Has anyone noticed that we aren’t hearing so much these days about Black Lives Matter? Could that be because it’s no longer an election issue for the Democrats?
In fairness it should probably be noted that the ones that are complaining the loudest about what Donald Trump is doing to keep this country safe from terrorists are the same people who complained W didn’t do enough to prevent 9/11.
I want you to consider something. One of the fastest ways to tear a culture apart is to get people within that culture to forget who they are and eventually to disclaim it.
Part of the 1960’s counterculture movement was the phrase “God is dead”. Of course that phrase was brought to us in “the parable of the madman” written by Friedrich Nietzsche…
Take the time to actually read that work, and you will see that the parable is a warning…. Without the moral framework the basis for everything disappears. How ironic, then, that the social left took it not as a parable and a warning, but literally… Thus bringing about the events that Nietzsche was warning us about.
As it happens I am just now rereading Russell Kirk’s “Roots of American Order“(1974).
In that work, Kirk, who is as much as a philosopher of history as anything else, suggests that our Roots can be drawn directly to five different cities… Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London and Philly.
As Russell Kirk himself summarizes it, it is a story of five cities. Jerusalem for the revealed source of order … The concepts of the sacredness of Life, the sacredness of property, and so on– Athens for arts and science — Rome for government — London where these influences grew and coalesced — and of course Philadelphia.
Kirk looks at all of this and makes a the observation that…
“… the imprints of Athens, Rome, and London are still upon us. But the all-important endowment of Jerusalem has been tossed to the winds.”
Now, keep in mind this is 1974. We have progressed somewhat down the road since then.
Western philosophy has always had the Judeo-Christian mindset at the root of it. That mindset informed us of the value of the individual. That the rights of the individual are paramount because of that worth. It is the foundation of our very way of thinking in the West.
So what happens then, when Jerusalem and lessons that it teaches are rejected? Remember that the concepts of the rights of the individual came from the lessons that Humanity learned in Jerusalem. When you remove the foundation from a building, what happens to the building? I suggest to you that we are already seeing the results of that rejection.
Now before you start warming up about freedom from religion, keep in mind I’m not talking about establishing a theocracy here. That was never the design or the outcome in early America. Re-embracing the judeo-christian mindset, rather, to acknowledge that Jerusalem has in fact taught us some truths about the human condition and the purpose of our existence.
The end result of freedom from religion as it is currently promoted by some atheists is a Surefire way to eliminate the rights created by the moral order that Jerusalem gave us, because it eliminates the moral framework that informed us of those rights.
I’ve been saying this for years now…
Here it is; Rights are a cultural construct, and meaningless outside that construct. As I said in the article linked above: Rights are not universal.
When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.
Rather than talking about a universal point of view, a universal truth, if you will, he was instead talking about the point of view of WE the new American culture. With this angle, many of the long-held myths about rights tend to disappear.
Consider; if it was in fact a universal truth that all men were created equal, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, for the time, much less then to now. Last I checked, it is quite true that a vast majority still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise; they consider them to be anything BUT self-evident. Royalty still exists, as do class structures, and slavery, as well.
Again, I say…Jefferson was speaking of the point of view of OUR culture, not that of others.
The fact of the matter is that RIGHTS ARE A CULTURAL CONCEPT, and are nigh on meaningless outside that construct.
And so we come back to Jerusalem and the lessons that it taught.
As Insidious as the movement away from Jerusalem in the lessons it teaches is, it is in a larger sense an attack on our individual rights. If the judeo-christian ethic is the foundation of our ideas about individual rights what happens to those rights foundations of that philosophy is ripped away, and finally outlawed?
As One reviewer to “American Order” puts it…
Order is organic; that which was inherited by the new American republic was the product of care, cultivation, and time. It is recklessness to quickly and radically reshape it, and still expect a just and free society. To engage the immense privilege of reconciling liberty with law we must recognize the roots of American order that have even made that task possible.
As an aside, and with that quote in mind, serious questions are raised about the recently Departed Administration in Washington and its goals, stated and otherwise. Remember, they came into office with the stated goals of fundamental change. And if you want a symbolic reference to frame all of that in, what was the removal of the bust of Winston Churchill from the Oval Office but a rejection of London?
How does one execute that fundamental change without fundumentally changing the perception of the nature of Rights?
With the idea that rights are cultural concepts comes the concern about other cultures and the attempt to change the baseline culture of America into a Multicultural Society or at least into their image, and replacing ours.
As an example, let’s look at Islam, And its effects on our culture and our legal system thereby. Islam is at the heart a complete rejection of Jerusalem. I’ve said it many times, there is no way that an America would be created with Islam as its philosophical foundation.
Proof? Easily had.
I could certainly go on at much greater length on that particular subject but I hasten to point out that America would never have been founded in what is being promoted now as a secular worldview… Or Islam, or any of the pantheistic cultures …. Nor can it be preserved in any of them.
I mean, has it slipped everyone’s notice that the farther behind we leave Jerusalem and its moral framework, the sicker our society becomes?
As I have suggested elsewhere…
1: Who invented the concept of government?
2: What purpose would that entity have had in such creation?
One way we can answer those two questions at once, would be to look at what existed as the most powerful force before government was invented, and therefore what was the most likely inventor of government: CULTURE.
If we make the logical assumption that governments were originally created by the individual cultures, then it follows that each culture constructed their respective governments in their own image… governments that best reflected and advanced each culture’s interests.
The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life. As such, to the greatest of degrees possible, each government’s laws, on the whole, were the culture, codified. It follows, then, that any government holding to the original purpose of government will perform this task.
There is a reason my friends why India for example did not succumb to Marxism. It’s culture was far too strong.
As I have said often …nature abhors a vacuum. Continuing to deny and reject the culture and the values that this nation was founded upon… the continuing moving toward a completely secular society… Our nation… Our culture… not going to be strong enough to defend itself when the time comes, and I am sure you have seen yourself the evidence that that time if not already upon us is it least very near and the threat very grave.
Absent the effort to allow the culture back into the role and value set… The perceptions of morality, of right and of wrong, that it had at the founding of this country, we are not going to save it.
I have told you recently that I love Kate, Small Dead Animals? Video:
If you don’t grasp the concept of the debate, even if you do, drop in on Small Dead Animals anyhow.
Cynical author warning.
I note, wryly, the rhinoceroses tears, from Chicago Tribune:
For the past decade, poachers have killed rhinoceroses in the wild and in protected reserves around the world at alarming rates, threatening the survival of four of the world’s five rhino species.
[…]
Perhaps no rhino death illustrates that threat more forcefully than the killing of Vince, a 4-year-old male white rhino who was slaughtered this week inside his enclosure at a zoo outside Paris. The rhino – discovered by his keeper at the Thoiry Zoological Park on Tuesday – now holds the ominous distinction of likely being the first rhino to be killed by poachers inside a zoo, experts said.
What next, twenty four seven, around the clock secret service style protection for all captive rhinoceroses? If some perverted scientists manage to un extinct the Woolly Mammoth, what price will mammoth tusk get and who will guard the game preserve in Siberia? Film at Eleven.
Postulate the following…
You are driving in a section of town known for it’s lawless nature and violence. It is night time.
Now, your car breaks down in the middle of this place. Suddenly, three burly looking males are moving toward you.
First question…
Would it be comforting for you know that these guys had just come from a mosque?
Second question…
Would it be comforting for you know that these guys had just come from a Bible study?
Doctor Ben Carson characterized slaves brought into our nation as “immigrants”, albeit, involuntary immigrants:
“I think people need to actually look up the word immigrant,” Carson said. “Whether you’re voluntary or involuntary, if you come from the outside to the inside, you’re an immigrant. Whether you’re legal or illegal, you come from the outside to inside, you’re an immigrant. Slaves came here as involuntary immigrants but they still had the strength to hold on.”
