A Best Family Anthem

Mat Best and, I gather, his father put this piece together.



I have a few more principles than that, but I do think that encapsulates a red line. That's the point at which fighting back becomes immediately necessary, because without the tools it will be that much harder.

Resist validation

The New Yorker is upset that the media and the Dems fell for the White House's cynical framing of the immigrant dilemma:
Like the media, Pelosi, whose district covers the sanctuary city of San Francisco, didn’t directly challenge the unspoken but clear premise that something terrible would happen to these cities if immigrants came to them.
Such is the framing of the issue by the White House, and the framing of the story by the media, that no one had the one right response to this idea: “But this is the very point of a sanctuary city! Immigrants, regardless of status, are safe in them. Bring them here! They are welcome.”
You know, that's right. Neither Pelosi nor the media made that argument. I'm perplexed now.

Incitement to Violence

If quoting you directly, in context, constitutes an incitement to violence... why would that be the case? What would you have to have said that merely quoting you would put your life in danger?

Dan Crenshaw, arguably the best man in Congress, is facing a charge to that effect.


You probably know the story. It has to do with a woman who came here as a child refugee, was taken in to our country, given every privilege and honor including elevation to high office. In return, she never seems to speak of her adopted nation -- we adopted her, I mean; I'm not at all sure that she adopted us -- without censure and criticism. And, in the event, she went to a fundraiser for a named but unindicted co-conspirator supporting the terrorist group Hamas, where she spoke dismissively of the 9/11 events.

I won't mention her name, since I wouldn't want to incite anyone. Some woman. Let's leave it at that.

Well, and she's a Congresswoman. She took the oath, for whatever that's worth any more. She took the oath of citizenship, too, for whatever that was worth to her.

Towards the end of her speeches, she sometimes says it was worth something. I'd be more inclined to believe it if the rest of the speech also reflected a heartfelt love of the nation, the Constitution, and our shared history and values.

Now, Dan Crenshaw, on the other hand: there's a man whose commitment seems clear. He enlisted in the Navy, suffered the hardships of becoming and remaining a Navy SEAL, served in Afghanistan, lost an eye to a VBIED. Because he is a conservative, he went on to mockery by our moral betters at Saturday Night Live; he responded to this with good humor and decency, in a way that was good for the Republic. Then he won a seat in Congress, where I don't doubt that he takes his oath very seriously.

He's the bad guy, though. You're supposed to get that.


What has become of the nation into which I was born? Where did it go, I ask, as once the wielder of a thunderbolt sword asked after his elvish wife.

[H]e had searched by the stream by which she had prayed to the stones, and the pool where she prayed to the stars; he had called her name up every tower, and had called it wide in the dark, and had had no answer but echo; and so he had come at last to the witch Ziroonderel."Whither?" he said, saying no more than that, that the boy might not know his fears. Yet Orion knew.

And Ziroonderel all mournfully shook her head. "The way of the leaves," she said. "The way of all beauty."
So too I, but not yet.

Semantics

A lot of freaking out over AG Barr's casual statement that there was spying on the Trump campaign, and the only question is whether it was the legitimate or illegitimate sort.  As RealClearInvestigations notes:
So there we have it with all the decisive logic of a Socratic dialogue: The FBI could not possibly have spied on the Trump campaign because bureau lingo includes neither the noun “spy” nor the verb “to spy.” Whatever informants may have been employed, whatever tools of surveillance may have been utilized, the FBI did not spy on the Trump campaign – didn’t spy by definition, as the bureau doesn’t use the term (except, of course, to describe the very same activities when undertaken by foreigners).

Roger Scruton Apologizes

The famous intellectual and critic Roger Scruton was recently embroiled in one of those controversies about saying some allegedly offensive things. Today, he apologizes:
Not for the first time I am forced to acknowledge what a mistake it is to address young leftists as though they were responsible human beings.
The most egregious of these was the editing "for space" of his comments on China, in which he warned that the government was trying to impose a dangerous homogeneity on the populace, and that this gave the society a frightening aspect. What they actually quoted him as saying was simply that it was scary how Chinese people are all alike: "each Chinese person is a kind of replica of the next one."

Measuring school performance

It's an enduring topic, how to assess the performance of education.  At least two ways that might make sense are improvement in performance on standardized tests per tuition dollar, and improvement in lifetime earnings per tuition dollar.  By both measures, these authors claim charter schools leave public schools in the dust in eight U.S. cities.

Racism and the minimum wage

Thomas Sowell is always worth reading.
In the United States, as the minimum wage rate specified in the law began to be raised, beginning in the 1950s, so as to catch up with inflation and then keep up with inflation, the minimum wage law became effective in practice once again — and a racial gap in unemployment rates opened up and expanded.
As a black teenager, I was lucky enough to be looking for jobs when the minimum wage law was rendered ineffective by inflation. I was also lucky enough to have gone through New York schools at a time when they still had high educational standards.

