The Other McCain

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

In The Mailbox: 03.28.23 (Evening Edition)

Posted on | March 28, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 03.28.23 (Evening Edition)

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Electric Vehicles – A Not So Green Solution
EBL: The Night Agent, When Trannies Go Wild, and Eva Vlaardingerbroek
Twitchy: Trans Activist So Mad About Being Called Out For Violent Rhetoric He Tries To Cancel Sam (Then Runs), also, Book Explaining How To Use Gay Hookup App Grindr Yeeted From School Library
Louder With Crowder: “To hell with ratings and talent”, Nashville Police Release Bodycam Footage Of Shooting Response And It’s Absolutely Heroic, and NWA champion Tyrus has a solution to protect our schools, and it involves our nation’s veterans
Vox Popoli: Mailvox – Even AI Lives in Fear, Profit is NOT the Motive, If the Dollar is Their Superpower, Demonic Disaccord, and NOW They Protest?
Stoic Observations: AIs Teach Humans To Be Human

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: JP finds God
American Conservative: A Worthy Tribute to Lincoln’s Moral Heroism
American Greatness: Biden Opens Speech With Rant About Ice Cream, Trump Again Defines National Priorities, and Do White Leftists Really Hate Themselves?
American Power: 32 States and Counting – Why Parents Bills of Rights Are Sweeping the U.S., Left Is Not Woke, and Justine Bateman Defends Her ‘Old Face’ 
American Thinker:  Why Vote GOP?, Uncommon Senselessness – Who Are These People?, and Fat, Stupid, and Diverse
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Re-Declaration News
Babalu Blog: Shocking! Only 2% of Cubans cast votes for ‘President’ Miguel Díaz-Canel, Surprise! Elián González ‘elected’ to Cuba’s National Assembly, immediately spews Castro-babble to CNN, and Reports from Cuba: Images of empty voting centers in Cuba belie official participation rate of more than 70%
BattleSwarm:  Ted Cruz Takes A Scalp, also, Russia-China Strategic Partnership is Molotovribbentroperrific
Behind The Black: A multitude of strange galaxies, NASA goes woke!, Leaking Soyuz capsule returns unmanned to Earth, Scientists detect water inside lunar samples returned to Earth by Chang’e-5, and Pushback – One doctor’s experience gives us all a ray of hope
CDR Salamander: In a Fight, Having Your Reloads At Home In The Safe Won’t Help
Chicago Boyz: Days of Rage
Da Tech Guy: Matters of Trust Under the Fedora, Leo Tolstoy and the meaning of life, and Am I really Seeing the Media Pushing the “Transgender School Shooter Was Provoked?” Line?
Dana Loesch: We’re Entering New Territory Where The Left Feels Violence Is Justified, also, Alphabet Activist Groups Don’t Want The Nashville Shooter’s Manifesto Released
Don Surber: What The Media Doesn’t Say About A Mass Murderer
First Street Journal: How stupid can they be?
Gates Of Vienna: Banksy’s Migrant Ferry Vessel Impounded, also, No Easter Allowed!
The Geller Report: Disguised as a “Ban TikTok” Bill, It Actually BANS YOUR Free Speech And Gives Government The Right To Silence Us At Will, Professor Suspended After Calling For Killing ‘Right-Wing’ Speakers – It’s ‘Admirable’, and American Forces Suffered 78 Iranian Attacks Since 2021
Glenn Reynolds: The Age Barrier And Its Costs
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Schools, Guns, and Nashville, Swan’s Way, and When Seconds Count
Hollywood In Toto: Top 10 Best Movie & TV Dads In a Crisis, also, Is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Trial Salacious Enough for Media, Public?
The Lid: March 30th – The GREAT American Holiday, also, Prof ‘Admires’ Murder Of Conservative Campus Speakers — CAN He Be Fired?
Legal Insurrection: DeSantis Expands School Choice Across All of Florida, UT-Austin Prof Says Objecting To Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Is “Modern Day Lynching”, IRS Agents Visited Twitter Files Journalist Matt Taibbi’s House the Day of His Congressional Testimony, George Soros, Rich Leftists Outraise Conservatives for Critical Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, and Lefty Media Upset Over ‘Misgendering’ of Transgender Shooter in Nashville Christian School Massacre
Nebraska Energy Observer: Who do Tyrants Fear, also, Now we understand
Outkick: Andy Reid Has No Clue Who Jordan Love Is In Painful Few Seconds For Packers Brass, JT Realmuto Hilariously Ejected By Umpire Who Clearly Has Self-Esteem Issues, Florida Atlantic Coach Dusty May Calls Out ESPN For Insinuating Owls Aren’t A Physical Team, Willie McGinest Beatdown Started Over A Comment About Utah Beating USC, and Giants Coach Brian Daboll Drinks Beer Before Noon At NFL Owners Meeting
Power Line: Another Horrible Food Idea, The Culture War About to Become Violent?, and Indictment Drama and 2024
Shark Tank: Broward School Board To Vote On Resolution In Support Of African-American History
Shot In The Dark: When Making Weekend Plans, Berg’s 18th Law Is Still In Full Effect, and While “Moving Forward” In “One Minnesota”
STUMP: CORRECTION: The French ARE actually long-lived
This Ain’t Hell: Stolen Valor – The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine, Russian pilots involved with US drone crash given bravery awards, Western and Russian military industry capacities as related to Ukraine, Marine veteran, Aaron Orozco, killed while working his Uber job, and Seth Beavers, a former Navy rescue swimmer, is charged with attempted murder
Transterrestrial Musings: Overdue, The “Billionaire Space Race”, and Pushback
Victory Girls: Kamala Goes To Africa To Do More Of Nothing
Volokh Conspiracy: West Virginia Legislature Enacts RFRA, With Abortion Carveout, also, More Elite Law Student Foolishness, This Time at Columbia
Watts Up With That: EU abandons ban of combustion engine cars – Britain needs to follow suit, Wash, blow dry & talk to me about global warming please, and EU War on Agriculture – Pushback Protests Spread
Weasel Zippers: Massive Donations Come To Light After AOC Defends TikTok From Possible Ban, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) Says He’s Against TikTok Ban Because It’d “Harm [Democrats] Politically In 2024”, DHS Chief Says He Wants To Ban So-Called “Assault Weapons,” But Can’t Define What One Is, and WH Says Biden Will Veto GOP Legislation To Increase American Energy Production
The Federalist: Maine Republicans Introduce Bill To Stop Ranked-Choice Voting From Rigging State’s Elections, Israel’s Judicial System Is The Dream Of The American Left, Why Hope And Realism Offer A Better Path Forward Than Giving Up On America, House Republicans Highlight Luzerne County’s Voter Suppression In The 2022 Midterms, and DOJ Won’t Say If It Will Investigate Trans Shooter’s Attack On Christian School As Hate Crime, But We Can Guess The Answer
Mark Steyn: The Mark Steyn Show – Monday to Thursday(ish)

