the rejoinder from the peacefully inclined among us is often “But they’re not all like that. We can’t punish all of them for the deeds of a few!” This response is so common that it’s generated an Internet acronym: NAXALT. And indeed, by American standards of justice that rejoinder is correct.

     But the phenomenon has killed the degree of mutual trust that made America the social, economic, and political envy of the world. When it’s unwise, for the sake of one’s own well-being, to trust in the good will of strangers, trust will disappear. And that is exactly what has happened.

     We cannot trust blacks.
     We cannot trust Muslims.
     Worst of all, we cannot trust those on the Left – and we have no reliable way of distinguishing them from the others around us. Any of them could be an assassin or an enabler of assassins. Any of them might cheer at seeing one of his fellows brutalize or kill us. The culture that shelters them has reduced the risk of those things to them.

     That has increased the risk to the rest of us.

---

     Retail establishments and restaurants are beginning to sense the dangers. Some have already gone to what I’ve been (mistakenly) calling a “kill box.” Properly, it’s a delayed-admission security entrance. Below is a picture of the sort of thing I’m describing:

     The outer door is unlocked. The would-be entrant steps inside. The inner door remains locked against him until a security guard can decide whether he should be allowed to pass into the establishment. If the answer is no, he can proceed no further; he must leave.

     The “kill zone” where the would-be entrant must wait is of course transparent. It can be made as large as the proprietors think appropriate for their application. The walls are usually made of Lucite. In the future they may be made of armor glass, given how many guns there are in the world. I know of one such retailer, a furrier, who has already imposed such a control on his potential customers. He won’t be alone for long.

     Such controls, openly designed to separate dangerous elements from the rest of us, are a stopgap solution. They can only protect enclosures; they cannot protect public places. With Muslim violence and black “chimp-outs” becoming more frequent and more widespread, the long-term solution can only be a complete, enforced separation of the populations, such as this. Popular sentiment won’t yet support that, but time will tell.

---

     Trust in the good will of strangers is a social requirement. The loss of it atomizes us, as it’s doing today. An increasing percentage of Americans are unwilling to leave their homes to shop. They fear what may await them. Many such have ample justification. (Say what you will about Jeff Bezos, but thank God for Amazon.)

     Do you hate the idea? I do. But anyone with a better idea, a better vision for restoring public peace and amity is welcome to present it. In this regard I must hope that there are keener eyes than mine... though I’ve seen no evidence to that effect.

A Declaration Of War

     Time was, wars were declared in formal notes, delivered by one nation’s ambassador to the potentate of another nation. Military operations waited until that note had been received and acknowledged. When hostilities did begin, they were often battles scheduled to begin at a particular time and in a particular place, with prior warnings delivered to any noncombatants in the area. Battles would often have mercy breaks, during which each side would collect its dead and wounded and care for them.

     Time was.

     I shan’t trouble my Gentle Readers with the tale of degradation that’s brought us to where we are. You may already know it, or some of it. Suffice it to say that nations’ warlike practices are no longer so civilized. The Geneva Conventions, noble attempts to return warfare to some degree of decency, are mostly honored in the breach, if at all.

     Today, wars begin with a military strike. “Oh, you didn’t know we were at war with you? Well, you know it now.” The attitude needs no analysis from me.

     That new “standard” applies to civil wars as well.

     Just in case you’ve been completely disconnected from national events for the past day or so, yesterday a sniper ended the life of Turning Point co-founder and popular conservative activist Charlie Kirk. A high-powered rifle bullet found his jugular from an estimated two hundred yards away. For a moment, it was a tragic, stunning shock, nothing more. Then the reactions and commentary from the Left began to accumulate: celebrations compounded with statements that “he deserved it.”

     It was barely possible to rationalize away Charlie’s murder as the deed of a madman, a “lone wolf,” before those reactions and comments began to appear. After that, it was no longer possible to interpret the assassination as anything but a declaration of war. Real war, the kind fought with bullets and bombs.

