Sir Humphrey Appleby:I strongly advise you not to ask a direct question.
James Hacker: Why?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: It might provoke a direct answer.
Yes Minister: The Moral Dimension 1982
Were the sacrifices of World War 2 worth it?
My father who served in the pacific braving Kamikazes & Subs to keep capital ships & carriers supplied died would have turned 104 last week on Halloween but died just after I was engaged but before I was married at the age of 65 so while I have an opinion of what he might think of this subject I can’t state it as fact.
However Alec Penstone who served in the Royal Navy is still with us at the age of 100. As soon as he was of age he left his factory job for the Royal Navy braving U-Boats and Air attacks to protect Great Britain from actual Nazis (as opposed to the phony Antifa cosplayers of today) and saw many of his friends lose their lives doing so.
Thus is was an awful shock to the British TV show when on Good Morning Britain he was asked what Remembrance Day (Veterans day for us) means to him and he answered thus:
However the moving segment took a turn when Kate asked him what Remembrance Sunday means to him. He said he felt that winning the war was “not worth” how the country had turned out today. “My message is, I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones and all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives, for what? The country of today?” he said sadly.
“No, I’m sorry – but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now. What we fought for was our freedom, but now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.”
It’s one thing for a blogger like myself online or even a Tommy Robinson during a protest to say that The Few, the term used to describe the pilots in the battle of Britain who defeated the German Luftwaffe, would be ashamed of what the Brits have done with the freedom they bought for them. It’s very easy for the powers that be to dismiss us.
It’s quite another thing for a man who fought and saw his friends die enduring all the Nazi Kriegsmarine could throw at him saying so on live television to an entire nation.
Here is the full interview:
What was really interesting however was his response when one of the hosts Aldi Ray followed up with a question concerning what he had just said:
“What do you mean by that, though?” the GMB host probed, prompting the WWII veteran to reply: “What we fought for, and what we fought for was our freedom.
“We find that even now it’s downright worse than when I fought for it.”
Ms Garraway intervened to bring the discussion to a close before Mr Penstone could face any further questions from Mr Ray. “Oh, Alec, I’m sorry you feel like that,” she said.
Ray is ironically getting hit for asking that follow up question because even those who have been so determined to Bring down the Britain that Mr. Penstone fought for dare not publicly attack him for giving that honest answer. As the Irish Sun put it:
It was a heartbreaking admission from a war hero and a damning indictment on the state of Britain today.
'What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,' says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW
Alec Penstone may not realize it but he just preformed one last great duty for his country speaking the truth outloud for the entire country to hear. Giving one final warning concerning the path that those he fought to protect have taken.
How the nation reacts to that warning will determine if Britain falls.
The hateful group’s four-page spread includes no bylines or any information connecting the articles to their respective authors, nor is there any solicitation for outside perspectives or reactions from readers.
The only words on the front-page masthead is a quote from a poem by woke extremist scholar Sophia Armen, which reads, “You, genocider — who remembers you?”
It almost goes without saying that I disapprove of the opinions of this paper and the people who write and distribute it on campus.
That being said I completely approve of this method of expressing these at best misguided and at worst violently anti-Semitic opinions.
It’s not occupying buildings or disrupting classing or any form of physical violence. It’s expressing their opinion is an open way and a person is not required to own or read said opinion if they don’t want to.
In short it’s making an argument and frankly there is no reason why such a weak argument can’t be countered by people making a counter argument.
By all means feel free to attack the paper and those who write and distribute it but I’m with Sarah Hoyt when she says:
FREE SPEECH INCLUDES THE RIGHT TO PUBLICLY EXPOSE YOURSELVES AS A**HOLES
The 1st Amendment covers everybody. Even A**holes. Full stop.
Just because you have the right to do something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, to wit: While you might have the right to buy your son an AR-15 as a gift even after he has been investigated by the FBI as a potential school shooter but as a father I submit it’s the wrong thing to do.
I simply don’t understand why Elon Musk’s twitter/X/whatever stubbornly refuses to re-instate Robert Stacy McCain. He was one of the first conservatives banned by twitter for the monstrous crime of quoting Radical feminists in their very own words and while there have been many others whose have been re-platformed on twitter Stacy is not one of them.
The number of lonely liberal men in the world must be high because between James O’Keefe OMG, Project Veritas and now Stephen Crowder there seems to be a limitless supply of such men willing to spill their guts to a honey pot who shows interest in them. Hey somebody has to be paying the money to those only fans models.
I think it’s no coincidence that the rise in antisemitism and the attempts to re-write the history of World War 2 (particularly the holocaust) are taking place when the youngest world war 2 vets alive are 97 years old. You don’t have a Dick Winters to come on TV to call them out anymore.
The best move that Dwight D Eisenhower ever did was making every US soldier who was able to see the camps so they couldn’t be denied. I distinctly remember Andy Rooney talking about seeing the camps one day but I (unexpectedly) can’t find the video anywhere.
The Red Sox broke their losing streak by beating the worst team in baseball history The 2024 Chicago White Sox whose current winning Percentage (.225) is a full .025 points behind the legendary 1962 Mets (.250). With 20 games to go The White Sox will have to go 9-11 to avoid the new “Worst Team EVAH!” title (.450). I just don’t see that happening.
Speaking of the NY Mets winning percentage from 2017 – 2023 the Indiana Heat of the WNBA have a combined winning percentage equal to those 62 Mets (58-74) with no playoff appearances, no winning records. In 2022 their winning percentage was .139 (5-31). This season they have clinched one of the 8 playoff spots currently holding 6th but mathematically could still finish as high as 4th or as low as 7th. That’s how much of an impact has Caitlyn Clark has on her Indiana Fever team. That’s a Babe Ruth class impact.
To put that last phrase in context in the 12 season years before Babe Ruth joined the NY Yankees (Highlanders till 1913) they had managed only two winning seasons. Not only would they would not have a losing record with Ruth on the roster (1918-1934) but the Babe would not live to see them have a losing season. He would die in 1948 and they would not have a losing season until 1965
In my 1972 online baseball league by all rights the Cleveland Indians season should be finished. They sit at 68 – 80 with 14 to play 7 1/2 games behind the Minnesota Twins who currently hold the final wild card spot in the AL. However not only have the Twins been collapsing spectacularly (2-8 in last 10) but they get three head to head games vs them next with a chance to get themselves back in it and have a fairly easy schedule the rest of the way. Alas for them the only team with an easier schedule, are those same Twins.
Finally the NFL season has started and will have their first full set of games this Sunday. They opened with the Kansas City Chiefs beating the Baltimore Ravens setting Patrick Mahomes on the path to another playoff season. How Dominant is Mahomes he has only lost 3 playoff games in his career and only one to a quarterback not named Tom Brady. How dominant are the pair of them? More than half of the Superbowls played in the 21st Century have had at least one of them playing in it (Brady 10, Mahomes 4) and the soonest that can no longer be true is 2027.
Question: Where are the feminist leaders leading large protests in the west over Afghanistan banning women from showing their faces and speaking in public?
This actually reminds me of Robert Stacy McCain’s famous phrase: “I write for money” example:
One of my rules is, I write for money, so if I’m going to expend the time it takes to write more than 2,500 words in an email, you better doggone believe I’ll publish that correspondence for the edification of my readers.
I suspect professional protesters do the same and until Qatar funds NGO’s to pay for protesters to complain about the treatment of women in Afghanistan or until such actions can be somehow blamed on Israel or perhaps Trump said silence will remain.
#Unexpectedly of course
(Of course it can be hard to protest for women if you can’t define what a woman is.)
Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog 