"These people are dangerous. They make ruthlessness seem reasonable."

In Ricochet, Dr. Bastiat writes,

There are many facets of the global warming fraud that I find concerning, but what bothers me the most about it is that its adherents claim to on a mission to save the world. Ok, so what would you not do to save the world? At that point, any action could be considered, right? Even horrible side effects are worthwhile in this case because the patient is dying and we’re desperate. So no action, no matter how drastic, is off the table.

It’s easy to chuckle when a self-important 16-year-old girl explains that the world is ending. It’s ridiculous.

Well, it may be ridiculous, but it’s not funny.

These people are dangerous. Their polarizing extremism encourages ruthless actions that would otherwise be unthinkable. Just ask a dead German Jew from 1943.

...A leftist politician no longer has to explain why socialism has never worked anywhere else, and how exactly it will work here. That’s a tough sell. All he/she has to do is convince voters that Republicans are evil capitalists who want to get rich by destroying the world, like a James Bond villain. And then convince those voters that global catastrophe is certain unless they vote for the leftist, who cares for the environment. Skip the details, just paint the picture.

At that point, no actions, no matter how drastic or ruthless, are off the table. Confronting and shaming people in public. Scaring the families of prominent conservatives. Arresting elderly nobodies like Roger Stone in SWAT raids in the middle of the night, with CNN along to broadcast it worldwide. It seems vicious, but hey, we’re trying to save the world here, so it’s ok. Really. Are you with us, or against us? Are you evil, or nice?

...These people are dangerous. They make ruthlessness seem reasonable.

Read more here.

Listen to Forrest!

Making sure that leftists learn to hate their new rules

In Kurt Schlichter's latest column at Town Hall, he gives credit to Saul Alinsky, which I rarely see conservatives do.

Alinksy was right – we must hold our enemies to their own stupid standards, and that's especially true if it's a newly-invented standard designed only to silence and suppress us conservatives. We must take their new rules, roll them up real tight, and ram them down the left's collective collectivist throat, if not elsewhere.

...They make it easy for us by being so ridiculous. Are women the strong, powerful equals of men, or fragile flowers who wilt at the mere mention of lady parts? It depends on which one is the most useful to the liberal narrative right then and there. Can you talk about lady parts? Apparently the new rule is that you can't, at least in the normal context of heterosexual men citing the parts that they like. But if you want to wear a gynecological sombrero on your pointy head, apparently that's muy bueno.

Part of the strategy behind the new rules is to not actually have any firm rules, to make you so uncertain and timid that you're unwilling to take any action because anything you do, at any time, can be a violation of a rule that didn't exist 30 seconds before. If you do talk about female body parts, you're wrong because you're insulting womyn, and if you don't talk about female body parts, you're wrong because you are invisibling womyn. Basically, if you don't have any female body parts, you're just wrong all of the time. Unless you have fake female body parts and betrayed your country; then you are America's greatest hero and a martyr to Harvard's infamous legacy of transphobia. Or something.

... Since they are establishing new rules, there's nothing wrong with applying them to our advantage. Take the example of that drooling moron on ESPN...wait I need to be more specific. I mean that particular drooling moron who recently tweeted about how Trump is a white supremacist because reasons and stuff, and thereby drew demands that she be fired from some conservatives. Smug, dumb libs started tut-tutting that "Oh, conservatives are now for firing people when they didn't used to be." Well, yeah. See, you changed the rules. The rule used to be that you can't be fired for what you say or think. But that's not the rule anymore, thanks to you liberals. Just ask that guy who was at Mozilla or that heretic who thinks men and women are different and got fired from Google. Sure, we were against the new rule, but you used your cultural power through the media, the Democrat party, and your corporate coward allies to impose it. So we are not hypocrites for employing the rule that exists now, thanks to you. And we hope you choke on it.

...Normal people naturally understand that there can't be two sets of rules, one for us normals, and one for you America-hating, alternately perverted and prudish, progressive weirdos.

But because some of us are fighting back we cons may actually be winning the cultural war, as Jim Geraghty points out. That delusional freakshow/traitor Bradley Manning got kicked out of Harvard and will no longer be a fellow, which we all thought was what he wanted all along. College man-witch burnings are being banned, and Ben Shapiro has forced the adminofascist university cartel to let him speak. ESPN is now telling its reporters that's not a political channel, which is a giant lie, but at least widespread unplugging of the MSNBC of Sports has compelled the network to try to front neutrality to the normals.

...Deliberately imposing new rules has emerged as one of the left’s most effective tactics for silencing normals’ dissent, and the first step toward stopping it is making sure that leftists learn to hate their new rules.

Read more here.

Putting Leftists under a microscope

Captain Capitalism thinks he knows

Why the Left Will Always and Inevitably Eat Their Own.

Read it here.

"Long live Valentine's Day!"

Did you know that Islamists hate Valentine's Day? Jamie Glazov writes at Front Page Magazine a round-up of how various Muslim countries ban Valentine's Day.

In the West, meanwhile, leftist feminists are not to be outdone by their Islamist allies in reviling — and trying to exterminate — Valentine’s Day. Throughout many Women’s Studies Programs on American campuses, for instance, you will find the demonization of this day, since, as the disciples of Andrea Dworkin angrily explain, the day is a manifestation of how capitalist and homophobic patriarchs brainwash and oppress women -- and push them into spheres of powerlessness.

As an individual who spent more than a decade in academia, I was privileged to witness this war against Valentine’s Day up close and personal. Feminist icons like Jane Fonda, meanwhile, help lead the assault on Valentine’s Day in society at large. As David Horowitz has documented, Fonda has led the campaign to transform this special day into “V-Day” (“Violence against Women Day”) — which is, when it all comes down to it, a day of hate, featuring a mass indictment of men.

So what exactly is transpiring here? What explains this hatred of Valentine’s Day by leftist feminists and Islamists? And how and why does it serve as the sacred bond that brings the Left and Islam together into its feast of hate?

The core issue at the foundation of this phenomenon is that Islam and the radical Left both revile the notion of private love, a non-tangible and divine entity that draws individuals to each other and, therefore, distracts them from submitting themselves to a secular deity.

The highest objective of both Islam and the radical Left is clear: to shatter the sacred intimacy that a man and a woman can share with one another, for such a bond is inaccessible to the order. History, therefore, demonstrates how Islam, like Communism, wages a ferocious war on any kind of private and unregulated love. In the case of Islam, the reality is epitomized in its monstrous structures of gender apartheid and the terror that keeps it in place. Indeed, female sexuality and freedom are demonized and, therefore, forced veiling, forced marriage, female genital mutilation, honor killings and other misogynist monstrosities become mandatory parts of the sadistic paradigm.

The puritanical nature of totalist systems (whether Fascist, Communist, or Islamist) is another manifestation of this phenomenon. In Stalinist Russia, sexual pleasure was portrayed as unsocialist and counter-revolutionary. More recent Communist societies have also waged war on sexuality — a war that Islam, as we know, wages with similar ferocity. These totalist structures cannot survive in environments filled with self-interested, pleasure-seeking individuals who prioritize devotion to other individual human beings over the collective and the state. Because the leftist believer viscerally hates the notion and reality of personal love and “the couple,” he champions the enforcement of totalitarian puritanism by the despotic regimes he worships.

...Yet as these novels demonstrate, no tyranny’s attempt to turn human beings into obedient robots can fully succeed. There is always someone who has doubts, who is uncomfortable, and who questions the secular deity — even though it would be safer for him to conform like everyone else. The desire that therefore overcomes the instinct for self-preservation is erotic passion. And that is why love presents such a threat to the totalitarian order: it dares to serve itself. It is a force more powerful than the all-pervading fear that a totalitarian order needs to impose in order to survive. Leftist and Muslim social engineers, therefore, in their twisted and human-hating imaginations, believe that the road toward earthly redemption (under a classless society or Sharia) stands a chance only if private love and affection is purged from the human condition.

