A Jehovah’s Witness knocked on my door yesterday, so I answered it and asked if he wanted to come in. He said, “Yeah, okay.”
I said “I’m just making a cup of tea, do you want one?”
He said, “Yeah, sure.”
I said, “I’ve just made some toast do you want a slice?
He said, “Yeah, why not.”
We sat down and I asked him, “So what now?
He said, “I don’t know, I’ve never got this far before!”
*.*
Fed Up With Oppressive Capitalism, Bernie Sanders Retires To Socialist Paradise Venezuela
LAKE CHAMPLAIN, VT—After years of suffering oppression at the hands of the capitalist system in America, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders announced he would be quitting politics and retiring to the socialist paradise of Venezuela.
Senator Sanders held a press conference at his summer vacation home on Lake Champlain to announce the move.
“I simply have had enough of being exploited by billionaires and evil corporations,” the democratic socialist who owns three homes said. “I will be retiring from my Senate seat and its problematic $200,000 annual salary and going to live in the idyllic land of Venezuela.”
“Here in America, we have great wealth inequality, whereas in the utopia of Venezuela, everyone has the same amount of money,” he added.
Sanders announced he would be driving his luxury SUV as far as he could before catching a ferry to the socialist wonderland, where he’d live in peace, comfort, and security for the rest of his days, “just like all the other lucky citizens of Venezuela.”
*.*
I finally realized why I dislike The Phantom Menace.
The acting? No.
Podracing? Nope.
The awkwardness of a 9 year old hitting on a 14 year old? Not even close.
Jar-Jar Binks? Na.
The E.T. cameo? Nadda.
The dialogue? Nein.
The whole Midichlorians causing the force? Nope.
Baby Greedo? Not even close.
My issue is this: they cast Liam friggin' Neeson, widely typecast as Mr. Punchy, and Samuel L. Jackson, widely typecast as Mr. Yelly-And-Cursey. And what happened?
There was no Liam Neeson punching faces and no Samuel Jackson yelling at people.
Sad.
*.*
I pulled into a crowded parking lot and rolled down the car windows to make sure my Labrador Retriever had fresh air. She was stretched out on the back seat, and I wanted to impress upon her that she must remain there.
I walked to the curb backward, pointing my finger at the car and saying emphatically, "Now you stay. Do you hear me? Stay! Stay!"
The driver of a nearby car, perhaps noting that I'm a blonde, gave me a strange look and then said, "You should just put it in park."
*.*
I'm currently dating an Avon lady.
We fight a lot, but it's worth it.
The makeup sex is incredible.
Issue of the Times;
Why Hire Women? by Stuart Schneiderman
You knew this was coming, because I have said that it was coming. The #MeToo movement will make life more difficult for women in the workplace. It feels like a revolutionary action to overthrow the patriarchy, and it is certainly destroying the careers of more than a few men, especially in the media and entertainment, but living your life within a grand historical drama is always a bad idea. This time, the ultimate victims will be women.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings.
Obviously, businessmen cannot speak out about the issue. But, what they are telling each other deserves a hearing, even if the author of the current piece speaks anonymously.
He mentions first that in a climate where accusations count as incontrovertible truths, our grand American tradition of justice has been largely discarded. Remember when Benjamin Franklin said that it is better for ten guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted. Well, you can forget about that, along with due process.
Anonymous quotes Emily Linden, a columnist for Teen Vogue, who declares that she does not care if some innocent man’s reputation is ruined as long as she can avenge herself against the patriarchy and can foment revolution. Naturally, Linden, a fanatic masquerading as a serious writer, has forgotten about due process and does not care either about what happens to the innocent man’s wife and children. Nice way to show us how sensitive you are, Em.
Anonymous offers his analysis from within the business world:
There are however two big problems with the whole situation:
1. Accusations alone kill careers and businesses just through the media attention and absence from any investigation or evidence.
2. The narrative of the whole debate is that every claim must be believed regardless how ridiculous the claim itself is and that any questioning of this or that people want an investigation is automatically anti female.
These two social justice paradigms have made it impossible to defend anybody against accusations regardless how suspicious or shallow the claims were and it still continues so we can assume this will stay for way longer than just the next week.
He is not alone in pointing out that in the ambient mania the meaning of sexual harassment has been bloated almost beyond recognition:
Another problem is that the meaning of sexual harassment was widened to include what most of us would consider normal behavior among adults. This includes but is not limited to: getting invited for a drink, making somebody a compliment or standing in the same room.
This paints almost any interaction at a workplace in a sexualized context which in turn makes it almost impossible to be comfortable with each other. This has a major chilling effect on teamwork, arbitration and general communication.
Worse yet, women are shouting that they are weak and ineffectual, that they are so sensitive that they are rendered ill by someone who makes them feel “uncomfortable.” So much for the myth of strong, empowered women.
Now as a business owner myself and somebody who is in voluntary leadership positions I can tell you one thing:
It´s impossible to accomplish anything if you are not willing to make someone “uncomfortable”! Especially if you take on a mentor role!
And also:
When James Damore was asked for feedback from his supervisor and internally circulated his google memo, it got leaked, he got fired and women stayed at home the next Day because “for emotional reasons”
A ten page summary of data and analysis from Damore was enough to “emotional distress” the women at the company.
I’m not arguing here about the validity of the memo we can talk about that on a separate occasion my point here is that a ten-page document with written words that suggested possible gender differences cost multiple sick days!
Anonymous tries to put it in context:
What the media doesn’t see are … very important facts:
Most businesses still care more about profit than gender distribution
Most businesses don’t share the blatant disregard for men
Most businesses are still created, maintained and lead by men so you can’t put men out of the equation
Now, male executives will react to the #MeToo movement by hiring fewer women and by practicing gender segregation. Anonymous quotes some of his male executive friends:
“We will probably not hire women if they have to work together with men” (paraphrased)
“We have to consider gender segregation at the workplace as a next step so we hire women only for positions where we can make a team out of them and where we have to hire a spot in the male-dominated parts we hire additional men” (paraphrased)
One of my colleagues from a US Tech company gave me even a (for me) more horrific answer when I asked him about this notion:
“We are considering to drop our female staffers in the non-support teams, this way we can eliminate the risk and from the outside, it looks like we just have a 90/10 split which is low but not unreasonable for a tech company” (paraphrased)
Many men are saying that hiring women is simply not worth the risk:
Even an unproven or false allegation can cost a company a significant sum of money!
For some businesses it could even mean bankruptcy because clients could drop them, they can’t bear the expensive legal fees or the media outrage kills their reputation.
And I don’t know anyone who is willing to take that kind of risk.
And then there are other unspeakable risk factors in hiring women. As he says, no one will say this out loud, because such speech is strictly forbidden:
Adding to that the risk of possible pregnancy, that some call for sick leave when they have their period and the whole depiction of women in the mainstream media and you have the perfect mix for “high risk, high cost, low reward” (actual quote)
“Officially, we will of course never ‘promote’ this if somebody asks about stuff like that we will just say the teams can work better this way… but we don’t risk our core team that makes money just to fulfill a quota. Google & Co can do that and cripple themselves in legal affairs” (paraphrased).
Anonymous concludes:
Well, it hurts me to say but maybe we shouldn’t if this is how women behave in today’s world! It just doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire somebody that can potentially cost you more time and money to the addition that you have to create special rules for all other employees.
Quote of the Times;
Wisdom comes alone through suffering. – Aeschylus
Link of the Times;
https://www.jihadwatch.org/2017/11/sweden-nobody-helped-woman-raped-by-20-muslim-migrants-neighbors-have-learned-not-to-see-or-hear-too-much
Hire?
Whitewashed?
Apple announced today that it has developed a computer chip that can store and play high fidelity music in women's breast implants.
The iBoob will cost between $799 and $999, depending on the speaker size.
This is considered to be a major breakthrough as women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.
*.*
A wife complains, "Our wall clock almost killed my mother today. It fell only seconds after she got up from the couch."
The husband mumbles, "Damn clock always was slow."
*.*
Japanese Emperor Admits Pearl Harbor ‘Kind of a Dick Move’
CHIYODA, Japan — In remembrance of Pearl Harbor, Emperor Akihito admitted in a public comment that the Japanese sneak attack that brought the United States into World War Two was “kind of a dick move.”
“We are taking the time to express Our regret for a wrong committed over 70 years ago,” the Emperor began. “This week, after seeing a news report about a Pearl Harbor veteran ceremony, We thought to ourself, ‘Man, that was kind of a dick move, We should probably make an expression that acknowledges that.'”
The emperor said he used the American slang to make his message more heartfelt and appealing to his US audience, according to a Japanese political analyst.
“Really, what the hell were we thinking? That was a really weird time for us,” Akihito added.
Akihito made the stunning remarks during a speech at the Yasukuni Shrine, a controversial Shinto site which commemorates the names of Japanese soldiers killed in service to the Empire. Among the names are those of war criminals hanged by international tribunal.
“We would also like to note that that this announcement has absolutely nothing to do with an upcoming $10 billion arms deal with the United States for new Aegis guided missile destroyers,” Akihito added at the end of his remarks.
The announcement stunned onlookers and infuriated governments across the region, especially China, whose people suffered some of the worst atrocities at the hands of the Japanese Empire during the war, including the infamous Rape of Nanking, where over 100,000 women were forced into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers and an estimated 300,000 citizens were killed.
Although Akihito apologized for the Nanking incident in 1995, he refused to issue a written statement. Many Japanese history books still refer to that conflict as the War of Western Aggression.
While US officials praised the announcement, many on social media have criticized the emperor for not going further and condemning his country’s role in the creation and distribution of Hello Kitty, Pokemon, tentacle porn, and ridiculous game shows.
At press time analysts noted that throughout the entire speech Akihito didn’t ever actually use the words “sorry,” “apologize” or even “our bad,” for the 1941 attack.
*.*
Little Johnny says, "Mom, when I was on the bus with Daddy this morning, he told me to give up my seat to a lady."
"Well, you've done the right thing," says Mommy.
"But Mommy, I was sitting on daddy's lap."
*.*
When life has got me down and I'm ready to give up, I try to remind myself:
I'm the one in control here.
I have the gun and the hostages.
So back off!
Issue of the Times;
The Whitewashed Tyranny of Abraham Lincoln by Tara Dodrill
Abraham Lincoln was the best U.S. President, motivated by a patriotic and Christian desire to preserve the union of states and free the slaves. At least that is what modern textbooks suggest. There is a bigger story to the 16th President of the United States than the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. A whitewashed version of the man is all that we learned about him in school. It is what our children and grandchildren are still being taught. Public school districts and universities have been dutifully parroting that the Southern states of Lincoln’s era had a perverse culture, while Northern society was superior. This became the politically-correct mantra when ‘teaching’ about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War for generations after the Civil Rights Movement. The identity politics is only getting worse, and more blatant.
The narrative is not only infused heavily with a liberal bias, but moreover, it is entirely wrong. Far too many Americans, both current students and adults, believe that the Civil War was a war about slavery. This liberalized version of history does not chronicle the political shenanigans that were undertaken by groups to harden theircentralized (federal) grasp on power, as is still the case today. Most Americans do not believe that this issue was at play during Lincoln’s era, but they are so very wrong. The current political atmosphere in America is a testament to how ignorance of history forces a people to repeat it.
President Abraham Lincoln should not be revered as a hallowed figure. “Honest Abe” was a mere man; one who made mistakes and decisions based on his own self-interest. Some of his choices did benefit America, but the benefits were often a positive byproduct of his political self-interest, not benevolence.
Abraham Lincoln’s Flopping Stance on Slavery
The liberal Republicans of the time, who eventually touted Lincoln as a champion of freedom, steadfastly demanded the media and citizens not “paint him with an Abolitionist brush,” during his first inaugural address. Abraham Lincoln did not wish to be known as anti-slavery after putting his hand on the Bible and taking the oath of office. Also, during his first inaugural address, President Lincoln declared that he had absolutely no legal authority to interfere with the practice of slavery in states where it already existed. He then went on to boldly say that he would be enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The federal law mandated the return of runaway slaves who had fled slave states to seek safety and freedom in the North.
Although the history textbooks tend to gloss over such facts, slavery did once exist in the North. The practice of owning human beings had ended throughout the Northern states by 1804. Even after slavery was abolished in the North, racial discrimination still heavily existed in workplaces, schools, and communities. The idea of a little white girl sitting next to a little black girl, or a black man and a white woman courting was still not accepted by the ‘tolerant’ North or ‘freedom-loving’ elites, who were hurling hateful rhetoric toward the South. Meanwhile, indentured servitude in the North, which was a big step but not a leap up from slavery, remained legal. Equally legal was the use of children as the North’s virtual slave labor inside its factories. Many of whom were worked to death, and usually had a poorer quality of life than the average Southern slave.
Politics, money, and power were just as intrinsically woven during the 1860’s as they are today. Some of the most fervent and vocal anti-slavery Northerners, who pushed for an end to slavery, were not doing it entirely from a human rights sentiment. Many wealthy businessmen in the North were pressuring politicians to force the South into submission over slavery, because they felt that it created unfair competition in the marketplace. With slavery existing in the Southern states, Northern businessmen were being forced to compete against free labor. Even child laborers had to be paid something, after all.
Congress was fiercely divided over the issue of slavery during the months prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln. Heated arguments over the Thirteenth Amendment occurred on a daily basis in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The furious debates continued during the early stages of Lincoln’s presidency.
The Thirteenth Amendment that most Americans associate with Abraham Lincoln was passed at the end of the Civil War, in 1865. However, there was a previous version of the Thirteenth Amendment that had a polar-opposite intent. Lincoln publicly supported the former version during his swearing-in ceremony. This original version of the Thirteenth Amendment was meant to enshrine the practice of slavery as immutable. It would have amended the Constitution to pro-actively prevent any future legislature from ever attempting to outlaw the ownership of human beings. This version of what would have become the Thirteenth Amendment, if it had passed, is now often referred to as the Corwin Amendment. Thomas Corwin, an Ohio Republican Representative and a Lincoln supporter, sponsored the bill.
“I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable,” Lincoln said when referencing Corwin’s proposal, according to a report by Constitution Daily.
The Political Landscape Before Lincoln’s Election
To truly understand what actually caused the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s massive flip-flop on slavery, we must understand what happened during the 10 years that led up to his election, and the split in the Democrat Party, which occurred at its convention to select a presidential candidate to oppose the Republicans.
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. This law permitted each new state coming into the United States to decide for itself whether or not slavery would be legal inside its borders. It was sponsored by the wing of Republicans to which Lincoln belonged. The legislation overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery north of Maryland’s northern border. This delineation is commonly known as the Mason-Dixon line.
For decades before Lincoln’s election, the Southern states had been responsible for most of the federal government’s revenue. The South had stringent tariffs forced upon it by Northern lawmakers, who in-turn gave about 80 percent of the funds to enhance public works in their states and bolster the struggling economy of the North. There was no income tax in the United States at that time, nor had there ever been an income tax, as it is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. About 85 percent of the revenue that the federal government had at its disposal came in the form of tariffs that were levied on goods and services from the South. The high taxes that Southerners paid helped to build railroads, roads, manufacturing complexes, and canals in the North.
