Dissent versus dissing

NFL fans appear to be ready to mount their own “protest” by ignoring the sport, after a fatal league infestation of knee-taking.  This is giving the Left vapors: “you can’t do that!  It’s our right to dissent.”

Yes, it is.  And it’s the fans’ right not to associate with people who do so in such a childish fashion.  You see, this isn’t about dissent so much as it’s about dissing. (As in “disrespecting.”)

Dissing the symbols of America, just because its past isn’t more perfect than any other nation.  Whether you take a knee during the anthem or simply cut to the chase and burn the flag, you’re expressing hostility to symbols that still mean a great deal to a lot of people.  Many of those people would be only too happy to help fund you a one-way plane ticket to whatever country whose heritage and symbols you find superior.  We’re generous that way.

Dissing present-day citizens who have the audacity to believe government should both protect the border and leave them alone, and they should have the ability to call out and resist idiocy — such as allowing people to choose whatever bathroom they “feel like” that day — as they see it.

Dissing the Christian heritage that forms an essential part of the foundation this country was built upon.  (Why isn’t it “dissent” to refuse to participate in a gay “marriage” ceremony?  Aren’t professional sports also “public accommodations?”  Bake that cake Stand up NFL — you’re offending people!)

The mistake many make is in focusing on the issue du jour in isolation.  This isn’t about just the NFL.  It’s merely a continuation of a tiresome trend that has finally worn out its welcome and the average American’s patience: the cultural appropriation of anything considered “as American as Mom and apple pie” to churn out anti-American agitprop.  The populist/traditionalist backlash that is brewing is due to people realizing the elites aren’t out to reform America so much as they are to replace it with something more to their globalist likings.  They’ve been doing this to our institutions for decades.  Now the fight is more out in the open.  This situation makes many angry.  I’m one of them.  The very anger I feel towards ‘those people’ (a deliberate reference – figure it out if you can) makes me concerned for the future.  For if I imagine it multiplied by millions of fellow citizens, it is a tremendous potential force that can be harnessed for good or evil.  Nor is America alone is seeing this anger rise among those who still value the nation of their birth.

As Christians, we’re not told it’s wrong to be angry — only that in our anger “do not sin.” Easier said than done.  As the famous philosopher Yoda once said, “…anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering…”   And frankly, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the ringleaders of these constant shenanigans suffer…

…even if it’s only suffering cramped economy-class seating on a long one-way flight to somewhere else, with citizenship and return privileges revoked.

Too harsh, you say?  Subversion–what they’ve been up to for a couple generations–is merely treason spread out over time.  Once it’s recognized for what it is, such a penalty seems light in comparison to the standard.

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Never forget September 11, 2001

Sixteen years.  That’s how long it’s been since the worst terrorist attack in American history.  A total of 2,996 people dead or never accounted for.  Symbols of American power struck without warning: both World Trade center towers and the Pentagon.  The actions of informed passengers on a fourth plane likely averted a strike on the White House or Congress.

An entire generation had horrifying visions of previously unimaginable events happening in their own nation, with memories firmly etched into their minds.

They say time heals all wounds. And for the families of those lost that day I hope there is some measure of truth in it. But there is a flip side: such events fade in the public consciousness, such that they no longer inform or shape how the nation acts. To quote the opening of the movie “The Fellowship of the Ring,”

“…some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend, legend became myth…” (click “continue reading” below to continue)

Stealing inheritances

I know of someone whose parents, while he was just a wee lad, broke into several antique stores, amassing a tidy little sum fencing the artifacts before retiring from such activity.  Then the family settled into the quiet life of the “Nouveau riche.”  There was just one problem: eventually the authorities broke the case and discovered who was responsible for the string of thefts.  By this time, my acquaintance was just entering a fairly respectable college, fully expecting to afford the tuition with ease.

That is, until his parents were exposed and all their assets seized.  But since it would be unfair to deny him such a great educational opportunity just because his parents had broken the law, the court ruled the family could keep the money and send him to school. The various antique store owners and their families were astonished.

Outrageous, no?

