Archive for the ‘culture’ Category

Earlier this week we had our annual five top posts for 2023. Now it’s time to look at the bottom of the barrel. The posts that drew the fewest views of the year that we think deserve a little more attention then they got:

To be sure over the course of the year we’ll serve up a few lemons but these are posts that we’d like you to take a 2nd look at:

Let’s start with my favorite of the lot.

The Feast of The Passion of John the Baptist Playing Out Daily in America Against an Army of Woke Herodians

This piece is all about the war on truth. John told the truth which is why Herodias wanted him dead

There are still some who either because they still retain some backbone or fear the masses of the people more than the army of woke Herodians (who are actually much smaller then they appear) decide to reject them and side with the people and each time they it strikes fear in the hearts of the woke Herodians because they know their power is dependent on the fear of their Herods and the indifference of the masses.

There are John the Baptists out there. Tucker Carlson who faced the wrath of the woke Herodians but thrived despite it, Riley Gaines who refuses to bend the knee to Transgender Inc. Joe Rogan who talked openly about ivermectin to be used in Covid cases, Ron DeSantis who didn’t give in to either the COVID hysteria or the Disney/woke crowd on sexualizing children and yes Donald Trump as well who refused to bend the knee even as he is treated like an enemy of the state for being an enemy of dishonest elections.

I’m really at a loss why this one didn’t play better as the problem is the single most relevant thing going on.


Rules Rules Rules

It can be very dry to hear about federal bureau​crat​ic rules but our man Jon Fournier understands that they are important and has tackled them. His pieces on Internet rules, Drinking from the feds and on norms on Transgenderism, Guns and life deserved a bigger audience then they got, but the one I’m going to quote is this piece about the resending of a Trump era rule:

The Biden Regime is once again trampling on the First Amendment

The federal government forcing anyone to violate their religious beliefs is a direct violation of the Free Exercise of Religion Clause of the First Amendment.  The original 1973 law, which is now back in effect thanks to Biden’s executive order, did not go far enough because there is no “undue hardship” exception to the First Amendment.

As you can see from this next quote, President Trump understood the First Amendment far better than progressives because his rule was instep with the original understanding of the Free Exercise od Religion Clause.

This piece was from one year ago Jan 5th. The rest of the year didn’t go much better.


Reality Sucks

As I mentioned in the first post I referenced a lot of what is going on is a war on truth and this piece from July 11th illustrated it well:

Ring Doorbells, Paper Ballots and Palestinians

You see the ring camera doesn’t care what your race or religion or the desired narrative of the day is, what it does is show the image of what is actually happening, objective reality.

And while it might be considered a good thing for a homeowner protecting their property or a neighborhood wanting to keep criminals from using it as a stomping ground or even for the mother of boys discourage them from getting into the type of trouble that boys do when they’re young and stupid if you’re trying to sell a narrative based on unreality, well it can be a killer.

Wired magazine didn’t like ring doorbells suggesting it would lead to vigilantism what they really don’t like is reality stomping on the narrative.

After all why do you think so many of the J6 videos were suppressed?


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Yarneck: You are the survivors. The others have run off. It would seem that evil retreats when forcibly confronted

Star Trek The Savage Curtain 1969

Elder of Ziyon is one of the must goes for news of Israel’s war with Hamas. A few days ago they had a post of an interview with a man named Dr. Harold Rhode who holds a doctorate in Islamic history, lived in Muslim lands for a very long time and has been an advisor on the middle east for more than a quarter of a century. His perspective on what’s going on is the type of info people need if they want to understand Hamas et/al:

And the peace we are looking for is that you will stop fighting, and we will stop fighting, and everyone will live together in peace. But the Muslims do not have a concept like that. They won’t stop until the whole world will be Muslim. They follow what their prophet Muhammad did. He signed a 10-year ceasefire with Quraysh. After 2 years, Muhammad realized Quraysh had weakened — so he attacked them, and won. There is a classic Latin phrase “Bellum omnium contra omnes, pace inter omnes interpellatur,” that war is the natural state of man, interrupted by periods of peace.

We do not look at life like that, but historically most people do. From a Muslim point of view, they can agree to have relations with their enemies — whether they be Muslims, Jews, or anybody else. They can make temporary agreements just like their prophet did. Those agreements can be renewed, renewed, and renewed. But to think that the Saudis see peace the way we Jews see it is a pipe dream. 