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Category: Linkagery

Nashville Shooting: Expert on Violence Agrees That Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | March 28, 2023 | 1 Comment

OK, so forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Smith did not say those exact words during her appearance today on Fox News, but we can read between the lines as she discusses Audrey Hale’s murder spree:

“When I did studies in the late ’90s on girls who kill or girls who are violent, I found that girls who feel very lonely, girls who dislike school, and girls who hold in a lot of anger … tend to lash out at other people.”

 

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Police still aren’t discussing much about the killer’s motive, but we are learning more details:

The 28-year-old former student who killed three children and three adults at a Christian grade school in Nashville on Monday was under a doctor’s care for an “emotional disorder” and had purchased seven guns ahead of the shooting, the city’s police chief said on Tuesday.

(What is the point of federally mandated background checks, when a transgender freak being treated for “an emotional disorder” can acquire an arsenal like this? That is to say, you can pass all the laws in the world, but without rigorous enforcement, the laws will never prevent such incidents. What we need to do is go back to locking these kooks up in lunatic asylums. But I digress . . .)

New details about Audrey Elizabeth Hale emerged hours after police released harrowing video showing officers storming the Covenant School and conducting a room-to-room search before confronting and fatally shooting the assailant.
Hale employed two assault weapons and a handgun during the assault on the elementary school, the latest in a long string of U.S. mass shootings that have turned guns into a hot-button political issue.

(Liberals want to make guns a “hot-button” issue, rather than making psycho trannies the issue, probably because psycho trannies vote Democrat.)

Those three guns were among seven Hale bought legally from five area stores, Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake told reporters on Tuesday.
Hale’s parents did not know that Hale was in possession of seven guns, the chief said, adding that they were under the impression that the suspect had owned only one gun but had sold it. . . .
Hale left behind a detailed map of the school showing entry points as well as what Drake described as a “manifesto” indicating that Hale may have planned to carry out shootings at other locations.
Drake previously said Hale self-identified as transgender. He referred to Hale using female pronouns on Tuesday, though Hale used male pronouns on a LinkedIn page that listed recent jobs in graphic design and grocery delivery.

(Oh, she killed six people including three kids, but the IMPORTANT thing is to make sure we use the “correct” pronouns. Gotcha.)

The chief said investigators still have not established a motive.
The newly released six minutes of footage, edited together from the body-worn cameras of two responding officers, starts with an officer retrieving a rifle from his trunk as a staff member tells him that the school is locked down but that two children are unaccounted for.
“Let’s go! I need three!” the officer yells as he enters the building, where alarms can be heard ringing.
The video shows officers passing by bulletin boards and cubbies as they clear one room after another before heading upstairs, where one says, “We’ve got one down.”
Amid the sound of gunfire, the officers race down the hallway — past what appears to be a victim lying on the ground — and into a lounge area, where the suspect is seen dropping to the floor after being shot.
Officer Rex Engelbert and Officer Michael Collazo — whose body cameras provided the footage — both fire several rounds at the suspect. The video shows the assailant still moving on the ground as another officer repeatedly yells, “Get your hands away from the gun!”

Those officers are heroes, and we can be thankful for their efficiency in killing the psycho tranny, thus sparing taxpayers the expense of a trial. Meanwhile, we have DM messages between the killer and one of her acquaintances, a former middle-school basketball teammate:

The transgender school shooter who killed six people including three innocent children yesterday before being gunned down by police sent a message to a friend moments before the rampage, telling her: ‘I’m planning to die today… you’ll probably hear about me on the news.’
Audrey Hale, 28, shot and killed three students and three teachers at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, shortly before 10.30am yesterday.
Audrey – who was transgender and also went by ‘Aiden’ – was then shot and killed by police.
Before traveling to the school, the killer sent a haunting final message to Averianna Patton on Instagram.
They had played middle school basketball together and remained friends. . . .
During an appearance on CNN on Tuesday morning, she said Hale had been suicidal in the past.
‘Audrey has shared with others that she had been suicidal in the past and I knew to take this serious.’
She also revealed that she was on hold for seven minutes before someone answered her call to the non-emergency police line.
‘I called Nashville’s non-emergency line at 10:14am and was on hold for nearly seven minutes before speaking with someone who said that they would send an officer to my home.
‘An officer did not come to my home until 3:29 pm,’ she said.
The first 911 call of a shooting came in at 10.13am.
By 10.27am, police were at the school and had killed Hale on the second floor of the building.

So, it’s the blaze-of-glory fantasy: “My life is worthless and I want to kill myself, but I’ll do a mass shooting and get the cops to kill me instead.” This is a theme we’ve seen more or less routinely in such incidents going back to the Columbine High School massacre. Sometimes there is a quasi-political motive, and sometimes it’s just incomprehensible rage. So while Joe Biden turns it into yet another opportunity to mumble about banning “assault weapons,” the rest of us can find no meaning to the atrocity other than the most obvious: Crazy People Are Dangerous.



 

 

Category: Crime, Tennessee, The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 03.28.23 (Morning Edition)

Posted on | March 28, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Duke Nukem is confused by the wily Asiatics.