It becomes completely understandable, therefore, why leftist believers were so inspired by the tyrannies in the Soviet Union, Communist China, Communist North Vietnam and many other countries. As sociologist Paul Hollander has documented in his classic Political Pilgrims, fellow travelers were especially enthralled with the desexualized dress that the Maoist regime imposed on its citizens. This at once satisfied the leftist’s desire for enforced sameness and the imperative of erasing attractions between private citizens. As I have demonstrated in United in Hate, the Maoists’ unisex clothing finds its parallel in fundamentalist Islam’s mandate for shapeless coverings to be worn by both males and females. The collective “uniform” symbolizes submission to a higher entity and frustrates individual expression, mutual physical attraction, and private connection and affection. And so, once again, the Western leftist remains not only uncritical, but completely supportive of — and enthralled in — this form of totalitarian puritanism.

Valentine’s Day is a “shameful day” for the Muslim world and for the radical Left. It is shameful because private love is considered obscene, since it threatens the highest of values: the need for a totalitarian order to attract the complete and undivided attention, allegiance and veneration of every citizen. Love serves as the most lethal threat to the tyrants seeking to build Sharia and a classless utopia on earth, and so these tyrants yearn for the annihilation of every ingredient in man that smacks of anything that it means to be human.

Read more here.

On Leftists, eagles, and some men in Alaska

Adrienne writes,

Leftists are fighting a holy war. And the war is against you. If you believe in God, the rule of law, and behavior that is decent and moral, you are the enemy and must be defeated.

She also brings us this video of bald eagles and men on a ship in Alaska.

Rush: "He’s gonna have to get up to speed"

At WND Joe Kovacs reports that Rush Limbaugh

unleashed on the commander in chief Tuesday for what he called a “serious” problem, keeping numerous officials from former President Obama’s era in his own administration.

Monday night, Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates for defiantly refusing to defend his executive order closing U.S. borders to refugees and people from predominantly Muslim countries.

“She should not have been there in the first place, and it’s not the fault of the Senate for not confirming [Sen. Jeff] Sessions already [as attorney general]. And it’s not the fault of anybody but Donald Trump,” Limbaugh said on his national broadcast.

“Donald Trump is singularly responsible for this woman being there. She should have been let go on Day One with every Obama appointee.”

Limbaugh wondered aloud when those on the political right were going to learn how those on the left are in full attack mode all the time.

“They do not believe in the kind of civility that we believe in. The left is simply a bunch of mean-spirited extremist bullies who are not interested in cooperating, working together, being civil or any of that. Sally Yates and every other Obama appointee should have been gone within 30 minutes of Trump taking the oath of office. That is his fault for not doing so.”

Limbaugh said he wasn’t sure why Trump kept Yates on for 10 days into his administration, but he theorized that it’s because Trump is “not ideological.”

“He’s gonna have to get up to speed on it,” said Limbaugh. “It’s not enough to know that he faces opposition. I’m sure he knows that. I’m sure his eyes are being opened each and every day. I’m sure he’s seeing a side of these people that he used to think were his friends. But until he is able to get up to speed and understand that he is fighting liberalism, socialism, extremism bordering on near communism, he’s not gonna understand what he’s up against.”

Read more here.

Bad words versus bad deeds

Thomas Sowell asks,

Are women more in danger from Trump's words or Hillary's actions?

Trump's talk is indefensible. But Hillary Clinton's actions as Secretary of State, carrying out the Obama administration's foreign policies, have cost many lives in many places, including the American ambassador and others killed in Benghazi.

Women have a right to be offended by Trump's words. But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton's and President Obama's actions. Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise of ISIS and their seizing of many women and young girls as sex slaves.

Mrs. Clinton's own announced agenda attacks the very foundation of American Constitutional government, on which Americans' own freedom depends. She has already said that she will appoint Supreme Court justices who will specifically overturn a recent Supreme Court decision, "Citizens United versus FEC."

That decision said that both corporations and labor unions have freedom of speech, including the right to contribute money toward political campaigns.

Hillary Clinton's determination to pick judicial appointees on the basis of their willingness to overturn that decision is a more brazen extension of the political left's other attempts to stifle the free speech of those who oppose their agenda.

Demands that various advocacy organizations reveal the names of all their donors are an obvious attempt to scare off those donors, with harassment by everyone from vandals to rioters to the Internal Revenue Service and other government bureaucrats.