Before 1812, the tariffs levied were between 15 and 20 percent. The funds garnered by these tariffs were enough to keep the federal government fully functional, without placing an excessive burden on any specific region of the country. When the War of 1812 broke out, the tariffs upon Southern businesses were increased up to 26 percent by Congress, with the net profits being funneled to aid manufacturers in the North. With a new tariff in 1828, the economy of South Carolina took the biggest hit and lost 25 percent of its export business in just 24 months. In the Southern newspapers, the tariff was nicknamed “Tariff of Abominations”. The U.S. Congress was dominated by Whig Party members from the North, who had passed the tariff, increasing the amount that the South had to pay on exported goods up to 50 percent.
In 1832, South Carolina officials called for a state convention to nullify both the tariff of 1828 and another tariff that had been enacted earlier that same year, by arguing that the tariffs were unconstitutional. Unfair taxation was one of the premises that had sparked America’s War of Independence against England, and it seemed as if the same issue was going to prompt a Civil War in the still-young nation.
In early 1860, the Morrill Tariff was passed. Even though the tariffs being collected from the South now totaled about 87 percent of the federal government’s revenue. The bill was named after Northern steel manufacturer and Republican Congressman, Justin Morrill. The legislation levied up to a 47 percent tariff increase on exported goods over the course of three years. The burden of this new tariff fell squarely on the shoulders of the South. The industrial businesses of the North were largely domestic sellers. The Morrill Tariff decreased the trade value of agricultural exports overseas, causing a gigantic blow to the Southern economy. Abraham Lincoln campaigned as a supporter of the tariff. Thaddeus Stevens, a Lincoln supporter and Republican Congressman, co-authored the Morrill Tariff.
During the campaign season, the iron manufacturer from Pennsylvania said that the two most important issues of the 1860 election were increasing tariffs and putting an end to slavery. Stevens also told a New York crowd that the new tariff would financially cripple the South and the West, but it would enrich the North. He claimed that it would increase the wages of Northern industrial workers and help America achieve greatness.
Henry Clay, who was the leader of the Whig Party, which held the majority in Congress, was able to implement an export tariff of 36 percent, in 1861. The economy of the North began to boom, because the bulk of its industrial goods were sold domestically. The Southern economy began a downward spiral, as the vast majority of its revenue was based upon the exportation of cotton and tobacco to Europe.
Former President and South Carolina Senator, John C. Calhoun, was able to negotiate a compromise that would roll back the tariffs to their former 15 percent range over the course of several years. Henry Clay (a man whom Lincoln greatly admired) and his Whig party were infuriated at being forced into a compromise with the South. It meant the loss of money that was to be ultimately funneled, at least in part, to their campaign supporters.
If Southern officials had tried to resist the tariffs, they would have been herded up and hanged as enemies of the state. Thaddeus Stevens was a powerful leader within the Republican party, and by some accounts, he ran the nation after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. His open hostility toward the South and vindictiveness explains the North’s punitive tone during the Reconstruction Era.
The 1860 Presidential Election
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election, but the why and how have been left out of most history books, and this is causing the mis-education of millions of Americans.
The Democrat Party split along geographical lines during its presidential convention. A northern faction and a southern faction emerged. The convention ended without the nomination of a candidate to run on the ticket. When the Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina to hold their convention in April, tensions swirled and boiled over rather quickly. Northern party leaders felt that Stephen Douglas was their best chance to defeat the “Black Republicans” seeking to end or limit slavery. Southern Democrats largely deemed Douglas to be unfit, because he believed that the federal government had no right to determine the legality of slavery. Douglas maintained that the issue should remain a state decision. Six weeks after the Southern Democrats walked out of the convention without a vote being held, Stephen Douglas was nominated during a second convention that was held in the North. Southern Democrats also held a second convention and nominated the sitting Vice President, John Breckenridge, to lead the ticket.
With the Democrat Party split in half and in chaos, Republicans felt that they would have an edge in the presidential race during their convention, which they held in Chicago the following month. Republicans needed a candidate who would garner the Electoral College votes of the North. Such a scenario would require carrying Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana.
After intense debate over a slew of possible candidates, Abraham Lincoln, after three votes were taken, received the nomination. During his one term in the Senate, the press had cast Lincoln as a strong all-American man, with an inspiring pull-yourself-up by the bootstraps story. He had become the darling of the Northern press during his bitter debates with Stephen Douglas earlier the same year. News coverage of the debates was spread nationwide at a time when the telegraph was still in its infancy.
When a 3-way race for the presidency turned into a 4-man contest, Abraham Lincoln’s party felt that their candidate would be a shoe-in, if given the right press coverage. John Bell, a wealthy Tennessee plantation owner, was nominated as the candidate for the newly-created Constitutional Union Party. The political group was largely composed of community pillars and former politicians. They described themselves as moderates. They believed that the best way to calm the nation and win the election was to avoid the issue of slavery altogether.
As a presidential candidate, Lincoln supported the deportation of all Negroes to an unpopulated zone outside of America. This was euphemistically described as a policy of “colonization”. As late as December of 1862, Lincoln was continuing to promote his idea of ridding the U.S. mainland of all Negroes, even as the Civil War raged on. This stance, which was one that was taken by some of the most conservative members of his political party, did not endear him to either abolitionists or Southern voters.
When Lincoln ran for the highest office in the land in 1860, it was the first time that “sectional” (regional) parties were involved in a presidential race. It was also the first time that the South was not represented on either the top or the bottom of a winning presidential ticket. Abraham Lincoln did not win a single Electoral College vote from either a Southern or a border state. In fact, he won the election with only 39 percent of the popular vote. The message was clear to Southerners: the North, and only the North, would determine the president.
“I will say then, that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the Negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, of having them to marry with white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch, as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1858, Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Abraham Lincoln’s Early Months in the Presidency
Southerners perceived the election of Abraham Lincoln as the solidification of Northern dominance over nearly every aspect of their lives. It took only a day for Americans in South Carolina and multiple Gulf Coast states to call for secession.
Despite the mounting tensions between the North and South, Lincoln did not have a single man who lived below the Mason-Dixon line on his cabinet as an adviser, nor did he take a meeting with any Southern lawmakers from the time that he was elected up through the beginning of the Civil War.
If the preservation of the Union was a top priority for Lincoln, he should have attempted to prevent the mounting hostilities, addressed the concerns that the South had been battling against for more than a decade, and tried to prevent the fever pitch from growing louder. But he did not. Lincoln ignored the South’s economic and states’ rights worries repeatedly, so their distrust of the new president increased dramatically.
Instead of attempting to meet with Southerners to calm their fears over continued tariff increases, or working toward eventually ending slavery peaceably, Lincoln signed the Morrill Tariff into law. Taking his power a step further, the new president vowed that he would ensure enforcement of the high tariff on Southern states that seceded from the Unites States. It signaled to the Southern states that they were trapped in a position of perpetual servitude to produce federal revenue.
President Lincoln was essentially calling the South out, but Southerners were not bluffing. They had lost patience in having taxation without representation for the sole benefit of the North, and so they seceded, with South Carolina being the first state to exit the Union. Northern members of Congress began preparing for a military campaign, as their Southern peers were packing up their Washington, D.C. offices for train rides home.
James Buchanan alongside other current and former politicians of the time reached out to the South, as well as the incoming administration to engage in a constitutional convention that was to be followed by a direct-vote national vote on the divisive issues threatening to tear apart the country. It was a Kansas Senator, John Crittenden, not Abraham Lincoln, who took bold steps to preserve the Union and prevent a Civil War that would ultimately take more than 650,000 American lives. Modern history books ignore the Kansas Senator’s noble efforts, as well as the decision by Lincoln and his party to embrace bloodshed.
The Crittenden Compromise called for immediate legislation to create a far more permanent solution, by way of constitutional amendments, for the issues dividing the nation. The compromise called for extending the slavery boundaries established by the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which had been terminated by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. This was the North’s proverbial fig leaf, which was being offered to appease Southerners, in the hope that friendly relations could be renewed. The act, which did get some support from powerful Senators in the North, was sent to a special committee. However, it died when some of Lincoln’s most staunch supporters quickly rejected the Crittenden Compromise. “History is to record us,” the Kansas Senator cautioned Congress when presenting his bill. “Is it to record that when the destruction of the Union was imminent, we stood quarreling?”
When elected officials from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida received no communication from President Lincoln to assure them that the fiscal attacks on the South would come to an end, they also voted to secede. North Carolina was the last to leave, and it ultimately lost the most men to the war.
President Lincoln’s War
Every newspaper in the country ran headlines about the South’s secession. Neither the press nor the Northeastern public disputed the right of the states to legally and peaceably withdraw from the United States, at least not initially. When a member of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet suggested that they just let the South leave peaceably, the president has been quoted as replying, “Let the South go? Where, then, would we get our revenue!” Respect for the South’s right to secede soon vanished, not because of a more in-depth look at our Constitution, but because wealthy Northern business leaders suddenly realized that they would soon be competing in a truly free market (sans high tariffs) against the South. This fact, on top of worries about the massive loss of annual revenues resulting from lost tariffs, soon caused saber rattling of epic proportions.
President Lincoln finally took a meeting, a covert one, with a Southerner. He met with Virginia Secession Convention delegate Colonel John Baldwin. The colonel, like many of his peers, preferred for his state to remain a part of the United States if a compromise could be reached. During the April 4th, 1861 meeting, Colonel Baldwin learned that the president was already plotting a military assault against the South at Fort Sumter. The Virginia delegate tried to convince Lincoln that any such action would force the Southern states into an all-out war with the North. The colonel also told the president that if the South were permitted to leave the Union peaceably, economic and historical ties would ultimately bring the two geographical factions back together again.
Another point of fact that modern history textbooks omit is why Fort Sumter was the place that Lincoln chose to make a stand. It was not merely a military fort. Fort Sumter was a tariff collection facility. The president’s attempt to terrorize the South through Fort Sumter was an epic failure.
Colonel Baldwin responded to a letter that was sent by a Northern politician asking what would become of Union men in Virginia after the battle of Fort Sumter. “There are now no Union men in Virginia. But those who were Union men will stand to their arms, and make a fight which shall go down in history as an illustration of what a brave people can do in defense of their liberties, after having exhausted every means of pacification.”
After losing the early battles of the Civil War, Lincoln and his supporters, both in industry and the Senate, began to anguish over the possibility that England and European nations would send military support to the South, since his administration was viewed throughout the world as a despotic regime. There was concern that the Republican leadership would be tried like war criminals. Threats and a naval blockade ensued to preemptively thwart interventions by other nations. Lincoln even threatened war against any nation that sought to provide humanitarian aid.
Author Charles Dickens penned a now obscure but relevant opinion piece about the Civil War in a London newspaper during the final weeks of 1861. “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the United States.”
Infamous socialist Karl Marx also saw the Civil War for exactly what it was. He wrote, “The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war, is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.”
During his first four months as President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln trampled the U.S. Constitution to create the military dictatorship that was necessary to wage and win a war against his own people.
Abraham Lincoln’s Unconstitutional Acts and High Crimes
Lincoln circumvented Congress when calling up the United States Army — 75,000 men initially.
He refused to call Congress back into session after ordering military action at Fort Sumter.
Ordered the Navy to blockade Southern ports, a direct act of war. Such an act could only be undertaken by an order of Congress. It was a diabolical tactic to prevent food imports, in order to starve the Southern states.
In an escalation of Lincoln’s starvation strategy, he ordered General Sherman to begin a military campaign against civilians, cities, and hospitals. Women and children were not spared. General Sherman was nicknamed “Burning Sherman”, because he randomly burned entire cities, even in the middle of winter. Lincoln ordered Sherman to terrorize the South by pillaging and plundering at a level that surpassed even the ancient Roman armies. As America’s first war criminal, General Sherman is one of the main reasons why disease and starvation killed significantly more people in the Civil War than combat.
Suspended the writ of habeas corpus, yet another act that is a function of Congress. The suspension of habeas corpus gave Lincoln the power to arrest Americans without filing a criminal charge and permitted him to have them held indefinitely without either a charge or a trial.
Lincoln violated the Constitution once again when he refused to comply with a Supreme Court order to immediately restore the right of habeas corpus. Our Founding Fathers added the habeas corpus protection into the Constitution specifically so tyranny would never again reign in America, as it had in Europe and when the “New World” was under British control.
Lincoln had the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court arrested after receiving a court order to restore habeas corpus protections. Upon receiving the ruling by the high court, the president sent a federal marshal to arrest the Chief Justice.
There has never been a more substantial threat to a free press in the history of our country than the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln sent soldiers to destroy printing presses and related newspaper publishing tools at outlets which did not support his handling of the Southern secession. In response to negative editorials about the military invasion of the South and his overall war policy, Lincoln also commandeered, and then closed 300 Northern newspapers.
President Lincoln did not stop at just destroying private property and commandeering newspapers, he also arrested and imprisoned many of the editors and publishers of those same press outlets.
Before the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had ordered the arrest of approximately 20,000 Americans without charging them with a crime or permitting them to have their day in court. The citizens who were unconstitutionally detained had spoken out against Lincoln personally, the Civil War, or were merely suspected of harboring anti-war sentiments.
The 16th President illegally took it upon himself to create a new state. West Virginia quickly came into existence after Lincoln declared war on the South, as a North-friendly region within the South.
Lincoln arrested and imprisoned the entire Maryland state legislature to prevent them from holding a debate and taking a vote on secession. The elected officials were never charged with a crime, or granted a trial.
Concluding the War of Northern Aggression
What occurred in 1861 still festers to this day, and almost all of it has been cloaked in politically-expedient lies. A tyrannical, centralized government that was hell-bent on dominating the Southern states was coalesced by the election of Abraham Lincoln. What was known as the War of Northern Aggression throughout the world gave birth to an overbearing federal government that is answerable to no one, a false supremacy of the federal government over the states, a government that cannot control its own growth or spending, the principle that agents of the federal government are above the law, a government that does not obey its own Constitution, and it spawned a perpetual cycle of servitude for all Americans in the form of income tax. That national tax system requires the tracking of everything that every American does. They did it for the money and it was only the money.
The Northern troops were enraged and their army began experiencing increased desertions when, in the middle of the war, the Northern politicians reinvented the war as a crusade against slavery, for political capital, and as a means to further punish the South. Northern soldiers were deeply disturbed by this new narrative, which stated that they were expected to continue killing their own countrymen for the sole benefit of the Negroes. It was not what they had enlisted for. Meanwhile, many (if not most) of the freed slaves had to be driven from their plantations by Northern soldiers, for they were afraid to leave the only places that they knew to be their homes. Most of the slaves had come to consider their owners as family and this feeling was often mutual. Allowing the slaves to voluntarily remain looked terrible politically and the press would have had a heyday if the overwhelming majority had remained. So, slaves were driven into the wilderness with very few options for their survival, other than crime. In response to the rampant crime by former slaves (who sadly had no other way to survive) the Ku Klux Klan was formed as a vigilante organization, but it quickly spiraled out of control with the growing racial tensions. At no point in this catastrophe was genuinely helping the “colored” a goal of the North’s war machine.
