VDH @ Intellectual Takeout:
Tennis great Martina Navratilova until recently had long been coronated as a social justice trailblazer. She was one of the first marquee celebrity athletes to come out as gay, and then to advocate lesbian issues in and out of sports. But suddenly the icon seems out of step with her progressive legend status.
Navratilova had the temerity to suggest that one’s sex is biologically determined. In other words, transgenderism, even with the imprimatur of the social and biological sciences, cannot trump our innate genetic codes.
A frustrated Navratilova was editorializing mostly in the context of men “transitioning” to women, while in many cases still enjoying innate muscular and size advantages over females in same-sex sporting events. As a result, she is being demonized unfairly as an intersectional traitor (“transphobic”) and thus increasingly disinvited from a number of events by what is known as the LGBTQ community.
In other words, her intersectional femaleness and gayness are revoked by improper ideology.
Hanson goes on to describe a number of different parallels within the world of the modern-day leftist, all centered around the left eating their own.
I am reminded in reading Hanson’s piece, of the words of GK Chesterton speaking with regards to the people involved with the Russian revolution.
I find Hansen’s invoking George Orwell’s Animal Farm to be entirely appropriate but I wonder how many current readers will understand the reference. along those same lines I’m thoroughly convinced that most people won’t understand the reference to Chesterton, so I will include his comments here:
“But the new rebel is a skeptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then he writes another book in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie, and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble, and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.’ (G.K. Chesterton,Orthodoxy, 1909)
There seems very little to differentiate between the situation the Chesterton describes here and what we see going on in the Democrat party today and indeed the left of most of the western world. As both Orwell and Chesterton describe, this is not a movement born of principle but of emotion, and its definitions seem to rise and fall based on the needs of the moment.
The result, then eminently predictable, and that’s borne out by the accuracy of the observations of both Chesterton and Orwell.
Legal Insurrection says:
Remember when the mainstream media sneered at President Trump’s claims on how people allegedly being tied up, bound, and duct-taped women at the border? These outlets included CNN and The Washington Post.
As it turns out, Trump was right. The media outlet going on the record to correct the “fact checkers” on this issue is the New York Times, the queen bee of liberal media outlets, and certainly no friend of the president’s.
Ya know, eventually they’re going to get tired of having their knee-jerk liberal support being both exposed and disproven and actually do some investigation before they print a story.
Nah. Who am I kidding?
As Henry Kissinger once quipped on an Iran/Iraq war that was pity that they both could not lose, from Daily Wire:
There’s an intersectionality fight going on in Great Britain between humanists who had a program teaching tolerance to their schoolchildren about homosexuality and Muslims who forced the school to suspend the classes.
[…]
Parkfield Community School in Birmingham, England had classes in which a program titled “No Outsiders” taught that “families look different,” in an effort to teach schoolchildren about homosexuality.
[…]
[S]tudents read books with titles such as “Mommy, Mama and Me” and “King & King.”
[…]
The community has a great number of Muslims; the program was pulled after the school received a petition last month with over 400 signatures from parents, mostly Muslim, who have withdrawn their children from the school in protest. The Guardian reported that last Friday, roughly 600 Muslim children, aged between four and 11, were withdrawn from the school for the day.
Pass the popcorn.
Clarice Feldman over at American Thinker pretty much agrees with my take on the matter of Bill Kristol and his Iranian-funded “Bulwark“, which inexplicably claims to be “Conserving Conservatism”:
The Weekly Standard eventually failed due to irrelevance. The Bulwark, established immediately to replace the aforementioned, will likely continue this tradition of irrelevance, only occasionally rising into the spotlight when some liberal television show needs a token conservative who has been beaten into submission.
It’s sad to see these minds, which have so much potential, wasting away in a fantasy land. Stuck on the drug of arrogant, uncritical pseudo-intellectualism.
The degree of irrelevance of Bill Kristol and his nonsense cannot be overstated.
