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October 2nd, 2019

It’s that time of year again

Plenty of things have gone to hell in a hand basket over the course of the last four or five decades, and I would only be living up my highest and bestest reputation as a grouchy curmudgeon if I ticked them all off here as a laundry list of petty grievances. But other writers and commenters have already done all that, much better than I can, so I am going to mention just one frustration. And it must be credited to that mild mannered conservationist Aldo Leopold, who first put his finger on this, on the very beginning of what ails us Americans today.

If I read one more time the overused phrase “In a Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold writes…” I am going to scream. You are there and I am here on the other side of the screen, and we cannot actually hear one another, so it will sound like a silent scream, but rest assured, it drives me nuts and right now I am doing my best silent scream imitation about this. Sure, it is a testament to how inspiring Leopold was and still is that so (so) many people begin all kinds of talks and writings and poems with this opener, citing some comment or observation Leopold made back in the crusty 1940s Dark Ages that yet, surprisingly, has so much application and salience today, eighty years later. But it is so very much overused to the point where it is almost maudlin to hear it used yet one more time.

And then, when I think of those intervening eighty years, well, they have been both a blessing and a curse, haven’t they, and so I find myself in that recognizably similar frame of mind…

So what the hell.

In Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, he talks about cutting down a large oak tree with a crosscut saw, and how much history is gliding by as the saw blade traverses across the tree stem. For every few growth rings that are sawn, Leopold lists various wars and human milestones, scientific achievements as well as natural science moments, as the blade cuts deeper. Just that description alone is a pretty cool writing achievement by Leopold. It is a symbol and image that so many people have trouble forgetting.

But then at the end of the essay, just when the reader thinks “Yeah, I suppose cutting fire wood is more symbolic and meaningful than I thought it was, guess there’s a lotta history in those old oaks at Grandpa’s farm,” Leopold suddenly gets to the whole raison d’être of his history lesson (and I am closely paraphrasing here):

“I knew Americans were eventually doomed to cultural rot and failure when we discovered that heat came from a small switch on the wall, and not from cutting our own firewood every year.”

Here in the middle of his gentle outdoor lullaby, Leopold lamented the ease of life that had arrived with then-modern conveniences and services. He saw them as a two-edged sword, cutting both ways, for and against, because working hard for something, especially for your own ambient heat in the dead of winter, is an important lesson about how all humans are in truth part of the natural cycles around us all the time. Participating in these cycles humbles us, brings us into the actual healthy swing of things around us, helps integrate us with the earth’s natural vibe, tune, and wavelength, each of which we ride every moment of every day, even if we are unaware of it. And thus, it helps us thereby appreciate the natural world that sustains us every day. Even if we are unaware of it.

Leopold was advocating for Americans living newly cushy lives devoid of physical challenges to get the hell off their asses and live in the real world, to take responsibility for their own needs and not outsource everything (like the Romans did at their end). Cut their own firewood, grow a garden, shoot a grouse for dinner or a catch a fish for lunch. The ability to be self-reliant is not only an American trait from our frontier days, it is innately tied to all successful human cultures at all times.

Mind if we switch here to someone on the other side of the spectrum from our mild naturalist and wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold, who nonetheless expresses much the same sentiment?

“I hate luxury. I exercise moderation…it will be easy to forget your vision and purpose once you have fine clothes, fast horses, and beautiful women. [All of which will result in] you being no better than a slave, and you will surely lose everything.” — Genghis Khan (brutal conqueror of the entire known world in his time).

As that completely successful “mad butcher” said it, luxuries make humans soft and weak. Hard work makes us strong and successful. If there is a hallmark of modern America, it is that we are awash in luxuries and conveniences, to the point where the younger generations have no idea how we arrived here at this point, how much sacrifice was required to give them these fancy phones and coffees. Our younger people think that luxuries and easy comforts just fall like manna from Heaven.

So, to be the truest, best American you can be, why not cut some firewood?

Here in central Pennsylvania it is that time of year again, the time of year where if you have not yet stacked the last of your firewood in the woodshed, you damned well better get on with it. Ain’t no time to lose. Any week now Mother Nature can show up with a big old cold surprise, a major dose of early Winter, knock out the electricity to your town, and leave you at the mercy of serious cold temperatures. It’ll be nice if we have all of October to enjoy mild Fall weather, with no need to light the wood stove, but you never know what the future brings. Better to be prepared, right?

Funny how something so insignificant as cutting one’s own firewood can be synonymous with an entire culture’s success or failure.

Wildlife biologist Aldo Leopold smoked tobacco, owned guns, ate what he hunted, planted a garden every year, and cut his own firewood. If you have not read A Sand County Almanac, then get it, because a world of special delight awaits you there, and it will change your life.

This season’s supply of split firewood stashed in the old woodshed, which is due to be replaced in 2020

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
August 10th, 2019

100 years of Liberalism = mass shootings

Since the 1917 violent triumph of Socialism in Russia, communists have more aggressively spread their efforts world-wide. There is no secret about this. Lots of official information outlets of openly socialist and communist organizations precisely describe their goals and targets, past and present. Cambodia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, now Venezuela, all fell victim to socialism.

Where socialists have failed to openly gain control in democracies, like America and Britain, because their intended victims have more say through voting, they have mostly gone vague. Vagueness allows socialists to talk in circles and in generalities, avoiding the unpleasant hard realities their policies will truly mean for hard working Americans and Britons.

In that vein, for decades the Democrat Party purveyed a more palatable-sounding ideology than socialism or communism. They became Liberals. Liberalism, now called “progressivism” and its advocates “progressives,” is still the same old evil socialism; it is just more incremental than the overtly revolutionary form of the 1917 Soviet Union’s tyranny.