Without the right to free speech, none of the other rights is safe. Government officials can get away with all sorts of abuses, if others are not free to talk about those abuses.

Despite Hillary Clinton's claims to be a champion for black people, her political agenda threatens the education of black children, the employment of black adults and the physical safety of black communities.

Read more here.

Slurs and slurers

h/t Bookworm, who writes,

I’ll take a gross patriot over a corrupt, incompetent Leftist any and every day.

A multi-frontal assault

One finds oneself asking impossible questions: Why would feminists remain silent while the promotion and importation of anti-feminists known for the most severe forms of oppression goes on at an accelerated pace? Why would homosexuals support the administration's full-throated support of regimes that routinely imprison, burn and toss homosexuals off of buildings? Why would a president encourage the division of the races, inflaming old hatreds and new resentments with the potential to cause massive civil slaughter otherwise only known to places like Rwanda? Why would the media assail and seek the punishment of a lying Olympic swimmer, yet defend with screaming silence the multitude of lies told by a presidential candidate, knowing all the while that her lies are exponentially more dangerous to individuals and society?

Why, why, why?

The only answer possible is that it is a multi-frontal assault on peace. It is an attempt to do exactly what it is doing, keeping the public off balance with daily insults to rational thought. The people start to understand the connection of the president to the jihadists and Black Lives Matter encourages the burning of the suburbs. The people start to understand the Democratic strategy of importing illegal voters and the president demands that transsexuals use any restroom they want.

...Yes, they are evil and devious enough to foment a race war to destabilize American society. Yes, they are evil and devious enough to expose our children to pedophiles lurking in bathrooms, pretending to be sexually indeterminate. Yes, they are evil and devious enough to import terrorists under the guise of humanitarianism to randomly commit acts of terror to frighten and disrupt society. Yes, they are evil and devious enough to encourage racial animosity on the southern border for all of the reasons above.

Read more here.

h/t American Digest

Bending reality to your cause

Jonah Goldberg writes at National Review with some advice for Obama and other Leftists,

Just because you’ve narcissistically decided that your passion to fight anti-gay bigotry has become an integral part of your self-esteem and self-conception doesn’t mean that you can cram the enormous square of Islamic terrorism into the round hole of the domestic gay-rights agenda and your often bigoted desire to demonize Christians who disagree with you.

Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean your cause isn’t important or worthwhile. You should feel free to fight that fight. But, please, don’t try to bend all of reality to that cause. The same goes for climate change, guns, or any of the other causes you wear like so many pieces of flare. Sometimes there are very important things that don’t provide ammunition in your battle to prove you, and you alone, are the Righteous Ones.

Read more here.

Play-fascisim versus real fascism

Dennis Prager writes in Town Hall that lefts may just inadvertently give us President Trump!

...the truth is that the left-wing attack on Trump's Chicago rally had little, if anything, to do with what the incendiary comments Donald Trump has made about attacking protestors at his events. Leftist mobs attack and shut down events with which they differ as a matter of course. They do so regularly on American college campuses, where conservative speakers -- on the rare occasion they are invited -- are routinely shouted down by left-wing students (and sometimes faculty) or simply disinvited as a result of leftist pressure on the college administration.

...Yet the mainstream media simply ignore this left-wing thuggery -- while reporting that the shutting down of a pro-Trump rally is all Trump's fault for his comments encouraging roughing up protestors at his events.

That the left shuts down people with whom it differs is a rule in every leftist society. The left -- not classical liberals, I hasten to note -- is totalitarian by nature. In the 20th century, the century of totalitarianism, virtually every totalitarian regime in the world was a leftist regime. And the contemporary American university -- run entirely by the left -- is becoming a totalitarian state, where only left-wing ideas are tolerated.

Tens of millions of Americans look at what the left is doing to universities, and what it has done to the news and entertainment media, and see its contempt for the First Amendment's protection of free speech. They see Donald Trump attacked by this left, and immediately assume that only Trump will take on, in the title words of Jonah Goldberg's modern classic, "Liberal Fascism."

