Archive for January, 2021
24 Jan 2021
Conservatism’s all-time top blogger, Glenn Reynolds, makes a practice of identifying repetitive memes with a particularly apt and cutting catch-phrase. His associate bloggers, especially Ed Driscoll, have gotten very good at using the same technique.
“JOE BIDEN, THE JOB-KILLING PRESIDENT: 70,000 JOBS KILLED ON DAY ONE, MORE SINCE.
Related: Biden’s pause on oil cause for big concern in New Mexico.
Good and hard:
HT: Karen L. Myers.
24 Jan 2021
Lot 19
Depicting a man deep in thought, sitting on the ground with his chin resting on his folded arms, this pre-Columbian terracotta sculpture from Colima in Mexico dates from around 250 AD. The horn protruding from the figure’s head marks him out as a shaman
Estimate: €6,000-9,000 ($7,302.79-$10,954.18)
9 February, Paris
23 Jan 2021
And it was a Democrat from Taxachusetts who got them forced out of the Capitol building. The Wiz:
National Guard troops protecting the Capitol were forced to sleep in a freezing parking garage because of complaints by Democrat Rep. Bill Keating (MA), according to Breitbart.
Rep. Keating told Capitol building authorities earlier in the day that a National Guardsman was seen in a Dunkin’ Donuts without a mask on.
After Keating said he commented out loud that masks were required to be worn at all times in a federal building, and a National Guard member responded, “I appreciate my freedom,” according to a source.
Rep. Madison Cawthorne (R-NC) tweeted that he brought pizza to the abandoned National Guard members and offered his office for them to sleep in.
———————
And President Trump did even better than pizzas. OANN:
President Trump gave thousands of National Guard troops permission to stay at his Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C. after Capitol Police kicked them out of the Capitol Building.
On Thursday, 5,000 guardsmen and women brought in to protect Joe Biden’s inauguration were forced to take shelter in an underground parking garage after they were told to vacate the building.
The move garnered intense backlash after it was revealed the soldiers were forced to sleep on the ground in freezing temperatures and had just one bathroom as well as one power outlet to share.
On Friday, an advisor told OAN that President Trump stepped in by informing the troops they could stay at his luxury hotel near the capitol.
Upon seeing the situation, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle demanded the unit be brought back inside.
21 Jan 2021
Curtis Yarvin (from his peculiar personal perspective in the hyper-intellectual Alt-Right) explains why our elite institutions (which he aptly calls “the Cathedral”) are currently so truly, horribly awful, and hints darkly at what must be done to effectuate reform. Not a terribly practical program, alas! but still a fun read.
An oligarchy inherently converges on ideas that justify the use of power.
I notice more people using this label, which I coined a long long time ago, and have always had ambivalent aesthetic feelings about. I used a capital C, but I see more of the miniscule and I think it’s better.
“The cathedral” is just a short way to say “journalism plus academia”—in other words, the intellectual institutions at the center of modern society, just as the Church was the intellectual institution at the center of medieval society.
But the label is making a point. The Catholic Church is one institution—the cathedral is many institutions. Yet the label is singular. This transformation from many to one—literally, e pluribus unum—is the heart of the mystery at the heart of the modern world. Read the rest of this entry »
19 Jan 2021
Today is the 214th birthday of Robert E. Lee, General-in-Chief of the Armies of the Confederate States, and one of the greatest American military commanders ever to pull on boots. This photograph, taken in late February-early March 1864 by Julian Vannerson, is among my favorites. Lee is shown in the Confederate colonel’s coat he habitually wore and the photograph certainly supports the diarist Mary Chesnut’s description of the General as –cold, quiet and grand.
When this photo was taken, Gettysburg was eight months in the past. Lee knows that the gigantic US Army of the Potomac is coming south again. He is consumed with anxiety because a third of his army is detached, away in east Tennessee; his own greatly outnumbered army’s horses, and soldiers, are tired and ill-fed; and the Confederate States is reaching the end of its resources. Winter is ending, the enemy will be moving very soon. . .
In 1864, Lee would do his finest work, stymying Grant in the Overland Campaign –(The Wilderness, Spotsylvania Court House, Yellow Tavern, Cold Harbor and other battles) — Lee keeping Grant out of Richmond despite frequently being outnumbered by almost two to one. The Southern war for independence was lost by that November. . .but not because of events in Virginia.
Volumes have been written on Lee the general, and as many on Lee the man. But I think the General speaks best for himself, and that his own writing shows the true measure of the man. Here is his letter to his sister Anne Marshall (a passionate Unionist and thus not on Lee’s side), written in April 1861, just after his resignation from the US Army:
Arlington, Virginia
April 20, 1861
My Dear Sister,
I am grieved at my inability to see you. I have been waiting for a more convenient season, which has brought to many before me deep and lasting regret. Now we are in a state of war which will yield to nothing. The whole South is in a state of revolution, into which Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn; and though I recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have forborne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether I should take part against my native State.
With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home. I have, therefore, resigned my commission in the Army, and save in the defense of my native State (with the sincere hope that my poor services may never be needed) I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword.
I know you will blame me, but you must think as kindly as you can, and believe that I have endeavored to do what I thought right. To show you the feeling and struggle it has cost me, I send you a copy of my letter of resignation. I have no time for more. May God guard and protect you and yours and shower upon you everlasting blessings, is the prayer of
Your devoted brother,
R.E. Lee
(From “The Wartime Papers of Robert E. Lee” (Clifford Dowdey, Louis H. Manarin, eds., Da Capo, 1987) pp. 9-10.