So much stuff in the Substack pile.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: Cops Have No Sense of Humor, also, Almost 98% Of Mass Shootings Take Place In “Gun Free Zones”
A View From The Beach: Majors Changes To Army Recruiting Problems
EBL: John Wick: Chapter 4, MAGA Bat Boy, and Gordon Moore, RIP
Twitchy: CA State Sen. Wiener Kicks Off Troon Visibility Week, Occasional Cortex Claims The Ones Really After Your Kids Are Straight, and Adam Kinzinger Pretends He’s Still A Republican But Nobody Believes Him
Louder With Crowder: Don’t act surprised, but ESPN honored troon “Lia” Thomas for Women’s History Month, also, World’s dumbest criminals tunnel out of jail, only to be caught having breakfast at IHOP
Vox Popoli: Decline, Then Fall, Barbarossa, “Biden” is not Biden, America is not Byzantium, and The Mistakes of Empire
Stoic Observations: Why Is Woke?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Oven baked baby zucchini with risotto
American Conservative: How Planned Parenthood Peddles Porn in Red States, also, Tempest in a Teapot
American Greatness: Who Owns the University?, Far-Left Group Battles Efforts to Ban Private Funding of Elections, and How Communist China Does Your Thinking for You
American Power: 
American Thinker: Was Massive Vote Fraud Confirmed with a Fishtail?, Warriors Don’t Want to Fight for a Woke, Anti-American Military, and In Case You Forgot What Government Did to Us for COVID
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: This Week in Miami History: In 1983, a Cuban exile entrepreneur was found dead in a mansion along with 29 others, Two Cubans refugees land in Key West after a daring escape in a motorized hang glider, While milk is unavailable to Cubans, the Castro dictatorship produces gourmet cheeses for foreigners, and Voting in communist Cuba: Approved!
Baldilocks: Rubber & Road, California From The Inside, Rebuking The Flakiness, and Mistaken Identity
BattleSwarm: MiniLinkSwarm for March 25, also, Bald, Bearded, Bespeckled British Bloke’s YouTube Empire
Behind The Black: NASDAQ gives two more space companies delisting warning, India launches 36 OneWeb satellites, Curiosity heads to the west of the Hill of Pillows, and Are launch prices up, or is the demand continuing to be high?
Cafe Hayek: Should Protectionist Measures Be Ended All At Once or Gradually?
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday, NATO’s Evolution In Response To The Russo-Ukrainian War, and Transcript From The Defense Breakfast Seminar
Chicago Boyz: The Electrical Grid and the Gas Network
Da Tech Guy: Quick Thoughts Under the Fedora, Military says vaccine refusers can come back!, My Take From Ladd Ehlinger’s Doctor Who Doom Promo Review: Run Away Dude Run Fast and Run Far, and Review: Season 2 of Shadow and Bone
Dana Loesch: DEVELOPING – Female Shooter Kills Six At Nashville Christian School, also, Democrats Swiftly Blame “Assault Weapons” For Nashville Tragedy
Don Surber: Highlights Of The Week, also, How Trump Gamed The Media
First Street Journal: When you don’t tell the truth at first, don’t be surprised if fewer people believe you later, also, 28½ hours without power
Gates Of Vienna: Milan Resists the Woke Imperative, Legal Under Islamic Law: Women, Honk If You Love Sharia, Vaccine Roulette, Part 3, and Let the Fun Times Begin!
The Geller Report: Federal Prosecutor Admits D.C. Metro Police Department Undercover Officers Acted as Provocateurs at Steps of U.S. Capitol, also, Taliban Releases Photos of Military Equipment Left Behind by Biden in Afghanistan
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, NGC 5486, Kissing Moons, and A Trio of Moons
Hollywood In Toto: Five Reasons The John Wick Franchise Can’t Be Stopped, FLASHBACK – When Hollywood Stars Stood Tall for Free Speech, When Will Authors Stand Up to ‘Sensitivity Readers?’, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves Rolls a 20
The Lid: In Joe Biden Era, For First Time Ever Most Americans Think Their Children Will NOT Be Better Off, also, War Looms, But Military Spends Time Pursuing DEI and Climate Change Policies
Legal Insurrection: Israeli PM Netanyahu to Pause Judicial Reform Amid Nationwide Protests and Pressure From Biden White House, American Corporations Have Given a Staggering $83 Billion to BLM and Related Groups, Elizabeth Warren Going for a Third Senate Term, DEI Deans at MIT Refuse to Participate in Debate About DEI Policies, and Oxford Physics Professor/CERN Researcher Concludes “Wind Power Fails on Every Count”
Nebraska Energy Observer: Judica Sunday, Lent 5, also, Saturday, Finally
Outkick: Another Russian NHL Player Opts Out Of Team’s ‘Pride Night,’ This Time For The Buffalo Sabres, NFL Network Host Desperately Wants Super Bowl To Be Played On Saturday, Pitched Idea To Roger Goodell, FAU Amanda Wants You To Pray For Her Liver After Owls Advance To Final 4, Riley Gaines Calls ESPN ‘Spineless’ Following Network’s Lia Thomas Tribute, and Bubba Wallace Needs To Be Fired, NASCAR Teammates Fight, Chase Elliott Gives Finger, Hooters Gianna Goes Cowgirl
Power Line: The Daily Chart – The Bitter Fruit of the Left’s Cultural Assault, The FBI and the Proud Boys, Kennedy stumps the nominees, and Field this
Protein Wisdom Reborn: A Re-Declaration Of Independence
Shark Tank: DeSantis Bucks Congress, Says Education Is A State & Local Issue
Shot In The Dark: How I Spent My Saturday, also, Take “You’ve Got To Pass It To Know What’s In It”
STUMP: Checking in on French Retirement Age Protests, also, Saturday Sumo – Only One Day More
The Political Hat: Regenerative Society: Communism By Another Name
This Ain’t Hell: Kids and Army CSM shot, killed, Stolen Valor – Ukraine, Higher cancer rates among Military pilots and ground crews, Actions by China and Russia require ramping up military investments, and “This Interview’s Over, Folks”
Transterrestrial Musings: Failure Is Not Not An Option, The New Witch Trials, “Hispanic”, and The Economy Gets Wrung Out
Victory Girls: Parents Bill of Rights Sets Democrat Hair Ablaze, also, Notre Dame Shows Stanford How Free Speech Works
Volokh Conspiracy: Professor Suggests Murder as Alternative to Shouting Down Speakers, also, Supreme Court Should Take and Reverse Fifth Circuit Decision that Creates a Catch-22 for Takings Claims Against State Governments
Watts Up With That: “Last Chance Travel” (climate alarmism in a suitcase), Who Noticed Earth Hour This Year?, and Germany Rebels Against EU Ban on Petrol Cars
Weasel Zippers: John Kerry: “Important We Work With China” On Climate, “Can’t Get Bogged Down” By “Other Issues”, Kamala Harris Absurdly Claims Americans Are Recovering From High Prices, and CNN Accuses White People Of “Digital Blackface”
The Federalist: ESPN ‘Celebrates’ Women By Denying Their Existence, Mounting Evidence Shows ‘Go Woke, Go Broke’ May Be More Than A Mantra, Biden’s Empty Suit Presidency Is Resetting The World Order, And Not In A Good Way, Stanford Mob Shows How Speech Restrictions Reinforce Social Isolation, and With His First Veto, Biden Puts Woke Capitalism Before American Workers And Retirees
Mark Steyn: Your Generation – The Boomers Progress and The Wanderers, Tal Bachman – The Latest Emails Between God and Me, and Lullaby of Broadway