And if these millions had any doubt that Trump alone will confront left-wing fascism, Trump's opponents seemed to provide proof. Like the mainstream media, the three remaining Republican candidates for president -- John Kasich, the most and Marco Rubio the least -- blamed Trump for the left-wing hooligans more than they blamed the left. It is possible that in doing so Senators Cruz and Rubio and Governor Kasich effectively ended their campaigns and ensured the nomination of Trump as the Republican candidate for president. The combination of left-wing violence and the use of it by the other GOP candidates to wound Trump rather than label the left as the mortal threat to liberty that it is may clinch Trump's nomination.

And if the left continues to violently disrupt Trump rallies, they -- along with the total absence of condemnation by the Democratic Party and its presidential candidate -- may well ensure that Donald Trump is elected president. Between the play-Fascism of Trump and the real Fascism of the left, most Americans will know which one to fear most.

Whose mainstream?

Brother Bob writes at Flopping Aces,

When you live in a place where saying that you voted for George W. Bush gets you looked at like you have two heads but saying that you’re a gay vegan is considered completely normal being mainstream for here (we live in the DC area) just means that we’re out of the mainstream for the rest of the country.

...The real appeal of the New Deal wasn’t its alleged success, it’s that the New Deal is synonymous with a time when progressives had nearly unfettered political power to do what they wanted. Liberals don’t really worship the New Deal, they worship themselves. The New Deal is just a talisman in their undying faith in their own ability to guide society and make decisions for others better than people can make for themselves.

Conceptual Lincoln Logs and Tinker Toys.

Jonah Goldberg continues to be amazed at the many ways the Left deceives itself and those who fall for their lies. He writes at National Review,

...This is why so many liberals are far, far, far more comfortable calling tea-partiers “terrorists” than they are talking about actual, you know, terrorists. This is why in the wake of the Paris attacks we hear so much about “Christian terrorism” and why so many lefties have raced to arguments about gun control. That is why the supposedly smartest argument among the supposedly smart set these days is to build a time machine and stop Bush from invading Iraq.

Barack Obama is so eager to respond to the Paris attacks with a rhetorical fusillade against Republican bigotry. It is a ploy as brilliant as it is disgustingly cynical. Obama is a co-author of this refugee crisis. As Walter Russell Mead writes, “No one, other than the Butcher Assad and the unspeakable al-Baghdadi, is as responsible for the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria as is President Obama.” Somewhere deep inside Obama’s supposedly Niebuhrian conscience even he must suspect there is some truth to this. And even if his denial is total, he must understand that a great many historians will side with Mead in this appraisal.

Rather than face this unthinkable truth, Obama seeks to change the story line so that he is the noble and besieged martyr fighting the forces of reaction at home, rather than the hapless and bumbling nutty professor who let the world go to Hell on his watch. “Sanctimony over refugees is Obama’s way of restoring his own moral superiority over people who’ve been complaining for years, entirely correctly, that his Syria policy is FUBAR and has contributed to the disaster,” as Allahpundit writes.

But it goes further than that. Obama never tires of telling us that he was elected to end wars, not start them (how’s that going?). His real ambition was transformation at home, and that was only possible if foreign policy stayed out of the headlines. His entire foreign policy has been geared towards that goal -- not safety, and certainly not what he considered to be the risible concepts of “American leadership” and “American strength.” That’s why he announced a withdrawal date the same day he announced the Afghan surge. That’s why whenever there’s a terror attack, the White House works assiduously to deny it was a terror attack for as long as possible. That’s why were are drenched in the Orwellian sludge of terrorism euphemisms -- “overseas contingency operations,” “man-caused disasters,” “workplace violence,” etc.

When Obama does talk about terrorism, he’s only comfortable when he frames the issue in a way that puts the blame on America. That’s why we are constantly hearing that ISIS is inspired by Gitmo. I wonder: Is there a jihadist anywhere in the world who will pause in his desire to behead an infidel, never mind drop his scimitar mid-swing, upon the glorious news that a prison in Cuba has been closed? When John Ashcroft warned Americans that conjuring false fears of lost liberties helped the enemy, the entire New York Times editorial board got its dress over its head. But when Obama and his fans routinely say that “Republican rhetoric” is a recruiting tool for ISIS, they all nod like a crate of bobbleheads in an earthquake.

