Category → Immigration
Party or Principle: To which are you loyal?
Just curious because of the curious elections going on around America right now. Appears that a lot of Americans are loyal to one political party, and not necessarily to a set of immutable principles.
Which are you loyal to, a political party or to certain principles?
Maybe you remember a certain political party back when it stood for certain principles, and I also remember that political party. From my seat now, it is hard to see how either of America’s two main parties have stayed true to a set of immutable principles, though one party has stayed much closer to its original founding ideas (anti-slavery, keeping the American union of states together, ensuring that new states admitted to the Union were not slave states) than the other.
Used to be that adherence to a political party resulted from agreeing with the policies it sought to implement. That kind of loyalty makes sense. It is a linear, logical relationship. And now that we see one of the American political parties so. freakin. far. from its historic beginnings, and yet still commanding loyalty of half of America, it is hard to square up.
In fact, this one political party is openly devoted to the interests of illegal border jumpers over those of existing American citizens, more supportive of Iran’s IRGC jihadi terror forces than of the American military forces seeking to stop them from nuking America, more supportive of pedophiles and murderers and rapists than of their victims, etc. The list of contrary policy positions is very long for this political party, to which tens of millions of Americans nonetheless pledge their allegiance, their money, and their vote. Imagine that your political party is supported by the IRGC, Russia, China, Cuba, and North Korea….the worst, most oppressive, most cruel, least-free nations all support…the Democrat Party.
Only one explanation for this makes sense to me: Self-destruction is the ultimate virtue signal.
In our modern digital world of personal signals and attempts to stand out, be unique, get noticed, break loneliness, gain influence or fame, nothing says I am superior to others than hating yourself and voting for policies that destroy yourself, your nation, your core necessities.
A stated willingness to sacrifice your own interests is the ultimate statement of purity, of goodness, or moral superiority, these leftists believe.
Problems with this are two:
One, leftists’ self-destructive (“suicidal empathy”) behavior is not limited to just leftists. They seek to impose this same destruction upon everyone else in America. So much for showing anyone the way and how socialism is supposed to be done right by living it successfully for the rest of us skeptics; nope, it has to be forced on us at gunpoint. And in their minds, the socialists are the ones with the guns…
Two, this behavior is based on the super rich irony that you have to be super rich and live in a super rich and super organized nation, like America, to indulge fantasies of self destruction. It requires living among such great wealth that one feels invulnerable, immune to accountability, to be able to entertain these moronic statements and beliefs.
Only spoiled rotten people can dye their hair blue, self-identify as a dog, change their pronouns daily, hate America, hate tax-paying white people, and also demand and expect expensive lattes and gourmet food. Starving people cannot indulge themselves in self-destructive fantasies, just like those humans who already lived under socialism, and got out alive, assiduously reject it.
We saw this mentality most vividly at the nationwide anti-Israel-anti-America-anti-police student + activist university encampments from 2023-2025. Students there made a big deal about going on hunger strikes to make their political point, and then just hours later they whined about the lack of “Door Dash” food deliveries to their violent environment.
Spoiled rotten pampered children of privilege acting out all brave and fierce, only to then complain about not getting exactly the kind of expensive, fancy food to which they are accustomed, or that the police they decried were also nowhere to be seen when needed to protect these overgrown children from each other.
What complete rubbish and childish nonsense.
Leftists and Democrats view America as an eternal safety net that is too big to fail, to which they must never donate but from which they can always take, that America is too successful to collapse under the weight of this sustained assault. At their deepest, leftists appear to believe that self-destruction is some sort of atonement, and that their lives will be better afterwards. And people like me say, in response, are you outta your freakin mind!
There is no food period in your leftist gulags. Forget Door Dash, or expensive lattes; food itself of any sort is in short supply at the education camps these fools envision for others but which will inevitably house them.
A great deal of this discussion is encapsulated in a powerful speech given by a Democrat at the Republican National Convention last week. Yes, he is a Democrat whose own family vilifies him for having broken ranks. But you know what? The people who care the absolute most about political party allegiance, like the Kennedy family, are not interested in ideas, or principles, or in being consistent, or in supporting the US Constitution. Rather, their political party affiliation is either their business, their family, or their religion.
For the Kennedy clan, being a Democrat is strictly business. It is access to power and wealth.
For many unaffiliated Catholics and Jews, the Democrat Party has become both family and the embodiment of their “religious values.” Not that abortion until after birth or defenseless citizens under the jack boot of all-powerful government are values of Judaism or Catholicism, as founded, but to the fallen members of these groups who are far far distant from actual religious teachings, these kinds of vacuous policies have supplanted tradition.
When coupled with the heroin-like dopamine rush these people get for always “voting correctly,” America ends up with tens of millions of uncritical Americans who are not anchored in principle, but who are rather loyal to a political party that changes with the winds, and which openly runs on self-destruction.
