The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

BREAKING NEWS: Nashville School Shooter Is Probably Not a Trump Voter

Posted on | March 27, 2023 | 1 Comment

While I always strive to avoid speculation in situations like this, the (allegedly) transgender person known as Audrey (or “Aiden”) Hale does not seem to fit the MAGA profile. It is not yet known if Hale’s motive was political, or if she/“he” was just crazy. Therefore I must withhold judgment on whether this shooting — which killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in the Green Hills neighborhood of Nashville — could be described as transgender terrorism.

Given what we know about media bias, expect this story to disappear with astonishing rapidity. Doesn’t fit the narrative, you see.



 

 

Category: Crime, Media Bias, Tennessee, The Transgender Cult

Inheriting a Legacy of Liberty

Posted on | March 27, 2023 | 2 Comments

The Queen of Bohemia

In his monumental Reflections on the Revolution in France, Edmund Burke goes to some length to demonstrate how the principle of inheritance operated in English law. The young person to whom he addresses his lecture — which began as a correspondence — seemed to have been deceived by those who contended that the English constitution included a “right” of the people to choose their own king. This contention, as Burke shows, was based on a misunderstanding of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which had the effect of bringing William and Mary to the throne. Yet in the very document establishing this succession, the signatories declare the fealty of “ourselves and our posterity” to their new sovereigns — and their posterity: How could the principle of inherited authority be voided, asked Burke, if the English people could by solemn compact bind their descendants as subjects of the descendants of their sovereign? So the imagined “right” to choose their own king was not proven by the Glorious Revolution; rather, it was explicitly denied.

Most people have never actually read Burke’s Reflections. If they have studied it at all, they’ve done so as college students under the supervision of a professor who includes excerpts from it as part of a syllabus on political philosophy, and thus absorb only a limited conception of Burke’s argument, one that overlooks such details as his emphasis on the importance of the principle of inheritance in English law.

Consider the Queen of Bohemia, a relative of William and Mary. The Queen of Bohemia was the daughter of King James I, and was allegedly a target of the conspirators (including Guy Fawkes) in the 1605 Gunpowder Plot. While her English cousins were going through their ordeals in the 1600s — Cromwell and all that — she was the wife of Frederick V of the Palatinate, who became King of Bohemia, a title he held for only one year before being exiled because of a defeat in the Thirty Years War. Despite their misfortune, Frederick and his English-born Queen had numerous children, the 12th of whom was Sophia, who in 1658 married Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover. In the meantime, the English throne had passed from William and Mary to Queen Anne. None of them left any surviving children, which precipitated a succession crisis:

Anne was the only person remaining in the line of succession established by the Bill of Rights 1689 [which excluded Catholics from the English throne]. To address the succession crisis and preclude a Catholic restoration, the Parliament of England enacted the Act of Settlement 1701, which provided that, failing the issue of Anne and of William III by any future marriage, the Crown of England and Ireland would go to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, and her Protestant descendants. Sophia was the granddaughter of James VI and I through his daughter Elizabeth, who was the sister of Anne’s grandfather Charles I. Over 50 Catholics with stronger claims were excluded from the line of succession.

As a Protestant nation, the English refused to be ruled by Catholics, which is how Sophia’s son, the grandson of the Queen of Bohemia, became King George I, establishing the Hanoverian dynasty in England. Was the exclusion of Catholic claimants to the crown a violation of the principle of inheritance in English law? On the contrary, it was confirmation of that principle. Going back to Henry VIII, the English had rejected papal supremacy, and the fundamental point of “Cromwell and all that” was the continuation of England’s Protestant legacy, even if they had to behead King Charles to accomplish it.

All of this may seem irrelevant to Americans today, but ask yourself why our forefathers fought the War of Independence and why, in agreeing to the ratification of the Constitution, they insisted that it immediately be amended with the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, establishing freedom of religion? Our nation was founded by men who understood the rights for which their English ancestors had fought during all those decades from James to Charles to Cromwell and onward. The legitimacy of colonial assemblies as instruments of governing authority in America had been recognized by the Crown and upheld by Parliaments, so that when George III started infringing on this long-established arrangement, the American colonists resisted. They saw the King as seeking to deprive them of their inherited rights — a legacy of liberty that Englishmen could trace back to Magna Carta.

American patriots love to speak of their “God-given rights,” adopting the rhetoric of the Declaration about the “self-evident” truth that “all men” are “endowed by their Creator” with these rights — which is fine, except when you ponder why these truths were not proclaimed at some other time in some other place by some other people, but rather by English-speaking Americans gathered at Philadelphia in 1776. And when they leave off quoting the Declaration, well-meaning American patriots are fond of quoting the Preamble of the Constitution without making much of the phrase wherein the Framers declared their intent to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,” extending to the infinite future the principle of inheritance.

My emphasis on the English origins of our conception of rights, as a legacy inherited from our ancestors, is not intended to exclude those Americans whose ancestors were not English and thus had nothing to do with this particular history. As Americans, all of us are rightful beneficiaries of this legacy, no matter where our ancestors came from, or how recently they may have arrived. Readers will recall my praise for Vivek Ramaswamy as “an enthusiastic proponent of American exceptionalism,” notwithstanding the fact that Vivek is a Hindu whose parents immigrated from India. Vivek gets it, in terms of the importance of “the Blessings of Liberty” which we seek to preserve under the Constitution. My ancestor fought in the Revolution as a teenager in the South Carolina militia, and I would hope that all his descendants — probably thousands of us by now — share the same sensibility expressed by Vivek Ramaswamy. Meanwhile, in Colorado, we have this adamant declaration from Jeff Goldstein:

Be it so understood:
I refuse to “unpack white violence.” I reject the idea that my existence “perpetuates white power structures.” I will not — and in fact cannot — “examine my implicit biases.” I’m an individual. I refuse to grant determined interpretive communities authority over my being. My meaning is mine. It is what makes me me.
I’m not taking any “journey” to “discover” the impact of my “privilege” on “black and brown peoples.” I will not become “anti-racist” or “anti-fascist” to satisfy your demands. I reject Cultural Marxism. I am an individual. I’m not defined by my color, my religion, my sex. I’m Jeff.
I will not “respect your pronouns” or “celebrate” your “queerness.” I am hostile to your sexualizing of children. I reject your neologisms, your “triggers,” and your desire to control my speech. I know who and what you are: you are my presumptive master, or else the Useful Idiot who empowers him. But I will grant you and your ideology no power over me.

(Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.) Jeff is definitely an individual, as he says — and if you’ve ever met him, you certainly wouldn’t argue the point — but he is recognizably American in his individualism, as he understands the “Blessings of Liberty” as the Framers intended it, as belonging to him by inheritance as an American. While I suppose that Jeff would bemoan the lack of liberty and the violation of rights in distant places — Quebec or Kabul, Kinshasa or Kathmandu — it is the preservation of freedom in America that concerns him.

Intelligent people understand what Ronald Reagan once pointed out, in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” about our nation:

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

Our freedom as Americans — our nation’s proud claim to be liberty’s “last stand on earth” — has a history, and if we don’t teach that history to our children, how can they possibly understand how precious this legacy is?

The Queen of Bohemia could not be reached for comment.



 

 

Category: Constitution, Great Britain, History

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Riley Gaines

Posted on | March 27, 2023 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Swimmer Riley Gaines, who competed for the University of Kentucky in the NCAA finals against infamous troon “Lia” Thomas, has had some harsh words for the NCAA and also for elite athletes who thanked her privately for coming out against “transgender” men in women’s sports.

Now I realize these private thanks make them responsible for this continuing and advancing as it has. -Riley Gaines on Twitter, 2/7/2023

She’s having an impact – eighteen states now have laws banning biological men from participating in women’s sports.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Built for speed.

NINETY MILES FROM TYRANNY: Hot Pick of the Late night, The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #2028, Morning Mistress, and Girls With Guns. 

ANIMAL MAGNETISM: Rule 5 Once-Golden State Friday, and the Saturday Gingermageddon.

EBL: MAGA Bat Boy, The Wrong Man, Daisy Jones & The Six, Kleo, Quo Vadis?, Luther: Fallen Sun, Dragged Across Concrete, Barbie, and Suisse Cheese.

A VIEW FROM THE BEACH: By Request – Hanna Kim, Beware of the Super Pigs!, Fish Pic Friday – Sage Scrimale, Tattoo Thursday, Is Today the Day?, The Wednesday Wetness, 25, The Monday Morning Stimulus, Palm Sunday, Florida Proposes Constitutional Right to Hunt and Fish, and Twitter File #19 Out, NY Plans to Arrest DJT

Thanks to everyone for all the luscious links!

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Category: Rule 5

NOT a Babylon Bee Headline

Posted on | March 26, 2023 | 1 Comment

Just a few days ago, I was talking about how satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird. The person using the name “Mara” has locked his/“her” @massofclay Twitter account, after deleting the series of posts complaining about a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent at New York’s JFK International Airport who allegedly injured him/“her”:

A transgender woman was left in tears at JFK Airport after she claimed a TSA agent punched her in the testicles while going through security, The Daily Mail reported.
The unidentified flyer took to social media to vent about the incident, in which she said the agent “humiliated” her in front of everyone in a series of posts that have since been deleted, according to the outlet.
“hi so a tsa agent at jfk airport punched me in the genitalia, yelled at me for having a penis (?) and humiliated me in front of everyone after i told her to please stop,” she captioned over photo of her crying in the airport bathroom, according to a screenshot of the post.
But the embarrassment didn’t stop there, according to the woman.
“[The TSA agent] followed me into the women’s bathroom and began talking about me to a coworker while I sobbed in a stall,” she wrote, asking friends on the internet for advice as to what she should do.
In a follow-up post, she said she was left crying for over an hour and said “my balls still hurt so bad,” according to a screenshot from the Daily Mail.
She does not want the TSA agent to be fired, she said in a separate post but wanted “her educated and the entirety of tsa abolished altogether.”
In response to the woman’s posts, JFK airport apologized for the incident.
“We apologize again for your experience,’ the airport tweeted in response, according to the Daily Mail. “Your comments have been noted and shared.”

“Your comments have been noted and shared” — and don’t you know they were laughing out loud while they typed that sentence?



 

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

Fear And Loathing On The Intertubes

Posted on | March 26, 2023 | 1 Comment

— by Wombat-socho


Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.


I don’t follow VTubers because my attention span these days is short enough I have a hard time making it through a lot of YouTube videos, much less a three-hour stream, and I’m not in the target demographic anyway. However, when #1 Son threw me a RedState link on Telegram a few weeks ago, I sat up and took notice. As Brandon Morse noted*, what’s significant here is not that somebody got bullied off the internet, but the massive backlash that bullying inspired in not just VTuber fandom, but a lot of people who had just had it up to here with the (alleged) minority of trans activists going around making other peoples’ lives miserable over video games. A lot of trans activists online got jumped on with both boots for not policing their own bad actors, and then 4chan got into the act. Every one of the “activists’ who had bullied Pikamee got doxxed, and quite a few of them shut down their Twitter accounts – but not before 4chan and others brought the receipts and exposed them as the lying bullies they were. Pikamee is still graduating, but the LGBTWTFBBQ crowd has been put on notice that people are tired of their shit and not willing to put up with it any more.

*RTWT, seriously.

Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” Winston S. Churchill, Their Finest Hour

By itself, this could be dismissed as a tempest in a teapot. But the revenge taken by VTuber fans and 4chan isn’t happening in a vacuum. States are passing laws banning sexually explicit drag shows in public venues, especially where children may be exposed to these “queens”. Parents across the country are demanding explanations from school boards when they find porn in their school libraries and troons making elementary school kids discuss sexual acts instead of teaching the three R’s. The same parents are bringing down the hellfire on schools that think it’s okay to hide the fact that Little Johnny is transitioning to Little Janey from Johnny’s parents. We have a long way to go before all these shifty genderqueer groomers are rooted out of the public schools, but as Churchill said after El Alamein, it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Never forget. Never forgive. Never surrender.

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Category: Fear. Loathing., Zeitgeist

FMJRA 2.0: Die Macht Der Bilder

Posted on | March 25, 2023 | Comments Off on FMJRA 2.0: Die Macht Der Bilder

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Sorry about last week, loyal members of the Commentariat.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

It’s a miracle!

The COVID-19 Fetish Community
The DaleyGator
Okrahead
A View From The Beach
Flappr
EBL
357 Magnum

The Answer Is ‘Yes’
Okrahead
The DaleyGator
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

 

Hiding In Plain Sight: Jeanette Jennings and Transgender Munchausen by Proxy
The DaleyGator
The First Street Journal
Flappr
EBL
357 Magnum

What Did China Get for Its Money?
The Pirate’s Cove
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

‘Stockholm Syndrome’? SVB, BLM and the Toxic Plague of Liberal White Guilt
The Pirate’s Cove
The Political Hat
EBL
357 Magnum

What Happened to Charlie Sykes?
The DaleyGator
EBL

Late Night With Rule 5 Sunday: Olga Kurylenko
Animal Magnetism
A View From The Beach
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.21.23 (Morning Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.21.23 (Evening Edition)
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.22.23
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Violence Against Women Update: Some Cases Are Just So…Unpredictable
The DaleyGator
EBL
357 Magnum

Best Headline Ever?
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

In The Mailbox: 03.23.23
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

The Ignorance of Professor Paul Campos
EBL

Cue the ‘Paw Patrol’ Theme
EBL

In The Mailbox: 03.24.23
A View From The Beach
EBL
357 Magnum

Top linkers for the week ending March 24:

  1.  EBL (15)
  2.  357 Magnum (12)
  3.  A View From The Beach (10)
  4.  The DaleyGator (5)

Thanks to everyone for all the links!

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Category: FMJRA Award

‘Limited Scientific Evidence’

Posted on | March 25, 2023 | 1 Comment

Are you kidding me with this? What kind of “journalism” is being practiced at NPR? Perhaps the kind in which ordinary common sense is prohibited. You don’t need an advanced degree in biology to know that the average man is 5-foot-10 and the average woman is 5-foot-5. And these average differences have a profound effect when considering the tail ends of the bell curve distributions. A man who is 5-foot-5 (the average height of a woman) is at the eight percentile (bottom 8%) of the male distribution; in other words, 92% of men are taller than the average woman. A man who is 6 feet tall is at the 84th percentile of the male distribution, whereas a 6-foot-tall woman is at the 99th percentile of the female distribution. So in a randomly selected group of 100 men, you’ll find 16 guys who are 6 feet tall. To find 16 women who are 6 feet tall, you’ll need to be choosing from a group of more than 1,500 women.

This is just basic statistics, using a single metric, based on information anybody can find with Google. There are other metrics we could consult. The world record for the 100-meter sprint is 9.58 seconds, set by Usain Bolt in 2009; the women’s world record, 10.45, was set by Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988. The women’s record has stood for 35 years, which should suffice to suggest that it represents pretty much the maximum feasible speed by a female runner. Last year in the Southeastern Conference men’s 100-meter finals, how many of the male finalists ran faster than Griffith-Joyner’s world-record 10.45 seconds? The answer: All of them. And this is routine — that is to say, all competitive male sprinters outrun Flo Jo’s female world-record time, in every college track meet in America. “Limited scientific evidence”?

Being a traditionalist, I can’t resist an ironic smile at the strange fruit now being produced by the feminist tree of Equality. For decades, feminists have assaulted any all-male institution as inherently unfair, but now you have men pretending to be women in order to access all-female institutions and suddenly the absurdity of Equality is apparent to everyone. The fact that militant feminists like Meghan Murphy now find themselves siding with conservatives vindicates what I’ve been saying for years: Never bet against the Gods of the Copybook Headings.

(Hat-tip: John Hoge.)



 

 

Category: Science, Sports

In The Mailbox: 03.24.23

Posted on | March 24, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.24.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Compliance Does Not Guarantee Your Safety
EBL: The Wrong Man, Orgins of “Licking Into Shape”, and Did Trump Escape Them Again?
Twitchy: Where’s Fetterman? also, Pinche Gordita Ana Navarro Whines About How Much Her Chosen Home State Of Florida Sucks
Louder With Crowder: ‘I’m just going by faith’ – Blac Chyna blasts ‘degrading’ OnlyFans after conversion to Christianity, also, 13-year-old boy dresses like girl, sexually gyrates on stage to entertain “adults”
Vox Popoli: Why We Don’t Care, also, Rekonquista Kommend
According To Hoyt: The Cuckoo In Our Nest, also, Equity or the Hundred Thousand Dollar Egg
Monster Hunter Nation: WriterDojo S4 E11: Brainstorming (Round 1)

