Month: April 2018

I was in high school when I realized that complete ignorance is no bar to strongly held opinion.

With broken ribs, I have to be careful what I watch on TV.  Case in point  —  I saw a commentator talk about Trump’s agenda being stalled if Democrats retake the House.  I started laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair.  It’s not stalled now, with Ryan as Speaker?

If Trump or another Republican wants to win in 2020, the very best outcome is the return of nitwit Nancy as House Speaker.  Victory would be virtually guaranteed.

Running against the prospect of this addled old leftist back in power doesn’t really work.  Memories are short.  But put her and her Congressional Black Caucus buddies in actual positions of power,  and we’ll all get to see examples of new left thinking in action.  Political winners like reparations and Black Lives Matter, open borders, climate hysteria, the radical LGBT agenda, the anguish of the snowflakes, and absurd Russian conspiracies will be front and center.

This is how you win elections.  The Democratic presidential candidate will be tarred by association with these loons.  Even more so because the nominee will surely be the first avowedly socialist presidential candidate of a major party in American history.

Dat brier-patch look pretty good to this old rabbit.

 

April 24, 1184 B. C. is the traditional date of the fall of Troy to the Greeks.  Troy was one of the great cities of the Hittite Empire, and its fall brought that empire to an end.  True Greek freedom, and the beginnings of western civilization, were now free to develop.

Hittites were Indo-European invaders of modern Turkey, and when they went to war with the Greeks their king had become a despot.  The kingship had become hereditary, and the ruler was called My Sun by the people.  He was a full blown dictator, with the power of military command, judge, and high priest embodied in one ruler.  As long as Troy and the Hittites kept their power, the ancient Greeks were confined to the Aegean Sea.  That ended some 3200 years ago.

650 years later, in 512 B. C., the Persian king Darius I invaded Greece, and resumed the war between Asia and the despotic east against the freedom of Europe and the west.  Like the Hittite kings, the rule of Darius was absolute, and he believed he had the divine right to rule the world.  This war of civilizations finally concluded with the triumph of Alexander the Great at Granicus in 334 B.C.,  not far from ancient Troy.

So today is a day to celebrate our western heritage, as Presidents Trump and Macron, of France, did this morning in a moving ceremony at the White House.  France is indeed our oldest alliance, and our relationship with them has always been special.

Today is also a day to celebrate the return of the black America I knew as a young man, growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Back then, the black family was alive and well, and so was black American society.  I actually knew more about blacks than most white boys, because I respected them as fellow Americans, and I wasn’t afraid of them.   Their culture was black American culture, with its own distinct flavor.   Back then, we all loved their music, and their magnificent athletes, and their own flavor of Christianity.

The new black renaissance is led by a black woman named Candace Owens, now capably supported by Kanye West.  One of its leading exemplars is the hero of the Waffle House shooting, James Shaw Jr.  At the White House ceremony I saw young black Americans in uniform, proudly representing their country.   They’re part of it, too.  And there were black school children there as well, excited by the pomp and circumstance of American patriotism.

As long as we’re celebrating the fall of Troy, let’s raise a glass to the imminent demise of the evil Google Empire, with its arrogance, tax avoidance and censorship of political speech.  Its business model is the invasion of privacy, and we have finally got their number.  They have claimed that don’t be evil is a core value, but they really don’t even know what evil is, or who they are.

They are some of the finest engineering minds of our time, but that’s all they are  — engineers.  They don’t even know what words mean.  When they read, “In the beginning was the Word….”  they are as clueless as a small child.  Their fall will be celebrated by humanists across the globe.

On a personal note, today I at last begin to try and resolve a family tragedy that has haunted us for years.  On this special day, when Troy fell.

 

There’s always been something a little “off” about author and talk show host Mark Levin.  He wrote “The Liberty Amendments”, which promote Article V, but he’s never lifted a finger to help the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force.  This is the group which has for years been pushing the BBA, the only serious Article V political effort in the country.  Instead he supports Mark Meckler, a political huckster pushing the hopeless “Convention of States” approach.

I’d listen to his show occasionally, because I think he’s better informed than people like Limbaugh and Hannity.  But he’s perpetually pissed off, and it soon gets old.  So what gives with this guy?

Mark Steyn explains it all in this revealing, and damning, article.  Steyn is flat out brilliant, and I hope he talks about all this on Tucker Carlson’s show tonight.  All conservative activists should tune in.

The Founding Fathers weren’t only statesmen, they were visionaries.  The work of Constitutional Convention was to establish the fundamental law of an empire of liberty that would rival if not surpass Rome itself.  So they rejected monarchy out of hand.

In the ancient Roman Republic, any man who would make himself king was a traitor who deserved death.  When Julius Caesar finally, and reluctantly, put an end to the Republic, he did not seek to replace it with a monarchy.  He had chosen his successor, Augustus, purely on merit.  Augustus followed suit by choosing Tiberius, who may have been the ablest ruler the Empire ever had.

But both Augustus and Tiberius clung to power too long, and the result was Caligula, and a ruinous century of hereditary succession.  Rome recovered in the age of the Philosopher Kings, (96-180), when Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and Antoninus Pius became emperors on their merits.  But Antoninus, too, clung to power too long, and allowed his love of his son, Commodus, to overcome his good judgement.  Rome was never truly great again.

The Framers knew all this, and provided for presidential succession by election.  The monarchical tendencies of Hamilton and John Adams were rejected out of hand.

Wittingly or not, President Trump, by leaving after one term, is showing the wisdom of the very best of the Roman emperors.  He has chosen as potential successors two outstanding men, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo.  If they, in turn, follow his wise example, we could have a prolonged period of outstanding governance.

Donald Trump.  Who knew?