In response some media outlets have gone utterly bonkers, here is Red State:
As I said elsewhere, they didn’t “come” to America. They were brought to America, against their will.
To paraphrase a reader from the original post: If you use chloroform to knock out an individual at a bar, drag them back to your home and chain them up in your basement, does that make them an “involuntary houseguest”?
I note the high irony of Red State attempting to explain proper English grammar.
Further, the lame stream media seems more than happy to slap the label of immigrant on any person either sets foot in the United States or attempts to do so, no matter what their purpose, legal or otherwise. If in say 1941 the Wehrmacht had marched down Fifth Avenue, the New York Times would have called them immigrants..
Overdrive Magazine reports…
?
“The more restrictive hours of service rules took effect in July 2013, prompting widespread criticism by both fleets and drivers for preventing truckers from returning to duty until 5 a.m. after a restart, even if the restart had spanned a full 34 hours.
One of the chief arguments against the regulations were that it pushed drivers into early morning rush hour traffic — which caused safety and operational issues — and that FMCSA issued the rule with little scientific evidence to back up the restrictions.”
Well, now…
If THAT is to be the criteria for overturning these regs, I’m all for it.
One question, though… On what basis are we to assume that the now existing regulations meet the standard set here?
In other words, why should we believe that the EXISTING regulations make us safer? What standard did these unelected paper-pushers use to make this determination?
I mean, let’s leave aside for the moment it was the same type of unelected paper pusher whom by means of the so-called Environmental Protection Agency forced us into more expensive less reliable trucks that consume more fuel per mile in the name of saving the environment without any indication whatsoever that it is actually doing that.
Perhaps we should remember also at the point these supposedly Safer regulations were put into place the federal government’s own figures showed that 90% of car truck accidents were the fault of the CAR driver. Not the truck driver. Course, how does the federal government respond? They regulated the truck driver.
If nothing else the reversal of these regulations proves once and for all the inept and quite probably corrupt means by which these matters are dealt with.
I’d like to think that the current Administration and the current Congress have both the intelligence and the stamina to put a stop to all this nonsense.
But frankly, I doubt it.
Did Barack Obama, a/k/a Dim Won, attempt to steal the last general election to salvage his legacy? Obama has a JD(Juris Doctor) to no license to practice law. On the hand Mark Levin has both.
From Real Clear Politics:
“The question is: Was Obama surveilling top Trump campaign officials during the election?” he asked.
“We absolutely know this is true, the FBI did a preliminary criminal investigation based on a potential connection between a server in Trump Tower and a couple of Russian banks. That turned out to be a dry hole, but one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen… totally uncovered by the media. Instead of closing the investigation, the Obama administration tried to turn it into a FISA court investigation in June [2016]. Apparently the first application they submitted named Trump.”
“Even the FISA court said no. There wasn’t enough evidence to make out probable cause involving Donald Trump,” he said. “In the middle of the campaign the administration was actively having Trump investigated.”
We know that Obama is not adverse to stealing elections. He tried to interfere with the general election in Israel. He has his FBI spy on the campaign of his anointed successor’s opponent.
Not unexpectedly, the Democrats are complaining that Trump wheeled that woman… the wife of a soldier KIA… out at the SOTU speech simply to score political points.
What they fail to publicly recognize and perhaps don’t even understand in reality, is that respect for the fallen and those who are left behind should be standard procedure and in a sane world would be.
Understand I am not a Trump supporter. But let’s call this what it is.
It’s quite true there was a shift of points there comma but as usual it’s not how the Democrats portray it. That shift happened not because Trump gained political points, but the Democrats lost points when they sat on their hands when the time came to show respect for the Fallen.
And by the way, let’s not ignore the fact that the Democrats brought their own people for prop purposes… immigrants… assumedly legal ones, as a protest of Trump’s proposed treatment of illegals.