Even if that political party is destroying the America that protects and feeds them and caters to their every desire and dream. Their silly fantasy about showing how much they care by killing themselves and their interests takes precedence.
People like me inhabit the other end of the many spectrums (emotional, cognitive, religious) involved here. I am loyal to America’s first principles, its founding ideas, like the superiority of meritocracy, not to any political party, and especially not to any political party that deviates so far from America’s first principles.
And I have a tough time understanding anyone who acts otherwise, except to pity them as the in-effect lost-in-space drug addicts they are.
I am loyal to the ideas the old party used to stand for, not for the crazy, self-destructive policies it promotes today. I did not leave the Democrat Party, it left me.
Remember 9-11
Never forget, never forgive until America gets a full apology.
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MIssing Charlie, Missing America
Today is the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s murder in Utah, on a college campus supposedly devoted to learning, education, ideas, free speech, debate, and so on. Because you were a kind person with a big heart, I miss you, Charlie, and so do a lot of other people. Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the 9-11 Islamic jihadi attacks on America.
Since the day Charlie was shot by a political leftist incapable of free thought or debate or learning or free speech, America has been subjected to an increasing onslaught of anti-free thought, anti free speech, anti debate, anti ideas by the political Left, especially on college campuses.
Incapable of standing and debating, the political Left and its Islamic jihadi allies always use violence, coercion, suppression, and censorship. Claiming victim status until they have sufficient power to firmly control their political opposition, political Leftists, and their political and cultural allies, demand equal footing in every venue, in every institution. Then, when they have enough votes, they take away everyone else’s vote.
And now, at Ground Zero in Manhattan, where 25 years ago the Twin Towers were hit by two jet airplanes hijacked by Islamic jihadis, and where over 3,000 Americans subsequently lost their lives in horrible deaths, the political Left is once again demanding shared space. Yes indeed, there are demands for a mosque (!) at the Twin Towers site. Because the murderous Islamic hijackers deserve to be remembered as victims, too. As though the murderers are the same as their victims.
Charlie Kirk stood for reasonable debate, but he also stood up firmly for Western culture, Western ideals, Western values. We must carry on this legacy, most importantly through voting for strong pro America, pro freedom candidates.
Charlie’s vision for America (and Europe) challenged people especially on college campuses, because his message was incompatible with the Left’s destructive moral relativism that has taken hold everywhere.
The same moral relativism that demands the 9-11 Islamic hijackers be treated the same as their victims has also infected the minds of the Lindsay Clancy jurors, who are now openly saying in front of cameras in public interviews that Lindsay Clancy was the real victim, not her three little children that she strangled with her bare hands, in her home, in their bedrooms, surrounded by all their teddy bears, toys, and other symbols of safe, happy, hearth and home. These women jurors are talking about “compassion” for the murderer, to the point where they would have her be found not guilty of brutally murdering three innocent children.
In other words, a year after Charlie was shot in the neck by a Leftist, America is still suffering from the Left’s attack on basic human morality and essential civilizational values held the world over, except in materially successful capitalist countries, like America, where citizens have so much stuff that they can afford to invent their own problems. Like so-called “compassion” for brutal child murderers.
Charlie, we miss you, we need you now more than ever, and I know I speak for many when I say that your legacy of freedom, core Western values, and open debate as fundamental to our American culture is not forgotten. Today we remember your martyrdom, and tomorrow we remember the martyrdom of the 3,000 innocent Americans burned alive, crushed alive, thrown into a fifty story fall to pavement alive, by Islamic jihadi murderers.
Hopefully, the lesson we Americans take from all this remembering is that we do not allow yet more Leftists to take elected office and perpetuate, nay, increase, all of this mayhem.
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Foggy Ireland
Ten years ago several young Syrian toughs confronted me on a boat in Mallaig, Scotland. Freshly imported into Scotland as supposed victims, they knew that they were untouchable, and they pushed everyone around, acting like they owned the boat. It irked the American crap out of me and I stood my ground. Been a while since I had a good donnybrook, which is always good for a man’s vasculature, and I squared off.
The captain walked over to me and quietly confided “Ya, ya kin take ’em, and we will all cheer you for it, but the coppers will lock you up and ship ya home, no matter who started it.”
So I drank that bucket of Syrian sh*t and enjoyed the quiet ride across the loch and to my hunt for red stag.
Not long after, Scotland had a Syrian prime minister who said wildly racist crap about the native, indigenous white Scots people, and he derided both Protestant and Catholic religion. The Scots had imported their own invading force, intent on destroying Scotland from within. No “Bravehearts” these.
A couple years later I toured the spectacular Worcestshire Church in Barmouth, Wales, (Bugs Bunny forever destroyed my ability to properly say or spell Worcestshire) and commented to a local man how sadly empty and un-used it appeared. Yes, he confirmed, the church sits neatly cared for and tidy, but the Welsh government acts to dissuade the Welsh people from attending church.