America’s Founding Fathers labored over what might be the most important document that will ever be written by man, only to be gutted less than 100 years later, by a president who is falsely revered. Lincoln may have taken actions that ultimately brought the broken Union back together, but the aftermath of his role as a despot and military dictator marks him as the worst enemy that the United States has ever known. Lincoln came closer to completely destroying the United States than anyone else. The institution of slavery would have ended soon, with or without a war. If Lincoln had chosen the without option, or if the South had been allowed to participate in the presidential election, then America would not have had its cultural and economic base obliterated. The U.S. would have advanced centuries beyond where it is now, and race relations would be good. Instead, most of America was sent back to the Stone Age, and the flames of racial hatred were fanned in a way that may never be truly quenched. Lincoln never expressed remorse for any of it. He was, by every definition, a sociopath. He would be at home in today’s liberal politics.
Lessons to Be Learned
The history of the American Civil War ought to provide us with some important lessons, and it is easy to understand why the lessons are avoided by today’s leftist educators. The American Civil War was a dire warning about the destiny of any welfare state. In the early stages of the disease, the U.S. political system was brought to its knees by class warfare.
Eventually, as the class system ever polarized, one group became entirely responsible for financially supporting another. America became the first welfare state, with the South providing the welfare benefits to the North. The North was the South’s ungrateful and jealous welfare child. Eventually, the North shifted from simple ingratitude to full-fledged resentment against the hand that fed it. This irrational resentment is the eventual consequence of all welfare systems, whenever they are continued for long enough. The solution to the North’s jealousy and resentment was violence, which it justified through rationalizations of injustices by the very people whom it had developed a parasitic relationship with. Everything collapsed once the North ran out of other peoples’ money. It had behaved as if there had been no need for thriftiness, since more money could always be taken, but there isn’t always more.
Compare this to the politics of today. Very little has actually changed. Between all the political correctness, socialist movement, race baiting, and identity politics of liberalism today, we still find that we destroy the character and spirit of a people whenever we are too generous. Through our excessive generosity, we encourage the beneficiaries of our philanthropy to develop a sense of entitlement and a belief in the righteousness of theft.
Quote of the Times;
“The intention is everything; the act nothing.”
Link of the Times;
https://www.dailywire.com/news/25183/12-major-stories-2017-media-buried-forgot-or-ryan-saavedra?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro
The iBoob will cost between $799 and $999, depending on the speaker size.
This is considered to be a major breakthrough as women have always complained about men staring at their breasts and not listening to them.
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A wife complains, "Our wall clock almost killed my mother today. It fell only seconds after she got up from the couch."
The husband mumbles, "Damn clock always was slow."
*.*
Japanese Emperor Admits Pearl Harbor ‘Kind of a Dick Move’
CHIYODA, Japan — In remembrance of Pearl Harbor, Emperor Akihito admitted in a public comment that the Japanese sneak attack that brought the United States into World War Two was “kind of a dick move.”
“We are taking the time to express Our regret for a wrong committed over 70 years ago,” the Emperor began. “This week, after seeing a news report about a Pearl Harbor veteran ceremony, We thought to ourself, ‘Man, that was kind of a dick move, We should probably make an expression that acknowledges that.'”
The emperor said he used the American slang to make his message more heartfelt and appealing to his US audience, according to a Japanese political analyst.
“Really, what the hell were we thinking? That was a really weird time for us,” Akihito added.
Akihito made the stunning remarks during a speech at the Yasukuni Shrine, a controversial Shinto site which commemorates the names of Japanese soldiers killed in service to the Empire. Among the names are those of war criminals hanged by international tribunal.
“We would also like to note that that this announcement has absolutely nothing to do with an upcoming $10 billion arms deal with the United States for new Aegis guided missile destroyers,” Akihito added at the end of his remarks.
The announcement stunned onlookers and infuriated governments across the region, especially China, whose people suffered some of the worst atrocities at the hands of the Japanese Empire during the war, including the infamous Rape of Nanking, where over 100,000 women were forced into sex slavery for Japanese soldiers and an estimated 300,000 citizens were killed.
Although Akihito apologized for the Nanking incident in 1995, he refused to issue a written statement. Many Japanese history books still refer to that conflict as the War of Western Aggression.
While US officials praised the announcement, many on social media have criticized the emperor for not going further and condemning his country’s role in the creation and distribution of Hello Kitty, Pokemon, tentacle porn, and ridiculous game shows.
At press time analysts noted that throughout the entire speech Akihito didn’t ever actually use the words “sorry,” “apologize” or even “our bad,” for the 1941 attack.
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Little Johnny says, "Mom, when I was on the bus with Daddy this morning, he told me to give up my seat to a lady."
"Well, you've done the right thing," says Mommy.
"But Mommy, I was sitting on daddy's lap."
*.*
When life has got me down and I'm ready to give up, I try to remind myself:
I'm the one in control here.
I have the gun and the hostages.
So back off!
Issue of the Times;
The Whitewashed Tyranny of Abraham Lincoln by Tara Dodrill
Abraham Lincoln was the best U.S. President, motivated by a patriotic and Christian desire to preserve the union of states and free the slaves. At least that is what modern textbooks suggest. There is a bigger story to the 16th President of the United States than the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation. A whitewashed version of the man is all that we learned about him in school. It is what our children and grandchildren are still being taught. Public school districts and universities have been dutifully parroting that the Southern states of Lincoln’s era had a perverse culture, while Northern society was superior. This became the politically-correct mantra when ‘teaching’ about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War for generations after the Civil Rights Movement. The identity politics is only getting worse, and more blatant.
The narrative is not only infused heavily with a liberal bias, but moreover, it is entirely wrong. Far too many Americans, both current students and adults, believe that the Civil War was a war about slavery. This liberalized version of history does not chronicle the political shenanigans that were undertaken by groups to harden theircentralized (federal) grasp on power, as is still the case today. Most Americans do not believe that this issue was at play during Lincoln’s era, but they are so very wrong. The current political atmosphere in America is a testament to how ignorance of history forces a people to repeat it.
President Abraham Lincoln should not be revered as a hallowed figure. “Honest Abe” was a mere man; one who made mistakes and decisions based on his own self-interest. Some of his choices did benefit America, but the benefits were often a positive byproduct of his political self-interest, not benevolence.
Abraham Lincoln’s Flopping Stance on Slavery
The liberal Republicans of the time, who eventually touted Lincoln as a champion of freedom, steadfastly demanded the media and citizens not “paint him with an Abolitionist brush,” during his first inaugural address. Abraham Lincoln did not wish to be known as anti-slavery after putting his hand on the Bible and taking the oath of office. Also, during his first inaugural address, President Lincoln declared that he had absolutely no legal authority to interfere with the practice of slavery in states where it already existed. He then went on to boldly say that he would be enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act. The federal law mandated the return of runaway slaves who had fled slave states to seek safety and freedom in the North.
Although the history textbooks tend to gloss over such facts, slavery did once exist in the North. The practice of owning human beings had ended throughout the Northern states by 1804. Even after slavery was abolished in the North, racial discrimination still heavily existed in workplaces, schools, and communities. The idea of a little white girl sitting next to a little black girl, or a black man and a white woman courting was still not accepted by the ‘tolerant’ North or ‘freedom-loving’ elites, who were hurling hateful rhetoric toward the South. Meanwhile, indentured servitude in the North, which was a big step but not a leap up from slavery, remained legal. Equally legal was the use of children as the North’s virtual slave labor inside its factories. Many of whom were worked to death, and usually had a poorer quality of life than the average Southern slave.
Politics, money, and power were just as intrinsically woven during the 1860’s as they are today. Some of the most fervent and vocal anti-slavery Northerners, who pushed for an end to slavery, were not doing it entirely from a human rights sentiment. Many wealthy businessmen in the North were pressuring politicians to force the South into submission over slavery, because they felt that it created unfair competition in the marketplace. With slavery existing in the Southern states, Northern businessmen were being forced to compete against free labor. Even child laborers had to be paid something, after all.
Congress was fiercely divided over the issue of slavery during the months prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln. Heated arguments over the Thirteenth Amendment occurred on a daily basis in the House of Representatives and the Senate. The furious debates continued during the early stages of Lincoln’s presidency.
The Thirteenth Amendment that most Americans associate with Abraham Lincoln was passed at the end of the Civil War, in 1865. However, there was a previous version of the Thirteenth Amendment that had a polar-opposite intent. Lincoln publicly supported the former version during his swearing-in ceremony. This original version of the Thirteenth Amendment was meant to enshrine the practice of slavery as immutable. It would have amended the Constitution to pro-actively prevent any future legislature from ever attempting to outlaw the ownership of human beings. This version of what would have become the Thirteenth Amendment, if it had passed, is now often referred to as the Corwin Amendment. Thomas Corwin, an Ohio Republican Representative and a Lincoln supporter, sponsored the bill.
“I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable,” Lincoln said when referencing Corwin’s proposal, according to a report by Constitution Daily.
The Political Landscape Before Lincoln’s Election
To truly understand what actually caused the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln’s massive flip-flop on slavery, we must understand what happened during the 10 years that led up to his election, and the split in the Democrat Party, which occurred at its convention to select a presidential candidate to oppose the Republicans.
In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. This law permitted each new state coming into the United States to decide for itself whether or not slavery would be legal inside its borders. It was sponsored by the wing of Republicans to which Lincoln belonged. The legislation overturned the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery north of Maryland’s northern border. This delineation is commonly known as the Mason-Dixon line.
For decades before Lincoln’s election, the Southern states had been responsible for most of the federal government’s revenue. The South had stringent tariffs forced upon it by Northern lawmakers, who in-turn gave about 80 percent of the funds to enhance public works in their states and bolster the struggling economy of the North. There was no income tax in the United States at that time, nor had there ever been an income tax, as it is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution. About 85 percent of the revenue that the federal government had at its disposal came in the form of tariffs that were levied on goods and services from the South. The high taxes that Southerners paid helped to build railroads, roads, manufacturing complexes, and canals in the North.
Before 1812, the tariffs levied were between 15 and 20 percent. The funds garnered by these tariffs were enough to keep the federal government fully functional, without placing an excessive burden on any specific region of the country. When the War of 1812 broke out, the tariffs upon Southern businesses were increased up to 26 percent by Congress, with the net profits being funneled to aid manufacturers in the North. With a new tariff in 1828, the economy of South Carolina took the biggest hit and lost 25 percent of its export business in just 24 months. In the Southern newspapers, the tariff was nicknamed “Tariff of Abominations”. The U.S. Congress was dominated by Whig Party members from the North, who had passed the tariff, increasing the amount that the South had to pay on exported goods up to 50 percent.
In 1832, South Carolina officials called for a state convention to nullify both the tariff of 1828 and another tariff that had been enacted earlier that same year, by arguing that the tariffs were unconstitutional. Unfair taxation was one of the premises that had sparked America’s War of Independence against England, and it seemed as if the same issue was going to prompt a Civil War in the still-young nation.
In early 1860, the Morrill Tariff was passed. Even though the tariffs being collected from the South now totaled about 87 percent of the federal government’s revenue. The bill was named after Northern steel manufacturer and Republican Congressman, Justin Morrill. The legislation levied up to a 47 percent tariff increase on exported goods over the course of three years. The burden of this new tariff fell squarely on the shoulders of the South. The industrial businesses of the North were largely domestic sellers. The Morrill Tariff decreased the trade value of agricultural exports overseas, causing a gigantic blow to the Southern economy. Abraham Lincoln campaigned as a supporter of the tariff. Thaddeus Stevens, a Lincoln supporter and Republican Congressman, co-authored the Morrill Tariff.
During the campaign season, the iron manufacturer from Pennsylvania said that the two most important issues of the 1860 election were increasing tariffs and putting an end to slavery. Stevens also told a New York crowd that the new tariff would financially cripple the South and the West, but it would enrich the North. He claimed that it would increase the wages of Northern industrial workers and help America achieve greatness.
Henry Clay, who was the leader of the Whig Party, which held the majority in Congress, was able to implement an export tariff of 36 percent, in 1861. The economy of the North began to boom, because the bulk of its industrial goods were sold domestically. The Southern economy began a downward spiral, as the vast majority of its revenue was based upon the exportation of cotton and tobacco to Europe.
Former President and South Carolina Senator, John C. Calhoun, was able to negotiate a compromise that would roll back the tariffs to their former 15 percent range over the course of several years. Henry Clay (a man whom Lincoln greatly admired) and his Whig party were infuriated at being forced into a compromise with the South. It meant the loss of money that was to be ultimately funneled, at least in part, to their campaign supporters.
If Southern officials had tried to resist the tariffs, they would have been herded up and hanged as enemies of the state. Thaddeus Stevens was a powerful leader within the Republican party, and by some accounts, he ran the nation after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. His open hostility toward the South and vindictiveness explains the North’s punitive tone during the Reconstruction Era.
The 1860 Presidential Election
Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election, but the why and how have been left out of most history books, and this is causing the mis-education of millions of Americans.
The Democrat Party split along geographical lines during its presidential convention. A northern faction and a southern faction emerged. The convention ended without the nomination of a candidate to run on the ticket. When the Democrats met in Charleston, South Carolina to hold their convention in April, tensions swirled and boiled over rather quickly. Northern party leaders felt that Stephen Douglas was their best chance to defeat the “Black Republicans” seeking to end or limit slavery. Southern Democrats largely deemed Douglas to be unfit, because he believed that the federal government had no right to determine the legality of slavery. Douglas maintained that the issue should remain a state decision. Six weeks after the Southern Democrats walked out of the convention without a vote being held, Stephen Douglas was nominated during a second convention that was held in the North. Southern Democrats also held a second convention and nominated the sitting Vice President, John Breckenridge, to lead the ticket.
With the Democrat Party split in half and in chaos, Republicans felt that they would have an edge in the presidential race during their convention, which they held in Chicago the following month. Republicans needed a candidate who would garner the Electoral College votes of the North. Such a scenario would require carrying Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Illinois, and Indiana.
After intense debate over a slew of possible candidates, Abraham Lincoln, after three votes were taken, received the nomination. During his one term in the Senate, the press had cast Lincoln as a strong all-American man, with an inspiring pull-yourself-up by the bootstraps story. He had become the darling of the Northern press during his bitter debates with Stephen Douglas earlier the same year. News coverage of the debates was spread nationwide at a time when the telegraph was still in its infancy.
When a 3-way race for the presidency turned into a 4-man contest, Abraham Lincoln’s party felt that their candidate would be a shoe-in, if given the right press coverage. John Bell, a wealthy Tennessee plantation owner, was nominated as the candidate for the newly-created Constitutional Union Party. The political group was largely composed of community pillars and former politicians. They described themselves as moderates. They believed that the best way to calm the nation and win the election was to avoid the issue of slavery altogether.
As a presidential candidate, Lincoln supported the deportation of all Negroes to an unpopulated zone outside of America. This was euphemistically described as a policy of “colonization”. As late as December of 1862, Lincoln was continuing to promote his idea of ridding the U.S. mainland of all Negroes, even as the Civil War raged on. This stance, which was one that was taken by some of the most conservative members of his political party, did not endear him to either abolitionists or Southern voters.
When Lincoln ran for the highest office in the land in 1860, it was the first time that “sectional” (regional) parties were involved in a presidential race. It was also the first time that the South was not represented on either the top or the bottom of a winning presidential ticket. Abraham Lincoln did not win a single Electoral College vote from either a Southern or a border state. In fact, he won the election with only 39 percent of the popular vote. The message was clear to Southerners: the North, and only the North, would determine the president.
“I will say then, that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of making voters of the Negroes, or jurors, or qualifying them to hold office, of having them to marry with white people. I will say in addition, that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I suppose, will forever forbid the two races living together upon terms of social and political equality, and inasmuch, as they cannot so live, that while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, that I as much as any other man am in favor of the superior position being assigned to the white man.” — Abraham Lincoln, 1858, Lincoln-Douglas Debate
Abraham Lincoln’s Early Months in the Presidency
Southerners perceived the election of Abraham Lincoln as the solidification of Northern dominance over nearly every aspect of their lives. It took only a day for Americans in South Carolina and multiple Gulf Coast states to call for secession.
Despite the mounting tensions between the North and South, Lincoln did not have a single man who lived below the Mason-Dixon line on his cabinet as an adviser, nor did he take a meeting with any Southern lawmakers from the time that he was elected up through the beginning of the Civil War.
If the preservation of the Union was a top priority for Lincoln, he should have attempted to prevent the mounting hostilities, addressed the concerns that the South had been battling against for more than a decade, and tried to prevent the fever pitch from growing louder. But he did not. Lincoln ignored the South’s economic and states’ rights worries repeatedly, so their distrust of the new president increased dramatically.
Instead of attempting to meet with Southerners to calm their fears over continued tariff increases, or working toward eventually ending slavery peaceably, Lincoln signed the Morrill Tariff into law. Taking his power a step further, the new president vowed that he would ensure enforcement of the high tariff on Southern states that seceded from the Unites States. It signaled to the Southern states that they were trapped in a position of perpetual servitude to produce federal revenue.
President Lincoln was essentially calling the South out, but Southerners were not bluffing. They had lost patience in having taxation without representation for the sole benefit of the North, and so they seceded, with South Carolina being the first state to exit the Union. Northern members of Congress began preparing for a military campaign, as their Southern peers were packing up their Washington, D.C. offices for train rides home.
James Buchanan alongside other current and former politicians of the time reached out to the South, as well as the incoming administration to engage in a constitutional convention that was to be followed by a direct-vote national vote on the divisive issues threatening to tear apart the country. It was a Kansas Senator, John Crittenden, not Abraham Lincoln, who took bold steps to preserve the Union and prevent a Civil War that would ultimately take more than 650,000 American lives. Modern history books ignore the Kansas Senator’s noble efforts, as well as the decision by Lincoln and his party to embrace bloodshed.
The Crittenden Compromise called for immediate legislation to create a far more permanent solution, by way of constitutional amendments, for the issues dividing the nation. The compromise called for extending the slavery boundaries established by the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which had been terminated by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act. This was the North’s proverbial fig leaf, which was being offered to appease Southerners, in the hope that friendly relations could be renewed. The act, which did get some support from powerful Senators in the North, was sent to a special committee. However, it died when some of Lincoln’s most staunch supporters quickly rejected the Crittenden Compromise. “History is to record us,” the Kansas Senator cautioned Congress when presenting his bill. “Is it to record that when the destruction of the Union was imminent, we stood quarreling?”
When elected officials from Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Florida received no communication from President Lincoln to assure them that the fiscal attacks on the South would come to an end, they also voted to secede. North Carolina was the last to leave, and it ultimately lost the most men to the war.
President Lincoln’s War
Every newspaper in the country ran headlines about the South’s secession. Neither the press nor the Northeastern public disputed the right of the states to legally and peaceably withdraw from the United States, at least not initially. When a member of Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet suggested that they just let the South leave peaceably, the president has been quoted as replying, “Let the South go? Where, then, would we get our revenue!” Respect for the South’s right to secede soon vanished, not because of a more in-depth look at our Constitution, but because wealthy Northern business leaders suddenly realized that they would soon be competing in a truly free market (sans high tariffs) against the South. This fact, on top of worries about the massive loss of annual revenues resulting from lost tariffs, soon caused saber rattling of epic proportions.
President Lincoln finally took a meeting, a covert one, with a Southerner. He met with Virginia Secession Convention delegate Colonel John Baldwin. The colonel, like many of his peers, preferred for his state to remain a part of the United States if a compromise could be reached. During the April 4th, 1861 meeting, Colonel Baldwin learned that the president was already plotting a military assault against the South at Fort Sumter. The Virginia delegate tried to convince Lincoln that any such action would force the Southern states into an all-out war with the North. The colonel also told the president that if the South were permitted to leave the Union peaceably, economic and historical ties would ultimately bring the two geographical factions back together again.
Another point of fact that modern history textbooks omit is why Fort Sumter was the place that Lincoln chose to make a stand. It was not merely a military fort. Fort Sumter was a tariff collection facility. The president’s attempt to terrorize the South through Fort Sumter was an epic failure.
Colonel Baldwin responded to a letter that was sent by a Northern politician asking what would become of Union men in Virginia after the battle of Fort Sumter. “There are now no Union men in Virginia. But those who were Union men will stand to their arms, and make a fight which shall go down in history as an illustration of what a brave people can do in defense of their liberties, after having exhausted every means of pacification.”
After losing the early battles of the Civil War, Lincoln and his supporters, both in industry and the Senate, began to anguish over the possibility that England and European nations would send military support to the South, since his administration was viewed throughout the world as a despotic regime. There was concern that the Republican leadership would be tried like war criminals. Threats and a naval blockade ensued to preemptively thwart interventions by other nations. Lincoln even threatened war against any nation that sought to provide humanitarian aid.
Author Charles Dickens penned a now obscure but relevant opinion piece about the Civil War in a London newspaper during the final weeks of 1861. “The Northern onslaught upon slavery is no more than a piece of specious humbug disguised to conceal its desire for economic control of the United States.”
Infamous socialist Karl Marx also saw the Civil War for exactly what it was. He wrote, “The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war, is further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery, and in fact turns on the Northern lust for power.”
During his first four months as President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln trampled the U.S. Constitution to create the military dictatorship that was necessary to wage and win a war against his own people.
Abraham Lincoln’s Unconstitutional Acts and High Crimes
Lincoln circumvented Congress when calling up the United States Army — 75,000 men initially.
He refused to call Congress back into session after ordering military action at Fort Sumter.
Ordered the Navy to blockade Southern ports, a direct act of war. Such an act could only be undertaken by an order of Congress. It was a diabolical tactic to prevent food imports, in order to starve the Southern states.
In an escalation of Lincoln’s starvation strategy, he ordered General Sherman to begin a military campaign against civilians, cities, and hospitals. Women and children were not spared. General Sherman was nicknamed “Burning Sherman”, because he randomly burned entire cities, even in the middle of winter. Lincoln ordered Sherman to terrorize the South by pillaging and plundering at a level that surpassed even the ancient Roman armies. As America’s first war criminal, General Sherman is one of the main reasons why disease and starvation killed significantly more people in the Civil War than combat.
Suspended the writ of habeas corpus, yet another act that is a function of Congress. The suspension of habeas corpus gave Lincoln the power to arrest Americans without filing a criminal charge and permitted him to have them held indefinitely without either a charge or a trial.
Lincoln violated the Constitution once again when he refused to comply with a Supreme Court order to immediately restore the right of habeas corpus. Our Founding Fathers added the habeas corpus protection into the Constitution specifically so tyranny would never again reign in America, as it had in Europe and when the “New World” was under British control.
Lincoln had the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court arrested after receiving a court order to restore habeas corpus protections. Upon receiving the ruling by the high court, the president sent a federal marshal to arrest the Chief Justice.
There has never been a more substantial threat to a free press in the history of our country than the 16th President of the United States. Lincoln sent soldiers to destroy printing presses and related newspaper publishing tools at outlets which did not support his handling of the Southern secession. In response to negative editorials about the military invasion of the South and his overall war policy, Lincoln also commandeered, and then closed 300 Northern newspapers.
President Lincoln did not stop at just destroying private property and commandeering newspapers, he also arrested and imprisoned many of the editors and publishers of those same press outlets.
Before the end of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had ordered the arrest of approximately 20,000 Americans without charging them with a crime or permitting them to have their day in court. The citizens who were unconstitutionally detained had spoken out against Lincoln personally, the Civil War, or were merely suspected of harboring anti-war sentiments.
The 16th President illegally took it upon himself to create a new state. West Virginia quickly came into existence after Lincoln declared war on the South, as a North-friendly region within the South.
Lincoln arrested and imprisoned the entire Maryland state legislature to prevent them from holding a debate and taking a vote on secession. The elected officials were never charged with a crime, or granted a trial.
Concluding the War of Northern Aggression
What occurred in 1861 still festers to this day, and almost all of it has been cloaked in politically-expedient lies. A tyrannical, centralized government that was hell-bent on dominating the Southern states was coalesced by the election of Abraham Lincoln. What was known as the War of Northern Aggression throughout the world gave birth to an overbearing federal government that is answerable to no one, a false supremacy of the federal government over the states, a government that cannot control its own growth or spending, the principle that agents of the federal government are above the law, a government that does not obey its own Constitution, and it spawned a perpetual cycle of servitude for all Americans in the form of income tax. That national tax system requires the tracking of everything that every American does. They did it for the money and it was only the money.
The Northern troops were enraged and their army began experiencing increased desertions when, in the middle of the war, the Northern politicians reinvented the war as a crusade against slavery, for political capital, and as a means to further punish the South. Northern soldiers were deeply disturbed by this new narrative, which stated that they were expected to continue killing their own countrymen for the sole benefit of the Negroes. It was not what they had enlisted for. Meanwhile, many (if not most) of the freed slaves had to be driven from their plantations by Northern soldiers, for they were afraid to leave the only places that they knew to be their homes. Most of the slaves had come to consider their owners as family and this feeling was often mutual. Allowing the slaves to voluntarily remain looked terrible politically and the press would have had a heyday if the overwhelming majority had remained. So, slaves were driven into the wilderness with very few options for their survival, other than crime. In response to the rampant crime by former slaves (who sadly had no other way to survive) the Ku Klux Klan was formed as a vigilante organization, but it quickly spiraled out of control with the growing racial tensions. At no point in this catastrophe was genuinely helping the “colored” a goal of the North’s war machine.
America’s Founding Fathers labored over what might be the most important document that will ever be written by man, only to be gutted less than 100 years later, by a president who is falsely revered. Lincoln may have taken actions that ultimately brought the broken Union back together, but the aftermath of his role as a despot and military dictator marks him as the worst enemy that the United States has ever known. Lincoln came closer to completely destroying the United States than anyone else. The institution of slavery would have ended soon, with or without a war. If Lincoln had chosen the without option, or if the South had been allowed to participate in the presidential election, then America would not have had its cultural and economic base obliterated. The U.S. would have advanced centuries beyond where it is now, and race relations would be good. Instead, most of America was sent back to the Stone Age, and the flames of racial hatred were fanned in a way that may never be truly quenched. Lincoln never expressed remorse for any of it. He was, by every definition, a sociopath. He would be at home in today’s liberal politics.
Lessons to Be Learned
The history of the American Civil War ought to provide us with some important lessons, and it is easy to understand why the lessons are avoided by today’s leftist educators. The American Civil War was a dire warning about the destiny of any welfare state. In the early stages of the disease, the U.S. political system was brought to its knees by class warfare.
Eventually, as the class system ever polarized, one group became entirely responsible for financially supporting another. America became the first welfare state, with the South providing the welfare benefits to the North. The North was the South’s ungrateful and jealous welfare child. Eventually, the North shifted from simple ingratitude to full-fledged resentment against the hand that fed it. This irrational resentment is the eventual consequence of all welfare systems, whenever they are continued for long enough. The solution to the North’s jealousy and resentment was violence, which it justified through rationalizations of injustices by the very people whom it had developed a parasitic relationship with. Everything collapsed once the North ran out of other peoples’ money. It had behaved as if there had been no need for thriftiness, since more money could always be taken, but there isn’t always more.
Compare this to the politics of today. Very little has actually changed. Between all the political correctness, socialist movement, race baiting, and identity politics of liberalism today, we still find that we destroy the character and spirit of a people whenever we are too generous. Through our excessive generosity, we encourage the beneficiaries of our philanthropy to develop a sense of entitlement and a belief in the righteousness of theft.
Quote of the Times;
“The intention is everything; the act nothing.”
Link of the Times;
https://www.dailywire.com/news/25183/12-major-stories-2017-media-buried-forgot-or-ryan-saavedra?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro
Canadians?
You pick up a hitchhiker...
A young, sexy, beautiful girl.
Suddenly, she faints inside your truck and
you take her to the hospital.
Now that's stressful.
But at the hospital, they say she is pregnant and
congratulate you that you're going to be a father.
You say that you are not the father, but the girl says you are.
This is getting very stressful!
You request a DNA test to prove that you are not the father.
After the tests are completed,
The doctor says the test shows you're infertile,
And probably have been since birth.
You're extremely stressed but relieved.
On your way back home, you think about your 5 kids at home...
Not that's stressful!
*.*
John was talking to his fiancée, Rebecca, and he said, "Be honest, now, baby. How am I as a lover?"
To which she replied, "Honey, I would definitely say that you're warm."
"Really?" he asked excitedly.
"Yes, in fact I would say that you're the dictionary definition of the word warm."
John was pleased until he went home and, just for fun, checked his dictionary and found, "Warm: Not so hot."
*.*
A man met a beautiful blonde lady and decided he wanted to marry her right away.
She said, "But we don't know anything about each other."
He said, "That's all right, we'll learn about each other as we go along."
So she consented, they were married, and off they went on a honeymoon at a very nice resort. One morning they were lying by the pool, when he got up off of his towel, climbed up to the 10 meter board and did a two and a half tuck, followed by three rotations in the pike position, at which point he straightened out and cut the water like a knife. After a few more demonstrations, he came back and lay down on the towel.
She said, "That was incredible!"
He said, "I used to be an Olympic diving champion. You see, I told you we'd learn more about each other as we went along."
So she got up, jumped in the pool and started doing lengths. After 75 lengths she climbed out of the pool, lay down on her towel, and was hardly out of breath.
He said, "That was incredible! Were you an Olympic endurance swimmer?"
"No," she said, "I was a prostitute in Memphis but I worked both sides of the Mississippi."
*.*
Q: What's the worst part about getting a lung transplant?
A: The first couple of times you cough, it’s not your phlegm.
*.*
President Reagan’s best communist joke:
…you know there is a ten year delay in the Soviet Union for the delivery of an automobile. And only one out of seven families in the Soviet Union own automobiles. There is a 10 year wait, and you go through quite a process when you are ready to buy, and then you put up the money in advance.
This man laid down the money, and the fellow in charge said to him: Come back in 10 years and get your car.
The man answered: Morning or afternoon?
And the fellow behind the counter said: Ten years from now, what difference does it make?
And he said: Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.
Issue of the Times;
Canadians Shocked When Minimum Wage Hike Negatively Impacts Workers by Jazz Shaw
The Fight for 15 crowd is having more success in the Great White North than they’ve seen across much of the United States lately, with Ontario being the latest province to massively increase their minimum wage. What could possibly go wrong?
As we’ve already seen repeatedly on our side of the border, quite a bit, actually. And as soon as the new mandatory minimum went into effect on January 1st, big employers of largely unskilled, lower wage workers responded in the only way available to them. They began cutting costs, starting with perks and benefits, but also reducing hours and even laying off workers. This left many “living wage” advocates in Canada shocked and dismayed.
Employees at nearly a dozen Tim Hortons outlets across Ontario tell CBC News they are facing the loss of paid breaks, benefits, and perks by franchise owners citing Ontario’s minimum wage increase.