     The Right has been muttering darkly about the possibility of a modern civil war for some time. We’ve never wanted one. We hoped we could restore the Constitutional order of the United States by argument, education, and electoral action. We failed to reckon with the emotional dynamics in this deeply divided country. We also failed to understand the two attempts on Donald Trump’s life as we should.

     Clarity has come.

     I could go into depths of detail that would sicken even me, but there’s no need. The matter is simple. The Left has lost at the ballot box. It has lost the national argument. It has lost the emotional allegiances of decent Americans. Its back is to the proverbial wall. Its remaining choices are surrender and violence – and the Left never surrenders.

     War is upon us.

     We don’t get to say “No, we don’t want this,” and end it that way. We don’t get to stand back and hope it will happen somewhere else, to someone else. We don’t get to declare a personal armistice and live our lives quietly while others argue over the terms of the peace treaty. We don’t even get to buy peace by surrendering. We’re in Israel’s position now: every one of us in the Right is on the front lines.

     Charlie Kirk was targeted because of his effectiveness, but even more because of his openness. He wasn’t a supreme commander, any more than was Archduke Franz Ferdinand. He was a high-value target, but nevertheless a target of opportunity.

     Other conservative speakers and public figures are on notice. But then, so are we all.

     I wish I could end this on a positive note, but there aren’t any positives to the thing. The Left has declared war on the Right. The violence will continue. It will probably escalate. More people will be maimed and killed.

     There’s no predicting the outcome. The Right has been too determinedly civil. We’ve never accepted the absoluteness of the contest. We’ve proceeded as if the contest could and would be settled by argument alone. But our adversaries will not accept defeat by that standard. They won’t stop short of anything but total power over all of us: the power of life and death and everything in between. Why should they not go to guns when the national discourse and the electoral contests turn against them?

     It’s August 1914 in America. The next few days will reveal much. For now, pray for our country. And clean and oil all your guns, of course.

Warning!

     Daniel Greenfield deposeth and saith:

     The Online Safety Act was sold to the British public as a way to protect children from adult content, but fighting porn proved to be a trojan horse over fighting what the regime cared about.
     Any Britons trying to read the Act probably never made it to Chapter 7 at which point the wooden horse legislation listed a ‘Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation’ and began handing out matching orders on how internet services are supposed to deal with the bogeys of unfettered speech. What does disinformation have to do with keeping kids from accessing porn?
     Recent court hearings revealed that officials had stated that the real purpose was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”. There’s only one kind of censorship the British government is really into.
     Rather than blocking pornography, the Online Safety Act was used to block videos of parliamentary debates about the Muslim sex grooming gang crisis in the UK. Not only wasn’t the Online Safety Act protecting children from being exposed to sexual content, it was being used to censor revelations about the complicity of the authorities in the sexual abuse of children.

     Yes, that’s Across the Water in our “brother nation” the United Kingdom, but it has some prospects for being replicated here.

     The American left has the same goal as the British Left: unbounded and absolute power in perpetuity. They know, as do my Gentle Readers, that there are three absolute requirements for the maintenance of freedom:

• Education,
• Communications,
• Weaponry.

     No free society can withstand the loss of any of those three,

     The Left has made deep inroads into education in the U.S. I’m sure I need not present the Bill of Particulars all over again. Weaponry is a battlefield: Washington and the state governments have done their damnedest to limit a right guaranteed in the Constitution, and though we of the “gun culture” have had some recent successes in rolling back those incursions, there’s still a long way to go. Communications, thanks to the Internet, was a bright spot for freedom lovers... but the UK’s Left is showing our domestic vermin the path to follow on that front: “safety,” especially for “the children.”