The following year, the government of Wales began removing public statues of white people, because white people statues somehow represent racism, they said, because apparently white people are inherently racist, they said. Or something nuts like that, they said. Whatever their nutty cause (imagine removing statues of black people because of their skin color…it is nuts), the Welsh government was making culture war on its own people.
England’s government has obviously gone to war against its own native people, importing millions of illegal, unvetted, unknown criminals from culturally opposing places, allowing them to run violent rampages daily against the native, indigenous people, and then arrests and harasses the victims of said rampages. Whether I am willing to submit myself again to this craziness, I doubt that I will even be allowed into England as a tourist at present. Thought crimes like those committed on this blog are officially deemed much more serious offenses than knifing people, and the British government is quite effective at tracking the different opinions held by others.
So one supposes that Ireland just had to join this war against native Europeans, and against its own native Gaelic speaking indigenous people, and so the Irish government began doing all the same things as the aforementioned “UK” member states. A stroll through Dublin a few years ago revealed more tattooed Pakistani men than native Irish on the streets, more Arabic spoken than English, or Gaelic, more new mosques than churches. As in Wales, the beautiful old churches sit empty. Irish coppers (Gardia) will indeed jail an Irish guy for stopping racial harassment and sexual violence by Pakistani men, while looking away at the Pakistanis’ crimes.
The official Irish Government war against Irish culture and people is well on its way. Despite countless generations of Irish fighting and dying to maintain their independence from Romans, Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Victorian England, modern British…the list of invaders and occupiers is long…now, Ireland is embarked on a foggy headed policy of self-erasure.
Conspiracy mongers dwell heavily on the unnatural coincidence of all of Western Civilization suddently and simultaneously committing “Harry Kary,” or ritual seppukku suicide. I do concur that it is odd as hell. But it is not some shadowy, secret handshake cabal causing this.
Rather, this “suicidal empathy” immigration policy is the inevitable result of too much material success putting too many people to sleep. Way way too many people in France, Germany, England, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and America have too much, and thus take way too much for granted, and have too many creature comforts and food and ease of living, to realize that they cannot drain their own collective bank account for the benefit of myriad total strangers, without losing it all themselves.
The old adage about soft times making soft men, resulting in hard times, which then make hard men, tough men, making tough and sometimes brutal decisions about life and death, seems to be playing out here. I observe that America’s young socialist brats have no idea just how hard and tough the old Americans like me can be, will be, need be.
An Irish song comes to mind about the likely future, as told by the Irish past:
As down the glen one Easter morn to a city fair rode I
Their Armed lines of marching men in squadrons passed me by
No pipes did hum, no battle drum did sound its dread tattoo
But the Angelus Bell o’er the Liffey’s swell rang out through the foggy dew
Right proudly high over Dublin Town they hung out the flag of war
‘Twas better to die ‘neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sud-El-Bar
And from the plains of Royal Meath strong men came hurrying through
While Britannia’s Huns, with their long range guns sailed in through the foggy dew
Oh the night fell black, and the rifles’ crack made perfidious Albion reel
In the leaden rain, seven tongues of flame did shine o’er the lines of steel
By each shining blade a prayer was said, that to Ireland her sons be true
But when morning broke, still the war flag shook out its folds in the foggy dew
‘Twas England bade our Wild Geese go, that “small nations might be free”
But their lonely graves are by Suvla’s waves on the fringe of the great North Sea
Oh, had they died by Pearse’s side or fought with Cathal Brugha
Their graves we will keep where the Fenians sleep, ‘neath the shroud of the foggy dew
Oh the bravest fell, and the Requiem bell rang mournfully and clear
For those who died that Eastertide in the spring time of the year
While the world did gaze, in deep amaze, at those fearless men, but few,
Who bore the fight that the freedom’s light might shine through the foggy dew
As back through the glen I rode again and my heart with grief was sore
For I parted then with valiant men whom I never shall see more
But to and fro in my dreams I go and I kneel and pray for you,
For slavery fled, O glorious dead, When you fell in the foggy dew…
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Happy USA 250th at National Mall big success
Spending two days in the DC-area 102 degree summer heat is not usually something I choose to do, but I gladly did it this week. And I am here to report back two facts: 1) The USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall was a big success, and 2) Everyone I met there at the National Mall, and then yesterday at Mount Vernon, was a conservative patriot. This I consider to be not a success, but a failure by the political Left in America. More on this in a moment.
First, let me report on the USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall. It was a lot of fun and I am glad I went. They had an active rodeo ring and horse riding competition, with hundreds of active fans cheering from around the fence at any given time. They had a huge Ferris wheel, which we rode in, and got a unique view from and of the DC skyline. There was a long line to get onto this ride at all times, and the two young ladies we rode up with said it was their second or third trip on it.
The FIFA or Fifi or FAFO whatever whatever huge screen soccer watching area was jam packed with thousands of fans, most of whom wore American flag shirts, pants, hats, or draped a flag over their shoulders. America was playing Bosnia when I was there, and the fans were cheering lustily. The line to get in went around the block.
The empty part of the National Mall that people try to show as evidence that this event is not popular is empty because there is nothing happening there. The state booths and the activities are almost all down-the-way, or back the other way. Everywhere else I went there were lots of Americans showing lots of interest in the events and music and exhibits etc etc. The live music was constant, fascinating, and performed by really talented people. No matter where we went, live music was being played.
The Princess of Patience was able to find one frozen ice cream treat out of all the food being marketed. And as far as I could see, the food vendors were struggling to keep up with the constant demand. A lot of food booths had staff promising that the next food delivery was due at any moment, and the hot, sweaty visitors were lined up and waiting. Gotta say, “artichoke dip-stuffed jumbo pretzel” and “bacon-and-cheese stuffed jumbo pretzel” sounds like a lot of work to make, cook, and then deliver ready to serve.
How about selling just ye olde regular big salty soft pretzel, with lots of yellow mustard? Strangely, I looked and never saw just regular old burgers and hotdogs being offered. The food was all creative and fancy, semi-gourmet. That would put a kink in your cowgirl rope, if you were trying to serve up fresh food to a constant stream of hungry fair-goers.
The state booths were fascinating and informative. I stopped in at Guam and had a long, fascinating talk with the friendly reps there, both of them Native, one of whom helped the Princess of Patience charge her phone. I learned about the 80-year American military presence on Guam (still a necessity, due to Chinese imperialism in the Pacific Ocean), and how the Natives are developing their own identity and tourist trade. Similar to Hawaii.
Pennsylvania’s booth seems clouded in controversy, but you would not know that when visiting it. PA’s booth was the best of all that I visited, because it had so much interesting information, and because the fascinating exhibits linked our glorious history to our excellent present. Lots of framed historic American and Pennsylvania flags, antiques, a life-size copy of the Liberty Bell… who the heck scrambled hard at the last second to put all of that together into a coherent exhibit? Thank you very much to US senators John Fetterman (D) and Dave McCormick (R), and to the many corporate sponsors who under-wrote the costs.
It is disappointing that my own governor, Josh Shapiro, did not participate. This big event, our nation’s 250th, should be a bi-partisan celebration. A person’s hate for someone in politics should not outweigh your patriotism for America or your pride in the state you represent. It is tough not to see this as a childish tantrum, but then again, I have yet to have any Democrat friend or family member explain this phenomenon to me without them going immediately from zero to a hundred on the Angry Meter. And it is hard not to see that as a childish tantrum.
Support for America should not be partisan, or even politically questionable. Especially on our 250th birthday.
Which brings us back to the attendees. What on earth is happening in America that people’s personal hatred of a president is so corrosive that they will vandalize national monuments that he has had cleaned up, and that they will boycott a fun, informative, unifying “national state fair” on the National Mall, on America’s 250th birthday?
Every single person I met and chatted with (dozens) there at the National Mall was a conservative patriot. The attendees had a great pride in celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, and made real showings of that pride in their choice of clothing, hats, and words of happy encouragement with one another. That there was no one Leftist (who I saw) just there out of love for America or pride in America says a lot of bad stuff about the political Left in America.
Ditto for yesterday’s day spent at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. The place was LOADED with American tourists, Boy Scout groups, all wearing patriotic colors and clothing. We all stood in lines to see just about anything, and despite the 102* blazing heat, everyone was just as friendly, happy, and good natured as the audience had been the day before at the National Mall. How refreshing.
Mount Vernon has incredible updated displays and exhibits, with a significant emphasis on the roles and daily lives of African slaves there, and presumably also across the South, until 1866, when the Republicans took away the Democrats’ slaves.
The George Washington Grist Mill and Distillery was closed, I guess due to the high heat, but come on, people. On July 4th week? On the week of America’s 250th birthday? Something there stank of sabotage….NPS staff who cannot bring themselves to work for a president they disagree with. That was not professional behavior or being devoted to America, if not to the man who temporarily runs it.
I fear for an America that is once again divided into halves. One half, my half, is proud of America, happy to be an American, will work with anyone to advance our great nation forward. The other half (or third) is angry about America, at war with America as we were founded, constantly faulting America, trying to set us back, trying to subvert us, and is actively boycotting our great nation’s 250th birthday celebration.
One guy I spoke with on a train was headed out of DC for the weekend. He is a Democrat lobbyist, an attorney, wearing a fabulous Swiss watch, and more or less said that DC was being inundated with knuckle dragging backwoods types, people like me, I guess, for the 250th celebration, and he had to get out of Dodge in order to enjoy the holiday weekend.