And so for one hundred years, liberals in American government have steadily introduced policy after policy, regulation after regulation, textbook after textbook, slowly changing American culture from the inside. For one hundred years liberals have used America’s democratic form of government (technically America is a republic, but loosely speaking we are governed by democratic principles) to achieve non-democratic outcomes. That is, liberals have used America’s freedoms and government to implement anti-freedom and anti-America policies and changes to our national fabric.

In general, American liberals have sought greater government power over the citizenry, a diminishment of individual rights, a lessening of the individual ability to stand up to and prevail against the kind of overwhelming government power America was originally founded to prevent. Their assault on America has at its core a determined corrosion of American identity and norms; that makes it easier to sell their anti-America, anti-freedom laws, regulations, and policies.

So, for example, by inverting the First Amendment, liberals have removed God from the public square. To liberals, any practice of religion in public is officially establishing religion. By gaining control of public schools through teacher’s unions, and then removing God’s values from those schools, liberals removed the ancient barriers and social mores that glued Americans together.

We can go down a list of liberal laws and policies that have been inflicted on America, and we can talk about how liberals have captured institutions like media, entertainment (Hollywood’s violent movies and ultra-violent video games), and academia, but let’s just say that after one hundred years of liberals tearing away at America’s social fabric, they have succeeded in destroying a great deal of what held America together.

Hearing liberals talk about more gun control is like watching people remove the wheels from my car, and then tell me how dangerous it will be to drive it and how I need to just give them the car keys.

I grew up in a rural community that had more guns, and more cows, than people. We all owned guns from an early age, and we suffered no gun crime. No mass shootings, no individual shootings. My 7th grade biology teacher reloaded my 7×57 Mauser rounds for me. In 7th and 8th grades I took my deer rifle on the school bus from home to Park Forest Junior High School in State College. The gun was placed inside my locker, and at the end of the school day, we students who had brought our rifles joined together to go deer hunting at some local farm or forest. Someone’s parent was in charge of picking us up and taking us to the hunt, and someone else’s parent was in charge of picking us up and taking us all back home at dark. It worked just fine.

Fast forward 40 years and America is a different place. School kids are shooting each other, unlike any previous time. The wheels have come off!

What changed is the American culture that supported responsible gun ownership was weakened by liberals, who have sought to eliminate private gun ownership. The founding American culture that created and reinforced values like self-reliance, personal responsibility, deferring immediate pleasure and gratification in lieu of future success, and making good choices was all tossed away in liberal-controlled public schools and colleges.

Instead of good solid time-proven American values, liberals taught bozo ideas like “challenge authority” — meaning disrespect your parents, having babies out of wedlock is fun, killing babies at will is freedom, who needs Home Economics and a hard work ethic when the government will just give you taxpayer-funded welfare money, and so on. So the culture of America changed, and now many of our youngest seem incapable of living up to basic American norms while still being presented with basic American freedoms, like gun ownership.

Liberals created this failed culture in which young Americans shoot each other. Just look at every major American city: They are nearly all run by liberals, home to the latest and best liberal ideas, and yet they suffer the greatest social failure, financial failure, and violence.

Liberalism is not the solution, but the cause of all that ails America today, especially the mass shootings in liberal-controlled schools.

And so liberals now demand gun confiscation, and phony “universal background checks” that are designed to create lists of who has what guns, to make gun confiscation easier.

Liberals created all these problems in the first place, and more liberal policy ideas like “gun control” are simply adding fuel to the fire.

Many years ago I worked with a woman who specialized in creating problems and crises in our office, and once the interpersonal conflicts were going hot, she would then swoop in and aggressively demand to “solve” the very problems she had created. Her proposed solutions always left her with more authority and direct control over everyone around her. This is what the liberals and the Democrat Party are doing with guns. They created all this mass shooting business, and now they want to exploit the violence crisis they created to further their assault on the rights of law-abiding gun owners, who have no connection to crime but who stand between liberals and their dream of absolute tyrannical control over everyone in America, like their socialist brethren everywhere else.

At a certain point normal Americans have to wake up to this obvious situation, and stop voting for liberals and their deceptive ideas. Liberalism is not good for America. Turn it back, restore our founding principles as America’s norms, take back our government and our institutions from destructive liberalism.

Here (below) is retired US Army Col. David Grossman talking about why children are now killing each other. Grossman was the guy who taught American special forces troops how to overcome their natural human inhibitions in order to quickly kill their opponents, and who then witnessed an alarming generational change in how American youth perceived killing. If you care about what causes mass shootings, watch Grossman’s fascinating videos.

 

By Josh • Posted in Family, Government Of the People... • No Comment
June 6th, 2019

D-Day remembrance poses challenge for many people

Today is the 75th anniversary of D-Day, that incredible re-invasion of Nazi-occupied France from across the English Channel that was the beginning of the end of Adolf Hitler’s cruelly evil “Thousand Year Reich.”

So what do people commemorate this week? Well, the American 82nd Airborne guys put on a live re-enactment of the cliff scaling at Point du Hoc, for one thing. A lot of ships and boats have been traveling across the English Channel for one re-enactment or demonstration purpose or another, as well as planes and I think even some parachuting. The purpose of all this activity is to visually and viscerally remind today’s people of what yesterday’s people did for them, how they sacrificed for them, died for them, gave everything they had so that today’s people could enjoy their lives free of fear, oppression, and military threats.

Problem is, do today’s people really understand or even care about D-Day and the Allied fight against totalitarian German war-making?

Many of us “older” people ask this question because so many of the younger people seem to think human history began with the invention of the iPhone, and that all one needs to be a functioning human being is a smart phone, a cup of expensive coffee, and the latest sloppy looking beanie hat, and that all of life’s successes will naturally follow if you simply appear in public like this.