OK – confession time.  The above is made up, and I don’t actually know of such a case. But there are apparently a lot of people who would agree with the fictional court ruling above.  These are the people who want to allow the children of illegal immigrants to stay in the United States, despite their parents breaking the law to get them here.

“But a child shouldn’t have to suffer for their parents’ actions!”  It’s an easy statement to agree with, emotionally.  And yet children do suffer the consequences of their parents’ actions every day.   Children are fatherless because of “no-fault” divorces.  Children live in poverty because their parents failed to acquire skills or motivation to work a decent paying job. Children are beaten when parents abuse alcohol or drugs and fly into rages. On and on the list could go.

Our nation is being played emotionally yet again to allow people to stay here who never had any right to be here in the first place.  I understand sending away people who’ve lived here their whole life seems cruel.  But is it compassion to allow wave after wave of invaders to break into America, depressing wages and driving up social spending for those already legally here?  Does it serve justice to have an immigration policy that, in effect says, “you have to follow this specific process… unless you can successfully hide out illegally in the U.S. long enough to become a sob story when you’re discovered?” Does it build confidence in the integrity of our institutions when those charged with enforcing the law go out of their way to obstruct it:

The NYPD says the (DACA) protesters arrested outside Trump Tower (Tuesday) won’t have to be fingerprinted if they provide their information willingly — no fingerprints means no arrest information transmitted to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After all, we wouldn’t want to deport any of these people who are now so bold as to say “yeah, we broke the law to get here, but we deserve to stay anyway!”

The other heartstring being pulled is “if you enforce the law it will break up families!” This is only because the United States is one of the few nations left in the world where geography of birth confers citizenship (via a grossly expanded reading of the 14th Amendment*, which was dealing with the end of slavery, not immigration in general).  The Founders talked about “securing the blessings of liberty to our posterity.” That means the descendants of Americans.  One should not receive automatic citizenship unless at least one of your biological parents is already an American (even if they themselves are a naturalized citizen).  Our current process created an “anchor baby” loophole through which hundreds of thousands of migrants have put down dubious roots in our land.

And it is our land.  Not just anybody’s.  To state otherwise is to void any semblance of a nation-state or international borders.  It’s understandable that parents want to provide the best life they can for their children.  But they must do so legally.  Allowing the children of illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. is the moral equivalent of allowing my fictional acquaintance to keep the ill-gotten gains his parents arranged.

So no, enforcement doesn’t mean breaking up families.  It means they should all go back.  Thirty years ago Ronald Reagan was played a fool by agreeing to a deal for amnesty in return for better border security and stricter immigration.  As we all know, only the first half of that deal occurred.  I guarantee Congress will try the same thing again, now the Trump has (properly) put this issue back to the legislature instead of trying to rule by Executive Order as his predecessor did.  We cannot allow our Congresscritters to hold stricter immigration and border security hostage to the demands of people who literally have no legal standing to be in the United States in the first place.  We must communicate to them clearly and loudly that we won’t consent to a second sucker’s deal.  On a tangential note, isn’t it interesting the GOP couldn’t fulfill its promise of repealing Obamacare, but within hours of the Administration’s DACA announcement there is already bipartisan support building to let the “Dreamers” (a propaganda term if there ever was one) remain in the U.S.?  Who, exactly, do these “representatives” represent?

Build the Wall.  Deport the lawbreaking illegal immigrants — all of them.  

This is not a race issue.  It is not a “realizing the American dream” issue.  It is an issue of whether we are a nation of laws, and one that is willing to defend the inheritance intended to be handed down to future generations.  If we fail this test we may as well erase the borders from all maps, because they will have become meaningless.

And our children will watch helplessly as invaders finish squandering the legacy of their ancestors.  

Let’s remember that when anti-American globalists try to play the emotion card.

_{(*) – The 14th Amendment is by far the single longest amendment to the Constitution, and the various broad judicial readings of its provisions have dramatically changed the way in which our system of governance operates.  But that’s a post for another time…}

Since we’re talking symbolism

Across the nation, Confederate monuments are coming down, and the question on many minds is whether the President was right: will it stop there, or grow to include any figure — including pivotal figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — associated with slavery or other grievances?