It is curious to me that the political left cannot enjoy sharing America with others. Either the political Left has absolute and totalitarian control of America, or they are miserable boycotters.
Kind of like 1860, a LOT like 1860….which America lived through, and came through stronger, after everything got sorted out.
On the other hand, I and the millions of Americans like me wish you a Happy Independence Day and a Happy 250th Birthday, America!
I took all of the photos below. Any reproduction requires attribution, please.
President George Washington’s face, made from a clay mask while he was alive. In 1776 he lead America to freedom
George Washington’s grist mill and distillery, which made him more money than anything else he did. Washington made rye whisky, which is now coming back into vogue, and which I can occasionally enjoy
General George Washington crossing the Delaware River imposed on the Washington Monument on the National Mall
The Washington Monument, the National State Fair Ferris wheel, and the “Arc d’Trump”
The Arc d’Trump, the big Ferris wheel, and the Washington Monument at dusk, a once-in-several lifetimes view. Smithsonian Institution on the left
Washington Monument lit up in celebration of America’s 250th birthday, with a temporary “national state fair” building in front
American soccer player Malik on the JumboTron on the National Mall, with the US Capitol in the background. Pretty unique view
Earliest known depiction of Uncle Sam, on an 1876 Centennial celebration flag, welcoming “all nations.” Legally, not as an invasion force
My view from the Ferris wheel, looking at the so-named “Arc d’Trump” and the US Capitol in the distance. The soccer game JumboTron is visible in the distance.
People from around America inscribed their best wishes for America’s 250th Birthday
Your faithful author and the Princess of Patience
Two friendly all-American federal police provided me with a grand entrance onto the National Mall
Yours truly, visiting the Truth booth. Truth Social is the official voice of President Trump, because former Twitter couldn’t stand the truth
So-called “Arc d’Trump” has great symbolism, especially with the Ferris wheel and the Washington Monument in the background
Pennsylvania’s booth had the most amazing exhibits, including this old flag from my home turf
Copy of the Liberty Bell at the PA booth
Soccer…nope
With the FiFi or FAFO or FIFA or whatever the hell soccer thing it is that is happening right now in America, Americans are being offered a front seat view of a sport that never caught on here. Soccer is big everywhere else around the world, because you just need an inflated ball, and bingo, you have a game.
Well, please allow me to set straight the wondrously gawking European guests here right now about our sports choices here in America: We like blood and guts and body armor.
Football (which soccer is not and never will be) is America’s official sport even more than baseball. Because our football involves military level strategy, tactics, gear, and military level hand to hand combat, it best captures the imagination of high testosterone men. Had the NFL not politically and culturally abandoned high T men, and patriotic men, and self respecting straight men, it would still be broadly popular.
But even in its deliberately weakened state, American football remains far more manly and exciting to watch than a bunch of too-skinny guys, who wear skinny jeans when not running in circles for pay, run up and down up and down up and down and around the damned field over and over. In soccer, whenever there is any manly contact, the referee starts effeminately tossing rainbow colored flags all over, the guys all stand around bitching and whining and gesticulating, and then it’s over. People start running in circles again.
Soccer is incredibly boring. I feel bad for those cultures that believe soccer is exciting. Watching paint dry must be one of their other national sports. In American football, men settle disputes in manly ways: People get dragged, carted, or helped off the field, such is the damage. That is true manly combat and contest, it is cool, it is exciting, and it is far superior to soccer.
Yeah, Europe has its rugby, which is manly, and bloody, grant you that. But it is also an ill-disciplined anarchic gang fight blur, which American cities have daily, for no charge. It impresses us Americans a little bit more than soccer, which will never catch on here.
Welcome to America, European cousins! Don’t forget to branch out your interests while you are here, beyond accepting that our American football is THE football. Shoot some guns, eat some red meat, enjoy your freedom, then take some manly toughness and defiance back home with you. God knows, ever-more autocratic Europe needs a huge dose of manliness, testosterone, and American style football-and-six shooter-style frontier justice from its people right now.
Glad you guys came here for the soccer, and left with your own must-have list of guns. Don’t forget to buy a Stetson cowboy hat on your way out, too. You want the EU bureaucrat people back home to know you mean business.
Why isn’t PA in the National Fair in DC?
Came as news to me that there even was a national state fair. Being held on the National Mall, in Washington, DC. Cotton candy, rides, Ferris Wheels, fried foods guaranteed to jump start your heart and then clog it, stuffed teddy bear prizes for your sweetheart, strong man competitions, rope-pulling contests, the usual fun stuff seen at most county and state fairs around America for the past 100 years or more.
Either I do not spend much time online, or the marketers for this big event were not aggressive about it. I just knew nothing about it, read nothing about it, heard nothing about it, had seen nothing about it until a week ago, when it was a couple days away from opening.
Turns out that this “National State Fair” is really big time. Almost a World’s Fair in some ways, with new technology and products being debuted. Pretty darned cool. It runs for a month, and covers America’s 250th birthday celebration on July 4th Independence Day. We are told the fireworks “will be like nothing you have ever seen, that Washington has ever seen.”
Yeah, OK, but is there a place and a role for one of my black powder cannons? Those things really go BOOM.
And so it came as a shock to see recent follow-up articles about how my home state of Pennsylvania is not (or was not) participating in this National State Fair on the National Mall in DC. Pennsylvania, the Keystone State, not participating in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington? Really?
Pennsylvania is called the Keystone State for some good reasons, some historic reasons. We were the keystone colony and then state that held together the northeastern and southern colonies and then states. Home of the Declaration of Independence. Pennsylvania’s natural resources literally built the America you experience today. Our own coal fueled the mills in Steelton and Pittsburgh that smelted our own iron ore into steel, that in turn became the railroad tracks laid on Pennsylvania oak railroad ties (of which I have sawed up many on my own sawmill).
The state of Wyoming is not some western name. It is an eastern name, from the Delaware Indian word for “great grassy plains.” The state of Wyoming is named after the Wyoming Valley in northeastern Pennsylvania, because it was the eastern railroads built entirely of Pennsylvania materials that deposited European settlers out on the Wyoming plains (after the Indians had been forced onto reservations). I do not know what the various Indian tribes called what is today Wyoming. But I do know that Pennsylvania had a big hand in making it so.
Pennsylvania coal, iron, and old growth hardwood timber drove the Industrial Revolution in America. Forty minutes due east of Harrisburg is the village of Cornwall, in Lebanon County. An enormous pit there is now filled with water, but it used to be filled with men mining heavy iron ore from the ground. In 1776, those pits were opened to produce the iron to make the cannons that Revolutionary War general George Washington needed to face off against the most hardcore British military, with much of the subsequent cannon blasting and men bleeding happening on Pennsylvania soil (and again at Gettysburg in the Civil War…hmmmmm… this Keystone State thing just keeps raising its head).
I could go on and on about Pennsylvania history in the founding and development of America, but you should get the point here. Pennsylvania got the nickname “Keystone State” for a lot of good reasons, worthy reasons, hard-won reasons.
So, Pennsylvania, having played such a huge role in the founding and early development of America, should naturally be well represented in America’s 250th birthday celebration in Washington, DC, right? Right? RIGHT?
Ummmm, nope. PA governor Josh Shapiro very recently stated to the press that his administration was unable to locate any PA businesses who wanted to participate in the National State Fair, or who could afford to participate in it.
Apparently, I was not alone in learning this new information, as both of our US senators, John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, have in the past 72 hours leapt to action, together, to find both interested businesses and the private funding to get them situated at the National State Fair.
Their bi-partisan action to save the day for Pennsylvania on the national stage is news in and of itself, because just finding a Democrat who wants to be caught dead anywhere near a Republican, much less work with one towards some common shared goal, like, say, a National State Fair in Washington, DC, is harder than raising Lazarus from the grave.
So bravo! to senators McCormick and Fetterman, who say that they have received an outpouring of interest from all of the associated and related and even distantly related associations, groups, and individuals and businesses. PA -based manufacturers and inventors are especially keen to showcase their wares at the event, and have now publicly said so.
Which brings me back to the lurking elephant in the room (it is more of a big donkey than an elephant): Why is Governor Shapiro not out in front of this, leading the charge down to the National Mall? Why did he just kind of low-T diss this event and downplay it, as if it is no big deal for PA to be AWOL on something so important as the national celebration of America’s 250th birthday?
Does Governor Shapiro really, truly, sadly suffer from an affliction of TDS so terribly fatal that he became grossly partisan and petty about something so important?
What a big missed opportunity this is for a man who has represented himself as a political centrist, a uniter and not a divider. Governor Shapiro has aspirations of being re-elected this Fall, and of possibly running for President of America in 2028. As a former Democrat myself, I find myself shaking meself’s old head, once again, at the sad turn the Democrat Party has not just taken once or twice, but which now continues to take even farther off and over a steep cliff.
That someone of Governor Shapiro’s caliber is sulking and boycotting America’s national 250th birthday celebration is a baaaaaad sign. Bad for our body politic and bad for Governor Shapiro’s larger political aspirations.
Past PA governor Ed Rendell was as partisan a politician as you could find anywhere. Rendell was a huge and tireless champion for the Democrat Party. And yet, Rendell also took every opportunity to work cooperatively with his political opponents when those opportunities were given. Rendell understood that it is better to bask in the spotlight of national appreciation with political opponents, than it is to sulk alone in some partisan silo, holding one’s ball close to the body and vowing to never play with those kids ever again. That behavior is bad for everyone.
Pennsylvania’s Governor Shapiro likely has better things to do than read this blog, but if he does, I would (and do) ask that he hightail it down to the National Mall, and share the spotlight with the two US senators from Pennsylvania, McCormick (R) and Fetterman (D).