Before the election I made no secret of my support for Ted Cruz and my annoyance with Trump. However, once that choice is made, and the election behind us, reality forces us into a more pragmatic stance of going after Trump and his people when they’re wrong, and supporting him when he isn’t. Fortunately, the former hasn’t happened often. Alas, that the GOP establishment still hasn’t managed to face that particular reality.
Which, in turn, is partially why what the Democrats are doing to themselves is so staggering. (One expects a certain level of idiocy from Democrats, but lately they seem to be out doing themselves.)
…after the last few weeks’ Jussie Smollett and Covington Catholic fiascos, more is about to come. The Mueller report — I know we keep thinking it’s just around the corner — will prove to be another face plant for them. You don’t actually need to see the report to know this. To quote Glenn Greenwald’s tweet: “[A]fter almost two years of the Mueller investigation, the number of Americans thus far indicted for criminally conspiring with Russia to influence the 2016 election is zero. We spend remarkably little time asking why this is.”
Don Surber has the answer to Greenwald’s question:
Counterintelligence Investigation is a cover-up to hide Obama’s illegal spying on the Trump campaign using — abusing — our national security apparatus.
Bungling Bob Mueller and the media have spent two years trying to overturn the 2016 election. They cannot.
But an honest investigation would focus on Obama, Clapper, Brennan and Susan the Unmasker Rice.
Doubtless aware that the two-year political fiasco was coming to a disappointing end, Elijah Cummings and Adam Schiff, called convicted perjurer Michael Cohen to testify before the House Oversight Committee represented by Clinton spinner Lanny Davis.
Among the highlights are these, as Sharyl Attkisson reports:
Final nails in the coffins
Nail 1 — The Steele dossier: Cohen said, unequivocally, that he’s never visited Prague. That’s contrary to the now-discredited opposition research “dossier” the FBI presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain secret wiretaps.
Nail 2 — BuzzFeed’s “bombshell”: Cohen said Trump never directed him to lie to investigators about the timing of a Trump Tower Moscow project during the 2016 campaign. That discredited the BuzzFeed “bombshell” and multiple anonymous sources that claimed Cohen had told special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump ordered Cohen to lie. Mueller also previously disputed the same report. (Note: While Cohen denied the BuzzFeed allegations that Trump had directed him to lie, Cohen stated that he did lie on Trump’s behalf, because he assumed Trump meant for him to do so.) [snip] Worst luck Cohen estimated that he secretly recorded people 100 times — but couldn’t cite any recordings proving claims against Trump.
… and then there’s their headlong march to the left…
Triggering the blowup was Wednesday’s votes on a bill to expand federal background checks for gun purchases. Twenty-six moderate Democrats joined Republicans in amending the legislation, adding a provision requiring that ICE be notified if an illegal immigrant seeks to purchase a gun.
That infuriated liberals who have railed against ICE’s role in conducting mass deportations and embarrassed Democratic leaders who couldn’t keep their members in line on a high-profile bill.
The Democratic infighting reflects a fractured caucus and diverse freshman class, with dozens of moderates elected in districts that President Trump won in 2016 at odds with hard-charging liberals. The split has exposed divisions among Pelosi and her top lieutenants, Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Majority Whip James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.), over the party strategy to keep its newfound majority.When the Democrats held the White House, the Senate, and the House they did not vote to restrict gun ownership. Why? Because too many of them knew it would end their time in office. Only nincompoops could imagine such measures would pass muster with a party now less powerewful.
Then again, frankly, that pretty much describes the Democrat Party of today as well as the GOP establishment.
I can’t help but think that the 2020 repercussions of the GOP establishment and the Democrat Party both engaging in lockstep suicide-by-fire will make Reagan’s two landslides look miniscule by comparison.
I’m telling you, I’m dying over here, with this…
“Pompous little twit. You don’t have a plan to grow food for 8 billion people without fossil fuels, or get the food into the cities. Horses? If fossil fuels were banned every tree in the world would be cut down for fuel for cooking and heating. You would bring about mass death,” he said in a tweet responding to Ocasio-Cortez.
