“As emblems of the Confederacy all across the country are being dismantled, a Texas Antifa group has picked an odd target for their angst — a well-loved statue of the Republic of Texas’ first President, Sam Houston.
Sam Houston was a bad#$% if ever there was one. Not only was he an honorary Cherokee, but it took him a measly 18 minutes to defeat Mexican General Santa Anna, effectively ending the Texas Revolution and creating the greatest Republic that ever was.
Before fighting (and winning) the Texas Revolutionary War, Houston beat the hell out of Ohio Congressman William Stanbery with a cane after Stanberry insinuated Houston was involved in fraudulent dealings with the Secretary of War. Passing him on Pennsylvania Avenue, Houston approached Stanbery and asked him to identify himself. When Stanbery confirmed his identity, Houston called him a “damned rascal” and beat the daylights out of him with a hickory cane made of wood harvested from Andrew Jackson’s estate. Onlookers said Houston lifted, “Stanbery up by his legs” and struck him “elsewhere.” Stanbery pulled a pistol, shoved it into Houston’s chest and pulled the trigger, but the gun never fired. Houston was drug before Congress for a trial, where he was represented by Francis Scott Key and found guilty of contempt. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine, refused and the debt remained unpaid.
Yes, Houston owned slaves. But during his tenure as a Texas Senator, he voted against the spread of slavery into new states repeatedly. His refusal to join the secessionist movement and swear allegiance to the Confederacy cost Houston the Texas Governorship. Thanks to his loyalty to preserving the Union, Houston was kicked out of office and replaced by the pro-Confederacy Lieutenant Governor.
But history is meaningless to many. Despite his allegiance to the Union and to preventing the spread of slavery, a strange group calling themselves the Texas Antifa is promising to eradicate Texas of its Confederate emblems. They’ve started by declaring war on a statue of Sam Houston located in Houston’s well-loved Hermann Park.
So wild is the language in their posts, that I’m not entirely sure whether they’re sincerely anarchist extremists, or just trolling everyone.”
“I know it’s theoretically wrong for a Republican candidate to smack around an annoying liberal journalist, but that still doesn’t mean that I care. Our ability to care is a finite resource, and, in the vast scheme of things, millions of us have chosen to devote exactly none of it toward caring enough to engage in fussy self-flagellation because of what happened to Slappy La Brokenshades.
Sorry, not sorry.
And that’s not a good thing, not by any measure, but it is a real thing. Liberals have chosen to coarsen our culture. Their validation and encouragement of raw hate, their flouting of laws (Hi leakers! Hi Hillary!) and their utter refusal to accept democratic outcomes they disapprove of have consequences. What is itself so surprising is how liberals and their media rentboyz are so surprised to find that we normals are beginning to feel about them the way they feel about us – and that we’re starting to act on it. If you hate us, guess what?
We’re going to start hating you right back.
Cue the boring moralizing and sanctimonious whimpering of the femmy, bow-tied, submissive branch of conservatism whose obsolete members were shocked to find themselves left behind by the masses to whom these geeks’ sinecures were not the most important objective of the movement. This is where they sniff, “We’re better than that,” and one has to ask ,“Who’s we?” Because, by nature, people are not better than that. They are not designed to sit back and take it while they are abused, condescended to, and told by a classless ruling class that there are now two sets of rules and – guess what? –the old rules are only going to be enforced against them.
We don’t like the new rules – I’d sure prefer a society where no one was getting attacked, having walked through the ruins of a country that took that path – but we normals didn’t choose the new rules. The left did. It gave us Ferguson, Middlebury College, Berkeley, and “Punch a Nazi” – which, conveniently for the left, translates as “punch normals.” And many of us have had personal experiences with this New Hate – jobs lost, hassles, and worse. Some scumbags at an anti-Trump rally attacked my friend and horribly injured his dog. His freaking dog.
So when we start to adopt their rules, they’re shocked? Have they ever met human beings before? It’s not a surprise. It’s inevitable.”
——————
“The left is shocked that the right has now stopped caring about the old rules, since for so long the left relied on the right to subordinate its human instincts and conform to those rules even when the left ignored them. We refused to stoop to their level, and for a long time, we were “better than that.” But you can only have one side being “better than that” for so long before people get sick of being the butt of the hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is poison not because it makes people stop knowing right from wrong, but because it makes its victims stop caring about right and wrong. Ben Jacobs got smacked around, and millions of us just don’t give a damn.
We all know it was wrong for Greg Gianforte to beat up Ben Jacobs. But we also know the general attitude of the media is that when we conservatives get beat-up by leftists it’s perfectly excusable – even laudable – and thanks to the fact that Twitter is forever, we now know that Ben Jacobs himself specifically thinks it’s A-OK to slug conservative kids. So can someone tell me why anyone should be shocked that we conservatives refuse to devote one iota of caring to poor Ben’s wedgie?”
By using these magical words, the gates to the Kingdom of Self-Esteem swing open for readers of all ages. Inside the Kingdom live twenty-four animals — the Lovables — each one with a special gift to contribute. Mona Monkey is lovable. Owen Owl is capable. Buddy Beaver takes care of the world around him. Greta Goat trusts herself.
It seems mawkish now, even by the standards of children’s books, but The Lovables was published as a runaway cultural trend was cresting across North America: the self-esteem craze. If you grew up, or raised a child, during the 1980s or 1990s, you almost certainly remember this sort of material, as well as goofy classroom exercises focusing on how special each individual child was. A certain ethos took hold during this time: It was the job of schools to educate, yes, but also to instill in children a sense of their own specialness and potential.
It wasn’t just schoolkids. During this span, just about everyone, from CEOs to welfare recipients, was told — often by psychologists with serious credentials — that improving their self-esteem could, as The Lovables put it, unlock the gates to more happiness, better performance, and every kind of success imaginable. This was both a personal argument and a political one: The movement, which had its epicenter in California, argued that increasing people’s self-esteem could reduce crime, teen pregnancy, and a host of other social ills — even pollution.