Promoting Pennsylvania is Job #1 for elected officials from Pennsylvania, and doing that with a smile on one’s face makes everyone involved look like emotionally healthy adults. And it makes all Americans feel like there are still some sane, normal people involved in retail politics. People we can look to for leadership. People who care about all of America, and not just about their own little slice of the electorate, off in some corner, away from everyone else American.
Now, please excuse me while I go hang my Happy 250th America flag on my front porch.
Memorial Day, does it fit in America any more?
Does Memorial Day fit into American culture any more?
I ask because our national culture is changing so fast, and diverging so hard from the values and principles that founded America. We have foreign-born elected and appointed officials who openly despise America (Khanna, Prayapal, Ilhan Omar, plenty of others, tons of judges including Juan Merchan), and who call our military personnel sacrifices “war crimes” against the foreign countries who still hold their loyalty.
The idea that Americans would mourn the death of our military heroes, whose deaths ensured our own freedom here at home, is not just foreign to a lot of people living in America, it is anathema. Even our own native born youth are being told that the American military is immoral and bad and terrible etc, and because our young people live extravagantly comfortable lives, they don’t question such an outrageous claim.
Our American teachers and college educators are largely tools of our worst enemies – China, Iran, Cuba – and they fill our young people’s heads with exactly the kind of rotten crap a nation’s enemies would say. Globalist moral relativity does not help either, because it is easier to say “America is no different than Iran’s violent theocracy” (or is worse) than it is to actually weigh out and think out and talk out the enormous differences.
Thus does America have pampered middle income White kids giddily marching down our streets alongside White-hating genocidal maniacs waving the PLO Hitler flag, and wearing the ultimate anti-Western jihadi fashion statement, the keffiyeh. Our own pampered middle income White kids wouldn’t know a heroic battlefield military sacrifice from an hour without internet service, so why should they mark this Memorial Day as something significant?
Not only is our broader culture changing, but our young men are changing for the worse, too. As a small business guy who works in the woods, I see it a lot. For every hard working rural young guy, there are now five lazy rural young guys. This is an inversion of the old rural-urban culture break, which now shows that for every five lazy rural guys, there are five hundred lazy urban guys. American culture is suffering, yes, but most of the military-age young men who should be riding to our national culture rescue via military service, training, discipline, and sacrifice are now themselves in need of rescuing.
Nobody embodies the lazy bitchy whiner limp wristed weak-ass little wuss American boy better than Nick Fuentes. His entire life is devoted to breaking cultural taboos by saying naughty and mean spirited things about people. And Fuentes is dragging down a lot of American young men with him.
A serious public ass kicking would benefit both Fuentes and his young followers, and therefore American culture, but somewhere an overly anxious urban helicopter mom is reading this and figuring out how to get at me and any other hard ass dad figure, if only to “protect” her son from the hard comeuppance every boy needs to experience either at home from a loving Dad, at school from fistfighting other boys, or in the military from a tough drill sargeant.
Speaking of messed up young men culture, Jeremy Boreing provides a compelling monologue here.
Remember, young men, you must be able to ride hard and shoot straight. Frontier grit and military sacrifice are what gave you this incredible nation you now enjoy. Do not squander it or allow others to ruin it for you. For America to succeed as the citizen-run republic it was founded as, all of its citizens must be politically and culturally engaged. Hiding behind a video screen or serving only one’s own personal enjoyments is not only not contributing to our national success, it is ceding hard-won battleground to our enemies.
To your enemies.
So saddle up, young men, and dust off your hidden manliness. Show us what you are made of, that old fashioned American frontier true grit and self sacrifice. Show appreciation for those who gave you what you now have here in America.
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America’s 250th Anniversary approaches… how many people care?
America’s 250th anniversary arrives this July 4th Independence Day. A huge milestone, an enormous achievement, a remarkable record, two hundred and fifty years protecting indivdiual rights as a constitutional republic.
I am excited about this event. But is anyone else?
When I drive around, anywhere, do I see extra American flags, extra examples of patriotism or excitement? Nope. Nothing.
The silence is deafening.
It seems that very few Americans are excited enough about our nation’s 250th anniversary to do much about it, to show their extra enthusiasm, or appreciation. Don’t you think this is odd? I do.
It may be that Americans do not know how to celebrate the 25oth. I mean, will we set off more fireworks than ususal? Wave more flags and banners and patriotic bunting than ususal? Hang flags from our vehicles? Drink more, war whoop more, or shoot tracers into the night sky more than usual?
One thing for sure, most Americans seem to take America for granted, as if we are too big to fail. So, they think, why celebrate something that we take for granted, that we already believe is due and kind of boring and unremarkable…
This is how cultures and nations end.