So this would be a good time to examine the symbol of one of the more active groups on the Left: Antifa.  Their flag has been seen from Berkeley to Boston at various “protests” and “counter-protests.”  Why the quotations?  Because in nearly every case, it has devolved into violence.

This is Antifa’s flag:

Note that the full name of the group is “Antifascist Action.”  The photo above is from an event in Oklahoma City.  Now take a careful look at this next photo:

This is the debut of that logo, at the first meeting of the “Antifaschistische Aktion” group in Berlin, July 10, 1932.  The organization was created by the Communist Party of Germany as a replacement paramilitary force after their original goon squad –the Rotfrontkämpferbund — was banned due to fighting between Communists and Nazis.

Note that the emblem is centered between two Soviet flags.  The banner on the table reads “Long live the Red Front.”  In essence, Antifa originated as the Communist answer to the Nazi “Brownshirts,” and the nature of the group was inherently violent.

The point has been made repeatedly in recent days that neo-Nazi symbolism has no business in the USA, and I agree.  But what about neo-Communism?  We’re reminded “we fought a war to conquer Nazi Germany.”  True.  We also waged a half century “Cold War” under threat of nuclear Armageddon to defeat the Soviet Union and its communist empire.  So why is Adolph Hitler the lone boogeyman and political epithet?

It’s because Communists and Nazis strongly emphasized their differences rather than their similarities.  This is deliberate deception.  BOTH belong on the “left” end of the spectrum, as both are collectivist totalitarian ideologies.  The opposite of each is not the other, but rather minimalist, individualist government.

But wait, there’s more!  Our society today is so historically ignorant that many people initially can’t understand why I lump Nazis and Communists together.  So here’s some info to chew on:

Quote of the day

“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”  – George Orwell, 1984

Whatever you may think about the appropriateness of removing statues of former Confederate figures, one thing is certain: it will not stop there.

George Washington and Thomas Jefferson are complex characters, not simple cardboard cutout “racists.”  In today’s climate, though, careful consideration of both virtues and vices is frowned upon.  We are pressed to judge historical characters not by the context of their times, but by how they measure up to current political emotionss.  And so we have reached Shakespeare’s observation through Mark Antony in Julius Caesar: 

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Caesar, rather than the wealthy, aristocratic Roman Senate, had populist support.  (Sound familiar?)  So was it out of patriotism or jealousy that the Senate acted?  It’s a fair question to ask those today who see our current President as Caesar, and dream of removing him, violently if necessary.

Whether Caesar should have been killed by the Roman Senate can be debated, but one thing history makes clear: after that milestone and the civil war that followed, the Republic clearly was dead.

What we are watching today is the disavowal and erasure of the historical foundations of the American republic.  It’s been a long process over the last half century, but those who want to see it done sense victory and are accelerating their efforts.  They may need to be more careful what they wish for.

WaPo to white middle class: drop dead

The Washington Post’s Johnathan Capehart explores “The Real Reason Working-class Whites Continue to Support Trump.”  To his credit, he manages to find one of the main underlying causes:

Working-class whites feel not only voiceless, but also silenced, especially in matters involving race. “The way they understood racism is different from the way we understand racism,” said Gest. “For them, racism has become an instrument of silence. It is a way of invalidating people. By saying someone is a racist, it means they cease to matter. Don’t listen to them.” ((emphasis added)) Gest spent three months in Youngstown, Ohio, and three months in East London, England, conducting interviews and researching his book. “So, when people said to me, ‘Now, I’m not a racist but …,’ what they were actually saying to me was, ‘Listen to what I’m about to tell you, and don’t dismiss me.’ ”

Indeed, for too long, traditional Americans have been shunted aside politically by the label ‘racist.’  It’s a far easier process than actually having an honest discussion of the issues.  The dangerous thing about this long-standing trend is that many average Americans have reached the point “if you’re going to call me racist no matter what I say or do, then what do I have to lose?”  This is one of several reasons race relations have deteriorated since the Civil Rights Era.