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Category: Linkagery

Nashville Shooter Left ‘Manifesto,’ Was ‘High-Functioning’ Autistic

Posted on | March 28, 2023 | 2 Comments

In an afternoon press conference, police confirmed that Audrey Hale — the transgender shooter who killed three 9-year-old kids and three adult staffers at a Christian school in Nashville before being shot by cops — left behind a “manifesto” that we may expect will explain her motives. Meanwhile, the Daily Beast interviewed several people who were neighbors or acquaintances of Audrey Hale and her family:

A source close to the Hale family told The Daily Beast on Monday night that Hale was autistic, but high-functioning.
“And relatively recently announced she was transgender, identifying as he/him,” the source said, asking to remain unnamed so as to avoid additional family strife.
Nashville Police Chief John Drake said at a press conference Monday afternoon that Hale was transgender.
A search of Hale’s home turned up “maps drawn of the school, in detail, so, surveillance, entry points, et cetera,” Drake said, as well as a “manifesto” and “some writings that pertain to this date, the actual incident… of how this was all going to take place.” Inside a Honda Fit that Hale drove and parked at the school campus Friday morning, cops found “additional material written by Hale,” police said in a tweet.
Drake said investigators have a working theory on a possible motive, but that it’s not confirmed. Covenant was “the only school that was targeted,” according to Drake, who added, “[t]here was another location that was mentioned.”
“But because of a threat assessment by the suspect, too much security, they decided not to,” Drake said. . . .
A LinkedIn profile says Hale started a freelance illustration and graphic design business last year after attending, and working for, Nossi College of Art in Madison, Tennessee. At Nossi, Hale won an award for “most improved” in 2015, according to the school’s site.
Hours after the shooting, police searched a home just three miles away from the school. A neighbor, Sandy Durham, who is also a family friend of the Hales, said the ATF told her they were there “to see what was going on next door [at the Hale house].”
“I do know Audrey, I’ve known her since she was a baby. I had just gotten out of the shower when all of this started happening. I didn’t really know anything more than that. Something was going on next door. It’s just tragic for everybody. The sweet children that were hurt, killed, the adults. All of it,” she told The Daily Beast.
Asked if there were any warning signs about Hale, Durham responded, “Never. She was very sweet. I don’t know what happened. It’s very scary.”

Until police release the manifesto (or at least, describe its contents), we don’t have a lot to go on, in terms of piecing together a motive, and I think conservative commentators should be cautious about using connect-the-dots guesswork. We know that Tennessee recently passed a state law outlawing transgender treatment of minors, and that there has been a lot of angry rhetoric from transgender activists around this issue, so it seems logical that this atrocity was somehow connected to or motivated by that public controversy. Yet a logical deduction is still merely speculation, absent some clear evidence — social media posts or whatever — showing that Hale was acting on such a motive.



 

 

Category: Crime, Tennessee, The Transgender Cult

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.
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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
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