When a nation’s citizens cease being excited about their nation, and about its longevity in a world hostile to individual freedom and liberty, they cease valuing that nation. And when they cease valuing it, they cease protecting it, safeguarding it. They give it away, like give its citizenship and taxpapyer money to illegal border jumpers; they throw it away, engage in all kinds of self-destructive virtue signaling, like calling America bad names and unfairly criticizing her for ridiculous things.
America is not too big to fail, folks. And while there are a lot of folks trying to make America fail, like Barack Hussein Obama, we do not see a commensurate backlash against them.
Mad Magazine’s longtime cover was Alfred E. Newman, saying “What me worry.” Because he was an idiot. Because only idiots do not worry about the future, and stability, and the strength of national currency, etc. Has America become populated by a bunch of Alfred E. Newmans?
The lack of American flags and patriotic fervor about our 250th sure seem to indicate it.
Is this the American citizen on the eve of America’s 250th birthday? Really?!
Sometimes no deal is good enough
President Donald Trump, the best president of my lifetime and the modern day savior of American democracy, believes in capitalism. He believes in “The Art of The Deal.” He believes that most humans, given good choices to select from, will almost always if not always choose logical, reasonable, rational options.
It is with this earnest mindest that President Trump has approached the Middle East. And in some ways, his view on human choices and preferences has, in fact, borne out with the wealthy Gulf states (Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait). These sparsely populated countries are exceptionally rich, and everything they do is centered on money. Money is the language that President Trump speaks most and best, because he is a capitalist. And it is piles of money that keep the rulers of the Gulf states in power.
So, money brings together some of President Trump’s foreign policy goals into alignment, or slight overlap, with the oil producing Arab Gulf states.
Where this money-and-comfort mindset and worldview fails is in the face of apocalyptic, genocidal supremacists like Adolf Hitler back then, or the jihadi Iranian Shia mullahs in the present. These people did not and do not speak the language of money or human comfort and happiness, other than to use these thoughts to move themselves forward on the chess board in the short term. Their currency is raw power and sheer domination and control of everyone in front of them, by any means necessary.
They are ruthless, whereas President Trump believes in choices and opportunities.
The jihadi/ Hitlerian supremacist view is contrary to President Trump’s view. The totally rational “Mutually Assured Destruction” doctrine that kept Soviet Russia and America from nuking one another in the Cold War does not apply in Iran, nor with any other Islamist country. There, money is only a means, not a goal. Lots of jihadis are happy to live in poverty, if it helps them achieve their measure of wealth in power and human subjugation.
Trump believes in kindness and human choices, free people making their own choices and reaching “deals” for mutual benefit. On the other hand, Jihadis believe in you, me, and Trump all on our knees (which is why the American and European Left share common cause with the Jihadis).
America was founded on individual freedom and choice, which are completely the opposite of Islam, and especially the jihadis within Islam. These two world views are incompatible; they do not overlap in a Venn diagram. To date, leaders like President Trump have managed to find points of contact between Western values and Islam where friction is least, but he has been unable to really find significantly overlapping areas of interest. The Abraham Accords came very close to bringing the Sunni Arab countries into a shared Venn diagram space with Israel and America, but those accords are pretty shaky. As soon as jihadis somewhere start their la-la-la-la yodeling thing, the Gulf states reflexively go into retreat. Culture is powerful.
With Iran, there is no compromise. Not because America does not want to, but because Iran’s apocalyptic, genocidal, fanatic jihadis do not accept any point of contact between themselves and anyone else that is not resolved 100% on their terms. And they will fight to the very end, even if they have to drag down their enemies with them into the abyss, to seek that end result.
President Trump is both a patient and loving man. That is clear. But he is also having trouble computing that anyone can be so different from him and from America’s hope and promise as are the Iranian jihadis. And so he keeps on trying to “make a deal.”
Mister President, a lot of us Americans, who are still squarely and absolutely in your corner, think you have tried more than is possible or than is even smart. You have done all that is possible to avert an absolute showdown with the Iranian jihadis, and they have been unable to meet you halfway. You must now accept that they are incapable of thinking like you, thinking in terms of mutual benefit. They do not think like that, or like you.
If the Iranian jihadis are allowed to stay in power in any way, shape, or form, they will return to their field of battle with America on their own terms. They will have learned from their mistakes since 2025, and they will adapt. Iran will find a way to destroy or damage America, one way or another, if they are allowed to remain in power.
You must finish the Iranian jihadi job, Mister President. If you love America as much as we all think you do, then you must make the unpleasant decision to wipe out the Iranian jihadis. It is us or them, and we elected you to protect Us.
We know that this is a difficult time for you, President Trump, and we stand firmly with you, at your side. Absolutely no one else in American politics has the strength of character that you have, and if you do not save America from jihadi Iran now, then we will end being apocalyptically victimized by them in the future. There is no art of the deal that you or anyone else can pull off that will avoid this; only military success right now will protect America.