Amazing examples of clueless disregard for what this week’s D-Day anniversary celebrations are about include Sadiq Khan behaving like a rotten jerk towards the elected leader of the Free World, Donald Trump, who made a lovely visit to England and France this week. Khan is mayor of London, and by any objective measure (crime, poverty, taxes, services, dirt, rats, fires) his politically correct city administration has been a disaster.

Without America’s intervention in World War II, without our nation’s huge sacrifice of young men and taxpayer money, Khan would not have the freedom today to spew his petty, nasty things against President Trump and freedom. Khan was joined yesterday by about five thousand fellow jerks who showed up to protest against Trump, for a “free Palestine,” for communism and against capitalism, for big government control and against individual liberty…an alphabet soup of leftwing causes as evidenced by the signs they waved about while cheerfully beating up two old men whose views they objected to.

So if London today elects an anti-Western Sadiq Khan to be its representative on the international stage, and Khan is full of petty, childish insults for the US president during this week celebrating freedom and democracy gratis America, then what does this say about the citizenry of London? Have they also forgotten why D-Day happened? Have they forgotten the nonstop German bombing of London’s citizenry, the massive destruction of London, the deprivation?

Do they even care?

With an elected representative like Sadiq Khan, it seems they don’t care. They don’t care about history, or the risks of totalitarianism, how we all got to where we are today, or the daily effort we all must make in our jobs, in our homes, and our communities to keep our common civilization moving forward. And in fact, many of Khan’s supporters seem pleasantly ignorant of D-Day and actually intent on bringing down our common civilization. What they plan to replace it with is anyone’s guess.

A natural question for Khan’s supporters is “Will your England be as free and have as many opportunities for self-improvement as the former England?”

Judging by the cruel and violent behavior of Siobhan Prigent against one of the old men, just asking the question of these folks will get you punched in the face.

And it is against this unnatural backdrop of foolish citizens demanding everything be given to them and that they not be asked to give back, that we celebrate the 75th anniversary of an incredibly complex multi-national operation to challenge the military success of an incredible evil, the very totalitarianism that Mayor Sadiq Khan and his followers seem to have in mind for Britain once again.

And so we see that in truth today’s memorialization of D-Day is not in vain, or just for pure history buffs who like pomp and circumstance, but rather to remind us that the same evil forces are unleashed against Britain and Western Civilization once more.

But this time from inside.

Bodies of a totalitarian government’s political enemies piled high at Dachau. This is in Europe, not in some far-off place we Westerners can’t pronounce. This is what happens to normal people like you and me when totalitarians like Sadiq Khan get full control of government

SWORD beach – 6 Jun 1944. This image is taken from a Royal Air Force Mustang aircraft of II (Army Cooperation) Squadron. The Mustang aircraft were made in America and supplied to the British. You can see the chaos unfolding on the beach, as high tide carried some troop boats all the way up to the top of the beach, and subsequent fire support and re-supply boats were stranded way below.

9,000 bodies were etched into the sand at Normandy Beach several years ago, by volunteers who wanted to visually depict the high cost of the opening effort to stop totalitarianism.

Hundreds of dead American and British soldiers along the D-Day beaches in Normandy

An American serviceman helping cover the bodies of the dead. He was raised in a culture of self sacrifice and risk-taking. Do America and Britain still have the same culture that produced these awesome men on D-Day?

London mayor Sadiq Khan’s anti-freedom supporters beat an old guy because he does not agree with their totalitarian views. Democracy is about disagreeing without violence and resolving differences at the voting booth. Sadiq Khan encourages this violence and is therefore against democracy

Another British grandpa is beaten by a mob of London mayor Sadiq Khan supporters. Siobhan Prigent is the blonde

Siobhan Prigent accuses British grandpa of being a “fucking Nazi” because he disagreed with her Nazi-like beliefs and behavior. Look carefully at her hateful face, her evil eyes. This is the face of what D-Day soldiers faced on the shores of Normandy

British grandpa has had enough abuse for simply disagreeing with Siobhan Prigent. A second later he was hit in the face with a mystery liquid and Siobhan and her violent pals kicked him to the ground.

By Josh • Posted in Immigration • No Comment
April 16th, 2019

Trump and that French Fire Water

President Trump tweets his immediate concern for extinguishing the blazing Notre Dame cathedral in France yesterday, and the next thing ya know, half of France is supposedly upset with him. And just to prove that there really is a little Wizard of Oz man behind that fake news curtain directing fake anger at Trump, both official and semi-official French outlets vented their displeasure and mockery of his comment.

All these French critics proved is that President Trump cares more for the Notre Dame cathedral, and for France as a free Western nation, than do the French themselves.

France has actually been on fire for years, and instead of extinguishing their own self-arson, they have poured gasoline on the flames through deliberate official action and inaction. By importing millions of openly hostile, imperialistic, non-conforming, non-integrating foreigners, France has injected a death serum into its own veins. We know this injection feels like France’s veins are on fire because of all the street level battles that have followed.

Islamic terror is real, and Islamic culture war against France and Catholic churches is real, but it is the least of France’s problems. Rather, it is the culture war against traditional French identity and values facilitated by the watered-down French Vichy intelligentsia itself (Trump’s loudest critics yesterday) that is the greatest threat to France.

Think of the official response to the 2015 Bataclan massacre in Paris by Muslim terrorists, who after the initial gunfire then walked among and picked through the dead and dying to find survivors they could further maim and sadistically torture: “Any person who thinks this event (and all the others like it) is about Islam vs. France is a bad person. No, the actual terrorists are not to blame; we French are all to blame.” It is complete nonsense, and it allowed France’s famous openness and freedom to be further stifled by an official clamp-down on pro-Western, pro-France activists.

Here in America, yesterday I listened to fake news talking weasel head Shep Smith of Fox News also shamefully carry water for the terrorists and arsonists.

If President Trump could walk on the water he recommended for the Notre Dame fire, his critics would complain that he can’t swim, and if he called for help while drowning in it, they would arrest him for disturbing the peace. Trump and his fellow pro-West leaders can do nothing correct in the eyes of his opponents. While the Bataclan dead bodies served up a big warning sign, it is difficult to create a better image of France’s nose-dive toward self destruction than the burning Notre Dame cathedral, and the French anti-France response afterwards.

Dear France, do you want to survive? If yes, then take all your fancy vino and pour it into a giant moat around your southern borders to keep the invaders out, or save it up for putting out the inevitable fires that are coming to your cities and towns.

France, the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the cross, all on fire

Bataclan massacre in Paris by religious Muslim terrorists. These bloody bodies were swept under the rug by French officials and their establishment media allies

By Josh • Posted in Immigration • No Comment
September 4th, 2018

A culture of protest, a culture of animosity

If you desire to see the raw underbelly of an overly tolerant democracy, then watch or listen to today’s US Senate hearings on Judge Kavanaugh.

Kavanaugh is a smart, friendly, humble, kind of nerdy, bookish federal judge who had the audacity to be nominated to the US Supreme Court.

Why audacity? Because he is not super liberal. Because he does not walk in lock-step with the media arm of the Democrat Party. Because he has a judicial philosophy that is directly connected to how America was founded. He does not run around making legal judgments that are contrary to the US Constitution.

All this makes him audacious in the eyes of people who would use the US Supreme Court to achieve de facto legislative results they cannot get in the US Congress. Kavanaugh is audacious in some people’s eyes because he dares to fill a vacant seat on the Court, and play a constructive role in administering US law and jurisprudence.

To me, it looks like the most boring job in the world. Though at one time, in the heat of my youth, I aspired to be a constitutional scholar and actually studied a lot of constitutional law at Penn State and in graduate school (Vanderbilt) in preparation for it. My uncle has argued twice in front of the US Supreme Court, and on his second trip I was honored to help draft an Amicus brief and sit in the audience while the justices grilled both sides.

But now, look at how even Kavanaugh, The Most Boring Man In The World, is attacked and dragged through the mud by opponents of a lawful society. A shameless howling mob greeted him and the entire world today in one of the world’s most hallowed democratic chambers, the US Senate. To watch and listen to Kavanaugh’s opponents today in The People’s chamber, you would not know that we live in the most civilized nation.

From the 1960s to present, a culture of protest has developed to the point where the ends justify the means. That is, if someone opposes a political issue or a political person, they can go batshit crazy in front of everyone and put on the most foolish antics, with the craziest accusations, and the most violent and destructive behavior, because they are simply protesting.

And because they are protesting, they must be correct, is how they think. And if people oppose them, or have a majority in a legislative chamber or on a court, then every possible brick must be thrown in order to stop them…is how they think.

Where protest has its healthy roots in the First Amendment’s guarantee of peaceable assembly and petitioning the government, today’s protests are anything but constitutional. They are violent and hate filled, lawless and vile, cruel and destructive of people and property.

A very real culture of animosity has resulted out of the 1960s, and it is a bad thing, a toxic thing, corrosive and uncivilized. Its practitioners do not wish to live and let live; they desire control above all, and the use of angry mobs and threats to intimidate their opponents into acquiescence.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hungary fell the same way. Slowly but surely the Communists there used a combination of violent mobs and corrupted police and courts to eliminate their political opponents. The Hungarian Communists used democratic processes and institutions to achieve non-democratic, tyrannical ends. Hungary went from one of Europe’s great nations to completely oppressed under the Communist boot. Only through uprising and great sacrifice were the Hungarian people freed once again, long after many horrible repressive crimes had been committed.

That same thing is now happening today with the national Democrat Party, whose hatred for the common person, the working person, the taxpayer and citizen, America’s “normal” and boring people, like Judge Kavanaugh, is so overwhelming that it can no longer be controlled.

If you love America, if you enjoy your simple pleasures and the basic freedoms we have here, then tell your US senators you support Kavanaugh, and do not vote for Democrats. The national Democrats do not have your interests at heart. Democrats care much more for illegal aliens (purported “victims”) who murder and rape our children than they care for you or me, taxpaying citizens who have worked hard to build this nation.

A good, decent man, a Justice Kavanaugh will restore some semblance of lawful and constitutional behavior to America, and the howling mob opposes that. Don’t let them win. They are not “protestors,” they are angry, lawless destroyers who pretend they are under the protection of the First Amendment.

By Josh • Posted in Government Of the People..., Immigration • No Comment
August 15th, 2018

Will the real Ireland please get up, stand up?

Tramping the Temple Bar in Dublin with old friends, we were in search of native music, and a cold Guinness. Despite our best efforts, we could not find one authentic Celtic pub, that was open at lunch time, anyhow. Every place we went was either blaring the same exact mix of John Denver, U2, the Beatles, and Neil Diamond, or had someone playing those same songs on a guitar. Really loudly.

This was not the real deal Ireland we came to see and experience.

What the hell is all that incongruous music doing on native Celtic soil? So out of place was this alien cacophonous tumult that we finally fled to what we thought was a quiet spot, only to have the talking-level ambience be detonated by just one guy with a guitar. Singing John Denver, Beatles, U2, and Neil Diamond songs. Really loudly. So loudly that we could not speak to one another at the table, except in between his songs. And believe it or not, this pub had run out of Guinness.