In 1949, after Israel’s War of Independence, there was a peace conference in Rhodes. The Arabs insisted the borders be called “ceasefire lines” and not borders. The situation was not set in stone. Arabs do not have the concept that when the fighting is over, we can be friends

To them the war never ends which is why you must never show weakness. That’s also why the “protestors are shoving western cities around. As long as their response if weak they will assert themselves, once you respond with strength and it cost them something, then it will change.


The left is the same way, as long as you don’t stand up to them they will constantly assert themselves, but when you stand up to them like the Archbishop of Milwaukee did when two liberal parishes in Keoshia decided to ally with a radical leftist group CUSH. The Keoshia county eye reports: Milwaukee Archbishop Denounces Extremist Kenosha Group CUSH – Instructs Rogue Priests, Deacons To Sever Ties

For theses reasons none of our parishes, clergy, parish leadership, and staff as official, public representatives of the Catholic Church, can support, or publically [sic] be affiliated with CUSH.”

Father Reesman said the following to KCE Monday evening:

” [The letter] was shared first with the pastors of Saint Mark and Saint Mary’s Parishes before it was made public, and after I had first discussed the issue with them. If there are any ongoing questions from the parishes or their leadership about the contents of this letter, we will handle them on a case by case basis.”

It seems when you push back against gay porn in schools and drag queen story hours, good things happen which is what happened when the folks at Mass Resistance got involved.


Speaking of Push back some armed home invaders got some pushback last week that left one dead, two arrested and the family safe. A sheriff evaluated what they family did and gave it a thumbs up

I like the way Dave and Susie handled this attack. It appears that they must have discussed home invasions and developed a plan. Not responding verbally to the home invaders kept the crooks wondering where their victims might actually be located. And blocking the door with the couch caused their attacker to focus on that chore instead of keeping his full attention focused on looking for victims. Susie gets points for maintaining an open line of communications with the 9-1-1 dispatcher. And Dave was also very smart to put his gun down and meet the police officer with empty hands. Latest reports are that police investigators see no legal problems for Dave & Susie and, in addition, a series of other home invasions may be cleared by this shooting and the subsequent arrests.

It’s a great: ”How to” piece on self defense.


The pushback on Disney continues as well:

Loftis announced that South Carolina will divest $105 million worth of Disney debt securities due to concerns over the company’s leadership and its embrace of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) principles.

Loftis said Disney has abandoned its fiduciary duty to shareholders in favor of ESG, which he defined as a “speech and behavior code that was … created by the left and delivered to everybody else.”

“The sane, sober, talented, mature people are gone, and now you have the gender studies crowd running Disney,” Loftis said, “That’s why their movies are flops and their market cap, I think, is about half what it used to be. It’s a tremendous loss to America — we all grew up on Disney,” he added.

Note the argument made, not because Disney is woke but because “woke” costs them cash. That’s the type of pushback shareholder listen to.


Finally the Harvard Crimson published a dissenting opinion calling for President Gay to go.

While going over the “higher standard” bit the real meat of the argument is here:

We are tired of reading about Harvard’s failures every time we check the news. We are sick of reporters hassling us for interviews in the Yard. We don’t want to return home for break and get pestered by friends and family, asking what is happening on campus or how we’re holding up in this awful environment. Our classes and our studying should not be interrupted by noisemakers and megaphones. Signing an affirmation that we will follow the Harvard College Honor Code before we take our final exams should not feel like a farce.

Students are not the only ones frustrated. Faculty are concerned with her academic misconduct too, though many refuse to go on the record, perhaps for fear of the consequences (a fact the Board’s opinion notes but seems not to take to heart).

Donors are tripping over each other to sever ties with the University. A senator has written in the Wall Street Journal that he was accosted in Widener Library. Congress has launched — and now expanded — an investigation into Harvard. Early application numbers have dropped sharply compared with peer institutions, perhaps in response to the turmoil.

It’s that pushback that is the real driver here and is the only thing that drives leftists away.


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Bart Maverick:Well it still smells of a con game but there’s too much money in the come-on.

Madame De Chauvrier: So?

Bart Maverick: Madame there isn’t a grifter alive who puts real gold in his “goldbrick” not over a million dollars worth.

Maverick Diamond in the Rough 1958

Now that the Civil war is suddenly in vogue thanks to Nikki Haley’s gaffe it’s worth noting a few things that are basic facts.

The south was fighting to preserve slavery, all you have to do is read the newspapers of the time to know this is true but if you really want to understand this, don’t take my word for it, take the word of the Vice President of the Confederacy Alexander Stephens:

The new [confederate] constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. 