The cuts go beyond the iconic coffee chain, with minimum wage workers at other businesses being told they’re also going to take a hit as a result of the hike.
Sources tell CBC News Tims franchise owners are taking similar action in Leamington and Port Hope and at multiple locations in the Cobourg area.
One family that owns six franchises in Durham Region, east of Toronto, is cutting paid breaks at its locations because of what it calls a “massive” increase in labour costs. Ontario’s minimum wage rose to $14 an hour from $11.60 on Jan. 1, and it will go to $15 next year.
So the minimum wage was previously $11.60, which was already fairly generous when you consider that’s currently about $9.40 per hour in American dollars. (Plus the fact that everyone gets free healthcare under their socialized medicine scheme.) But it went up by $2.40 per hour overnight and will go up another buck next January. Places like Tim Hortons, along with other fast food outlets, restaurants and coffee shops, were taking a massive hit to their bottom line. And in such a competitive market space, they couldn’t just jack up all their prices by 20% and expect to keep their customer base.
One employer sent out a memo to their workers explaining it in simple terms. “Unfortunately when wages rise at such a fast pace we cannot raise our prices at the same rate to offset the costs and something has to give.”
The “something” in question was paid break time and other little bonuses they offered to attract workers. Other companies are figuring out how to do more with less, laying off workers or shifting some full-time employees to part-time status. In other words, if you’re lucky enough to still have a full-time job, you’ll be bringing home more money (albeit with fewer perks at work), which is great for you. But a lot of your minimum wage colleagues, rather than being lifted up by this change in the law are now finding themselves making even less or being out of a job entirely.
There’s one other area which won’t come as good news to minimum wage workers, and it’s once again something we’re already dealing with in the United States. Canadian employers knew these wage hikes were coming and many have been moving at lightning speed towards automation wherever possible. One report from October found that companies in Canada were on track to eliminate as many as 40% of minimum wage, low-skill jobs with robots over the coming two years.
A new report suggests the speed of technological advances has become so rapid that it’s outpacing the rate at which large Canadian businesses and government institutions can adapt, with the number of jobs threatened by automation ranging from 35 to 42 per cent.
The co-authored report, by Deloitte and the Human Resources Professionals Association, calls upon policy-makers and business leaders to prepare Canadian workers for the disruption that artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies are having on the economy.
This is just the free market in action. As long as human labor remains significantly cheaper than automated alternatives, many companies will be loathe to make the significant investments required to automate. But as soon as labor costs exceed a certain breaking point it simply makes more sense to replace workers with machines and internet applications which work 24/7 at a fixed cost without ever getting sick, needing a vacation or demanding benefits.
But hey… you got your minimum wage hike. And at least some people will be able to enjoy it. Well done, I suppose.
Quote of the Times;
“Remember, they’re not making a big deal about sexual assault in Hollywood because they found out about it. They’re making a big deal because you found out about it.” - Glenn Reynolds
Link of the Times;
https://ijr.com/2016/24/455643-cafe-owner-tells-vegans-theyre-banned-store-things-get-really-hand/?utm_campaign=Sharing&utm_content=post-footer&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook
A young, sexy, beautiful girl.
Suddenly, she faints inside your truck and
you take her to the hospital.
Now that's stressful.
But at the hospital, they say she is pregnant and
congratulate you that you're going to be a father.
You say that you are not the father, but the girl says you are.
This is getting very stressful!
You request a DNA test to prove that you are not the father.
After the tests are completed,
The doctor says the test shows you're infertile,
And probably have been since birth.
You're extremely stressed but relieved.
On your way back home, you think about your 5 kids at home...
Not that's stressful!
*.*
John was talking to his fiancée, Rebecca, and he said, "Be honest, now, baby. How am I as a lover?"
To which she replied, "Honey, I would definitely say that you're warm."
"Really?" he asked excitedly.
"Yes, in fact I would say that you're the dictionary definition of the word warm."
John was pleased until he went home and, just for fun, checked his dictionary and found, "Warm: Not so hot."
*.*
A man met a beautiful blonde lady and decided he wanted to marry her right away.
She said, "But we don't know anything about each other."
He said, "That's all right, we'll learn about each other as we go along."
So she consented, they were married, and off they went on a honeymoon at a very nice resort. One morning they were lying by the pool, when he got up off of his towel, climbed up to the 10 meter board and did a two and a half tuck, followed by three rotations in the pike position, at which point he straightened out and cut the water like a knife. After a few more demonstrations, he came back and lay down on the towel.
She said, "That was incredible!"
He said, "I used to be an Olympic diving champion. You see, I told you we'd learn more about each other as we went along."
So she got up, jumped in the pool and started doing lengths. After 75 lengths she climbed out of the pool, lay down on her towel, and was hardly out of breath.
He said, "That was incredible! Were you an Olympic endurance swimmer?"
"No," she said, "I was a prostitute in Memphis but I worked both sides of the Mississippi."
*.*
Q: What's the worst part about getting a lung transplant?
A: The first couple of times you cough, it’s not your phlegm.
*.*
President Reagan’s best communist joke:
…you know there is a ten year delay in the Soviet Union for the delivery of an automobile. And only one out of seven families in the Soviet Union own automobiles. There is a 10 year wait, and you go through quite a process when you are ready to buy, and then you put up the money in advance.
This man laid down the money, and the fellow in charge said to him: Come back in 10 years and get your car.
The man answered: Morning or afternoon?
And the fellow behind the counter said: Ten years from now, what difference does it make?
And he said: Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.
Issue of the Times;
Canadians Shocked When Minimum Wage Hike Negatively Impacts Workers by Jazz Shaw
The Fight for 15 crowd is having more success in the Great White North than they’ve seen across much of the United States lately, with Ontario being the latest province to massively increase their minimum wage. What could possibly go wrong?
As we’ve already seen repeatedly on our side of the border, quite a bit, actually. And as soon as the new mandatory minimum went into effect on January 1st, big employers of largely unskilled, lower wage workers responded in the only way available to them. They began cutting costs, starting with perks and benefits, but also reducing hours and even laying off workers. This left many “living wage” advocates in Canada shocked and dismayed.
Employees at nearly a dozen Tim Hortons outlets across Ontario tell CBC News they are facing the loss of paid breaks, benefits, and perks by franchise owners citing Ontario’s minimum wage increase.
The cuts go beyond the iconic coffee chain, with minimum wage workers at other businesses being told they’re also going to take a hit as a result of the hike.
Sources tell CBC News Tims franchise owners are taking similar action in Leamington and Port Hope and at multiple locations in the Cobourg area.
One family that owns six franchises in Durham Region, east of Toronto, is cutting paid breaks at its locations because of what it calls a “massive” increase in labour costs. Ontario’s minimum wage rose to $14 an hour from $11.60 on Jan. 1, and it will go to $15 next year.
So the minimum wage was previously $11.60, which was already fairly generous when you consider that’s currently about $9.40 per hour in American dollars. (Plus the fact that everyone gets free healthcare under their socialized medicine scheme.) But it went up by $2.40 per hour overnight and will go up another buck next January. Places like Tim Hortons, along with other fast food outlets, restaurants and coffee shops, were taking a massive hit to their bottom line. And in such a competitive market space, they couldn’t just jack up all their prices by 20% and expect to keep their customer base.
One employer sent out a memo to their workers explaining it in simple terms. “Unfortunately when wages rise at such a fast pace we cannot raise our prices at the same rate to offset the costs and something has to give.”
The “something” in question was paid break time and other little bonuses they offered to attract workers. Other companies are figuring out how to do more with less, laying off workers or shifting some full-time employees to part-time status. In other words, if you’re lucky enough to still have a full-time job, you’ll be bringing home more money (albeit with fewer perks at work), which is great for you. But a lot of your minimum wage colleagues, rather than being lifted up by this change in the law are now finding themselves making even less or being out of a job entirely.
There’s one other area which won’t come as good news to minimum wage workers, and it’s once again something we’re already dealing with in the United States. Canadian employers knew these wage hikes were coming and many have been moving at lightning speed towards automation wherever possible. One report from October found that companies in Canada were on track to eliminate as many as 40% of minimum wage, low-skill jobs with robots over the coming two years.
A new report suggests the speed of technological advances has become so rapid that it’s outpacing the rate at which large Canadian businesses and government institutions can adapt, with the number of jobs threatened by automation ranging from 35 to 42 per cent.
The co-authored report, by Deloitte and the Human Resources Professionals Association, calls upon policy-makers and business leaders to prepare Canadian workers for the disruption that artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies are having on the economy.
This is just the free market in action. As long as human labor remains significantly cheaper than automated alternatives, many companies will be loathe to make the significant investments required to automate. But as soon as labor costs exceed a certain breaking point it simply makes more sense to replace workers with machines and internet applications which work 24/7 at a fixed cost without ever getting sick, needing a vacation or demanding benefits.
But hey… you got your minimum wage hike. And at least some people will be able to enjoy it. Well done, I suppose.
Quote of the Times;
“Remember, they’re not making a big deal about sexual assault in Hollywood because they found out about it. They’re making a big deal because you found out about it.” - Glenn Reynolds
Link of the Times;
https://ijr.com/2016/24/455643-cafe-owner-tells-vegans-theyre-banned-store-things-get-really-hand/?utm_campaign=Sharing&utm_content=post-footer&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook
Look?
A gorgeous woman gets into a taxi. She says, "To the airport, please."
After a few minutes, the taxi driver, watching the woman in the mirror, says, "You're third pregnant woman I've driven to the airport today."
She woman, indignant, says, "You must be kidding. I'm not pregnant."
The taxi driver says, "Well, you haven't arrived to the airport yet, either."
*.*
A couple was driving down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the wife asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"
"Yep," the husband replied, "in-laws."
*.*
Afghan policeman promoted after multiple sexual assault allegations
KABUL — Afghan National Police Col. Adeeb Safi was promoted to the rank of major general after receiving multiple sexual assault allegations, sources confirmed today.
Reports that Safi had sexually assaulted subordinates and young boys for the past 15 years came to light earlier this week, according to defense officials. After one victim went public, many others were empowered to share their stories of the horrific assaults Safi had inflicted.
“Safi has long acted as a corrupt warlord, giving drug smugglers and the Taliban free reign over his province. He made a lot of money allowing anarchy to flourish,” said Afghan Interior Minister Wais Barmak. “I considered him an outstanding police officer, and today’s news proves he has what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of the Afghan National Police force.”
The veteran officer was promoted “for his outstanding dedication to sexual assaulting the most vulnerable among the Afghan population,” according to his certificate of achievement.
Safi celebrated his promotion by adding more trinkets to his police car and defecating by the side of the road.
“It’s good to see my hard work finally get recognized,” Safi said. “I’ve spent a lot of time performing summary executions and forcing women to get raped, you know, upholding the law. At the same time I was going the extra mile to rape boys and young men. So glad my efforts are finally coming into the light.”
*.*
Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost three hundred times in a single year.
That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired.
He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position.
Hopkins wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me."
*.*
When I was going through puberty, I learned the meaning of the word "nymphomaniac."
I remember thinking to myself, "Well they have a name for it, I guess that means I'm not the first."
Issue of the Times;
Why Liberals Need to Look Down on Conservatives by Selwyn Duke
A common theme among progressives is that conservatives aren't just wrong; they're dumb. Reagan was dumb. G.W. Bush was dumb. Trump is dumb. "Knuckle-dragger," "mouth-breather," "stupid," and "uncultured" are typical pejoratives hurled at conservatives, who apparently tend to live in trailer parks, require dental care, handle snakes, and marry first cousins. Why, I had a liberal actor (excuse the redundancy) tell me once that I wasn't necessarily bad, just not as "evolved" as he was.
The reason for this arrogance isn't as simple as many may think. Rather, it relates to a deep psychological phenomenon that makes it difficult for those afflicted to evolve out of the leftist primordial soup.
I'll introduce this with a story. Many years ago, I was at an affair attended by a very chauvinistic, left-wing Greek fellow who would expound upon the superiority of Greek culture while at times demeaning the U.S. He was like the father character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only with an anti-American twist. Desiring to take him down a peg and do a little face-to-face trolling, I finally said with a smirk, "If all that's true, why is Greece now like a third-world country?" (For those offended, know that I have great respect for ancient Greek accomplishments, just love moussaka, and have the physique of a Spartan hoplite.)
Well, I exaggerate not when saying he turned red and, with veins popping out in his neck, exclaimed, "Don't say that! Don't say that!" It was the kind of situation where you get the feeling the guy might take a swing at you.
His intense reaction wasn't hard to explain. His self-esteem, his self-image, was wholly dependent upon the idea that he was a member of an elite, a superior group, with which he identified so closely that there was little to no separation in his mind between it and him. This was something deeply ingrained, part of the fabric of his being. Thus, any challenge to this idea struck directly at an intractable self-image, threatening to upset his ego's world order, which had him, through group association, at its very pinnacle.
This phenomenon is common. It's often exhibited by those considering themselves part of a "master race" or any kind of special group. It can be comforting: a person may not be accomplished, intelligent, or gifted and might otherwise feel inadequate. But his group association saves his psyche's day, for whatever he is or isn't, at least he's not like those other people, those untouchables.
Remember that at issue here isn't a mere intellectual appreciation. For example, I truly believe that Western culture (which did originate with ancient Greece, mind you) is superior to all others. Yet I derive no self-esteem from being a "Westerner"; it's just not part of who I am. Rather, the phenomenon in question here is a deeply emotional one.
For this reason, it's wholly resistant to intellectual appeals. You can't logically talk someone out of something irrational on which his self-worth is based. In fact, if it begins to dawn on such a person that his notions of superiority – and hence his self-image – rest on a lie, it will be intensely painful and depressing. The individual will thus have a strong incentive to rationalize away this realization.
I don't claim that every single leftist derives his self-esteem from the notion that he's part of a superior group called "liberals," nor does this phenomenon completely explain leftist resistance to reason. But it is common among devoted liberals, and it's part of why, as a group, they can't give traditionalist views a fair hearing. Doing so doesn't just threaten their ideology; it threatens who they are, their entire self-image. Any argument that may give them even an inkling that they're wrong can induce a bit of panic and is thus quickly rationalized away – often as the rambling of uneducated, un-evolved mouth-breathers who just don't know any better.
This phenomenon is exacerbated by two related factors. First, liberals are generally dysfunctional, vice-ridden people who embrace what we call liberalism because its underlying relativism and nihilism help them justify their sins. (They become the arbiters of their own "values." "Everything is gray, a matter of perspective. I have my own 'truth.'") Simultaneously, liberalism allows these virtue-bereft people to virtue-signal by paying homage to the day's fashionable values. In other words, liberals are generally morally "unaccomplished" people who often have nothing to cling to but the illusion of intellectual, and often moral, superiority.
(As to the left's actual moral inferiority, I urge you to read the excellent 2008 piece "Don't listen to the liberals – Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.")
Second, conservatives are more likely to have authentic faith, while liberals tend be to avowed or de facto atheists, which is why church attendance is one of the best predictors of voting patterns. This has an effect. Theists may, and I hope will, recognize moral differences among people and groups; any tendency to become haughty, however, is often tempered by a divine injunction prescribing humility and the knowledge that we're all sinners, part of a fallen race. Love for others is also demanded. Atheism involves no such requirements; in fact, its correlative moral relativism or nihilism (explained here) makes "if it feels good, do it" the ultimate guide for behavior. Moreover, unable to look up at divine perfection, and with the individual becoming his own source of (pseudo-) "morality," the self is often exalted, the ego deified. As with a pharaoh believing he's a god on Earth, it then becomes easy to look down on others.