It would be hard to overstate the long-term impact of these claims. The self-esteem craze changed how countless organizations were run, how an entire generation — millenials — was educated, and how that generation went on to perceive itself (quite favorably). As it turned out, the central claim underlying the trend, that there’s a causal relationship between self-esteem and various positive outcomes, was almost certainly inaccurate. But that didn’t matter: For millions of people, this was just too good and satisfying a story to check, and that’s part of the reason the national focus on self-esteem never fully abated. Many people still believe that fostering a sense of self-esteem is just about the most important thing one can do, mental health–wise.”
———–
“The end result of all this was an increasingly massive cottage industry devoted to self-esteem. It’s actually hard to find concrete dollar amounts about the true size of this industry — the broader self-help industry, of which self-esteem is a part, brought in a cool $10 billion a year by 2015 — but a New York Times article from 1990 nicely captures its scope: “Hundreds of school districts have added self-esteem motivational materials to their curriculums,” wrote reporter Lena Williams. “American employers have turned increasingly to consultants who say they can raise employees’ morale and work performance through self-esteem techniques. New companies have formed, devoted to teaching on self-esteem themes, and hundreds of books on self-esteem and self-enhancement have been published.” Naturally, the most successful self-esteem entrepreneurs made a lot of money peddling their wares. Jack Canfield, the founder of the L.A.-based Self-Esteem Seminars, offered seven-hour self-esteem seminars involving videos, audiotapes, and kinesthetics (he would later co-author the mega-best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul, which launched a veritable empire of sequels and offshoots). In some states, welfare recipients were given workbooks designed to help them boost their self-esteem, and of course some companies had to provide those materials, too. Overall, the cottage-industrialization of self-esteem further disincentivized many people — not just the peddlers of self-esteem materials, but the school-district and corporate decision-makers who had already shelled out a lot of money for them — from viewing the concept with too skeptical an eye.”
“In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
But if a single bugging of the political opposition is enough to bring down a presidency — and maybe lead to an unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president — then what are we to make of the recently unveiled Obama administration program of massively spying on political opponents in violation of clearly established law?
Because that’s what was unveiled last week.
When the FBI wants to wiretap a domestic suspect, it goes to court for a warrant. But when listening in on foreigners, the National Security Agency hoovers up a vast amount of stuff in bulk: Conversations between foreigners, conversations between Americans and foreigners, conversations between Americans who mention foreigners, and sometimes just plain old conversations between Americans.
There are supposed to be strict safeguards on who can access the information, on how it can be used and on protecting American citizens’ privacy — because the NSA is forbidden by law from engaging in domestic spying. These safeguards were ignored wholesale under the Obama administration, and to many Republicans, it is no coincidence that intelligence leaks damaged Democrats’ political opponents in the 2016 election.
A report from journalists John Solomon and Sara Carter last week, based on recently declassified documents, exposed what went on. As Solomon and Carter write:
More than 5%, or one out of every 20, searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards President Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa. …
The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying that the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor,” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26.
The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans. … The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself and safeguard Americans’ privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.
As former anti-terrorism prosecutor and national security expert Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review, this is a very serious abuse. And potentially a crime. If such material were leaked to the press for political advantage, that’s another crime.”
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All these crimes, yet Congress does nothing. They’re too wrapped up chasing Russian squirrels.
AJ, don’t expect for anyone hear to get excited over Obama’s wiretaps and leaks. They’re having too much fun vilifying the current president and his supporters. :–/
This probably belongs on the Prayer Thread as a “Praise the Lord” but it will go here. Even my husband is tired of watching CNN- All Trump. All the Time.
This is an interesting factoid I didn’t know. From Sasse who is emphasizing the importance of reading and being literate:
There are many crucial debates to be had about gender and race in patriarchal colonial America, but a the level of nonslave households, early America probably set a high-water mark as the most broadly literate place in human history to date. These colonists were “as committed to the printed word as any group of people who have ever lived.” They braved the ocean with their books as key cargo. Historians estimate that white male literacy ran between 89 and 95 percent, based on written records.
I was curious about current literacy levels so I googled it.
Literacy Rates of the US
Although the US spends more money per student than any other country in the world, the educational system only ranks as the 14th best. The percentage of US residents who are literate, able to read and write, ranges between 65% and 85%. This wide range is due to a difference in how literacy is measured. Approximately 15% of the population can read at a university Bachelor’s degree level. The majority of Americans are able to read at a 7th or 8th-grade level.
When we lived in CT the average education was a BA or BS degree. In TN the average is 8th grade I think.
The real reason Merkel and Europe have their panties in a bunch over Trump. Like with NATO, it’s all about the money, and Trump won’t play along with their global tax plan to fight “climate change” like Obama did. THAT is what Merkel was whining about.
“President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett confirms.
Mr. Trump has also discussed with senior White House staff attempting to renegotiate the Paris Climate protocols on reducing greenhouse gas emissions – with an eye to making them less onerous to U.S. industry.
Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he will have a formal announcement on the decision “over the next few days.”
First reported by Axios, Mr. Trump made his decision to withdraw from the agreement, according to two sources that have direct knowledge of the decision.
Details on just how exactly the U.S. will be withdrawing are still being worked out by a team that includes EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.
A full, formal withdrawal could take up to three years to execute, unraveling one of former President Barack Obama’s major achievements in office to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Mr. Trump had initially delayed his decision on whether or not to withdraw during his first foreign trip overseas, where he met with other G-7 leaders.
Following the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested the meeting had served as something of a wakeup call. G-7 leaders were unable to reach unanimous agreement on climate change after Mr. Trump said he needed more time to decide whether to back a key climate accord.
“The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days,” Merkel told the crowd of some 2,500 that gathered to hear her and Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer.”
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“The Washington Post editors refuse to publicly release the smoking gun “anonymous letter” that serves as the foundation of their sensational charge that White House advisor Jared Kushner sought a secret, back-channel to Russian officials.
The “anonymous letter” was part of a front-page article claiming the president’s son-in-law sought to set up a private communications channel to Russian officials during a discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The piece was published Sunday and received high profile coverage throughout the long Memorial Day weekend.
“The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among other things, that Kushner had talked to Kislyak about setting up the communications channel,” the article’s three authors stated.
WaPo also claimed American intelligence agencies discovered the ploy through an intercepted open phone call by Kislyak to Moscow. Observers have noted that Kislyak, a seasoned spy, made the phone call on an “open line,” and therefore knew it was likely to be intercepted.
To date, there has been no independent verification the letter is real or that WaPo’s description of its contents is accurate. The Washington Post editors also never explain why they withheld the letter.
The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group contacted The Post’s national desk over the weekend, seeking a copy of the letter and an explanation why their editors withheld it from the public. WaPo did not reply to either TheDCNF’s email or phone inquiries.
The question is, what is The Washington Post hiding?”
—————-
“When politics is the name of the game, one man’s treason is another man’s service to the nation.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just over half (53%) of all Likely U.S. Voters still consider the leaking of classified information to the media to be an act of treason. Thirty percent (30%) disagree, while 18% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This is largely the same way voters felt in November 2010 following WikiLeaks’ publication of top secret U.S. government data related to the war in Afghanistan and other defense and foreign policy issues.
But while 73% of Republicans consider the leaking of classified information which plagues the Trump administration as treasonous, only half as many Democrats (36%) feel that way now. Voters not affiliated with either major party agree by a 50% to 27% margin that the leaks are an act of treason.
Republicans are more likely to see treason now; Democrats are less likely to do so. Unaffilliateds are unchanged.”
I can’t imagine living in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria where this sort of thing happens with any regularity. Are we really sure that spending more and more of our GDP on our military is going to improve things?
Trump’s OMB Director is proposing that we tighten eligibility requirements for the fraud-ridden Social Security Disability program. Three cheers for that!
If he pulls out of The Paris Accord, I will have to give him a B+ for the week, despite the end of The American Century.
After the I read a little of Ben Sasse’s book this morning , I read the NYTimes. (And here I make a small confession that for the first time in my life I have actually purchased a subscription to the Times.) I wanted to start with a columnist that I thought would be reasonably intelligent. My conservative-ish options appeared to be Ross Douthat, comparing Trump to the Manchurian Candidate; or Thomas Friedman’s “America now has a monarchy in the White House, headed by an emir named Donald” blah, blah, blah… I’m already starting to regret spending my $1.88 wkly. Before I long, I bet you will be too. ;–)
This is why healthcare reform needs to be bi-partisan.
This is how the budget cuts are expected to look over a 10 yr. period. And there are cuts for everyone–even Disability gets a .08% nibble over 10 yrs. (there, there Ricky). Although….why do they give us 10 year projections when everyone knows these budgets are made every year?
Ok, after this one last post, I promise I will shut up for awhile. I just keep reading the book! Although I have a sinking feeling that I will come to conclusions somewhat different from Ben Sasse, it is still unquestionably one of the best offerings in terms of depth and acuity written not for scholars, but for ordinary readers, regarding the basic building blocks of citizenship, which is the basis for national community. Still speaking of the importance of literacy, he writes:
The main focus of this chapter–and this book–is on rebuilding a culture comprised of resilient, literate, and thoughtful *individuals*. This chapter is not chiefly a lament about the decline of the *national* canon. But…
The individual is always part of a community, and the literate individual is reading someone someone else’s work, and reading it alongside others. We must tend to that togetherness or we will inevitably spin apart. I think we’ve made some big wrong turns in abandoning a consensus set of readings. For reading is *not only about individuals* deciding what we do and don’t believe; it is also always about the preservation and cultivation of a *shared* heritage. Only with some common points of departure can we find sufficient room for healthy debate about inherited beliefs and possible alternate futures.
Meaningful engagement requires a certain amount of basic common knowledge. The repudiation of a shared canon thus wasn’t just about the marginalization of certain *content*; it also necessarily reduced shared *experience*. Our national abandonment of a shared set of readings has harmed us not just individually–it has also damaged our community and exacerbated polarization.
AJ – Re: your 7:04 post, about hating the liberals back.
I still think that “taking the high road” is the right thing to do. Hating them back, being as dismissive of them as they are of us, is not going to remedy the situation. It will just give them even more ammunition to keep hating us, but with more reason.
And, from a Christian viewpoint, we have the Bible’s teaching to not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, to treat our enemies good & to pray for them.
Correct. But the author was pointing out that human nature being what it is and all, you get what we got. And there are a lot of non-Christians out there that don’t care what the Bible says about it either way. And here we are. 😦
Speaking of not being overcome by evil. . .I recently mentioned seeing that some are advocating punching Nazis (that’s mentioned in one of the articles above somewhere, too). On Facebook, I saw this meme-thing shared:
“Liberals, do you know why we say ‘No platforms for fascist scum?’ Why we believe in shutting down white supremacy by ANY MEANS NECESSARY?
Because the idea of ‘civil debate’ and ‘letting them make fools of themselves’ when dealing with white nationalists COSTS ACTUAL LIVES.”
Then there’s a paragraph stating that factual analysis will not make white nationalists change their minds, & it ends with this:
“WE SHUT THEM DOWN, WE BREAK THEIR POWER BASE, WE STOP THEM FROM HURTING INNOCENT PEOPLE.
BY. ANY. MEANS. NECESSARY.”
