Red State has a wonderful response from an immigrant who has just earned his citizenship in 2021 and considers himself a MAGA supporter.
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A voyage into history
Posted: August 30, 2022 by chrisharper in Uncomfortable TruthsTags: Da Magnificent Seven, Magellan
By Christopher Harper
On September 5, 1522, The Victoria sailed into the harbor near Seville, Spain, after completing a three-year, 60,000-mile trip around the world.
For centuries, the expedition, launched by Ferdinand Magellan, was regarded as one of the most outstanding achievements in history and had a significant impact on the West’s understanding of the world.
See a map of the incredible journey at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uKhVFlasxE
Mired in today’s wokeness, the voyage is regarded as the beginning of colonialism and the dominance of the Catholic Church over those colonies.
But Magellan’s vision and his sailors’ persistence against all odds demonstrate what’s wrong with wokeness.
Would the world really have been better if people didn’t know how to sail around it?
After studying maps for years, Magellan had a dream. He was convinced that by sailing west instead of east, he could find a better route to Indonesia and India from Europe. The king of Portugal wouldn’t finance his trip, so he headed for Spain, where he gained citizenship and Charles V’s backing for five ships.
But he was in an awkward position regarding his crew and royal mission. “The [Spanish] resented sailing under a Portuguese commander, and the Portuguese considered him a traitor,” historian Lincoln Paine wrote.
After winter weather forced his ships to wait for months in what is now Argentina, Magellan’s crew mutinied. One ship was wrecked; another headed back to Spain.
Magellan managed to navigate a treacherous passage around South America that later was named in his honor—the Strait of Magellan. He’s also credited with naming the Pacific Ocean.
But the troubles weren’t over. As the crew traveled across the Pacific, food spoiled, and scurvy and starvation occurred. The sailors reached the Philippines, where Magellan was killed in April 1521 by a local tribe.
After Magellan’s death, his crew continued in the single ship that remained, captained by Juan Sebastian Elcano. Only 18 of the 270 men survived, but the expedition had proven that the globe could be circumnavigated and opened the door to European colonization of the New World in the name of commerce.
A legend was born—and in 1989, one of Magellan’s namesakes even traveled to Venus. During a five-year-long journey, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft made images of the planet before burning up in its atmosphere.
According to Antonio Pigafetta, who chronicled the journey and lived to tell the tale: “Magellan’s main virtues were courage and perseverance, in even the most difficult situations; for example, he bore hunger and fatigue better than all the rest of us. He was a magnificent practical seaman who understood navigation better than all his pilots. The best proof of his genius is that he circumnavigated the world, none having preceded him.”
Today, Magellan’s vision and fortitude should be praised rather than placed on the altar of wokeness.
Fortunately, a relatively apolitical rendition of Magellan’s accomplishments is now airing on Amazon Prime. See https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0B1LNS6LB/ref=atv_hm_hom_1_c_lZOsi7_2_1
It’s all about the kids
Posted: August 23, 2022 by chrisharper in baseballTags: Da Magnificent Seven, Little League World Series
By Christopher Harper
The Little League World Series, just a few miles up the road from my home in central Pennsylvania, provides a wonderful sense of sanity amid the chaos and controversy throughout the country.
For two weeks in Williamsport, once a thriving lumber town, the focus is on the crack of the baseball bat until the end of the month, offering a celebration of Americana that is difficult to surpass.
The players between 10 and 12 years old come from some of the smallest towns in the United States, including Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania; Bonney Lake, Washington; Hagerstown, Indiana; Pearland, Texas; Santa Clara, Utah.
The 20 teams also include groups from Guaynabo, Puerto Rico; Aguadulce, Panama; and Bologna, Italy.
Whatever their language or background, the games are all about the kids, the parents, and the city of Williamsport.
As ESPN put it: “Williamsport is the happiest town in America for nearly two weeks starting in the middle of August. It opens with The Grand Slam Parade the night before the games begin, the kids riding down the street with their team, next to other teams that have come from thousands of miles away. They don’t all understand the same language, but they know a party and a parade when they see one.”
In 1939, Carl Stolz started Little League baseball in Williamsport because he enjoyed playing baseball with his two young nephews and ultimately decided that he wanted to create an organized league for them to play in. There were just three original teams in the league: Lundy Lumber, Lycoming Dairy, and Jumbo Pretzel. See https://www.nytimes.com/1992/06/05/sports/carl-stotz-82-founder-of-little-league-baseball.html
Little League baseball eventually expanded to 12 leagues in Pennsylvania in 1946. Today, there are an estimated 180,000 teams throughout the world.
The first official Little League World Series occurred in August 1947 in Williamsport. This year’s event, which can be seen on ESPN, will continue until August 28, when a champion is declared. Or, you can drop by to see a game for free.
According to the Little League website, the World Series has featured some participants who had notable sports careers in the MLB, the NFL, and the NHL, including Yankee third baseman Todd Frazier, Stanley Cup winner Chris Drury, and Tennessee Titans quarterback Matt Cassel.
This year brought Yankee Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera, former President George Bush, and Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson.
It just doesn’t get much better than that.
By Christopher Harper
The ideological attack on white men in the United States has gained considerably in recent years, including a series of blatantly racial attacks.
Simply put, being white in America has become inherently bad.
For example, Rolling Stone recently highlighted the arrest of a man the publication contends wanted his compatriots to rape white women and kill blacks to increase the majority of Caucasians in America.
“[A] former U.S. Marine plotted mass murder and sexual assault to ‘decrease the number of minority residents’ in the United States as part of his membership in a far-right neo-Nazi group, ‘Rapekrieg,’ the news organization writes.
“Belanger was the subject of an FBI Joint Terrorism Taskforce investigation into allegedly plotting to ‘engage in widespread homicide and sexual assault.’ Much of Belanger’s ideology and plotting…is based around a desire to lessen the number of nonwhite Americans and to rape ‘white women to increase the production of white children,'” Rolling Stone contends.
What’s noteworthy about the report is the final paragraph: The Senate Armed Services Committee recently stated that the Pentagon was spending too much money on investigating such matters because the number of individuals is so small.
So why does Rolling Stone even report the arrest? Because it promotes a frequent meme: Marines are primarily white, rightist wingnuts rather than soldiers who deserve the nation’s respect.
But there’s more. Atlantic published an article equating Catholic rosaries with extremism. “Just as the AR-15 rifle has become a sacred object for Christian nationalists in general, the rosary has acquired a militaristic meaning for radical-traditional (or ‘rad trad’) Catholics,” Atlantic’s Daniel Panneton writes.
“On this extremist fringe, rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture,” Panneton adds. “These armed radical traditionalists have taken up a spiritual notion that the rosary can be a weapon in the fight against evil and turned it into something dangerously literal.”
Just think about the outrage if someone wrote that worry beads were a sign of a terrorist in the Middle East.
But there’s even more. Wired, known primarily as a tech publication, has picked up the anti-white meme in a book review.
“Whiteness is a seduction. Whiteness is also an illusion. These are the twin motifs on which Pakistani writer Mohsin Hamid props up The Last White Man, his latest novel,” Wired states.
The novel focuses on how whites wake up as nonwhites and how society becomes better for the change.
It’s heartening that Atlantic’s outrageous slander against Catholics has faced some blowback on social media. Still, it appears that the current meme in the media elite is to publish even more outrageous and offensive attacks against whites.
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