     If there’s anything we ought to have learned beyond all possibility of refutation, it’s that when a Leftist starts talking about “the children,” he’s reaching for power. “The children” is now a shibboleth, a bludgeon-phrase intended to foreclose argument on the current subject, whatever that may be. The Left has no interest in children’s well-being. How on Earth would any concern for children be consistent with “gender fluidity” ideology and “drag queen story hour?” Or allowing Muslims into the United States, come to think of it?

     But as Greenfield notes, the UK’s power-lusters have dropped the mask. Don’t allow our domestic variety to pretend to be different.

Guidelines For Survival In A Socialist America

     My secret sweetie Adrienne has posted a brief list of points that strike me as exceedingly good advice for the four years ahead:

     An interesting comment over at Gateway Pundit carries quite a bit of truth:

     SURVIVING IN A SOCIALIST AMERICA

1. Assume nothing.
2. Never go against your gut.
3. Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
4. Do not look back; you are never completely alone.
5. Go with the flow, blend in.
6. Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
7. Lull them into a sense of complacency.
8. Do not harass the opposition.
9. Pick the time and place for action.
10. Keep your options open.

     Print that list out and paste it to the wall over your computer, or wherever you’ll see it every morning.

Gauleiters

     I can no longer remember where I first encountered the title word. It may have been in Thomas Sowell’s writings. In any case, I’m sure it was some time ago. Dictionary.com gives its meaning as “the leader or chief official of a political district under Nazi control.” It’s a rough equivalent to a word of great importance in the late, unlamented Soviet Union. That word, when transliterated from the Cyrillic, is usually spelled zampolit. It refers to a political-orthodoxy officer, one of which was attached to every Soviet military unit of any size.

     The gauleiter was an important figure in Nazi Germany, just as the zampolit was in the Soviet Union. He was de facto the superior of those in his charge, regardless of formal considerations of rank. Regardless of whether a Leftist regime is structured along Nazi or Soviet lines, maintaining absolute conformance to Party doctrine is an important aspect of all such regimes. Dissent from Party doctrine is such a regime’s greatest enemy.

     The United States doesn’t have gauleiters. Of course not! We’re free. We can believe whatever we please. Saying it out loud, though...well, that can have consequences.

     Consider the following tweet:

     Consider also this story:

     Secretary of State Mike Pompeo derided "multiculturalism" and other "-isms," tweeting Tuesday that they "distort" the nation's founding.

     "Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is," he said. "They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker."

     His comments came after a speech last week when he attacked "censorship, wokeness, political correctness."

     “Systemic racism” and “multiculturalism” are Leftist doctrines. If we had a Leftist regime, the gauleiters would be all over Carol Swain and Secretary Pompeo, immediately silencing them and removing them from any perch from which they could promulgate their heresies. But we don’t have any such officials in these United States...or do we?

     See for yourself. Do a couple of Google searches: the first for “Carol Swain” AND “systemic racism;” the second for “Mike Pompeo” AND “multiculturalism.” Survey what those searches bring you. Then decide for yourself.

---

     We don’t have gauleiters who wield the force of the State...yet. We do have plenty of folks who’d love to fill such positions. Many of them work in the “mainstream media.”

     In his book A Time for Action, William E. Simon wrote scathingly of the “media megaphone.” Have a choice snippet:

     One episode especially vivid in my memory arose when there was speculation that I might be President Ford’s running mate on the ’76 ticket. This possibility prompted several major media outlets, including Newsweek magazine, to bankroll an “investigative” task force to look into my background. A reasonable investigation into the views and record of anyone mentioned for higher office would not, of course, be objectionable. But this, I found, was something else.
     I first heard about this venture when friends of mine in the press corps called and said that people were poking around trying to plant stories that, when I was with Salomon Brothers, I had been involved in laundering money for the Mafia! The idea was so ludicrous I simply laughed at it. Then I started hearing rumors picked up by my staff that a major newspaper in the Midwest was planning an expose of me, including the aforementioned charge....
     A second episode occurred after I had left public office. In late 1978 I was involved in negotiations to buy the Baltimore Orioles. I am a longtime sports nut, and owning a major league baseball team would have been, for me, a boyhood dream come true. It appealed to me both as a business proposition and as an outlet for my interest in sports.
     For some unknown reason, this touched off alarm bells at the Washington Post. I was back working in New York and wasn’t aware of the paper’s concern until General Al Gruenther called form Washington and advised me I should sue the Post for libel. That aroused my curiosity, and when I got a copy of the paper, it was every bit as unfriendly as he suggested.
     Played across the top of the Post’s first sports page I found a long attack on my personality, work habits, and service as Treasury Secretary. The author described me as a formed “bond salesman” and a “political and financial gadfly,” accused me of being a “darling of right-wing Republicans,” derided my stand for balanced budgets, attacked a “tour” I had made to the Soviet Union at the end of my tenure at Treasury, and made me out to be an ogre with my staff. What did all this have to do with sports? Answer, according to the headline: I’m used to playing “hardball” (get it?). In fact, the article—written by a political-financial reporter—had nothing to do with sports, the Orioles, or anything else except intense dislike of William Simon’s philosophy and politics. If you can’t destroy the message, someone once said, destroy the messenger.

---

     When the message is conservative, pro-freedom, pro-Christian, or pro-America, the major media immediately whip out the big guns. They are too deeply in bed with the Left to permit any such messages to gain popular attention—because the Left cannot argue successfully against them. But for that reason, the guns are trained on the messenger, having first been loaded with all manner of libels, rumors, and innuendi. If the messenger is tarred with sufficient slander, the reasoning goes, no one will give his message any credence.

     Gauleiters? Persons assigned by the State to ensure conformance with Party doctrine? Persons empowered to remove or destroy those who dare to depart from the official line? Of course not! We don’t have any such officials.

     Not yet. Not officially, anyway.

     One final observation: Many have spoken of a “revolving door” between government and the major media. There is a steady flow of persons between the two...but the door revolves freely only for persons on the Left. Former members of conservative administrations are excluded from major media positions from which they could make their viewpoints and arguments heard by many. Yea verily, even during Leftist administrations, despite the media’s claims of being in “an adversary relationship” with government.

     Ask yourself why.

UPDATE - Bill Gates Wins RL Farmville Game, And WE LOSE!

Guess he got addicted to that Facebook Farmville app and decided to win IRL.

Also, just noticed that today - 1/20/2021 - is a palindrome.

After I finally, really woke today (I went back to be after I posted this) I started to actually think about the aim of this takeover of land.

Gates will partner with the Big Food Companies, getting a good-sized foothold in the marketplace. Not a monopoly, but near.

SUDDENLY, a virus will be discovered, that is a DANGER to the food supply. It will be carried by seeds - EXCEPT for the seeds of a single hybrid! Which will be available, at first, from a single company (or, perhaps, SEVERAL of the largest companies).

Strictly because of this EMERGENCY, the government of Biden-Harris - VERY RELUCTANTLY - will be forced to OUTLAW use of any other variety for these plants. Violators will be fined, and - if they CHOOSE to use UNAPPROVED SEEDS (the heirloom kind that can be saved and re-used) - THEIR FARMS will be forfeited to COMPLIANT NON-KULAKS.

TPTB MAY carve out an exception for a few groups (the Amish and others), but probably not. They will likely be forced to stop using the heritage techniques of their community, and become dependent on the public.

Protesters will be met with force (WHAT a surprise!). It will be illegal to have a garden that uses non-approved seeds. If resistance in a group (perhaps those White Supremacists?) is great, ANY garden activity will become illegal.

Problem solved. No more unapproved sources of food.

Or, for that matter, pot. The USA will start importing from Mexico, only the finest hybrid-seed pot. That will eliminate a source of income for Non-Party dissidents.