That’s kinda scary, although I am no fan of white supremacists/nationalists. And kind of ironic that they are in favor of shutting down free speech of those they find abhorrent by using the one kind of freedom of speech that is illegal – inciting to violence.
AJ – I understand, & that is the sad result. I would hope that, since conservatives tend to value morality so highly, that not many will fall into the trap (of giving hate for hate). Unfortunately, I have seen some of that hateful attitude in some of my conservative friends. (Most still take the high road, though.)
It’s mentioned in the article about Ben Jacobs, the Guardian reporter who may or may not have been body slammed last week. Again, old Ben missed the irony of it all. He was one of those leftists advocating punching Nazis on Facebook, so it’s funny he got so upset that someone took his advice. I guess some people have different ideas on who the real Nazis are than Ben does. He failed to consider that when advocating violence. 🙂
AJ @ 5:29, I came out in support one of your “General’s” proposals @ 1:14 and also backed him on The Paris Accord, Ryan’s Healthcare Reform and other proposed budget cuts. Will you join us in the “trenches” or are you AWOL as described by Prager yesterday?
Tychicus, Here is an article on the battle within the White House on The Paris Accord. If you read the sixth paragraph, you need to tell Grover Norquist that he is not entirely correct.
Cheryl — Canada’s paternity leave program is funded by the Employment Insurance program. You need to work a certain period of time (depending on location) before you become eligible for leave and you cannot access more than a year at a time, hence you need to return to work for a year or so before having the next kid. Some of my colleagues worked a year, had a kid, took a year off, worked a year, had a kid, took a year off, etc.
CNN — the left never liked CNN. Ted Turner’s inaugural speech on CNN would explain why non-American leftists don’t like it. Americans on the left view CNN as the channel sponsored by the elite to keep the masses in line. Most leftists find Comedy Central more trustworthy than cable news.
The Guardian — He was body slammed — FOX news reporters confirmed it. I find it interesting that some on the right no longer support rule of law — not a very conservative position. Sure some on the left won’t let the alt-right speak and some on the right have little regard for the those on the margins of the left but classical liberals, Burkean style conservatism and modern liberals/socialists all have the rule of law as a foundational to their ideology — its part of the shared western civilization experience. For the traditional right to ignore rule of law is to essentially negate their own ideology’s need to exist. This is the essential difference between Trump and Sasse, the latter understands the an ideology’s need for shared culture whereas the former is a symbol of a modern mutant form of corporatism/capitalism — greed is good, and shared history/culture is irrelevant.
Paris accords — the US may or may not leave the accord, it would be nice if they stay but its not necessary. Those who abide this accord or others are making a conscious choice to move from fossils fuels to alternative fuels (solar, wind, etc). The US, bound by fossil companies and the Saudia, may withdraw but the move away from fossil fuels will continue. The EU and Asia will change and this represent enough mass to succeed away from fossil fuels.
Solar panels will be like cell phones — they will become cheaper as China rolls them out. When cell phones became commonplace and relatively cheap, poorer nations who previously had no telephone infrastructure were able to leap frog past the need for central exchanges, lines, etc and join the modern cell phone world. Twenty five years ago, I flew from Warsaw to Athens next to two American young businessmen. They were working for Nokia trying to establish cell phone service in Warsaw — landlines were substandard but they pointed out they could skip that stage and just move straight to cell service — no need for the infrastructure. Similarly, India is skipping the need for centralized infrastructure, power plants, etc and is electrifying rural India one solar panel at time. No need to burn coal and build nuclear plants, just wheel out the solar panel and turn on the lightbulb.
The US can skip the Paris accord but they are choosing to stay with outdated centralized power production instead of decentralized individual production. Strange since the latter should appeal to the liberterian bent of American politics.
HRW, Natural gas is clean, cheap and plentiful. The cheap power it has produced has helped lift millions out of poverty
Yes, anyone who reads knows that Ben Jacobs was body slammed, but the Trump Cult won’t let its members admit that fact. Here is an interesting take on the motive for Trump’s lies from David Leonhardt:
A lie is a conscious effort to mislead someone, usually in the service of persuasion. But Trump often isn’t trying to persuade. He is instead creating a separate language meant to distinguish his allies from his enemies. A Trump lie, Yglesias writes, is “a test to see who around him will debase themselves to repeat it blindly.”
Tychicus, My 9:36 a.m. post from CNN says he is lonely, angry and is gaining weight. In Trump’s defense, the White House is a crowded place, it is hard to get exercise there and the food is very good. There is no reason for him not to spend most of his time at one of his golf clubs or at Camp David. He could get more exercise, aides could come see him, he could make phone calls, and even host foreign dignitaries.
The main reason to be in DC is if he is going to positively interact with Congress or the bureaucracy. That is not going to happen.
Wandering Views 
Ricky,
Sadly it looks like the history erasing PC Police are coming to Texas.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/05/texas-antifa-group-to-protest-statue-of-sam-houston/#more-214819
“As emblems of the Confederacy all across the country are being dismantled, a Texas Antifa group has picked an odd target for their angst — a well-loved statue of the Republic of Texas’ first President, Sam Houston.
Sam Houston was a bad#$% if ever there was one. Not only was he an honorary Cherokee, but it took him a measly 18 minutes to defeat Mexican General Santa Anna, effectively ending the Texas Revolution and creating the greatest Republic that ever was.
Before fighting (and winning) the Texas Revolutionary War, Houston beat the hell out of Ohio Congressman William Stanbery with a cane after Stanberry insinuated Houston was involved in fraudulent dealings with the Secretary of War. Passing him on Pennsylvania Avenue, Houston approached Stanbery and asked him to identify himself. When Stanbery confirmed his identity, Houston called him a “damned rascal” and beat the daylights out of him with a hickory cane made of wood harvested from Andrew Jackson’s estate. Onlookers said Houston lifted, “Stanbery up by his legs” and struck him “elsewhere.” Stanbery pulled a pistol, shoved it into Houston’s chest and pulled the trigger, but the gun never fired. Houston was drug before Congress for a trial, where he was represented by Francis Scott Key and found guilty of contempt. He was ordered to pay a $500 fine, refused and the debt remained unpaid.
Yes, Houston owned slaves. But during his tenure as a Texas Senator, he voted against the spread of slavery into new states repeatedly. His refusal to join the secessionist movement and swear allegiance to the Confederacy cost Houston the Texas Governorship. Thanks to his loyalty to preserving the Union, Houston was kicked out of office and replaced by the pro-Confederacy Lieutenant Governor.
But history is meaningless to many. Despite his allegiance to the Union and to preventing the spread of slavery, a strange group calling themselves the Texas Antifa is promising to eradicate Texas of its Confederate emblems. They’ve started by declaring war on a statue of Sam Houston located in Houston’s well-loved Hermann Park.
So wild is the language in their posts, that I’m not entirely sure whether they’re sincerely anarchist extremists, or just trolling everyone.”
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It stinks, but he has a point. Several in fact.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/05/29/liberals-are-shocked-to-find-were-starting-to-hate-them-right-back-n2332712
“I know it’s theoretically wrong for a Republican candidate to smack around an annoying liberal journalist, but that still doesn’t mean that I care. Our ability to care is a finite resource, and, in the vast scheme of things, millions of us have chosen to devote exactly none of it toward caring enough to engage in fussy self-flagellation because of what happened to Slappy La Brokenshades.
Sorry, not sorry.
And that’s not a good thing, not by any measure, but it is a real thing. Liberals have chosen to coarsen our culture. Their validation and encouragement of raw hate, their flouting of laws (Hi leakers! Hi Hillary!) and their utter refusal to accept democratic outcomes they disapprove of have consequences. What is itself so surprising is how liberals and their media rentboyz are so surprised to find that we normals are beginning to feel about them the way they feel about us – and that we’re starting to act on it. If you hate us, guess what?
We’re going to start hating you right back.
Cue the boring moralizing and sanctimonious whimpering of the femmy, bow-tied, submissive branch of conservatism whose obsolete members were shocked to find themselves left behind by the masses to whom these geeks’ sinecures were not the most important objective of the movement. This is where they sniff, “We’re better than that,” and one has to ask ,“Who’s we?” Because, by nature, people are not better than that. They are not designed to sit back and take it while they are abused, condescended to, and told by a classless ruling class that there are now two sets of rules and – guess what? –the old rules are only going to be enforced against them.
We don’t like the new rules – I’d sure prefer a society where no one was getting attacked, having walked through the ruins of a country that took that path – but we normals didn’t choose the new rules. The left did. It gave us Ferguson, Middlebury College, Berkeley, and “Punch a Nazi” – which, conveniently for the left, translates as “punch normals.” And many of us have had personal experiences with this New Hate – jobs lost, hassles, and worse. Some scumbags at an anti-Trump rally attacked my friend and horribly injured his dog. His freaking dog.
So when we start to adopt their rules, they’re shocked? Have they ever met human beings before? It’s not a surprise. It’s inevitable.”
——————
“The left is shocked that the right has now stopped caring about the old rules, since for so long the left relied on the right to subordinate its human instincts and conform to those rules even when the left ignored them. We refused to stoop to their level, and for a long time, we were “better than that.” But you can only have one side being “better than that” for so long before people get sick of being the butt of the hypocrisy.
Hypocrisy is poison not because it makes people stop knowing right from wrong, but because it makes its victims stop caring about right and wrong. Ben Jacobs got smacked around, and millions of us just don’t give a damn.
We all know it was wrong for Greg Gianforte to beat up Ben Jacobs. But we also know the general attitude of the media is that when we conservatives get beat-up by leftists it’s perfectly excusable – even laudable – and thanks to the fact that Twitter is forever, we now know that Ben Jacobs himself specifically thinks it’s A-OK to slug conservative kids. So can someone tell me why anyone should be shocked that we conservatives refuse to devote one iota of caring to poor Ben’s wedgie?”
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How the self-esteem craze took over America.
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/05/self-esteem-grit-do-they-really-help.html
“I AM LOVABLE!
By using these magical words, the gates to the Kingdom of Self-Esteem swing open for readers of all ages. Inside the Kingdom live twenty-four animals — the Lovables — each one with a special gift to contribute. Mona Monkey is lovable. Owen Owl is capable. Buddy Beaver takes care of the world around him. Greta Goat trusts herself.
It seems mawkish now, even by the standards of children’s books, but The Lovables was published as a runaway cultural trend was cresting across North America: the self-esteem craze. If you grew up, or raised a child, during the 1980s or 1990s, you almost certainly remember this sort of material, as well as goofy classroom exercises focusing on how special each individual child was. A certain ethos took hold during this time: It was the job of schools to educate, yes, but also to instill in children a sense of their own specialness and potential.
It wasn’t just schoolkids. During this span, just about everyone, from CEOs to welfare recipients, was told — often by psychologists with serious credentials — that improving their self-esteem could, as The Lovables put it, unlock the gates to more happiness, better performance, and every kind of success imaginable. This was both a personal argument and a political one: The movement, which had its epicenter in California, argued that increasing people’s self-esteem could reduce crime, teen pregnancy, and a host of other social ills — even pollution.
It would be hard to overstate the long-term impact of these claims. The self-esteem craze changed how countless organizations were run, how an entire generation — millenials — was educated, and how that generation went on to perceive itself (quite favorably). As it turned out, the central claim underlying the trend, that there’s a causal relationship between self-esteem and various positive outcomes, was almost certainly inaccurate. But that didn’t matter: For millions of people, this was just too good and satisfying a story to check, and that’s part of the reason the national focus on self-esteem never fully abated. Many people still believe that fostering a sense of self-esteem is just about the most important thing one can do, mental health–wise.”
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“The end result of all this was an increasingly massive cottage industry devoted to self-esteem. It’s actually hard to find concrete dollar amounts about the true size of this industry — the broader self-help industry, of which self-esteem is a part, brought in a cool $10 billion a year by 2015 — but a New York Times article from 1990 nicely captures its scope: “Hundreds of school districts have added self-esteem motivational materials to their curriculums,” wrote reporter Lena Williams. “American employers have turned increasingly to consultants who say they can raise employees’ morale and work performance through self-esteem techniques. New companies have formed, devoted to teaching on self-esteem themes, and hundreds of books on self-esteem and self-enhancement have been published.” Naturally, the most successful self-esteem entrepreneurs made a lot of money peddling their wares. Jack Canfield, the founder of the L.A.-based Self-Esteem Seminars, offered seven-hour self-esteem seminars involving videos, audiotapes, and kinesthetics (he would later co-author the mega-best-selling Chicken Soup for the Soul, which launched a veritable empire of sequels and offshoots). In some states, welfare recipients were given workbooks designed to help them boost their self-esteem, and of course some companies had to provide those materials, too. Overall, the cottage-industrialization of self-esteem further disincentivized many people — not just the peddlers of self-esteem materials, but the school-district and corporate decision-makers who had already shelled out a lot of money for them — from viewing the concept with too skeptical an eye.”
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Yes. Yes it was. But nobody will do anything about it.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/05/30/obama-admin-illegal-spying-worse-than-watergate-glenn-reynolds-column/102284058/
“In 1972, some employees of President Nixon’s re-election committee were caught when they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters to plant a bug. This led to Nixon’s resignation and probably would have led to his felony prosecution had he not been pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford.
But if a single bugging of the political opposition is enough to bring down a presidency — and maybe lead to an unprecedented criminal prosecution of a former president — then what are we to make of the recently unveiled Obama administration program of massively spying on political opponents in violation of clearly established law?
Because that’s what was unveiled last week.
When the FBI wants to wiretap a domestic suspect, it goes to court for a warrant. But when listening in on foreigners, the National Security Agency hoovers up a vast amount of stuff in bulk: Conversations between foreigners, conversations between Americans and foreigners, conversations between Americans who mention foreigners, and sometimes just plain old conversations between Americans.
There are supposed to be strict safeguards on who can access the information, on how it can be used and on protecting American citizens’ privacy — because the NSA is forbidden by law from engaging in domestic spying. These safeguards were ignored wholesale under the Obama administration, and to many Republicans, it is no coincidence that intelligence leaks damaged Democrats’ political opponents in the 2016 election.
A report from journalists John Solomon and Sara Carter last week, based on recently declassified documents, exposed what went on. As Solomon and Carter write:
More than 5%, or one out of every 20, searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards President Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa. …
The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying that the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor,” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26.
The admitted violations undercut one of the primary defenses that the intelligence community and Obama officials have used in recent weeks to justify their snooping into incidental NSA intercepts about Americans. … The American Civil Liberties Union said the newly disclosed violations are some of the most serious to ever be documented and strongly call into question the U.S. intelligence community’s ability to police itself and safeguard Americans’ privacy as guaranteed by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful search and seizure.
As former anti-terrorism prosecutor and national security expert Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review, this is a very serious abuse. And potentially a crime. If such material were leaked to the press for political advantage, that’s another crime.”
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All these crimes, yet Congress does nothing. They’re too wrapped up chasing Russian squirrels.
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AJ, don’t expect for anyone hear to get excited over Obama’s wiretaps and leaks. They’re having too much fun vilifying the current president and his supporters. :–/
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This probably belongs on the Prayer Thread as a “Praise the Lord” but it will go here. Even my husband is tired of watching CNN- All Trump. All the Time.
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You can also read CNN.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/05/30/opinions/trump-home-all-alone-borger/index.html
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This is an interesting factoid I didn’t know. From Sasse who is emphasizing the importance of reading and being literate:
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I was curious about current literacy levels so I googled it.
When we lived in CT the average education was a BA or BS degree. In TN the average is 8th grade I think.
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Ah yes….
The real reason Merkel and Europe have their panties in a bunch over Trump. Like with NATO, it’s all about the money, and Trump won’t play along with their global tax plan to fight “climate change” like Obama did. THAT is what Merkel was whining about.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/president-trump-expected-to-withdraw-from-paris-climate-agreement/ar-BBBJlAm?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=U452DHP
“President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, CBS News White House Correspondent Major Garrett confirms.
Mr. Trump has also discussed with senior White House staff attempting to renegotiate the Paris Climate protocols on reducing greenhouse gas emissions – with an eye to making them less onerous to U.S. industry.
Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning that he will have a formal announcement on the decision “over the next few days.”
First reported by Axios, Mr. Trump made his decision to withdraw from the agreement, according to two sources that have direct knowledge of the decision.
Details on just how exactly the U.S. will be withdrawing are still being worked out by a team that includes EPA administrator Scott Pruitt.
A full, formal withdrawal could take up to three years to execute, unraveling one of former President Barack Obama’s major achievements in office to reduce the impacts of climate change.
Mr. Trump had initially delayed his decision on whether or not to withdraw during his first foreign trip overseas, where he met with other G-7 leaders.
Following the summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested the meeting had served as something of a wakeup call. G-7 leaders were unable to reach unanimous agreement on climate change after Mr. Trump said he needed more time to decide whether to back a key climate accord.
“The times in which we can fully count on others are somewhat over, as I have experienced in the past few days,” Merkel told the crowd of some 2,500 that gathered to hear her and Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer.”
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So what’s “the rest of the story?”
http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/30/what-is-the-washington-post-hiding-about-its-jared-kushner-story/
“The Washington Post editors refuse to publicly release the smoking gun “anonymous letter” that serves as the foundation of their sensational charge that White House advisor Jared Kushner sought a secret, back-channel to Russian officials.
The “anonymous letter” was part of a front-page article claiming the president’s son-in-law sought to set up a private communications channel to Russian officials during a discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The piece was published Sunday and received high profile coverage throughout the long Memorial Day weekend.
“The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among other things, that Kushner had talked to Kislyak about setting up the communications channel,” the article’s three authors stated.
WaPo also claimed American intelligence agencies discovered the ploy through an intercepted open phone call by Kislyak to Moscow. Observers have noted that Kislyak, a seasoned spy, made the phone call on an “open line,” and therefore knew it was likely to be intercepted.
To date, there has been no independent verification the letter is real or that WaPo’s description of its contents is accurate. The Washington Post editors also never explain why they withheld the letter.
The Daily Caller News Foundation’s Investigative Group contacted The Post’s national desk over the weekend, seeking a copy of the letter and an explanation why their editors withheld it from the public. WaPo did not reply to either TheDCNF’s email or phone inquiries.
The question is, what is The Washington Post hiding?”
—————-
Most likely, it’s the truth they’re hiding.
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Well good, at least I’m in the majority for a change. 🙂
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/may_2017/53_say_media_leaks_are_act_of_treason
“When politics is the name of the game, one man’s treason is another man’s service to the nation.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that just over half (53%) of all Likely U.S. Voters still consider the leaking of classified information to the media to be an act of treason. Thirty percent (30%) disagree, while 18% are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
This is largely the same way voters felt in November 2010 following WikiLeaks’ publication of top secret U.S. government data related to the war in Afghanistan and other defense and foreign policy issues.
But while 73% of Republicans consider the leaking of classified information which plagues the Trump administration as treasonous, only half as many Democrats (36%) feel that way now. Voters not affiliated with either major party agree by a 50% to 27% margin that the leaks are an act of treason.
Republicans are more likely to see treason now; Democrats are less likely to do so. Unaffilliateds are unchanged.”
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A bombing in Kabul near the German and other embassies killed at least 80 people.
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I can’t imagine living in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria where this sort of thing happens with any regularity. Are we really sure that spending more and more of our GDP on our military is going to improve things?
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Trump’s OMB Director is proposing that we tighten eligibility requirements for the fraud-ridden Social Security Disability program. Three cheers for that!
If he pulls out of The Paris Accord, I will have to give him a B+ for the week, despite the end of The American Century.
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After the I read a little of Ben Sasse’s book this morning , I read the NYTimes. (And here I make a small confession that for the first time in my life I have actually purchased a subscription to the Times.) I wanted to start with a columnist that I thought would be reasonably intelligent. My conservative-ish options appeared to be Ross Douthat, comparing Trump to the Manchurian Candidate; or Thomas Friedman’s “America now has a monarchy in the White House, headed by an emir named Donald” blah, blah, blah… I’m already starting to regret spending my $1.88 wkly. Before I long, I bet you will be too. ;–)
This is why healthcare reform needs to be bi-partisan.
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This is how the budget cuts are expected to look over a 10 yr. period. And there are cuts for everyone–even Disability gets a .08% nibble over 10 yrs. (there, there Ricky). Although….why do they give us 10 year projections when everyone knows these budgets are made every year?
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Ok, after this one last post, I promise I will shut up for awhile. I just keep reading the book! Although I have a sinking feeling that I will come to conclusions somewhat different from Ben Sasse, it is still unquestionably one of the best offerings in terms of depth and acuity written not for scholars, but for ordinary readers, regarding the basic building blocks of citizenship, which is the basis for national community. Still speaking of the importance of literacy, he writes:
The main focus of this chapter–and this book–is on rebuilding a culture comprised of resilient, literate, and thoughtful *individuals*. This chapter is not chiefly a lament about the decline of the *national* canon. But…
The individual is always part of a community, and the literate individual is reading someone someone else’s work, and reading it alongside others. We must tend to that togetherness or we will inevitably spin apart. I think we’ve made some big wrong turns in abandoning a consensus set of readings. For reading is *not only about individuals* deciding what we do and don’t believe; it is also always about the preservation and cultivation of a *shared* heritage. Only with some common points of departure can we find sufficient room for healthy debate about inherited beliefs and possible alternate futures.
Meaningful engagement requires a certain amount of basic common knowledge. The repudiation of a shared canon thus wasn’t just about the marginalization of certain *content*; it also necessarily reduced shared *experience*. Our national abandonment of a shared set of readings has harmed us not just individually–it has also damaged our community and exacerbated polarization.
[All * are Sasse’s emphasis.]
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AJ – Re: your 7:04 post, about hating the liberals back.
I still think that “taking the high road” is the right thing to do. Hating them back, being as dismissive of them as they are of us, is not going to remedy the situation. It will just give them even more ammunition to keep hating us, but with more reason.
And, from a Christian viewpoint, we have the Bible’s teaching to not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good, to treat our enemies good & to pray for them.
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Keep reading, Debra. When Sasse challenges Trump in the primaries in 2020, we are going to need your vote.
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Kizzie,
Correct. But the author was pointing out that human nature being what it is and all, you get what we got. And there are a lot of non-Christians out there that don’t care what the Bible says about it either way. And here we are. 😦
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Speaking of not being overcome by evil. . .I recently mentioned seeing that some are advocating punching Nazis (that’s mentioned in one of the articles above somewhere, too). On Facebook, I saw this meme-thing shared:
“Liberals, do you know why we say ‘No platforms for fascist scum?’ Why we believe in shutting down white supremacy by ANY MEANS NECESSARY?