Acknowledging that the threat is still real only empowers those bitter-clingers who don’t want to transform our country. (They don’t want to transform our country, by the way, because they actually like our country the way it is -- or was. And it is now a given among most of the Left that this is a racist and bigoted desire.) Obama subscribes to the mainstream liberal view that there’s nothing wrong with America that making us more like Europe won’t fix. That’s why terror attacks in Europe are so cruelly inconvenient.

I should say that I am perfectly willing to concede that Obama has some good points on his side in the debate over Syrian refugees. Tourism rules, visa waivers, and homegrown radicalism will likely deliver more terror attacks to our shores than the refugees currently in the pipeline. But that doesn’t make the concerns about refugees unserious, illegitimate, or bigoted. Obama has complete confidence in the screening procedures. Well, okay. He also had complete confidence in the IRS, the VA, and the team building Healthcare.gov. When Obama declares complete confidence in a government agency, that’s a good time to buy gold.

But his remarks this week should remove all doubt that he’s not interested in persuading anybody. He’s interested instead in propping up the walls of his comfortable ideological bunker, where he’s a hero beset by irrational, cowardly, and evil men. I for one am sick of seeing this country go down the tubes just to salve the ego of this vain and cynical man.

The smearing of Dr. Carson

Dennis Prager notices at National Review that the Left has been really going after Ben Carson.

The Left is in full-blown smear-Carson mode. He is, after all, the Left’s worst nightmare — a black Republican who is brilliant, kind, and widely admired, including by many blacks.

It is a rule of left-wing life that black Republicans must have their names and reputations destroyed. The Left knows that if blacks do not vote overwhelmingly Democrat, Democrats cannot win a national election.

So, the smearing of Dr. Ben Carson has just begun.

Read Prager's examples of Leftist smears against Carson here.

Defending big government, no matter what it does

Timothy Carney writes at aei.org,

When Bernie Sanders, President Obama, or the New York Times editorial page advocate big government, it’s usually on the premise that big government is needed to protect the powerless. But look carefully, and the pattern becomes clearer. When big government oppresses the powerless, the Left is equally likely to defend big government.

He gives many examples here.

Our fixation on frivolous identity culture

V the K writes at Gay Patriot,

If you had to pick a single person to epitomize Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the USA, you could not do better than Caitlyn Jenner, who once achieved feats that brought the admiration of the entire world, but has chosen to become an emasculated, celebrity-chasing joke.

But Rachel Dolezal (a.k.a ‘Sideshow Flozell’) comes a pretty damn close second. Whether her race-fluidity is a cynical exploitation of an academic and political culture that favors dark skinned people, a reflection of deep mental illness, or just an extreme example of a white person appropriating what respected social anthropologist Cher called “black cool,” it is striking that her effforts to change her identity have been not as universally lauded by the social progressive left as Caitlyn Jenner’s. (Although some leftists are willing to support Dolezal’s delusion.)

...Above all, the fixation on Caitlyn Jenner and Flozell of Spokane at a time when Chinese hackers are stealing state secrets with impunity; when the Chinese, Iranians, and Russians are laughing at our military; when our economy is being sustained only by massive Government borrowing (that can go on forever, right?) shows that, as a culture, we no longer care about Serious Things. We have lost sight of what matters, and instead are locked into a cycle of self-validation through self-gratification and fixation on frivolous identity culture.

Read more here.

Thomas the Tank Engine "sinister?"

Did you know that leftist parents don't like Thomas the Tank Engine? I did not know that. He is a popular attraction in Golden, Colorado. Mattel sells $1 billion worth of Thomas products every year. But Paul Kendall writes at the Telegraph that leftists say the seies is

“nasty”, “negative” and a “bad example” to youngsters.

“Thomas is a poor role model,” says one reviewer. “Lots of nasty competitiveness between the trains."

...in fact, the series, which is broadcast to more than a billion households in 300 territories each week, and prides itself on teaching children traditional values such as friendship, loyalty and resilience, has come in for regular criticism from Left-wing writers and academics for many years.