Alexander Stephens: Crossroads speech

Keep an eye on that link we’ll be going back to that speech a lot in this post.

What would have been more accurate to say was that the North was not fighting to end slavery, although there were many in the union ranks who believed in its abolition. As Lincoln himself put it in his letter to Horace Greeley:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less  whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

This believe it or not is something that even Nikole Hannah-Jones of the phony narrative of the 1619 project understands and states publicly showing that every now and again when a person is trying to sell a salted mine or a fake narrative it’s necessary for a person to make sure there is enough gold in their gold brick or a bit of truth in the come-on to be able to make the sale.

Of course Hanna-Jones likely had little use for the final sentence of Lincoln’s letter

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

And I suspect that she thought even less of Alexander Stephens words concerning what the founding fathers thought of Slavery and the black race in that same Crossroads speech:

But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”

All emphasis mine

This completely contradicts the narrative of the left on what the founders thought. Furthermore unlike Hanna-Jones, Stephens was in a real position to know what the founders thought not only because the founding of the country was still in living memory at the time of this speech but because he was one of the most educated men of his time:

Take a note of what he says here. He not only states that Jefferson and most of the leading statesmen were opposed to slavery and considered wrong on every count and that said idea was the prevailing idea of the time, but that those founding fathers held that idea based on an assumption of the equality of the races.

It’s important to note here that his was not mere rhetoric. Stephens despite poor beginnings was not only well read in an age were illiteracy was common, but well educated (Top of his college class) a successful lawyer, married to the daughter of a Revolutionary war colonel but at the time of this speech had been an elected representative in the state of Georgia and congress for over a quarter of a century. Few men in the entire nation were in a better position to know the history and the sentiment of the Founders than he.

The real irony is that Hanna-Jones argues for advantages and reparations and special privileges for Blacks in education, and the workplace and by law because they can’t make it in the biased “white” world. Stevens would and did agree completely with this argument:

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

And he not only stated this but he noted that their opponents in the North arguments against slavery would be correct if they did not subscribe to what he considered a false premises of racial equality.

One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. 

emphasis mine

Is this not the same argument that the Nichole-smith and folks from DEI are making? Blacks must have separate graduations, gays must have separate graduations, they must have separate spaces, all of this is pretty much the argument that Stephens made that Blacks can’t complete on a level playing fields.

George W. Bush called it the: Soft bigotry of low expectation.

I call it “racism”, racism for fun and profit. Well fun and profit for those who make a living off the DEI grift, but for the vast majority of actual students of color who are going to have to make it in a world that doesn’t give a damn about DEI but skills and results It’s a sentence to failure, that ironically will be blamed on racism.


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One of the reasons why both antisemitism and the violence of the left continue unabated is the complete lack on incentive to stop doing these things.

As long as laws are not enforced, except against those who fight against such things , they will continue.

In a famous scene in the John Wayne movie True Grit this is illustrated

Society has had enough of the “let him be” and I fear that unless things change quickly citizens themselves will decide to apply the alternate as the norm.


The distinct difference between this stuff happening in areas controlled by the left and places controlled by the right is striking, but not as striking as the number of leftist willing to tolerate all this crap for the sake of fitting in with the right people.

It’s always amazed me how so many people willingly choose hell over heaven but my amazement to that pales before the number willing to choose hell on earth.


I hear Elon Musk is getting ready to start his own university.

This is a smart idea, given what being taught at colleges these day and the attempt to view even math and science through the lens of DEI rather than objective fact it would seem there would be a market for a school that actually you know teaches real skills.

Idiocracy was not a how to guide, but our colleges are lurching toward it.


The degree that all things have become one big grift is really something and the speed that this had taken place has been really something too.

But like most things that are unsustainable they tend to collapse, first slowly then very very quickly.

Don’t Worry, as Cardinal George told you there will be someone to pick up the pieces and start again.


Finally a quick word on the death of Mr. Hoge.

He lived a long useful life and because of this and his abiding honesty bad people tried to make trouble for him.

They not only failed but he mocked them ruthlessly on a regular basis for the rest of his life to make sure they knew he failed, this is what happens when you have someone who has brains in places where most people don’t have places and faith to go along with it.

His tweets were a joy, his post were deep, particular those involving space but having him as a friend was the real treasure.

He gave me the black fedora I have as a gift. Every time I put in on for the rest of my life I will remember him. That’s a better gift that the hat itself.

Everyone dies, my suggestion is to try and live as good as he did.