I haven't figure out just how they are going to shut down home distilling/brewing, but - considering that the products are made with substances derived from seeds - I imagine they will figure out a way.

Another Highly Instructive Graphic

     If you’ve struggled to read Herbert Marcuse’s essay “Repressive Tolerance,” which is central to the assertions, beliefs, and methods of the Left, know that you’re not alone. Others have suffered equally. But thanks to Weasel Zippers, we have a Campbell’s Condensed version that anyone can grasp:

     The Marcuse essay is deliberately written in the most obscure language possible. My belief is that this wasn’t just natural to Marcuse, but deliberate, to conceal the falsehoods and fallacies at the core of his thesis. After all, he claimed that:

     The elimination of violence, and the reduction of suppression to the extent required for protecting man and animals from cruelty and aggression are preconditions for the creation of a humane society.

     ...right at the beginning of his essay. However, he proceeds thence to rationalize all sorts of violence and repression in pursuit of Leftist ideals:

     The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and 'philosophies' can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the 'marketplace of ideas' is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the 'end of ideology', the false consciousness has become the general consciousness--from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities. It should be evident by now that the exercise of civil rights by those who don't have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise, and that liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters.

     Note the invocation of Marx’s “false consciousness” notion. This asserts, in the simplest terms, that Americans are wrong to think that we know our own interests. Note also the “small and powerless minorities” gambit. Who are they, who “oppresses” them, and how? Blank-out. And of course, we have “an emergency,” so there’s no time to think – we must act now!

     But wait: there’s more! Marcuse wrote his drivel in 1965, when mass media was tightly centralized and entirely one-way, and when individual Americans’ means of communication were restricted to the mails and the telephone call (apart from a small number of amateur radio enthusiasts). Can you imagine how horrified he would be by the Internet, its two-way nature, and the way it’s allowed millions of patriots to find and converse with one another? Can you imagine what he would rationalize as “necessary” in light of the present “emergency?”

     Hold on to the above graphic. You’ll find it exceedingly useful in the weeks and months to come. Sadly, I can guarantee it.

The Guerrilla’s Tocsin

     What’s that? You think the cautionary sentiments in the pieces you’ve read here are excessive, alarmist, hyperbolic? You say we should calm down? You’re sure “it can’t be all that bad?” Sorry, Gentle Reader. It’s war to the knife, and there are no non-combatants:

     Roger Stone’s wife was attacked by a leftist goon while walking her dog in her neighborhood on Thursday.
     Nydia Stone was attacked so viciously that she was hospitalized and will require surgery....
     “It is true that Nydia Stone was attacked by a leftist on a bicycle in front of their home and that she was already convalescing from a very bad dog bite sustained the week before and reported Broward County animal control. This re-opened a gash in her knee which required a visit to the emergency room,” [spokesman Rev. Randy] Coggins said.

     Do you have a spouse, children, or a home, Gentle Reader?

---

     If you know the term guerrilla warfare, you probably associate it with insurgencies that are too weak to confront their targets in open battle. Historically, that was the principal significance of the term. However, guerrilla tactics can be applied to any combat situation. They’re especially effective against an opponent that has a lot to defend and can’t defend all of it all the time.

     Terrorism is a variant of guerrilla warfare. While the terrorist may have aims that go beyond simply defeating his opponent militarily, his tactics are parallel to those of the “conventional” guerrilla. The terrorist selects a target unlikely to be defended. He musters just enough force to do severe damage and strikes the target by surprise. If possible – it isn’t always – he gets away while his target is still reeling from the strike. The differences between the terrorist and the “conventional” guerrilla are motivational.

     The attack on Nydia Stone qualifies as left-wing terrorism by guerrilla methods. The tactics were as described above. The motivation was and is to terrify major figures in the Right into silencing themselves.

     Strategically, the Left seeks to destroy as many of us as it can, and to compel the rest to go into hiding. For the moment, at least, Leftists cannot do that openly, with the force of the law at their backs rather than against them. Until their strategists are certain that “law enforcement” will not act against them, they’ll rely upon stealth ambushes and vandalism.

     Anyone in the Right with a significant profile could become a target.

---

     As I’ve written before, no one has ever won a war by remaining on the defensive. When there are so many people and things to defend, the terrorist/guerrilla has a huge advantage over his opponent – especially if the defense, such as it may be, is centralized.

     Centralized defense – defensive forces organized along conventional military or law-enforcement lines – will always lose to a diffuse, guerrilla-style threat. That’s the why of terrorism: it inflicts damage on the opponent without incurring open-warfare battles that would allow a centralized defense to use its forces effectively. Even if the damage is relatively slight, its emotional impact is significant. It imbues the opponent with the conviction that no one is safe.

     The Left’s guerrilla tactics have been getting them what they want. Not only are they inflicting damage on the Right, at this time the media are more on their side than otherwise. Successful tactics tend to be emulated. Clearly, they must be countered, swiftly and devastatingly...but how?

     The Israeli approach is to militarize the whole of the populace: “Every Israeli is a front-line soldier.” It’s a grim way to organize a society, but a small nation surrounded by a legion of blood enemies that seek its destruction has no alternatives. Israelis may not be “safe” in the customary sense, but they are armed, ready, and aware of the threats to them individually and nationally.

     Abraham Lincoln spoke of something similar in his 1838 “Lyceum Address:”

     At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?-- Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!--All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

     At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

     The “nation of freemen” of which Lincoln spoke was a nation of armed men. In his day Americans understood that “to be free” means “to be armed.” Men habitually went about with a gun near to hand. They were not inherently violent, but they were prepared for violence. An attacker had to reckon with the high probability that he would lose his life in the attack. Moreover, the man who took it from him would be hailed as a hero who had done his community an important service.

     Sad to say, things are no longer as they were in Lincoln’s time.

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     We speak all too easily of our rights. We lament what’s been done to them these past few decades. But a right cannot be maintained unless it is defended against those who would infringe, abridge, or destroy it. And too many Americans think that defending their rights – including their right to life – is someone else’s job. But it’s not that way and never has been.

     If we wish to be free, we must once more become an armed society: one in which every able-bodied adult is presumed to be armed, ready to defend himself and others, at all times. Needless to say, our political class dislikes the idea. Armed men, jealous of their rights and aware of the threats to them, would have no truck with 99% of what the political class has done to us this century past. Besides, the attitude of dependency upon “law enforcement” to “protect us” is exceedingly useful to the Establishment. It conduces to the steady increase of the Establishment’s power over us.

     Yes, there will be costs. But no one ever said that freedom comes for free, nor that it can be maintained at no cost. If you don’t think the costs are worth paying, ponder this:

     My wife works for the Catholic Church. Recently, several of the nuns with whom she works have received anonymous threatening phone calls that ran something like this:

     “We know you’re a Republican. Unless you change that, you won’t be voting any more.”

     Such calls have been received by nuns in New York, Florida, and elsewhere. The tocsin is sounding loud and clear.

     Have a nice day.

Recapitulation

     The Fortress is having its entire heating and hot water system replaced today, which will make it a cold, waterless, generally difficult period here. Moreover, the work is scheduled to begin early, just an hour or two from now. So rather than blather in my usual fashion, allow me to present a few links and two highly instructive graphics.

     First, the links:

• Leftists always attempt to exterminate their opposition.
• The pre-criminalization of the President.
• This is who they are. This is what they do.
• American “liberals” are alone in their support for this.
• I’d ask him “what was your first clue?” but...
• The atomization of Americans continues.
• Sit down and shut up, Citizen.

     All good stuff, and all highly relevant to our current situation. But what nails it down are these two graphics, which have appeared at several other sites – enough so that I can no longer remember from whom I stole them:

     And:

     Ponder it all. And do have a nice day.