Bibi

Echoes:
Pundits are already declaring that [Netanyahu's] government will fall sooner rather than later. Perhaps. But in the meantime, consider: Decisiveness, security-mindedness, bluntness, and economic well-being trumped political correctness, character assassination, and hand-outs in Israel. The Democratic Party should take note.

Hate speech

It's getting as hard to define as climate change.

Now THAT"S how to Honor a Hero

This is an old story, but it's new to me, and since I don't recall seeing it here before, I'm going to go ahead and assume it'll be new to you too.

If you recall the London Bridge knife attack terrorists of a few years ago, you probably remember Roy Larner.  He's the fellow who famously stood up, walked toward the attackers when they broke into the restaurant, and yelled at them to draw attention away from the other patrons, and then engaged them, deterring them but sustaining several wounds in the process.

Well, when Frequency Beer Works heard this story, they thought he deserved to be honored, and so they didn't just offer to buy him a beer (or several), but created a brew just to honor his actions that day. Here's the label:


I think they did a nice job with the graphics- particularly the nicked up St. George's Cross.

So kudos to Frequency Beer Works for doing this.  It was a great idea.


Honesty Abroad

It's interesting to me what Democratic establishment figures like Obama and Clinton say about immigration when they go to Europe.
Obama made the comments during a two-hour town hall meeting in Berlin, which hundreds of young leaders from across Europe attended.

"Immigration issues are driving a lot of the political turmoil here in Europe and in my own country," Obama said in a shared video of the talk.

Urging those in the crowd to view those who expressed opposition to immigration with empathy, Obama said: "We can't label everyone who is disturbed by migration as racist.

"If you're going to have a coherent, cohesive society, then everybody has to have some agreed-upon rules. And there are going to have to be some accommodations that everybody makes. And that includes the people who are newcomers. The question is, are those fair?" Obama said.

"Should we want to encourage newcomers to learn the language of the country that they're moving to? Of course," he continued. "Does that mean that they can never use their own language? No, of course it doesn't mean that, but it's not racist to say, 'Ah, if you're going to be here then you should learn the language of the country that you just arrived at because we need to have some sort of common language in which all of us can work, and learn and understand each other."
Ms. Clinton said something similar a while back.
“I think Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame,” Clinton said, speaking as part of a series of interviews with senior centrist political figures about the rise of populists, particularly on the right, in Europe and the Americas.

“I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic.”
Yet somehow when they talk here, even the simple enforcement of existing law is nothing but racist and evil.

Alive, But Ready for Rebirth

The Western as a genre. I think I may have posted this one before, but I can't recall. Rather than going back and trying to figure it out, well, it's a good piece. If you missed it the first time, if there was a first time, here it is again.

Hate Music

...featuring Johnny Cash.



My favorite thing about this is the "Disney" logo on the bottom corner.

UPDATE: If you like Cash with puppets, this one's good too.

You Have Chosen... Wisely

Glock got a new spokesman.

"Border Hardliners"

We are on track for a million violators being caught this year, but sure, only "hardliners" would have a problem with the performance of the outgoing Homeland Security Secretary.

Lest We Forget

I, like probably most of you, am well past the median age for American citizens, which was 38 in 2017. Thus, the median American was born in 1981, and was too young to have political awareness in 1991 when the USSR collapsed. More and more, I notice that those who came aware after the Cold War do not remember the truth about Communism.
The Wall Street Journal in 2016 asked: “Is Communism Cool? Ask a Millennial.” Last year MIT Press published Communism for Kids and Teen Vogue ran an excited apologia for Communism. Tablet announced, with some concern, a “Cool Kid Communist Comeback.” On Twitter, there is new trend of people giving themselves communist-themed names: “Gothicommunist,” “Trans-Communist,” “Commie-Bitch,” “Eco-Communist.” The hammer and sickle flag has been re-appearing on campuses, at protests and on social media.

How could we have forgotten?

A poll in the UK by The New Culture Forum from 2015 showed that 70 percent of British people under the age of 24 had never heard of Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung, while out of the 30 percent who had heard of him, 10 percent did not associate him with crimes against humanity. Chairman Mao’s communist regime was responsible for the deaths of between 30 to 70 million Chinese, making him the biggest genocidal killer of the 20th century, above Stalin and Hitler.

One of the reasons Mao’s genocides are not widely known about is because they are complex... it is precisely the ambiguity over whether Mao’s Communist Party was responsible for 30, 50 or 70 million deaths that leads to internet users giving up on the subject.
Wretchard today is warning about the Cultural Revolution, which our own young left seems to be trying its best to kick off here. If they haven't heard of Mao, they haven't heard of the Cultural Revolution either; and they don't know where this process leads. Which makes them, of course, easily led there.