No Irish music and no Guinness in this Temple Bar Irish pub….the heart and soul of Ireland. Supposedly.

This arrangement was, to us, utterly bizarre and not at all what these Americans wanted to hear, or experience. We had traveled back to the old country to hear the heart-felt authentic sound of the old country, either old or modern, not modern, plastic inversions from and for the New World. We put up with it and enjoyed each other’s company for a while, and then fled to greener pastures.

Now about that old time Irish religion…every Catholic church we visited there was a museum. They all had small charity shops, selling post cards. Dark and uninhabited, after a thousand years for some, they now sit mute. How sad to see the backbone of Irish morality, spirituality, and identity cast aside so abruptly.

While talking to anyone who would share their views with us about this, which included at least a dozen natives, from taxi drivers to cops on the street to the barber Seamus who cut me hair, we heard the following themes: The Catholic church overplayed its hand and alienated the very flock under its care. By being part and parcel of the public schools, the Church had a lot of control over people’s lives. But instead of being a positive force, the Irish we spoke to said that when they saw a priest coming, they ducked the other way. Their schooling was unhappy, not inspiring. The Church did not have to compete for the people’s trust and allegiance; it took them for granted and treated them like a captive audience.

And then there was the same molestation issue as here, except that it was bigger, known longer, and covered up in plain sight much longer in Ireland than in America. One man, Martin, our taxi driver on the way to the ferry to Holyhead, said “And you loved Pope John Paul, right?”

To which I naturally answered “Of course! He was a powerful force for good on Planet Earth!”

To which Martin replied “Yes, of course you would say this. All the Americans say it. But did Pope John Paul, the greatest pope in modern history, ever apologize for the molestation problem, here or in America? No, he did not, and it caused most Irish to turn away from him and the Church. Including me.”

I was then reminded of Sinead O’Connor’s bizarre outburst on Saturday Night Live decades ago. “Fight the real enemy,” she shouted at a picture of the Pope. Most Americans were stunned and unhappy about it, regardless of their religious affiliation or identity.

Apparently Sinead had a reason that the rest of us did not know. And at that time, Ireland was just an island a million miles away. We did not know what she was talking about, what Martin was telling us about. There were no social media to broadcast her message, just a brief appearance in front of a big TV audience. It was up to the audience members to dig deeper to find out what she meant.

Today, it appears that outside of the really rural areas, the Catholic Church in Ireland is being abandoned by the Irish. Like completely abandoned.

This terrifies those of us who believe in the supremacy of Western civilization. Without the Church, a cornerstone of Western Civilization, the whole falls. What fills that vacuum could be anything, and there are some powerful forces at play, playing for all the chips that spoiled, soft, fantasy-driven Westerners seem to be oblivious to. The Irish are not soft, or spoiled, but they are like children in a way. They are largely innocent children, in my eyes, unexposed to the harsh realities of the outside world, waiting to eat them up. Their guard is down, not up. The Irish are vulnerable, in the way that middle-income American kids are clueless and big hearted about the intentions of their enemies they call friends.

It is painful to see an Irishman drop his own music in Dublin, drop the source of his soul and family, and drop his guard when a fight for his culture is looming in his face.

Will Ireland please stand up? Will the real Ireland please get up? Yes, we know you are tired of fighting, but sadly, we all must fight to stay free. It is a constant thing. You Irish should know this better than everyone else.

For those who want to hear some authentic, modern, native Irish music, in the symbolic spirit of James Joyce; it is possible:

By Josh • Posted in Family, Immigration • No Comment
May 10th, 2018

Boy Scouts, Supreme Court, Mueller Witch Hunt: One Common Thread

In 1973, amidst an earth-shaking cultural civil war, a divided US Supreme Court legislated a patchwork interpretation of the US Constitution to create a heretofore unmentioned “right” to abortion-on-demand.

Irrespective of whether you agree with abortion on demand as a reasonable or moral policy, or you do not, there are three key facts from this incident that are important today.

First, it marked one of the major milestones in an increasingly legislative judiciary, taking for itself the creative duties Constitutionally assigned to the US Congress (House and Senate).

As constituted, the judiciary is simply supposed to render more or less Yes and No holdings on US laws, deciding whether or not they are Constitutional. Those that are not are supposed to be remanded back to lower courts or sent back to the legislature altogether. Our courts are not constituted to come up with their own ideas and substitute them for the ideas brought before them in lawsuits.

Laws and the ideas in them are supposed to begin and end in the Congress.

Second, in its decision, the Court did mental backflips and logical contortions to arrive at its holding, because nowhere in the Constitution or any of the Founding debate documents is or was abortion mentioned; nor was the legal process or thinking that the Court used to reach its conclusion.

Again, as a policy, one can agree or disagree with abortion on demand, but to reach into a top hat and pull out a new and arguably foreign concept, as the Court did, and declare it protected by the Constitution is really legal chicanery. It is not how American government is supposed to work.

Which leads to the third outcome: out of all this brazen behavior in Roe v. Wade, the US Supreme Court established a political and cultural precedent for illegal legislating and political meddling from the bench.

This behavior evolved the court system into a de facto government unto itself; all three functions – judicial, legislative and executive – housed in just one branch of government.

Housed with just a five-person majority on the Court.

This last result is the most dangerous to democracy, because it tested the American people’s credulity and patience. The outstanding hallmarks of American government are the separation of powers, the rule of law, and the idea that government legitimacy flows from The People, not from the government’s coercive power. To grant just five people absolute power over an entire nation is to throw America out the window.

Like their European Marxist counterparts, modern American liberals (progressives, Communists, ANTIFA, Socialists, Democrats, whatever) focus their efforts on acquiring power, on controlling decision making, on getting government-endorsed results, at whatever cost, in whatever way possible.

