Category Archives: culture

National Sovereignty

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The Paris Peace Forum met earlier this week; fortunately, we didn’t send any government representative to it.  National sovereignty, this claque held, is a danger to the world.

French President Macron advocated for multilateralism and a “balanced cooperation” between the nations.

Balanced cooperation is good, but that requires not the open borders and come one, come all—no matter who the one or the all are—but coalitions built for specific times and purposes.  And those coalitions, even treaties between or among States requires…nation-states with actual borders, nation-states with internal, coherent cultures, nation-states that put their own interests first.

Easy immigration, certainly, but immigrant prospects who are carefully vetted before they’re allowed in, immigrant prospects committed to assimilating into the culture of the nation they wish to enter and become a part of.

National sovereignty, nationalism.

Emmanuel Macron doesn’t want this.

… unilateralism is “very risky. …  Nationalism is war.”

Never mind that balanced cooperation requires nations actually to be willing to cooperate with each other to do something that’s necessary.  The necessary thing needs doing, though, whether or not nations are willing to cooperate, and that requires, occasionally, unilateralism.  Occasions like Iran, openly and bluntly committed to the destroying Israel and supporting terrorism throughout the world, rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons—while Europe not only stands by, but actively funds Iran’s effort with trade and efforts to circumvent unilaterally applied economic sanctions.

Occasions like the People’s Republic of China seizing and occupying the South China Sea, with only the US willing even a little bit to object, the PRC’s economic, intellectual property, and technology thefts while Europe not only stands by, but actively seeks out new trade deals with the PRC.

Occasions like Russia occupying and partitioning parts of Georgia and Ukraine, engaging in cyber war against each of the Baltic States, deploys tactical and intermediate range nuclear weapons on its western border while Europe stands by and watches—and actively facilitates Russia’s ability to export natural gas to…Europe.

But nationalism, putting one’s own nation ahead of an amorphous multiculturally international entity is anathema.

This is who one of our putative friends is.

“Enemy of the People”

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The good citizens of Hong Kong continue to protest the despotism of PRC President Xi Jinping’s satrap government in Hong Kong, and Xi’s Governess, Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is coming unraveled as she’s squeezed from one side by the ongoing protests against her rule and from the other side by Xi’s increasing demand that she get this right.

Her police, for some time, have taken to shooting protestors at point blank range, firing water cannon with dyed water so protestors can be identified and arrested for their effrontery—260 arrests from Monday’s protests alone—siccing Hong Kong’s mafia-esque thugs on the protestors.

Lam now is calling the protestors “the enemy of the people.”

No.  The protestors are the people.  Neither the despot in Beijing nor his satrap in Hong Kong seem capable of understanding that.

Disgusting

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On Veteran’s Day, last Monday, University of Virginia President James Ryan—you remember Virginia, the State that just went full-on Progressive-Democrat the prior week—canceled the University’s 21-gun salute part of what used to be the school’s Veterans Day ceremony.  Ryan’s rationalization (as opposed to rationale) was two-fold.

[F]irst, to minimize disruptions to classes, given that this event is located at the juncture of four primary academic buildings and is held at a time that classes are in session….

Surprisingly (or perhaps not), it seems never to have occurred to him that classes could have been not in session on this day, or during this hour, or that students could have been allowed excused absences on this day, or during this hour.

His other rationalization:

second, recognizing concerns related to firing weapons on the Grounds in light of gun violence that has happened across our nation, especially on school and university campuses.

Because, apparently, Ryan has no confidence in his professors’ ability to teach UVA pupils enough capacity for critical thought to be able to distinguish between real gun violence (a rarity) and a celebratory firing, annually, to honor those who fought, were killed, or were maimed in defense of the right to be snowflakes.

Consistent with the foregoing, though, Ryan chose to duck his role in this business, blaming it on his Provost and the ROTC commander. He doesn’t even have the courage of his own convictions.

 

H/t Texan99, writing on Grim’s Hall.

Contempt

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Here is the plain, palpable contempt the Progressive-Democrats have for Republicans and for us average Americans.  This excerpt is from the transcript of LtCol Alexander Vindman’s “testimony” during House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) closed door…hearing (excuse the differing image sizes):Aside from blocking legitimate questioning, this lawyer for Schiff’s witness (while Republican witnesses are routinely denied the presence of their or of State or White House counsel) openly called the Republican Congressman a liar.  Without objection or correction by Schiff.

And we average Americans are supposed to be stupid enough not to understand either the naked stonewalling or the slur.

Remember this next November.

Free Speech vs No Free Speech

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The Progressive-Democratic Party vs the Republican Party.

Progressive-Democratic Party icon—and proud progressive—Hillary Clinton wants to ban free speech, and the first step is Twitter’s Jack Dorsey’s ban on the free speech of political advertising, done with her wholehearted and full throated support.

Twitter made the right decision to say, “Look, we don’t want to get into the judging game.” I think that should be the decision that Facebook makes as well.

Never mind that banning political ads—a form of the speech explicitly protected under the 1st Amendment—is a most fundamental bit of judging speech.  Note that Clinton desire to extend the ban to Facebook:

If you were to say to your expert engineers, our algorithms really favor the explosive, the inflammatory, the blatantly false, and we love to hook people into them and they seek more of it and then they get absolutely barraged by all of this information, we need to tweak the algorithms[.]

Never mind whose judgment—not that of us average Americans, whose judgment plainly is inadequate, we being merely a gang of deplorables—would be used to make those definitions of falseness; never mind whose judgment—certainly not our own—would be used to determine the badness of “inflammatory” or “explosive.” This is a move to protect the established, the elite, the Know Betters.

On the other hand, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) objected to such limits on free speech.  He objected, as paraphrased by Fox News,

the new Twitter policy as an effort to undermine the First Amendment right to free speech.

He went on: the ban on political advertising—on a form of political speech—would

just amplify the already privileged speakers who already possess multimillion-dollar platforms. It would just help clear the field for those elites by denying the same tools to fledgling speakers who are not already famous.
[It does] not bolster our democracy. It would degrade democracy. It would amplify the advantage of media companies, celebrities, and certain other established elites while denying an important tool to the Americans who disagree with them[.]

There’s that judgment bit again, and how it would work were the Progressive-Democrats’ attack on our speech successful.  Of course Dorsey, Clinton, and Party leadership know this full well—they’re just after protecting their narrative and their positions atop the political pantheon.

And, with Dorsey’s established practice of censoring Conservative speech in general, a more insidiously subtle effort to expand that censorship.

Remember this next fall.