Because the idea of ‘civil debate’ and ‘letting them make fools of themselves’ when dealing with white nationalists COSTS ACTUAL LIVES.”
Then there’s a paragraph stating that factual analysis will not make white nationalists change their minds, & it ends with this:
“WE SHUT THEM DOWN, WE BREAK THEIR POWER BASE, WE STOP THEM FROM HURTING INNOCENT PEOPLE.
BY. ANY. MEANS. NECESSARY.”
That’s kinda scary, although I am no fan of white supremacists/nationalists. And kind of ironic that they are in favor of shutting down free speech of those they find abhorrent by using the one kind of freedom of speech that is illegal – inciting to violence.
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Ricky,
So you like her comment huh?
Did you miss the irony of that or what? 🙂
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AJ – I understand, & that is the sad result. I would hope that, since conservatives tend to value morality so highly, that not many will fall into the trap (of giving hate for hate). Unfortunately, I have seen some of that hateful attitude in some of my conservative friends. (Most still take the high road, though.)
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Kizzie,
It’s mentioned in the article about Ben Jacobs, the Guardian reporter who may or may not have been body slammed last week. Again, old Ben missed the irony of it all. He was one of those leftists advocating punching Nazis on Facebook, so it’s funny he got so upset that someone took his advice. I guess some people have different ideas on who the real Nazis are than Ben does. He failed to consider that when advocating violence. 🙂
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AJ @ 5:29, I came out in support one of your “General’s” proposals @ 1:14 and also backed him on The Paris Accord, Ryan’s Healthcare Reform and other proposed budget cuts. Will you join us in the “trenches” or are you AWOL as described by Prager yesterday?
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The “adults in the room” are all for the Paris climate agreement…
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Douthat gives Trump the benefit of the doubt and makes some interesting comparisons in this article.
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Tychicus, Here is an article on the battle within the White House on The Paris Accord. If you read the sixth paragraph, you need to tell Grover Norquist that he is not entirely correct.
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Cheryl — Canada’s paternity leave program is funded by the Employment Insurance program. You need to work a certain period of time (depending on location) before you become eligible for leave and you cannot access more than a year at a time, hence you need to return to work for a year or so before having the next kid. Some of my colleagues worked a year, had a kid, took a year off, worked a year, had a kid, took a year off, etc.
CNN — the left never liked CNN. Ted Turner’s inaugural speech on CNN would explain why non-American leftists don’t like it. Americans on the left view CNN as the channel sponsored by the elite to keep the masses in line. Most leftists find Comedy Central more trustworthy than cable news.
The Guardian — He was body slammed — FOX news reporters confirmed it. I find it interesting that some on the right no longer support rule of law — not a very conservative position. Sure some on the left won’t let the alt-right speak and some on the right have little regard for the those on the margins of the left but classical liberals, Burkean style conservatism and modern liberals/socialists all have the rule of law as a foundational to their ideology — its part of the shared western civilization experience. For the traditional right to ignore rule of law is to essentially negate their own ideology’s need to exist. This is the essential difference between Trump and Sasse, the latter understands the an ideology’s need for shared culture whereas the former is a symbol of a modern mutant form of corporatism/capitalism — greed is good, and shared history/culture is irrelevant.
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Paris accords — the US may or may not leave the accord, it would be nice if they stay but its not necessary. Those who abide this accord or others are making a conscious choice to move from fossils fuels to alternative fuels (solar, wind, etc). The US, bound by fossil companies and the Saudia, may withdraw but the move away from fossil fuels will continue. The EU and Asia will change and this represent enough mass to succeed away from fossil fuels.
Solar panels will be like cell phones — they will become cheaper as China rolls them out. When cell phones became commonplace and relatively cheap, poorer nations who previously had no telephone infrastructure were able to leap frog past the need for central exchanges, lines, etc and join the modern cell phone world. Twenty five years ago, I flew from Warsaw to Athens next to two American young businessmen. They were working for Nokia trying to establish cell phone service in Warsaw — landlines were substandard but they pointed out they could skip that stage and just move straight to cell service — no need for the infrastructure. Similarly, India is skipping the need for centralized infrastructure, power plants, etc and is electrifying rural India one solar panel at time. No need to burn coal and build nuclear plants, just wheel out the solar panel and turn on the lightbulb.
The US can skip the Paris accord but they are choosing to stay with outdated centralized power production instead of decentralized individual production. Strange since the latter should appeal to the liberterian bent of American politics.
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HRW, Natural gas is clean, cheap and plentiful. The cheap power it has produced has helped lift millions out of poverty
Yes, anyone who reads knows that Ben Jacobs was body slammed, but the Trump Cult won’t let its members admit that fact. Here is an interesting take on the motive for Trump’s lies from David Leonhardt:
A lie is a conscious effort to mislead someone, usually in the service of persuasion. But Trump often isn’t trying to persuade. He is instead creating a separate language meant to distinguish his allies from his enemies. A Trump lie, Yglesias writes, is “a test to see who around him will debase themselves to repeat it blindly.”
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Strange bedfellows:
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I am not the only conservative who has awakened to the danger of the goofy Hannity:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/sean-hannity/528144/
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Breaking News: CNN’s Anderson Cooper is reporting that Pres. Trump is upset because he gained weight on his recent trip to the Middle East and Europe.
That bombshell was according to “unnamed sources.”
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Tychicus, My 9:36 a.m. post from CNN says he is lonely, angry and is gaining weight. In Trump’s defense, the White House is a crowded place, it is hard to get exercise there and the food is very good. There is no reason for him not to spend most of his time at one of his golf clubs or at Camp David. He could get more exercise, aides could come see him, he could make phone calls, and even host foreign dignitaries.
The main reason to be in DC is if he is going to positively interact with Congress or the bureaucracy. That is not going to happen.
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