Just as liberalism is defined not by an unchanging set of doctrines, but by opposition to conservatism and what it defends – the status quo – godless liberals can judge themselves only relative to other people. And being moral train wrecks, they can't really be happy. But hey, whatever they may or mayn't be, Mr. Conservative, at least they're not you. And that's one status quo they're dead set on maintaining.
SelwynDuke.com
Quote of the Times;
“You want to know who is enslaved in society, look at who’s not allowed to get angry.”
Link of the Times;
http://www.wnd.com/2017/06/true-goal-of-socialism-from-the-horses-mouth/
After a few minutes, the taxi driver, watching the woman in the mirror, says, "You're third pregnant woman I've driven to the airport today."
She woman, indignant, says, "You must be kidding. I'm not pregnant."
The taxi driver says, "Well, you haven't arrived to the airport yet, either."
*.*
A couple was driving down a country road for several miles, not saying a word.
An earlier discussion had led to an argument and neither of them wanted to concede their position.
As they passed a barnyard of mules, goats, and pigs, the wife asked sarcastically, "Relatives of yours?"
"Yep," the husband replied, "in-laws."
*.*
Afghan policeman promoted after multiple sexual assault allegations
KABUL — Afghan National Police Col. Adeeb Safi was promoted to the rank of major general after receiving multiple sexual assault allegations, sources confirmed today.
Reports that Safi had sexually assaulted subordinates and young boys for the past 15 years came to light earlier this week, according to defense officials. After one victim went public, many others were empowered to share their stories of the horrific assaults Safi had inflicted.
“Safi has long acted as a corrupt warlord, giving drug smugglers and the Taliban free reign over his province. He made a lot of money allowing anarchy to flourish,” said Afghan Interior Minister Wais Barmak. “I considered him an outstanding police officer, and today’s news proves he has what it takes to succeed at the highest levels of the Afghan National Police force.”
The veteran officer was promoted “for his outstanding dedication to sexual assaulting the most vulnerable among the Afghan population,” according to his certificate of achievement.
Safi celebrated his promotion by adding more trinkets to his police car and defecating by the side of the road.
“It’s good to see my hard work finally get recognized,” Safi said. “I’ve spent a lot of time performing summary executions and forcing women to get raped, you know, upholding the law. At the same time I was going the extra mile to rape boys and young men. So glad my efforts are finally coming into the light.”
*.*
Although he was a qualified meteorologist, Hopkins ran up a terrible record of forecasting for the TV news program. He became something of a local joke when a newspaper began keeping a record of his predictions and showed that he'd been wrong almost three hundred times in a single year.
That kind of notoriety was enough to get him fired.
He moved to another part of the country and applied for a similar job. One blank on the job application called for the reason for leaving his previous position.
Hopkins wrote, "The climate didn't agree with me."
*.*
When I was going through puberty, I learned the meaning of the word "nymphomaniac."
I remember thinking to myself, "Well they have a name for it, I guess that means I'm not the first."
Issue of the Times;
Why Liberals Need to Look Down on Conservatives by Selwyn Duke
A common theme among progressives is that conservatives aren't just wrong; they're dumb. Reagan was dumb. G.W. Bush was dumb. Trump is dumb. "Knuckle-dragger," "mouth-breather," "stupid," and "uncultured" are typical pejoratives hurled at conservatives, who apparently tend to live in trailer parks, require dental care, handle snakes, and marry first cousins. Why, I had a liberal actor (excuse the redundancy) tell me once that I wasn't necessarily bad, just not as "evolved" as he was.
The reason for this arrogance isn't as simple as many may think. Rather, it relates to a deep psychological phenomenon that makes it difficult for those afflicted to evolve out of the leftist primordial soup.
I'll introduce this with a story. Many years ago, I was at an affair attended by a very chauvinistic, left-wing Greek fellow who would expound upon the superiority of Greek culture while at times demeaning the U.S. He was like the father character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only with an anti-American twist. Desiring to take him down a peg and do a little face-to-face trolling, I finally said with a smirk, "If all that's true, why is Greece now like a third-world country?" (For those offended, know that I have great respect for ancient Greek accomplishments, just love moussaka, and have the physique of a Spartan hoplite.)
Well, I exaggerate not when saying he turned red and, with veins popping out in his neck, exclaimed, "Don't say that! Don't say that!" It was the kind of situation where you get the feeling the guy might take a swing at you.
His intense reaction wasn't hard to explain. His self-esteem, his self-image, was wholly dependent upon the idea that he was a member of an elite, a superior group, with which he identified so closely that there was little to no separation in his mind between it and him. This was something deeply ingrained, part of the fabric of his being. Thus, any challenge to this idea struck directly at an intractable self-image, threatening to upset his ego's world order, which had him, through group association, at its very pinnacle.
This phenomenon is common. It's often exhibited by those considering themselves part of a "master race" or any kind of special group. It can be comforting: a person may not be accomplished, intelligent, or gifted and might otherwise feel inadequate. But his group association saves his psyche's day, for whatever he is or isn't, at least he's not like those other people, those untouchables.
Remember that at issue here isn't a mere intellectual appreciation. For example, I truly believe that Western culture (which did originate with ancient Greece, mind you) is superior to all others. Yet I derive no self-esteem from being a "Westerner"; it's just not part of who I am. Rather, the phenomenon in question here is a deeply emotional one.
For this reason, it's wholly resistant to intellectual appeals. You can't logically talk someone out of something irrational on which his self-worth is based. In fact, if it begins to dawn on such a person that his notions of superiority – and hence his self-image – rest on a lie, it will be intensely painful and depressing. The individual will thus have a strong incentive to rationalize away this realization.
I don't claim that every single leftist derives his self-esteem from the notion that he's part of a superior group called "liberals," nor does this phenomenon completely explain leftist resistance to reason. But it is common among devoted liberals, and it's part of why, as a group, they can't give traditionalist views a fair hearing. Doing so doesn't just threaten their ideology; it threatens who they are, their entire self-image. Any argument that may give them even an inkling that they're wrong can induce a bit of panic and is thus quickly rationalized away – often as the rambling of uneducated, un-evolved mouth-breathers who just don't know any better.
This phenomenon is exacerbated by two related factors. First, liberals are generally dysfunctional, vice-ridden people who embrace what we call liberalism because its underlying relativism and nihilism help them justify their sins. (They become the arbiters of their own "values." "Everything is gray, a matter of perspective. I have my own 'truth.'") Simultaneously, liberalism allows these virtue-bereft people to virtue-signal by paying homage to the day's fashionable values. In other words, liberals are generally morally "unaccomplished" people who often have nothing to cling to but the illusion of intellectual, and often moral, superiority.
(As to the left's actual moral inferiority, I urge you to read the excellent 2008 piece "Don't listen to the liberals – Right-wingers really are nicer people, latest research shows.")
Second, conservatives are more likely to have authentic faith, while liberals tend be to avowed or de facto atheists, which is why church attendance is one of the best predictors of voting patterns. This has an effect. Theists may, and I hope will, recognize moral differences among people and groups; any tendency to become haughty, however, is often tempered by a divine injunction prescribing humility and the knowledge that we're all sinners, part of a fallen race. Love for others is also demanded. Atheism involves no such requirements; in fact, its correlative moral relativism or nihilism (explained here) makes "if it feels good, do it" the ultimate guide for behavior. Moreover, unable to look up at divine perfection, and with the individual becoming his own source of (pseudo-) "morality," the self is often exalted, the ego deified. As with a pharaoh believing he's a god on Earth, it then becomes easy to look down on others.
Just as liberalism is defined not by an unchanging set of doctrines, but by opposition to conservatism and what it defends – the status quo – godless liberals can judge themselves only relative to other people. And being moral train wrecks, they can't really be happy. But hey, whatever they may or mayn't be, Mr. Conservative, at least they're not you. And that's one status quo they're dead set on maintaining.
SelwynDuke.com
Quote of the Times;
“You want to know who is enslaved in society, look at who’s not allowed to get angry.”
Link of the Times;
http://www.wnd.com/2017/06/true-goal-of-socialism-from-the-horses-mouth/
Root?
After intravenously injecting the chocolatey,
peanut-buttery substance that had been marinating
for a week in a mixture of vinegar, rubbing
alcohol and sea salt, I was sick for days.
Apparently, there IS a wrong way to eat a Reese's.
*.*
Senior Trying to set a Password
WINDOWS: Please enter your new password.
USER: cabbage
WINDOWS:
Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.
USER: boiled cabbage
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.
USER: 1 boiled cabbage
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.
USER: 50fuckingboiledcabbages
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper case character.
USER: 50FUCKINGboiledcabbages
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper case character consecutively.
USER: 50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon'tGiveMeAccessNow!
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USER: ReallyPissedOff50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow
WINDOWS: Sorry, that password is already in use.
*.*
The Most Statistically Terrifying Days On the Calendar
The One Day Each Year Everyone Drives to and from Work Shitfaced
Two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin invented daylight savings time when his after dinner orgies grew too large to successfully navigate in the dark. These days, the lost hour of sleep is big news in the world of the Cathy comic strip, but it doesn't really faze the rest of us. Right?
Actually, that single lost hour of sleep knows 50 different ways to kill a man with its bare goddamn hands. Thanks to the 20th century's invention of "stuff to do," Americans today average an hour and a half less sleep than we did a hundred years ago. In fact, we're so sleep deprived that Transportation Officials can pretty much set their watch to a statistical spike in fatal car accidents the Monday following the spring forward.
You're basically drunk all day, and contrary to what your body and Cathy might tell you, you're not fine after the morning coffee. There's also "a significant increase in traffic fatalities in the latter half of the day" when people are driving home from work. In case you're bad at geometry, that also means you're also as good as drunk at work. A study of West Virginia coal miners found they were more likely to suffer "a serious work related accident" the week after the clock shift. There's even bad news for the small portion of our readership who aren't West Virginia coal miners. The "Spring forward" has been blamed for $31 billion in losses on Wall Street thanks to sleep deprived traders. You know, it might be time to switch to a less adorable mnemonic device for remembering Daylight Savings.
July 1st Effect
Every July 1st, hospitals across America are flooded with the newest batch of medical interns. Think the first episode of Scrubs, with JD's snappy internal monologues replaced by the phrase "Oh shit" on a continuous loop. According to a Harvard study, the medical industry's throw 'em to the wolves all at the same exact time approach to teaching results in "1,500 to 2,750 additional deaths" each July.
Before you start berating any doctor who doesn't look sufficiently dead in the eyes, that's actually the worst possible thing for you to do. There's a lot of paperwork required to get you from the emergency room to the cardiologist who knows why your heart appears to have the hiccups. Interns are well supervised, they just take longer to process paperwork, and perform other tasks. This means you spend more time in the hospital, which it turns out is just about the worst place to be provided you don't want to die.
Anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year because of something they caught in the hospital, which is more than either motor vehicle crashes or breast cancer. By slowing things down, the new batch of interns ensure you get exposed to more "real" doctors whose hands, or more likely neckties, could be carrying some illness you can't pronounce from the wing where they keep people with the really scary shit.
Christmas Doesn't Make You Want to Kill Yourself, Is Happy To Do the Job Itself
First of all, suicide rates do not spike around Christmas, contrary to what our collective unconscious apparently wants to believe. But while the holidays don't sap our will to live, Christmas day is better than any other at murdering us. Between 1973 and 2001, Christmas Day netted 53 million deaths, making it the #1 killer on the calendar. And when you look at its weapons of choice, it's almost as though the entire tradition was intentionally calibrated to snuff you out with a quiet efficiency.
Picture a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas morning. Family around a crackling fireplace, including Grandma and all the relatives. Mom fixes dad an egg nog while preparing the Christmas ham, just two of the many "traditional holiday foods" known outside of December as "the worst things you can put in your body that aren't a live hand grenade." You've got the Christmas presents under the tree that Dad spent all night putting together, and that Mom spent the past month freaking out about buying.
It's stress on top of stress, and that along with exhaustion is a great way to kill your heart. (By the way, you're also 11 percent more likely to die of a heart attack the Monday after the Spring Forward. Sorry, forgot to mention that).
Which brings us to the crackling fire, or as your heart calls it, "my chance to test drive the body of a pack a day smoker." According to a 1999 report on what cardiologists call the "holiday effect" (because "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was already taken by that 80s horror film) even "pollutants from wood-burning fireplaces trigger cardiovascular irregularities."
So according to science, you might be the only thing in your living room that's not trying to kill you this Christmas. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the mythical holiday depression after all. The most skillful murderers always make it look like a suicide.
Bad Days For Drunk and Sober Walking
Let's say you're having a New Year's party, and your friend who never got the hang of the whole "adulthood" thing has had one too many. As you see him staggering toward the door holding whichever dinner utensils he presently believes are the keys to his car, you're faced with a dilemma: Do you remind him that he left his keys in the kitchen when he was peeing in your stove?
This is where the echo chamber of news reports and 80s PSAs inside your head should be taking over, reminding you that drunk driving is the most dangerous thing you can do, especially on days like New Year's and the Fourth of July. Plus, he only lives a few blocks away, so you stay quiet, figuring the worst case scenario is someone bumps into him on the way home and gets peed on a little bit.
New Year's Eve is also the #1 day of the year for drunk walking deaths and according to economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, "Doing the math, you find that on a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver." In your friend's head, the empty 30 pack he's wearing as a helmet and the jock strap you convinced him wasn't on backwards provide all the protection he needs. But compared with the 3,000 pounds of speeding metal drunk drivers have wrapped around their body, your friend is at what's known in the world of splatter forensics as a strategic disadvantage.
Even when you take into account all the people drunk drivers plow into, Dunbar and Levitt say that "walking drunk leads to five times as many deaths per mile." This of course isn't to encourage drunk driving. Just to say that whether drunk or sober, there are certain times when walking is way more dangerous than you'd expect.
For instance, jogging, walking and any other show-offy habit that involves propelling oneself over land on foot is 350 percent more likely to get you killed during the first week of November, thanks to the fall-back half of daylight savings time. While the alarm on the joggers' stop watch tells them it's time to put on their ridiculous short shorts and hit the road at the usual time, the weekend shift means normal people are driving home from work in darker conditions than they're accustomed to. And let's face it, joggers, they're looking for any excuse.
Best Day to Make a Decision You'll Regret
Our ancestors probably had mating seasons just like the rest of the animals that they were trying to out breed. In an attempt to get a glimpse of what that might have looked like, researchers at Brown University studied rural African birth patterns and found "a tendency to have babies ... in the dry season after the harvest was complete." A 1987 Japanese study found what it considered a basic rhythm of human reproduction that peaks with a surge in Spring birthdays.
Births in the United States begin rising in August and September and peak on October 5th, the most popular birthday in America. Not only is this a bad time in relation to the harvest, our birth rate dips exactly when births in Japan and Europe are peaking.
According to D.T. Arcieri, a biologist at Farmingdale State University in New York, the answer is simple: "The average pregnancy lasts 274 days. Oct. 5 ... is about 274 days from New Year's Eve, the day millions of Americans are celebrating with alcohol."