The fact is the Democrats have years… decades….generations of lack of respect for the military, and lack of respect traditional America to overcome. What we were witness to the other night does not help matters for them at all.
Nor does this.
Bill Nye( BS, Cornell – 1977 ) bills himself a “The Science Guy.” The problem is that Nye is not a scientist. He is a mechanical engineer. Nye says the science of anthropogenic global warming is “settled>” Yet when pressed Nye could not or would not cite any settled scientific
Nye would have you believe if but for man, the Earth’s climate would be the same today as in 1750. Takes?
Hat tip: Watts up with That
Over at Politico, one Natasha Korecki declares that President
Trump wages war on Chicago:
The president barely gets through a few days without sounding off on Chicago violence, often casting the nation’s third largest city as a war-torn wasteland. He whacked it yet again on Twitter Thursday evening, then followed with another haymaker Friday morning in his CPAC speech.
[…]
While it’s long been a favorite target of conservatives who view it as a den of Democratic voter fraud and a Midwestern metropolis with tough gun laws that do nothing to quell violence, Trump’s frequent potshots have struck a nerve, leaving local officials to wonder what’s behind the obsession with Chicago.
Conservative legend has it that it was the dead voters of Chicago who gave us President John F. Kennedy, and it was Kennedy who gave us the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Berlin Wall and the War in Vietnam. What is not to hate?
Jumping ahead a few decades, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s People’s Republic of Chicago has waged a success war on both the Second Amendment and the lives of her own people.
What ever Emanuel is doing in Chicago it is clear that is not working and has not been working for a long time. To quote myself from 2012:
Meanwhile Back in the People’s Republic of Chicago
While I have been negligent in tracking the shootings and the murders in the People’s Republic of Chicago, Professor William A. Jacobson, Legal Insurrection has taken up the slack,
Chicago is a war zone, and there is no need to declare war on city intent on killing herself.
The ‘rats pretend to be pro-minority, pro-women, born ones anyhow, and pro-refugees. Further, the ‘rats feigned outrage when the Senate cut Senator’s Lying Lizzie Warren’s microphone. Lying Lizzie’s crime, impugning a fellow senator. So one would think that a state senator, of state controlled by democrats, who is a minority, woman and refugee would be allowed speak her piece. Not so in the People’s Republic of California.
Recently, the California State Senate in their infinite wisdom eulogized the late Tom “Mr. Jane Fonda” Hayden, a controversial figure, to say the least. It ought to obvious, even to a California democrat, that opinions of the humanity of the late Mr. Hayden are subject to individual interpretation and all the more so if state senator was both a member of class persecuted by the late Mr. Hayden and represented a district largely populated by his victims. What follows in California State Senator Janet Nguyen attempting to speak truth, as she sees it, to power. The sight is not pretty, video:
I am not aware of any response by United States Senator Elizabeth “Fauxasquawa” Warren.
Hat tip, but no link, Red State(Spam)
Bruce, where you get into trouble with this is you’ve forgotten a whole group of people. Actual conservatives who are not followers of the GOP establishment because the establishment are not conservative.. but who firmly believe that Trump was the wrong choice.
It’s very easy, and I think proper, to conflate establishment Republicans with the left. John McCain leaps to mind. If those morons had their way the party of Reagan would permanently be indistinguishable from the party of Barack Obama.
But, you said it yourself. Trump is not a conservative. And conservatism is precisely what has been needed for a long time.
As I have said here before, where he acts correctly he will have my support. Where he doesn’t he will have my flamethrower
Perhaps more correctly is Islam compatible with America?
I suggest you can probably answer that one best yourself. Ask yourself if you can see Islam ever giving birth to an America?
For my part, I cannot.
I suggest further that Europe is our Canary in the coal mine. Look at what’s going on over there right now as a direct result of allowing too many people with incompatible ideologies into their culture. This is precisely what immigration laws are supposed to be defending against.