So, judicial over-reach is now a major liberal approach to implementing political change, and changing cultural norms for political decision making.

Thus, Roe v. Wade was not as much about abortion as it was about five unelected, unaccountable people wearing black robes making all policy and legislative decisions about all issues for three hundred and fifty million other Americans.

This behavior is as un-American as anything could be. It strikes a subtle but fatal dagger blow to the American heart, demanding fealty to the rule of law while suspending the rule of law. It really is a coup d’etat.

Several years ago the US Supreme Court did the same thing again with gay marriage as it had done with Roe v. Wade. Instead of begging off of that political issue, because marriage has always been a subject of local and state purview, the US Supreme Court took decision making away from the American People. It created a right that no one had ever heard of before, that flew in the face of thousands of years of human behavior, that should have bubbled up from the local level and worked its way through the legislative process to gain traction among a majority of the American People to give it legitimacy, a real organic cultural belief with roots.

But the Court circumvented all that messy representative democracy stuff, and just implemented the policy and cultural goal they wanted.

(And if you care at all what my opinion is about gay marriage, I don’t give a damn. Marry the adult you want to marry. Go ahead, live your life. Gather together a community or quorum or church or whatever imprimatur you think you need and get married under those auspices. But it is a mistake to demand that three hundred and fifty million other people accept your ideas at the price of their liberty).

So now America is undergoing the Mueller “investigation” of supposed Russian tampering and collusion with Donald Trump so he could win the presidency. After two years of looking, not one shred of evidence has been found, and there is tons of evidence of lots of illegal actions by the prior administration.

Nonetheless a highly coercive and obviously political witch hunt has emerged, with arch criminal Robert Mueller leading the charge.

Why is Mueller a criminal? Because he knows his cause is unjust and dangerous to democracy. He knows there is no evidence for the fake cause of his work. He knows that the FISA warrant upon which his work is based was obtained under very fake pretenses (the fake Clinton-created political “dossier” on Trump). He knows that everyone he has charged is totally innocent or innocent of anything having to do with Russian “collusion.”

Mueller withholds from Congressional oversight the investigation-enabling letter written to him by Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, which began this witch hunt.

If Mueller believed in the integrity of his work and his mission, he would happily, willingly share the enabling letter with the American People. Transparency, right?

Mueller’s witch hunt is so utterly brazen because it demands the American People abandon their commitment to the rule of law, and instead swear allegiance to raw political audacity and the aggressive exercise of power.

Mueller’s attack on our democracy is criminal because it is the creation of coercive political power by sheer willpower and desire to rule, without a shred of legitimacy behind it. Robert Mueller is everything that America is not.

So therefore, Robert Mueller is a criminal, and he knows it. Mueller and his allies hope that the American People’s loyalty to even a flawed democratic process overrides their disgust at the blatant misuse of the process and their trust. It is a big gamble.

Last week the Boy Scouts of America formally changed their name to the “Scouts,” formally adding girls to the mix.

Just eight or so people on the BSA board of directors voted for this change. Demand for this change did not come up from the ground, from the grass roots, from the thousands of local Boy Scout troops and the associated moms and dads across America.

Rather, this huge cultural change was forced down upon everyone else by a very small handful of politically and culturally radical people.

They know they cannot persuade the Boy Scouts members to agree with this change, so like the other changes made on abortion, same sex marriage, and political election results, the decision is made “from above” and forced down on everyone else. It is just another coup d’etat foisted upon America by liberals.

While we would normally think of the Boy Scouts and abortion and gay marriage and election results being totally different subjects and areas, they do share one commonality.

Binding them all together is the Democrat Party’s war on democracy, its lust for power, its lust for political control and domination over all others, its wish for the destruction of all established norms and expectations so that their version of cultural change will be implemented. By brute force, if necessary.

(For those who care to know, I used to be a Democrat. Today I am a reluctant member of the Republican Party, and, like George Washington before me, I disdain all political parties as an occasional, temporary necessity.)

And from all this, liberals hope to “fundamentally change America” into a Socialist paradise like Cuba or Venezuela, or even like the failed and dead Soviet Union they revered.

Why? Because liberals do not believe in The People. They believe in power and control, period, and that is the common thread connecting all of these disparate issues and topics they are involved in. It is just now that these decisions and changes are so starkly contrasted with how America was founded.

I, for one, do not accept any of this behavior, nor the coup d’etats being attempted against our government and our culture.

By Josh • Posted in Family, Government Of the People... • No Comment
May 6th, 2018

Movie review: “White Tiger”

When we think of Russia today and now, our mind might wander off into brutal poisonings of ex-spies across international borders, brutal assassinations of journalists inside Russia, brutal repressions of Chechen independence movements, brutal invasions of South Ossetia, Ukraine, and Georgia (THAT Georgia, not our Georgia), poorly chosen relationships with Iran and Syria, and the current czar riding around bare-chested on a horse with a rifle slung over his back.

Perhaps it was always thus. But if we think and search back a hundred years or more, we will stumble upon buried treasure in the farthest reaches of Russia.

Yes, it is true, Russia was not always just a military force to be reckoned with, it was also a significant cultural center of the very highest magnitude, the very highest achievement. World class music, literature, arts and crafts, poetry, ballet, and so on all were major hallmarks of the Russians.

Not of the oppressed Soviet satellite states, but the actual Russian people themselves.

Rachmaninoff, Dostoyesky, Faberge, and so on, so many great minds contributing in a singularly unique way, native to Russian culture.

Russians had this knack for art that you would not necessarily see if you looked at the simple surface of their culture or landscape. Behind the eightball on technology, Russian writers and poets and musicians bedazzled Westerners with their brilliance and inspiration.