—–
On Robert E. Lee:
“I cannot in justice omit to notice the valuable services of Captain Lee of the engineer corps, whose distinguished merit and gallantry deserves the highest praise.” Gen. Gideon Pillow, 1847.
“As distinguished for felicitous execution as for science and daring.” Gen. Winfield Scott, 1847.
“He was a foe without hate; a friend without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victor without oppression, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without vices; a private citizen without wrong; a neighbour without reproach; a Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was a Caesar, without his ambition; Frederick, without his tyranny; Napoleon, without his selfishness, and Washington, without his reward.” Benjamin Harvey Hill (former Confederate Senator from Georgia), 1874.
“There is as much instruction both in strategy and in tactics to be gleaned from General Lee’s operations of 1862 as there is to be found in Napoleon’s campaigns of 1796.” Gen. Garnet Wolseley, date unknown.
“He had a calm and collected air about him, his voice was kind and tender, and his eye was as gentle as a dove’s. His whole make-up of form and person, looks and manner had a kind of gentle and soothing magnetism about it that drew every one to him and made them love, respect, and honor him.” Samuel R. Watkins, veteran of 1st Tennessee Regiment, 1881.
“He possessed my unqualified confidence, both as a soldier and a patriot.” Jefferson Davis, 1881.
19 Jan 2021
Glenn Reynolds admires the new Banana Republic America as exemplified in the post-Stolen-Election 2021 Caudillo Inauguration.
THIS IS NORMAL: FBI vetting Guard troops in DC amid fears of insider attack. “U.S. defense officials say they are worried about an insider attack or other threat from service members involved in securing President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration, prompting the FBI to vet all of the 25,000 National Guard troops coming into Washington for the event.”
This is what happens when you define half the population as enemies of the state.
And nothing says “normal, legitimate election” like a swearing-in behind 12 feet of razor wire and 25,000 troops that you’re not sure you can trust.
RTWT
17 Jan 2021
Remember lovely, isolated, once rock-ribbed Republican Vermont? Trust fund Bolsheviks and retired stock brokers from Connecticut and Taxachusetts poured in, fleeing their home states’ left-wing mismanagement and spendthrift taxation.
But, no sooner did they arrive than they began lobbying for new services and progressive ways. Now everybody’s crazy Jewish communist uncle is Vermont’s senator and Brattleboro is famous for Nudism.
The politics of Austin, Texas have a distinct resemblance to those of Berkeley, California, and California refugees have wrecked all of Eastern Colorado.
Mark Pulliam finds that they are all over the place in Eastern Tennessee these days, and warns that they are probably coming to your rural red state, too.
As a resident of a small town in east Tennessee, I regret to report that wokeness is everywhere, even in the brightest-red areas of Republican-majority states. My town is home to a small, 200-year-old, Presbyterian-affiliated liberal arts college that appears to be an island of sanity in higher education. But it’s not, and neither is the rest of the town.
When we relocated here from Austin, my wife and I imagined the school was comparable to Hillsdale College, except nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. My wife and I quickly learned the reality is otherwise when a supposedly faith-based lecture we attended on campus was devoted to the teachings of Karl Marx rather than Jesus Christ. The lecturer, who teaches “religious studies” at Skidmore College, is the daughter of the host school’s equally-leftist campus minister.
We were also chagrined to learn that the local public library—in a county that voted for President Trump in 2020 by a margin of 71-27 percent—maintains a curated “antiracism” reading list that includes controversial fare such as Ibram Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist,” Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility,” and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me.”
Ignoring the blight homeless people inflict on library users across America, the local library also provides office space to a newly formed organization serving the homeless, with which the library works as a partner, even engaging in “street outreach.” The library staffer leading this initiative is—predictably—a graduate of the local leftist college. Indoctrination works.
Even though the area is overwhelmingly Republican, the local paper (owned by a national chain headquartered out of state) is unfailingly and obnoxiously left. The editor admits that one of his “life’s greatest disappointments” was being interviewed by The Washington Post and getting turned down for the job. The local paper is a WaPo wannabe, albeit relying heavily on Associated Press reportage. It consistently boosts leftist ideas, locally and nationally.
Due in part to the paper’s favorable coverage, a leftist activist who chaired the local Democratic Party and founded the radical organization Indivisible East Tennessee was recently elected to the ostensibly nonpartisan city council. The local Republican Party belatedly—and reluctantly—supported the center-right candidates in a four-person race for two seats. Supported by Soros-funded organizations from outside the state, the Democrat eked out a second-place finish by a few hundred votes, establishing a leftist toe-hold in an otherwise solidly conservative county.
Complacency is a problem for east Tennesseans. They are so used to Republicans winning elections that they falsely assume victory is automatic. It is not.
RTWT
HT: Bird Dog.
17 Jan 2021
Edward Hopper, “American Locomotive” advertisement (1944).
We’re all familiar with Hopper, the world-famous painter of “Nighthawks”, but how many of us remember his prominence as a commercial illustrator working in advertising (above) and earlier career illustrating pulp fiction?
From the July 18th, 1918 issue of Adventure.
Daniel Crown discusses these in an earlier LithHub article.
HT: Vanderleun.
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