..
And the Jackass party keeps lining up behind this monstrosity. Why?
Not because it’s going to save the planet, but because it sets government mandates government powers that only a socialist could love.
Sad news has reached me here.
Former state Republican Party spokesman and Tennessean reporter Bill Hobbs died early Saturday morning.
At age 54.
(Sigh)
Whatever else Bill might have been, and he was a great many things, he was a class-one blogger, and I had been trying to talk him into coming back to the fold, for years now. We need his kind of fighter, particularly today.
Alas, that he never did.
But I was glad to know him.
The answer of course…. it isn’t.
Jim Treacher digs in.
The Vice President is quite correct when he says these things.
Pence singled out Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and referenced supporters of the Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.
“Remarkably, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination is an avowed socialist. And it’s not just him. Bernie’s been joined by a chorus of candidates and newly elected officials who have papered over the failed policies of socialism with bumper-sticker slogans and slick social-media campaigns,” warned Pence.
Spot on, at least so far as he goes.
Glenn Reynolds, in talking about the speech this morning says;
To be honest, Eugene Debs would have his doubts about these people.
(Nod)
Probably true. and that’s a measure of how far left the Democrat Party has gone. Certainly outside the ideological realm of mainstream America.
That said, I think Michelle Malkin got it a little closer when she pointed out the establishment GOP are the larger problem. The Democrats and their extremism is easy to identify as an anti-aircraft spotlight from miles away.
Fighting against them compared to these RINOs, who, while branding themselves as “conservative” are nothing of the sort. It’s my view that they will do far more damage so the Democrats by themselves ever could….
If we continue to let them.
I can’t help but snicker when I consider what the idiots over at Bill Kristol’s new publication are thinking about this one…
By the way, I thought using the CNN feed for this was a nice touch. (Snicker)
That’s right. You’ll never see the Democrats talking about this or the Press (but I repeat myself) but it’s true.
The IRS has released new data about tax filing season that has put weeks of overhyped media stories to rest: Compared to last year, refunds are now up 1.3 percent on average. Many politicians were quick to jump to conclusions about how tax refund data had proven that the recent tax cut law was a bad idea, but it’s turning out that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been on the whole a windfall for taxpayers up and down the income ladder.
Another Democrat talking point falls to the wayside. As the article points out that argument was always kind of silly to begin with but even as silly as it was it wasn’t true.
Even CNN of all places admits it:
The average refund check was $40 more this year than last year through the week ending February 22, according to data released by the Internal Revenue Service on Thursday.
Now if we can get the democrat-run states to start cutting taxes those numbers would go even higher.
You suppose we’ve got any kind of a shot of convincing Cuomo the lesser on this point?
Would somebody please explain to me the difference between AOC doing this and Nancy Pelosi doing this?
The reason that we’re seeing this right now, and the reason that the Democrats are seeing what most people would consider to be an inordinate amount of candidates for the office of POTUS, is that the party is seriously fractured. The reason is simple enough, every blessed one of them is going out for themselves. and of course everyone has to be in lockstep with them.
I’ll tell you the truth, I have never met a leftist pol, who did not conflate our national interest with his /her /its own power. Then again, it’s the same with any petty dictator… A personality type which seems to be most prevalent amongst the Democrat Party.
It’s time for Bill Kristol to stop calling himself and his publication “conservative”.
The Weekly Standard fell over because it deserved to fall over. Based on what I’m seeing so far Kristol’s new publication is even worse. And it dares to call itself conservative?
(Spit)
Message to the Democrats. Please take Bill Kristol with you. He’s one of your kind… You’ll get on splendidly together I’m sure.
Yeah.
Sister Toldjah dives in.
There’s a large number of things that don’t add up about Michael Cohen. But listen closely to Tucker Carlson explain some of it…