That all started to die in fits and starts after the violent 1917 revolution led by the Democrat Party of that day and place, but nonetheless art persisted until the 1950s, when Soviet socialist control firmly held every thing and every person in its crushing grasp.

To dissent from all that big government with a pink pussy hat or with a snarky hashtag was unthinkable. Not that people wouldn’t try to do it, but the Soviet thought police, much the same as our own politically correct thought police in America today, would catch the thought crime even before it had taken physical form, and, as our own thought police openly wish they could do, WHOOSH, off to a starvation diet in Siberia went that ‘evil’ free thinker.

I am not sure that the Soviets used the words “sexist,” “racist,” homophobe,” “Islamophobe,” and other overdone American generalities meant to crush dialogue and debate, but if they could have used these terms, they would have. Different words then, but the same anti-democracy process then and now.

So for the past seventy years Russia has had an especially harsh Russian winter, art-wise, because of the Soviets and then their control freak successors, whatever Mr. Putin’s political party is named.

To be an artist in that Russian cultural winter was to walk around every day muzzled, daring not to say much less think your own creative thoughts. Too much was at stake.

But somewhere, somehow, that beautiful old Russian voice began to quietly break through the repressive walls. Finding acceptable subjects and means to convey them became a new form of creativity in and of itself.

Nationalism, patriotism, history are all legitimate subjects of artistic creativity, and so Russian artists have adapted. Very, very well. Albeit with throwback Soviet-style imagery, which is lamentable. Gosh, if the Russians could only be our friends…the things we could achieve together.

And so here we now have a truly artistic Russian movie we can all be proud of, in the mould of the old-time Russian artistic capacity. It is called White Tiger and debuted about 18 months ago. I have been wanting to write about it since watching it back then, but as we know, the past 18 months in America have been pretty intense.  Every time I thought I could breathe again, some new issue would pop up. There was more compelling competition for writing space and creativity of my own.

At least this is how I have experienced the past 18 months.

If you are afflicted with a love of liberty, as I am, then you have shared my somewhat anxious condition as the American “deep state,” or Obama holdovers, or career bureaucrats, or whatever you want to call them, have attempted to reverse the outcome of a presidential election they thought they would win and still cannot stomach the thought of losing, by any means necessary. Which means illegal, unethical, immoral, un-American, anti-democratic means.

That all seems to be unwinding now.

And so now, for this moment, I get to bask in the glow of art, thanks to the Russians. And I really mean it, thank you. Seeing this movie took me way back in time to when my own mind was creative and artistic.

Dear Russians, I lift my glass to you: Tvoye zdorovye!

White Tiger is on its face a war movie set in World War Two. It is about Russians versus Germans, good guys versus bad guys, the Eastern European version of cowboys versus Indians. It is also about tanks and heavy armor, about technological superiority versus the grass roots spirit to survive, and history. Lots of history. And lots of action.

At its core, this movie is mythological and Darwinian, with a lot of symbolism, not the least of which is the theme music, an artfully done refrain of Wagner’s pilgrim’s chorus.

If you care to pay careful attention, and walk a mile in a Russian tank tread, you will end up being impressed by this low-budget, high-performance film.

Briefly summed up with no spoilers, the unlikely (and yet so likely…there’s that symbolism thing) Russian hero is reborn, a plausible enough biological fluke consistent with species adapting.

He goes on to learn his enemy’s ways, to anticipate his next moves, and in the end, he goes on a ghostly chase into both past and future, bound up in one of Russia’s most enduring identities: Not German!

And speaking of German, Germany, and World War Two, no better representation of Adolf Hitler has been captured in cinema than the movie’s very last few minutes, where Satan’s boots on the ground has a heartfelt confession with his sponsor, who sits patiently listening in the shadow.

White Tiger.

And as an aperitif, try this Russian music to settle your soul before bed time.

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
September 24th, 2017

The Wonder of Elvis

Elvis Presley was a wonder in so many ways.

Youthful cutting-edge song writer and musician, he combined mountain folk music with country, blues, and gospel, with substantive themes and meaningful words, creating his own powerful sound with bi-racial bands that captivated people around the world. Come to think of it, in some ways like Ray Charles, a similar creative genius who also went on to make his own unique blues and jazz sound (also drawing upon sacred music) during the same time.

Both men created, captured, and represented certain turning points in American culture in their music.

But Elvis was more than a musician of meaningful songs. He also wrote, directed, and starred in dozens of movies, for which he wrote or performed some or all of the sound tracks. Like his music, Elvis movies are about simple life themes, like love, relationships, community, commitment, family, patriotism, public service, and God. Gosh his movies are corny, with clunky acting, but they carry important and positive messages Americans could sure use a dose of today.

In the 1950s, when Elvis was debuting, American women were married to the scarred men who had returned from the battlefields or the military training grounds of World War II. A lot of these men were tough, hardened either from the Great Depression or from their military experiences, or both. Romantic thoughts or gestures, tender touches, gentle words with their women were pretty scarce then.

Along came Elvis, singing to these women about loving and relationships they could only dream of, representing a model man they could only hope for. In his way, Elvis taught men of his generation how to respect and treat women right, mostly by singing about the kinds of feelings women had and how men could aspire to satisfy them.

Women screamed and swooned, and men wanted to be his friend.

Meanwhile, other entertainers were singing about banging in the back of a car, and most popular music hasn’t moved too far forward since. OK, it is true that later on Elvis developed that hip thrust, but he let it stand on its own without any words to back it up.

He was a good soldier, literally, volunteering for the US Army at a time when most of the people being drafted to serve in combat were less privileged young men without access to lawyers or school deferments. His military service was mostly symbolic, but inspiring. Asked by a reporter in 1971 what he thought about the anti-war protestors, he responded that he was just an entertainer and would rather keep his opinions to himself.