Several have attacked the plots, which normally revolve around an engine getting into trouble with the Fat Controller, the man who runs the fictitious railway, for selfish, lazy or thoughtless behaviour before eventually being forgiven and handed another chance to become a “really useful engine”.

More recently, the cultural critic Jessica Roake wrote an article for the American online magazine Slate - titled Thomas the Imperalist Tank Engine- in which she branded the series “sinister”.

“Something about Thomas & Friends gives liberal parents the creeps,” she claimed. “The conservatism of Thomas & Friends is not the conservatism of America. Key to the ‘pick yourself up by your bootstraps’ mythos in the United States is the notion that anyone can rise to the top with hard work and initiative.

The 70-year-old series was originally created by a father for his young son, Christopher Awdry, who is now 74-years-old, and is coming to the defense of his father.

Mr Awdry, 74, said the main moral of the stories was that “good triumphed over evil” and the principal values his late father, a railway enthusiast and a Church of England curate, wanted to instil in his young readers were a love of steam trains and an appreciation of what it meant to be a loyal friend and a useful member of society.

Read more here.

It began 75 years ago

David Foster writes at Chicago Boyz,

On May 10, 1940, German forces launched an attack against Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. Few people among the Allies imagined that France would collapse in only six weeks: Churchill, for example, had a high opinion of the fighting qualities of the French army. But collapse is what happened, of course, and we are still all living with the consequences. General Andre Beaufre, who in 1940 was a young Captain on the French staff, wrote in 1967:

The collapse of the French Army is the most important event of the twentieth century.

...Many military factors were involved in the defeat – obsolete doctrine on armored forces, inadequate use of radio communications, a strange and cumbersome military organization structure. But the roots of the 1940 debacle are not to be found only–or perhaps even primarily–in strictly military matters. A major role was played by certain characteristics of French society and politics of the time–and some of these factors are spookily similar to some of the things that are going on in America today.

In her autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir reflects on the attitude of the French Left (of which she was a part) toward the rise of Nazi Germany…”there was no threat to peace; the only danger was the panic that the Right was attempting to spread in France with the aim of dragging us into war.” (Horne) A constant thread that runs through France in the 1930s is the extreme factionalism, often resulting in more fear and distrust of other Frenchmen than of the rising external enemy.

Read more here.

Meltdowns from special snowflakes

Open Blogger writes at Ace of Spades,

Most of us are here on the right because we value logic and reason over the raw emotionalism of the left. That means that we tend to want to construct long, detailed arguments to prove our points, and as a general rule in a fair debate we destroy the left on the merits of our argument. This reinforces our bias towards intellect over emotion, and we congratulate ourselves that we've proven our point. Now things will surely change!

Except they don't. Know why?

Nobody's listening.

Why is nobody listening? Well, first of all, our coldly logical arguments never get to them. The media cuts and edits and castigates to reinforce their relentlessly leftist point of view so that our arguments never get through. Secondly, many people don't care about well reasoned logical arguments. We live in an age of instant gratification. Like it or not, it's a Vine world out there. Finally, our side has been so demonized that many LIVs won't even bother to listen to what we're saying, dismissing us out of hand.

So what's the solution? The solution is “eff off”.

...All of this stuff stems from three impulses:

1) A desire to assume unearned moral superiority – I'm better than you
2) A desire to assume unearned prominence – I'm more important than you
3) A desire for attention – Look at me! Aren't I special?


That's what they're looking for. Don't give it to them. Don't play their game, refuse to acknowledge that their game even exists. I just realized it right this second, but this is exactly what Breitbart did, and it drove them NUTS! They're yapping on about the oppression of the 1% and he's screaming “STOP RAPING PEOPLE!” in their face. He popped their bubble. He refused to acquiesce to their assumptions. He pointed out the reality they were purposefully attempting to ignore. Imagine how Andrew would have handled the VA frat rape hoax or the reaction to Christina Hoff Sommers' speech.

Be Breitbart. And have fun with it. The meltdowns from the special snowflakes when you refuse to grant them what they assume is theirs by right of their magnificence are AWESOME.

Read more here