So America's annual birth pattern went from being governed by concerns such as "availability of food" and "ability to help with the harvest" to considerations such as, "C'mon girl," and "It's not my fault, you were moving around too much." Congratulations October babies!
The Day After Valentine's, Mother's Day
There's an even crueler chaser to the holidays that are actually supposed to celebrate the before and after of the baby making equation: Valentine's and Mother's Day. What men refer to as holidays invented by the greeting card companies, women prefer to call, "the day I decide to start fucking other dudes."
Ashley Madison, the dating site for married people, typically sees 2,500 to 3,000 women sign up on an average Monday. On the day after Mother's Day last year, the site saw 31,427 new sign-ups.
According to the site's founder Noel Biderman , "Moms have high hopes that they'll be recognized on Mother's Day and often the breakfast in bed, flowers and massage never happens. Their disappointment drives them to consider other options." He stopped short of saying, "That's where I come in!" while making a thrusting motion with his hips.
If your wife was one of the 31,427 women who signed up to Ashley Madison, don't worry, there are other fish in the sea. As Biderman, the guy who made money off of destroying your family put it, "As a husband and father, I personally look forward to Mother's Day." Yes, there's a Mrs. Biderman. And we hear her husband is just super busy around Valentine's and Mother's Day.
The Worst Days Of The Year to Be Born
Did you know your birthday can screw your life? Intelligent people generally agree that the alignment of the stars when you were born is approximately as important as what was on PBS at the time. But just because astrology is complete bullshit doesn't mean your birthday isn't plotting new, and creative ways to screw you.
Americans get a small taste of this in baseball. If your birthday is in late July, every time you struck out in Little League, it turns out you should have been the one throwing empty Budweisers at your dad. That's because the age cutoff for Little League is July 31st, meaning kids with August 1st birthdays were actually a year older you, meaning he porked you into existence at the worst time possible for your baseball career. And if you think that's a minor disadvantage, you should know that a July birthday makes you 50 percent less likely to make the Major Leagues.
This starts to make sense when think about how we figure out what we're good at. It's pretty much all guess and check. You try something out. If you like it, you keep trying it. If you suck at it, you dodge empty beer cans and move on to something else.
Where it starts to get downright terrifying in in places like Australia, Norway and the UK where the school system is run with the precision that Americans reserve for children throwing a ball around in the dirt. In those countries, a child born on the wrong side of their grade's cutoff day will be at a significant disadvantage in reading at age 16, less likely to get good grades and less likely to be university-bound. All because they have the wrong birthday.
The Worst Days of the Year to Order "The Special"
When we go to a restaurant, most of us don't like to think about where the food is coming from. That's the point. You're putting the trust in the hands of a professional just like when you board a plane. Only commercial aircrafts aren't 35 percent more likely to crash during the summer, nor are pilots more likely to risk your life on Mondays--both chances you're taking every time you go out to eat on a Monday in the summer.
The 35 percent increase in food poisoning comes from the fact that microscopic organisms like warm climates just as much as we do. This is of course why most of us have refrigerators, and the meat and fish you buy at grocery stores spend most of their journey to your plate frozen solid. But restaurants are more likely to get meat and fish that hasn't been frozen from butchers and fish markets, to ensure the food tastes better. In his 2000 memoir about his time as the executive chef at some of New York's top restaurants, Anthony Bourdain describes the fish market where most Manhattan restaurants get their seafood.
And the problem isn't just Discount Sushi. As much as we don't like to think about it, restaurants are a business with notoriously thin margins. The ability to stay open can come down to how a restaurant does in a single weekend, when people are more likely to eat out. The problem is that most food providers don't deliver on the weekend, meaning a restaurant has to over estimate how much food to buy, or risk running out.
This brings us to Mondays in the summer, when the chef has a fridge full of days old fish and meat. Thanks to the hot weather, most of it was a risky proposition when it arrived in the kitchen. But if he throws it out, he risks not having a job the following Monday. So according to Bourdain, what happens instead is the chef creates a "special" dish designed to unload the ingredients that are starting to smell funny. That special dish gets printed up, inserted into the menu. Hell, the waiter even offers to "tell you about the specials," presumably because they don't feel quite as bad about poisoning people who need to have the menu read to them.
The Worst Days of the Week to Be Alive (Apparently)
Suicide is a big deal, and most of us assume that the people who kill themselves recognize this fact. It's the most important decision you make in life other than who to marry and what your high school yearbook quote is.
So what day could possibly make us almost twice as likely to kill ourselves than any other?
Not Christmas. Not the day after taxes are due. Wednesday.
What the hell is so bad about Wednesday? It's far away from the weekend, sure. And it's pretty annoying when the lady from work calls it hump day. But it's not put-a-gun-in-your-mouth annoying. She's a woman, and she's using the word hump in a sentence.
Actually, the best explanation researchers were able to come up with for the spike boils down to: The weekend is far away on both sides, and works got you down. In fact, there's no shortage of statistics showing that many suicides are less the result of a profound philosophical problem and more a temporary fart of the soul that would have passed if they'd just given it a night or two to air out.
Take the British coal-gas story, famous among suicide experts (whose children tend not to invite them to career day). For the first half of the 20th century, the preferred method of suicide in Britain was "sticking ones head in the oven," where the coal gas delivered a swift, fatal dose of CO2. When the British government transitioned to a more efficient fuel that, as a happy coincidence, couldn't kill you, the suicide rate for the entire country dropped by a third, and has stayed there ever since.
A similar thing happened in the state of Washington, where statewide jumping suicides were cut in half by raising the guard rails on one bridge. At the Golden Gate Bridge, the world's most popular suicide destination, 515 people were grabbed by cops mid suicide attempt between the years of 1937 and 1971. A researcher in the late 70s tracked these troubled souls down, and found that only six percent went on to kill themselves.
This isn't to deny that there are people in the world who have profoundly difficult problems. It just indicates that for 94 percent, ceasing to exist only seems worth it for a remarkably brief window of time. So whatever day of the week it is, if you're thinking of doing something drastic, it's probably a temporary trick of the mind. Sleep on it. If you still feel like jumping off a bridge in the morning, maybe give it until the holidays. Christmas will be happy to do the job for you.
*.*
‘Sorry aboot that, eh’ — Canadian sniper apologizes after record-breaking kill shot
OTTAWA — A Canadian sniper apologized today after he was confirmed to have scored the longest lethal shot on record, according to sources.
The sniper, whose identity is being withheld for operational security reasons, said he was sorry both to the ISIS fighter he killed and to the former record-holder, British soldier Craig Harrison, whose record his 2.2-mile shot smashed by over 3,000 feet.
“Sorry aboot that, eh,” the sniper supposedly said as the .50 caliber round ripped through the insurgent’s thoracic cavity. “I thought that was a dern moose, friend.”
According to experts, Canadian standard operating procedure is to ask a target’s permission before ending his life, so as to maintain a spirit of good sportsmanship.
“We’re all aboot friendship and fair play up here in Canada, even if we’re just killing a bunch of hosers like ISIS,” said Canadian military spokesman Mick Robinson. “All the famous Canadians that everyone’s heard of like Frank Boucher and Jack Bionda would tell you the same, buddy.”
After hiding out in full-body denim ghillie suits for days, the sniper team allegedly returned to their base where they celebrated with a “specially prepared dinner of maple syrup, Tim Horton’s doughnuts, Molson Ice, and poutine for the Québécois comm. guy.”
Robinson says this shot will “stand right up there with Gretzky’s hat trick against Calgary in ’88” as one of the greatest moments in Canadian history.
“I’d say that was aboot as accurate as a Gordie Howe slapshot, eh,” said Robinson while sitting in a refrigerator and sharpening his ice skates. “I don’t even know what a 2.2 miles is, but I’m scared to look it up.”
“You happen to catch the score of the curling match?”
*.*
A Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim and a Jew were in a discussion
during a dinner.
Catholic: "I have a large fortune....I am going to buy Citibank!"
Protestant: "I am very wealthy and will buy General Motors!"
Muslim: "I am a fabulously rich prince.... I intend to purchase
Microsoft!"
They then all wait for the Jew to speak....
The Jew stirs his coffee, places the spoon neatly on the table, takes a sip of his coffee, looks at them and casually says:
"I'm not selling."
Issue of the Times;
Bad Philosophy by Roger Scruton
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it is fitting to ask whether we have learned what it tells us about its ideological root. Do we now appreciate that the Marxist ideology destroys legal order, political opposition and human rights? Do we have some idea of the death toll that has in every case followed the triumph of the ‘vanguard party’? Do we have an inkling of the human cost of collectivisation, or of what the gulag meant in terms of the humiliation and destruction of its victims?
Of course the answer in each case is no. Our school curriculum dwells incessantly on the Holocaust. Several states have made denial of it into a crime, and museums and monuments to the victims of Nazism and fascism exist all across the continent. But communism’s millions of victims are remembered hardly at all. One standard history of modern times, widely used in our schools, praises the Russian Revolution as aiming at ‘the complete destruction of the Russian and European bourgeoisie’, necessary for ‘the victory of socialism’. This history (Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes) does not mention the abolition of the law courts, or the establishment of the Cheka (the secret police), or the vicious expropriations that destroyed the Russian economy, or the mass starvation inflicted on the Ukrainian peasants. It is inadmissible for a historian to write in any but disgusted terms of the Nazi destruction of the Jews; but the equally cruel ‘destruction of the bourgeoisie’ can be described in terms of unqualified approval.
The term ‘bourgeoisie’ is a technicality of the Marxist theory. But it has a real human reference, and that reference is you and me. We who own property, deal in markets, collect salaries, have spouses and children, and live by the ordinary day-to-day morality of neighbourliness, are the people whom Lenin set out to destroy. We are the targets of resentment, and Marxism is the theory of that resentment.
One thing we should surely learn from the Russian revolution is that resentment is always on the lookout for the theories that will justify it. And the lesson that bore in on me in vivid and unforgettable ways during my own journeys behind the Iron Curtain, is that resentment, when it finally takes power, spells the death of politics. The real purpose of politics is not to express resentment but to contain and conciliate it. When, in the wake of the Grenfell fire, leading political figures began calling for a ‘day of rage’, and for the requisitioning of bourgeois property, I heard again the voice of that old resentment. And I asked myself how could it be that the lesson has not been learned?
The problem is not a lack of literature. Invocations of communist terror abound, and include masterpieces that all educated people should know, such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. However, resentment easily overrides the evidence. Just as anti-Semitism has survived constant reminders of the Holocaust, so does the Marxist vision survive the accumulated testimony to its murderous legacy. Resentful people cherish their hatred more than they respect the rights of those who arouse it.
For this reason it is surely time to establish museums devoted to the Marxist legacy. We have a model, indeed, in the House of Terror, established in Budapest in 2002 under the directorship of Maria Schmidt. This commemorates the victims of both fascism and communism, and has been controversial for that very reason. Even in Hungary, leftist intellectuals tell us that the two evils cannot be compared, and that to commemorate their victims in a single museum is to deny their most important difference: that the aims of communism were good, those of fascism bad. It is precisely in order to counter that kind of apology that Maria Schmidt has turned the same light on both ideologies. The aim of both, she insists, was the same. What difference does it make that one focused its resentment on the Jews, the other on the bourgeoisie, when the primary aim was in both cases the mass murder of their victims? Or do we say, with Eric Hobs-bawm, that in the one case, but not in the other, the end justified the means?
As the Momentum movement seduces more and more people towards historical oblivion and utopian exultancy, the need for a programme of public education about these matters is ever more urgent. But I fear that it may be too late.
Quote of the Times;
"Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare."
Link of the Times;
http://www.funnyjunk.com/
peanut-buttery substance that had been marinating
for a week in a mixture of vinegar, rubbing
alcohol and sea salt, I was sick for days.
Apparently, there IS a wrong way to eat a Reese's.
*.*
Senior Trying to set a Password
WINDOWS: Please enter your new password.
USER: cabbage
WINDOWS:
Sorry, the password must be more than 8 characters.
USER: boiled cabbage
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain 1 numerical character.
USER: 1 boiled cabbage
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot have blank spaces.
USER: 50fuckingboiledcabbages
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password must contain at least one upper case character.
USER: 50FUCKINGboiledcabbages
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot use more than one upper case character consecutively.
USER: 50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDon'tGiveMeAccessNow!
WINDOWS: Sorry, the password cannot contain punctuation.
USER: ReallyPissedOff50FuckingBoiledCabbagesShovedUpYourAssIfYouDontGiveMeAccessNow
WINDOWS: Sorry, that password is already in use.
*.*
The Most Statistically Terrifying Days On the Calendar
The One Day Each Year Everyone Drives to and from Work Shitfaced
Two hundred years ago, Benjamin Franklin invented daylight savings time when his after dinner orgies grew too large to successfully navigate in the dark. These days, the lost hour of sleep is big news in the world of the Cathy comic strip, but it doesn't really faze the rest of us. Right?
Actually, that single lost hour of sleep knows 50 different ways to kill a man with its bare goddamn hands. Thanks to the 20th century's invention of "stuff to do," Americans today average an hour and a half less sleep than we did a hundred years ago. In fact, we're so sleep deprived that Transportation Officials can pretty much set their watch to a statistical spike in fatal car accidents the Monday following the spring forward.
You're basically drunk all day, and contrary to what your body and Cathy might tell you, you're not fine after the morning coffee. There's also "a significant increase in traffic fatalities in the latter half of the day" when people are driving home from work. In case you're bad at geometry, that also means you're also as good as drunk at work. A study of West Virginia coal miners found they were more likely to suffer "a serious work related accident" the week after the clock shift. There's even bad news for the small portion of our readership who aren't West Virginia coal miners. The "Spring forward" has been blamed for $31 billion in losses on Wall Street thanks to sleep deprived traders. You know, it might be time to switch to a less adorable mnemonic device for remembering Daylight Savings.
July 1st Effect
Every July 1st, hospitals across America are flooded with the newest batch of medical interns. Think the first episode of Scrubs, with JD's snappy internal monologues replaced by the phrase "Oh shit" on a continuous loop. According to a Harvard study, the medical industry's throw 'em to the wolves all at the same exact time approach to teaching results in "1,500 to 2,750 additional deaths" each July.
Before you start berating any doctor who doesn't look sufficiently dead in the eyes, that's actually the worst possible thing for you to do. There's a lot of paperwork required to get you from the emergency room to the cardiologist who knows why your heart appears to have the hiccups. Interns are well supervised, they just take longer to process paperwork, and perform other tasks. This means you spend more time in the hospital, which it turns out is just about the worst place to be provided you don't want to die.
Anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 Americans die each year because of something they caught in the hospital, which is more than either motor vehicle crashes or breast cancer. By slowing things down, the new batch of interns ensure you get exposed to more "real" doctors whose hands, or more likely neckties, could be carrying some illness you can't pronounce from the wing where they keep people with the really scary shit.
Christmas Doesn't Make You Want to Kill Yourself, Is Happy To Do the Job Itself
First of all, suicide rates do not spike around Christmas, contrary to what our collective unconscious apparently wants to believe. But while the holidays don't sap our will to live, Christmas day is better than any other at murdering us. Between 1973 and 2001, Christmas Day netted 53 million deaths, making it the #1 killer on the calendar. And when you look at its weapons of choice, it's almost as though the entire tradition was intentionally calibrated to snuff you out with a quiet efficiency.