In private Elvis was no Lothario. Reportedly chaste and deeply religious, his child was born exactly nine months to the day after his marriage to Priscilla. No fooling around or cutting corners.

After developing his own sequined and bejeweled stage look, Elvis wore a freakin cape, and yet still commanded the adoration or respect of everyone around him, be it president of the United States or hard bitten businessmen. He was authentic, real. A humble, simple country boy. With a big shiny gold belt under his coat!

He was relatable, because he was real.

“Before Elvis there was nothing,” said John Lennon of the Beatles.

“When I heard Heartbreak Hotel, I was transported,” said crusty Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, no pushover or soppy romantic.

Elvis’ impact on the development of music was unequaled.

Embodying so many unique, separate, divergent, and ultimately convergent strands of American identity, Elvis was a wonder no matter how you analyze him. He represented the best of America, the best of its values.

Elvis is still be the King of Rock and Roll, four decades after prematurely reaching the Promised Land. His generous spirit lives on, albeit appreciated by fewer and fewer. No one since has attained his heights or impact on popular culture.

America could use a pop culture figure like Elvis today. Someone to bridge the gaps between us, to help inspire and unify us, to sing to us about our best qualities, about love and gentleness.

We need and miss you, Elvis.

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
September 13th, 2017

NFL – “No F@#*n Loss”

As part of the entertainment industry’s decades-old war on American culture, ESPN and now the NFL have joined the politically correct pile-on.

Hollywood has led the way, surely, with its movies’ power of suggestion.

That Hollywood increasingly excretes unvarnished political activism in the guise of children’s movies as well as rated R adult movies is a thing of pride to that city; no one there even denies it. Hollywood is really just a communication propaganda arm of one political party.

But you cannot discount the increasing effects of ESPN reporters who now openly write that President Trump and his supporters are “white supremacists,” among many other examples of overt daily political activism by ESPN staff.

When I write “effects,” I mean the boomerang effect, which is where the intended results of one’s actions negatively rebound and injure the person who started it. These are ironic consequences, the best, most well-earned.

Perhaps the pinnacle of this boomeranging political activism is the anti-America statements by NFL players. Taking a knee and not standing during the national anthem wasn’t enough. Now some NFL players are making political videos that are shown at the game opening, or at half-time.

Well, removing the ESPN application from my iPhone was easy. There, ESPN, I am done with you. You are out of my life. See ya!

Over the past few years, ignoring the latest crop of poorly acted, poorly scripted, CGI-heavy Hollywood movies was a little more difficult, because Saturday night out at the movies with ice cream afterwards is a regular family thing. Even a lame movie would nonetheless entertain us and provide food for discussion later on. Like, was the movie’s symbolism consistent with its message? Did the message flow, or did acting anomalies and hiccups sidetrack the message? Was the message worthy, or was it muddled, or even negative?

These kinds of conversations with our kids were always stimulating, because as parents we enjoy watching our children grow. Nonetheless, unless a movie is exceptional in every way, we now decline to spend our money on a product from Hollywood, because that city is constantly at war with our values.

Now we have the National Football League, the NFL, getting all poseur-like. The NFL, too, is starting to see a substantial decline in business income. Why?

Illiterate men of the NFL, who have earned tens of millions of dollars in a few brief years’ time simply for running up and down a field, are out complaining about their station in life. You cannot make this stuff up. We indeed have phenomenally successful young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, whose wealth is largely accumulated from admirers of a different skin color, now claiming discrimination. And therefore, they take a knee during the American anthem.

In short, they tell their audiences and fans to go to Hell.

I don’t deny these guys have a right to stage their silly protests. But I have no duty to watch them, or to listen to their nonsense. And I have the right to stop watching their football games altogether, which is what I have now done.

This past January I called the NFL headquarters in Manhattan. Sharing my opinion of the league’s unwillingness to bring the football games back to being just about the games was the goal of the call. But, try as I might, finding a live human being was impossible. The phone menu just kept rotating through, taking me back to the beginning each time.

So I just started punching random numbers in to the phone.

Next thing I know, I was into the voice mail of a young NFL staffer, whose name I do not recall. But you know I took that opportunity to leave a detailed message on his voice mail.

My message to him was simple: Since I was eleven years old, I have looked forward to new NFL seasons. I always enjoyed watching NFL games.  But that enjoyment has diminished lately because of all the fake moaning, fake victimhood, fake whining by these anti-America grandstanders on the football teams. And so I kindly asked the league to give players a simple choice: Dear employees, play, or leave, but no more political crap on someone else’s dime.

Unsurprisingly, I did not get a call back from anyone at the NFL. The organization seems to take people like me for granted. At their own peril.

Well, I did not watch one single NFL game last year, and I will not watch one single NFL game this year, either. And I will keep spending my time on other activities until the NFL gets its players to commit to just playing the game, and to stop insulting good people who have not had a racist thought in their lives. Or perhaps the time I free up that I used to spend watching NFL games on TV will become better spent, irrespective of the political landscape.

Yes, I know, it is common now for people to assert that disagreeing with them on policy issues automatically means you or I are “racist.” The contrary facts do not matter to them. As a result, nothing has done more damage to the battle to end discrimination and racism than this constant crying wolf by crybullies and rich crybabies.  I am a very good person, I am not a racist, and I am tired of being told I am a bad person because I do not share some silly ideology.

Guys, just play ball. OK?

I have now arrived at a place where the NFL has taken on a new meaning: No F@&#’n Loss to me. I don’t miss it.

 

By Josh • Posted in Family • No Comment
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