Another is the contempt shown by various colors of our social rainbow to the plight of working-class whites in an era of globalism, open borders, free trade agreements, loss of purchasing power (and jobs to foreigners) and reverse discrimination.  But the Post reports on how to deal with these:

“The only way of addressing their plight is a form of political hospice care,” he said. “These are communities that are on the paths to death. And the question is: How can we make that as comfortable as possible?”

It’s no secret the Left has been giddy about the approaching demographic shift in America to a nation made up of competing minority groups, with no one group making up a majority.  The Huffington Post even looked at “Ten Reasons You’ll Love Living in a Minority-Majority America.”  After discussing such insignificant ‘advantages’ as “culinary diversity,” it goes on to say:

Without a numerically dominant race, people of every group could be more inspired to drop discriminatory biases and challenge the racial injustices that continue to define the American experience for many.

It’s cute that they expect such a utopia, but visible trends today seem to indicate it’s not going to happen.  Our political class has stoked social divisions for so long that a minority-majority nation will end up being even more a collection of squabbling interest groups, determined to ensure their demographic gets a “fair share” (as they define it, of course).  That such an outcome results in more government power as a referee is not coincidental.  At least one public college has attempted a “day of absence” for white teachers and students, and when a white (and by all accounts, liberal) professor protested, the campus erupted.

Since 1965 and its notorious Immigration Act, the percentage of whites in the population has fallen from 85% to just over half.  In those same 52 years, the dwindling white population has been increasingly vilified as personally culpable descendants of previous generations of slaveowners and bigots.  (Hint: this is not a good way to win friends and influence people.)  As the Evergreen State College professor found out, even if you go along with most of The Narrative, any deviation will be dealt with harshly.  Devastated by the loss of good-paying blue-collar jobs, often to immigrants, many whites have fallen into despair and substance abuse.

Is it any wonder this demographic overwhelmingly went for Trump?  His election represents one big raspberry (and a couple extended middle fingers) to the system that has pulled the country out from underneath them.  Many see Trump as the last chance to have a voice in the largely faceless U.S. bureaucracy that for so long has been stacked against them.  So I believe the Instapundit is right when he shows the latest outrage from the Left and asks “do you want more Trump?  Because this is how you get more Trump.”

No matter how “comfortable” the Washington Post may want to make the allegedly dying white community, it’s not likely that community is going to softly and suddenly fade away.  Perhaps the Washington Post should do an article on why middle-class Americans no longer put much stock into anything they (or any other traditional media outlet) have to say.  They might find out that calling certain groups ‘racist’ at the drop of a hat, while musing that such groups need to be put in ‘hospice care’ might not draw many subscriptions.

Same pablum, different day

This article is worth your attention, as it encapsulates the feelings of an already large and growing number of people (myself included):

The sad truth, and getting sadder with every attack, is that the political class has little interest in doing what would really be necessary to combat Islamist terrorism, let alone talk about it. They don’t want to talk about how Britain’s (the West’s) lax immigration policies over decades led to hundreds of thousands of immigrants entering the country with varying degrees of willingness to assimilate and adopt Western values. They don’t want to openly criticize the blatant problems with the multiculturalism the UK (West) has pursued for years and the obvious impact it has had on the immigrant population.

Oh no. This would cost them too much. It would shatter the façade of political correctness that’s been constructed over our “civilized” western world, and destroy the illusion, so vital to the political class, that Western values are universal.

The politicians are only willing to give speeches about how united we are and how terrorists cannot tear us apart. But the truth—so clear and obvious—is that with every attack the West becomes more and more divided. We are not united, not by a long shot…

There’s little to no tolerance in polite society for the kind of honesty for which many in the West are hungry…

Our political leaders are basically telling us that this kind of terrorism, random and deadly, is the price we have to pay for their policies of multiculturalism and political correctness. They know that their weak platitudes can’t stop terrorism, and so do the people. They might as well come out and say what they mean: get used to the new normal.  ((slight editing and emphasis by yours truly))

Close the borders.  Send the illegals home.  And stop importing more of the medium — hundreds of thousands of Muslims from broken and radicalized countries — in which this ideology flourishes.