Picture a perfect Norman Rockwell Christmas morning. Family around a crackling fireplace, including Grandma and all the relatives. Mom fixes dad an egg nog while preparing the Christmas ham, just two of the many "traditional holiday foods" known outside of December as "the worst things you can put in your body that aren't a live hand grenade." You've got the Christmas presents under the tree that Dad spent all night putting together, and that Mom spent the past month freaking out about buying.
It's stress on top of stress, and that along with exhaustion is a great way to kill your heart. (By the way, you're also 11 percent more likely to die of a heart attack the Monday after the Spring Forward. Sorry, forgot to mention that).
Which brings us to the crackling fire, or as your heart calls it, "my chance to test drive the body of a pack a day smoker." According to a 1999 report on what cardiologists call the "holiday effect" (because "Silent Night, Deadly Night" was already taken by that 80s horror film) even "pollutants from wood-burning fireplaces trigger cardiovascular irregularities."
So according to science, you might be the only thing in your living room that's not trying to kill you this Christmas. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised by the mythical holiday depression after all. The most skillful murderers always make it look like a suicide.
Bad Days For Drunk and Sober Walking
Let's say you're having a New Year's party, and your friend who never got the hang of the whole "adulthood" thing has had one too many. As you see him staggering toward the door holding whichever dinner utensils he presently believes are the keys to his car, you're faced with a dilemma: Do you remind him that he left his keys in the kitchen when he was peeing in your stove?
This is where the echo chamber of news reports and 80s PSAs inside your head should be taking over, reminding you that drunk driving is the most dangerous thing you can do, especially on days like New Year's and the Fourth of July. Plus, he only lives a few blocks away, so you stay quiet, figuring the worst case scenario is someone bumps into him on the way home and gets peed on a little bit.
New Year's Eve is also the #1 day of the year for drunk walking deaths and according to economist Steven D. Levitt and journalist Stephen J. Dubner, "Doing the math, you find that on a per-mile basis, a drunk walker is eight times more likely to get killed than a drunk driver." In your friend's head, the empty 30 pack he's wearing as a helmet and the jock strap you convinced him wasn't on backwards provide all the protection he needs. But compared with the 3,000 pounds of speeding metal drunk drivers have wrapped around their body, your friend is at what's known in the world of splatter forensics as a strategic disadvantage.
Even when you take into account all the people drunk drivers plow into, Dunbar and Levitt say that "walking drunk leads to five times as many deaths per mile." This of course isn't to encourage drunk driving. Just to say that whether drunk or sober, there are certain times when walking is way more dangerous than you'd expect.
For instance, jogging, walking and any other show-offy habit that involves propelling oneself over land on foot is 350 percent more likely to get you killed during the first week of November, thanks to the fall-back half of daylight savings time. While the alarm on the joggers' stop watch tells them it's time to put on their ridiculous short shorts and hit the road at the usual time, the weekend shift means normal people are driving home from work in darker conditions than they're accustomed to. And let's face it, joggers, they're looking for any excuse.
Best Day to Make a Decision You'll Regret
Our ancestors probably had mating seasons just like the rest of the animals that they were trying to out breed. In an attempt to get a glimpse of what that might have looked like, researchers at Brown University studied rural African birth patterns and found "a tendency to have babies ... in the dry season after the harvest was complete." A 1987 Japanese study found what it considered a basic rhythm of human reproduction that peaks with a surge in Spring birthdays.
Births in the United States begin rising in August and September and peak on October 5th, the most popular birthday in America. Not only is this a bad time in relation to the harvest, our birth rate dips exactly when births in Japan and Europe are peaking.
According to D.T. Arcieri, a biologist at Farmingdale State University in New York, the answer is simple: "The average pregnancy lasts 274 days. Oct. 5 ... is about 274 days from New Year's Eve, the day millions of Americans are celebrating with alcohol."
So America's annual birth pattern went from being governed by concerns such as "availability of food" and "ability to help with the harvest" to considerations such as, "C'mon girl," and "It's not my fault, you were moving around too much." Congratulations October babies!
The Day After Valentine's, Mother's Day
There's an even crueler chaser to the holidays that are actually supposed to celebrate the before and after of the baby making equation: Valentine's and Mother's Day. What men refer to as holidays invented by the greeting card companies, women prefer to call, "the day I decide to start fucking other dudes."
Ashley Madison, the dating site for married people, typically sees 2,500 to 3,000 women sign up on an average Monday. On the day after Mother's Day last year, the site saw 31,427 new sign-ups.
According to the site's founder Noel Biderman , "Moms have high hopes that they'll be recognized on Mother's Day and often the breakfast in bed, flowers and massage never happens. Their disappointment drives them to consider other options." He stopped short of saying, "That's where I come in!" while making a thrusting motion with his hips.
If your wife was one of the 31,427 women who signed up to Ashley Madison, don't worry, there are other fish in the sea. As Biderman, the guy who made money off of destroying your family put it, "As a husband and father, I personally look forward to Mother's Day." Yes, there's a Mrs. Biderman. And we hear her husband is just super busy around Valentine's and Mother's Day.
The Worst Days Of The Year to Be Born
Did you know your birthday can screw your life? Intelligent people generally agree that the alignment of the stars when you were born is approximately as important as what was on PBS at the time. But just because astrology is complete bullshit doesn't mean your birthday isn't plotting new, and creative ways to screw you.
Americans get a small taste of this in baseball. If your birthday is in late July, every time you struck out in Little League, it turns out you should have been the one throwing empty Budweisers at your dad. That's because the age cutoff for Little League is July 31st, meaning kids with August 1st birthdays were actually a year older you, meaning he porked you into existence at the worst time possible for your baseball career. And if you think that's a minor disadvantage, you should know that a July birthday makes you 50 percent less likely to make the Major Leagues.
This starts to make sense when think about how we figure out what we're good at. It's pretty much all guess and check. You try something out. If you like it, you keep trying it. If you suck at it, you dodge empty beer cans and move on to something else.
Where it starts to get downright terrifying in in places like Australia, Norway and the UK where the school system is run with the precision that Americans reserve for children throwing a ball around in the dirt. In those countries, a child born on the wrong side of their grade's cutoff day will be at a significant disadvantage in reading at age 16, less likely to get good grades and less likely to be university-bound. All because they have the wrong birthday.
The Worst Days of the Year to Order "The Special"
When we go to a restaurant, most of us don't like to think about where the food is coming from. That's the point. You're putting the trust in the hands of a professional just like when you board a plane. Only commercial aircrafts aren't 35 percent more likely to crash during the summer, nor are pilots more likely to risk your life on Mondays--both chances you're taking every time you go out to eat on a Monday in the summer.
The 35 percent increase in food poisoning comes from the fact that microscopic organisms like warm climates just as much as we do. This is of course why most of us have refrigerators, and the meat and fish you buy at grocery stores spend most of their journey to your plate frozen solid. But restaurants are more likely to get meat and fish that hasn't been frozen from butchers and fish markets, to ensure the food tastes better. In his 2000 memoir about his time as the executive chef at some of New York's top restaurants, Anthony Bourdain describes the fish market where most Manhattan restaurants get their seafood.
And the problem isn't just Discount Sushi. As much as we don't like to think about it, restaurants are a business with notoriously thin margins. The ability to stay open can come down to how a restaurant does in a single weekend, when people are more likely to eat out. The problem is that most food providers don't deliver on the weekend, meaning a restaurant has to over estimate how much food to buy, or risk running out.
This brings us to Mondays in the summer, when the chef has a fridge full of days old fish and meat. Thanks to the hot weather, most of it was a risky proposition when it arrived in the kitchen. But if he throws it out, he risks not having a job the following Monday. So according to Bourdain, what happens instead is the chef creates a "special" dish designed to unload the ingredients that are starting to smell funny. That special dish gets printed up, inserted into the menu. Hell, the waiter even offers to "tell you about the specials," presumably because they don't feel quite as bad about poisoning people who need to have the menu read to them.
The Worst Days of the Week to Be Alive (Apparently)
Suicide is a big deal, and most of us assume that the people who kill themselves recognize this fact. It's the most important decision you make in life other than who to marry and what your high school yearbook quote is.
So what day could possibly make us almost twice as likely to kill ourselves than any other?
Not Christmas. Not the day after taxes are due. Wednesday.
What the hell is so bad about Wednesday? It's far away from the weekend, sure. And it's pretty annoying when the lady from work calls it hump day. But it's not put-a-gun-in-your-mouth annoying. She's a woman, and she's using the word hump in a sentence.
Actually, the best explanation researchers were able to come up with for the spike boils down to: The weekend is far away on both sides, and works got you down. In fact, there's no shortage of statistics showing that many suicides are less the result of a profound philosophical problem and more a temporary fart of the soul that would have passed if they'd just given it a night or two to air out.
Take the British coal-gas story, famous among suicide experts (whose children tend not to invite them to career day). For the first half of the 20th century, the preferred method of suicide in Britain was "sticking ones head in the oven," where the coal gas delivered a swift, fatal dose of CO2. When the British government transitioned to a more efficient fuel that, as a happy coincidence, couldn't kill you, the suicide rate for the entire country dropped by a third, and has stayed there ever since.
A similar thing happened in the state of Washington, where statewide jumping suicides were cut in half by raising the guard rails on one bridge. At the Golden Gate Bridge, the world's most popular suicide destination, 515 people were grabbed by cops mid suicide attempt between the years of 1937 and 1971. A researcher in the late 70s tracked these troubled souls down, and found that only six percent went on to kill themselves.
This isn't to deny that there are people in the world who have profoundly difficult problems. It just indicates that for 94 percent, ceasing to exist only seems worth it for a remarkably brief window of time. So whatever day of the week it is, if you're thinking of doing something drastic, it's probably a temporary trick of the mind. Sleep on it. If you still feel like jumping off a bridge in the morning, maybe give it until the holidays. Christmas will be happy to do the job for you.
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‘Sorry aboot that, eh’ — Canadian sniper apologizes after record-breaking kill shot
OTTAWA — A Canadian sniper apologized today after he was confirmed to have scored the longest lethal shot on record, according to sources.
The sniper, whose identity is being withheld for operational security reasons, said he was sorry both to the ISIS fighter he killed and to the former record-holder, British soldier Craig Harrison, whose record his 2.2-mile shot smashed by over 3,000 feet.
“Sorry aboot that, eh,” the sniper supposedly said as the .50 caliber round ripped through the insurgent’s thoracic cavity. “I thought that was a dern moose, friend.”
According to experts, Canadian standard operating procedure is to ask a target’s permission before ending his life, so as to maintain a spirit of good sportsmanship.
“We’re all aboot friendship and fair play up here in Canada, even if we’re just killing a bunch of hosers like ISIS,” said Canadian military spokesman Mick Robinson. “All the famous Canadians that everyone’s heard of like Frank Boucher and Jack Bionda would tell you the same, buddy.”
After hiding out in full-body denim ghillie suits for days, the sniper team allegedly returned to their base where they celebrated with a “specially prepared dinner of maple syrup, Tim Horton’s doughnuts, Molson Ice, and poutine for the Québécois comm. guy.”
Robinson says this shot will “stand right up there with Gretzky’s hat trick against Calgary in ’88” as one of the greatest moments in Canadian history.
“I’d say that was aboot as accurate as a Gordie Howe slapshot, eh,” said Robinson while sitting in a refrigerator and sharpening his ice skates. “I don’t even know what a 2.2 miles is, but I’m scared to look it up.”
“You happen to catch the score of the curling match?”
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A Catholic, a Protestant, a Muslim and a Jew were in a discussion
during a dinner.
Catholic: "I have a large fortune....I am going to buy Citibank!"
Protestant: "I am very wealthy and will buy General Motors!"
Muslim: "I am a fabulously rich prince.... I intend to purchase
Microsoft!"
They then all wait for the Jew to speak....
The Jew stirs his coffee, places the spoon neatly on the table, takes a sip of his coffee, looks at them and casually says:
"I'm not selling."
Issue of the Times;
Bad Philosophy by Roger Scruton
As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, it is fitting to ask whether we have learned what it tells us about its ideological root. Do we now appreciate that the Marxist ideology destroys legal order, political opposition and human rights? Do we have some idea of the death toll that has in every case followed the triumph of the ‘vanguard party’? Do we have an inkling of the human cost of collectivisation, or of what the gulag meant in terms of the humiliation and destruction of its victims?
Of course the answer in each case is no. Our school curriculum dwells incessantly on the Holocaust. Several states have made denial of it into a crime, and museums and monuments to the victims of Nazism and fascism exist all across the continent. But communism’s millions of victims are remembered hardly at all. One standard history of modern times, widely used in our schools, praises the Russian Revolution as aiming at ‘the complete destruction of the Russian and European bourgeoisie’, necessary for ‘the victory of socialism’. This history (Eric Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes) does not mention the abolition of the law courts, or the establishment of the Cheka (the secret police), or the vicious expropriations that destroyed the Russian economy, or the mass starvation inflicted on the Ukrainian peasants. It is inadmissible for a historian to write in any but disgusted terms of the Nazi destruction of the Jews; but the equally cruel ‘destruction of the bourgeoisie’ can be described in terms of unqualified approval.
The term ‘bourgeoisie’ is a technicality of the Marxist theory. But it has a real human reference, and that reference is you and me. We who own property, deal in markets, collect salaries, have spouses and children, and live by the ordinary day-to-day morality of neighbourliness, are the people whom Lenin set out to destroy. We are the targets of resentment, and Marxism is the theory of that resentment.
One thing we should surely learn from the Russian revolution is that resentment is always on the lookout for the theories that will justify it. And the lesson that bore in on me in vivid and unforgettable ways during my own journeys behind the Iron Curtain, is that resentment, when it finally takes power, spells the death of politics. The real purpose of politics is not to express resentment but to contain and conciliate it. When, in the wake of the Grenfell fire, leading political figures began calling for a ‘day of rage’, and for the requisitioning of bourgeois property, I heard again the voice of that old resentment. And I asked myself how could it be that the lesson has not been learned?
The problem is not a lack of literature. Invocations of communist terror abound, and include masterpieces that all educated people should know, such as Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago. However, resentment easily overrides the evidence. Just as anti-Semitism has survived constant reminders of the Holocaust, so does the Marxist vision survive the accumulated testimony to its murderous legacy. Resentful people cherish their hatred more than they respect the rights of those who arouse it.
For this reason it is surely time to establish museums devoted to the Marxist legacy. We have a model, indeed, in the House of Terror, established in Budapest in 2002 under the directorship of Maria Schmidt. This commemorates the victims of both fascism and communism, and has been controversial for that very reason. Even in Hungary, leftist intellectuals tell us that the two evils cannot be compared, and that to commemorate their victims in a single museum is to deny their most important difference: that the aims of communism were good, those of fascism bad. It is precisely in order to counter that kind of apology that Maria Schmidt has turned the same light on both ideologies. The aim of both, she insists, was the same. What difference does it make that one focused its resentment on the Jews, the other on the bourgeoisie, when the primary aim was in both cases the mass murder of their victims? Or do we say, with Eric Hobs-bawm, that in the one case, but not in the other, the end justified the means?
As the Momentum movement seduces more and more people towards historical oblivion and utopian exultancy, the need for a programme of public education about these matters is ever more urgent. But I fear that it may be too late.
Quote of the Times;
"Vision without action is daydream. Action without vision is nightmare."
Link of the Times;
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And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.