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Conservative: Nikki Haley Responds to China-Russia Summit with Girl Power, also, Operation Warp Bleed
American Greatness: Biden EPA Administrator Demands Funding for Hundreds of New Bureaucrats, also, New Emails Reveal Earliest Efforts to Suppress Negative Biden Stories
American Thinker: When Will Stubborn Trump Loyalists Face Inconvenient Truths?, also, Biden is Preparing Americans To Lose the Second Cold War
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Once-Golden State Friday
Babalu Blog: NGO documents political repression in Cuba ahead of ‘elections’, Cuban dictatorship on the hunt for escaped slaves, Majority of Cubans disapprove of Cuba’s electoral system, don’t view it as legitimate or fair, and Surprise! Cuban dictatorship predicts worst ever tobacco harvest this year
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm for March 24
Behind The Black: Rocket Lab and SpaceX successfully launch, Sierra Space pops another inflatable test space station module, Hubble spots long term seasonal changes on Uranus, Musk denies SpaceX is seeking investment funds from UAE and Saudi Arabia, and The invulnerability of today’s academic blacklist culture
Cafe Hayek: More On Why Adam Smith Was No Protectionist
Chicago Boyz: Running Slap Up Against Reality
Da Tech Guy: A Godsend for the Democrats
Don Surber: Biden Handed Putin To Xi
First Street Journal: The truth will set you free
Gates Of Vienna: Queer as a Three-Dollar Bill
The Geller Report: World Athletics Bans Biological Males from Competing in Female Track and Field Competitions, also, US Air Force Strikes Back After Iran-Backed Drone Kills American Contractor, Injures 5 Soldiers
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, New Views of Jupiter and Uranus, Underwater Firearms, and Don’t Know Much Biology
Hollywood In Toto: Why ‘Anti-War’ Hollywood Went All-In on Ukraine
The Lid: Has Everything Become Racist?
Legal Insurrection: House Panel Finds ‘No Legitimate Basis’ for Biden DOJ Investigating Parents Protesting School Boards, House Republicans Call for Halt to Offshore Wind Projects, Study Concludes Nature Magazine’s 2020 Endorsement of Biden Hurt Trust in Science, Pentagon Diversity Chief Faces No Consequences After Probe of Anti-White Social Media Posts and Alan Dershowitz Says Stanford Law Protest was Orchestrated by Well Known Left Wing Group
Nebraska Energy Observer: Going Gently into the Good Night is NOT the American Way
Outkick: Memphis Women’s Basketball Player Who Sucker-Punched BGSU Player In Handshake Line Charged With Assault, 14-Year-Old Football Player Who Wears Size 23 Shoes Gets Great News From Under Armour & Puma, Thursday Night Games Were So Awful Last Year NFL Owners Are Voting To Flex Them, Cavinder Twins Follow In Olivia Dunne’s Footsteps, Sign With Trading Card Company As NIL Value Skyrockets, and Baltimore Ravens Star Marlon Humphrey Sparks Debate Over Athletes That Are Cheap
Power Line: America’s Worst Politician, Donald Trump, RIP, and Thoughts from the ammo line
Shark Tank: Gaetz Votes Against Parental Rights Bill, Says Education is A State Issue
Shot In The Dark: Mandate, Unspecified, and Learning From Failure?
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday: Limits of Behavioral Control
This Ain’t Hell: The U.S. military establishes permanent garrison in Poland, West Point cadets role play preferred pronoun scenario, Iranian backed forces fire rockets at US base in Syria, and Valor Friday
Transterrestrial Musings: BIden’s Sergeant Schulz Defense On Hunter
Victory Girls: Don’t Try To Glom On The Trump Brand
Volokh Conspiracy: Fifth Circuit Again Stays FDA Denial of E-Cigarette Product Application
Watts Up With That: Green Dictatorship? Netherlands Politicians Answering to the EU instead of Voters, also, Greta Thunberg:  Doctor of Theology
Weasel Zippers: Jill Biden: “It’s Been Really Warm Because Of Global Warming”, Biden Treasury Sec. Insists The IRS Is Unpopular Because They Are Too Small, and Occasional Cortex Falsely Claims A Parents’ Bill of Rights Would “Force The Outing Of LGBT People”
The Federalist: Missouri’s Attorney General Sues To Remove Soros-Funded Crime-Enabling Saint Louis DA, Black Lives Matter Activists Executed A Shocking $83 Billion Shakedown Of American Corporations, Why Classics Like Casablanca Hold Up And Modern Schlock Doesn’t, When It Comes To The Left’s Radical Agenda, No One Is Safe, and NM School Boards Association Administrator Says Parents Have No Rights In Public Education
Mark Steyn: Live Around the Planet: Friday March 24th

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Category: Linkagery
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