Thanksgiving and the Meaning of America

Posted on | November 23, 2023 | 2 Comments

What are you thankful for, this holiday? Personally, I’m thankful for gluten. Our oldest daughter has been on a gluten-free diet for some time, and because she’s visiting us for Thanksgiving — with her husband and two sons, Franco and Luca — my wife bought some gluten-free bread. Not realizing it was gluten-free, I accidentally used this to make a sandwich the other day and, wow. Thank God for gluten. I’d never realized how much I loved gluten, until I didn’t have it.

Ingratitude is a sin. God does so many things for us — the wonderful miracle of gluten! — that we ought to express our gratitude often, but if we only say thanks once a year, it’s the least we can do.

Everybody knows the story of the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1621, the surviving English colonists had their first harvest of corn, and invited a group of Wampanoag Indians to join them in a three-day feast to celebrate this success. Fewer are aware that the colonists in Virginia had celebrated Thanksgiving even earlier:

Thanksgiving services were routine in what became the Commonwealth of Virginia as early as 1607; the first permanent settlement of Jamestown, Virginia, held a thanksgiving in 1610. On December 4, 1619, 38 English settlers celebrated a thanksgiving immediately upon landing at Berkeley Hundred in Charles City County, Virginia. The group’s London Company charter specifically required “that the day of our ships arrival at the place assigned for plantation in the land of Virginia shall be yearly and perpetually kept holy as a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God”. This celebration has, since the mid 20th century, been commemorated there annually at present-day Berkeley Plantation, the ancestral home of the Harrison family of Virginia.

For that matter, the claim to the first Thanksgiving in what is today the United States actually belongs to St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565.

All of these observations remind us that our nation was founded by Christians, who considered the blessings of God necessary to the success of their dangerous adventure in attempting to establish colonies in what they described as the “wilderness” of America. It is little appreciated now how perilous life was for those early settlers. Captain John Woodlief, who led the expedition that founded the Berkeley plantation in Virginia, was a survivor of the “starving time” in the Jamestown colony. During the winter of 1609-1610, three-quarters of the Jamestown settlement perished, leaving just 60 survivors of the 240 who had begun the winter inside their fort, besieged by hostile Powhatan Indians. The hazards involved in crossing an ocean to establish those first English settlements in America made the colonists keenly aware of the need for divine protection, so their “thanksgiving to Almighty God” was quite sincere.

We ourselves are cursed to live in an age of ingratitude, with idiotic intellectuals demanding we “decolonize Thanksgiving.” The Left has persuaded our intelligentsia that success is something to be ashamed of — to succeed is to become an oppressor — rather than something for which we should be grateful to God. The beneficiaries of college education are nowadays indoctrinated with this destructive nonsense, wherein the success of English colonists in America is viewed as a bad thing, and we’re supposed to feel guilty that any of them survived.

Recall what I said last month about Gaza:

Liberals make the same mistake about this situation that they make on every other issue: Having made an idol of “Equality,” liberals decide that members of a less-than-successful group are victims of “oppression,” and then accuse their more successful neighbors of perpetrating this oppression.

This obsession with victimhood produces a mentality that sees “oppression” everywhere, and results in a rhetoric of demonization, making scapegoats of people in order to justify retaliatory measures against them. This mentality explains how many on the Left actually celebrated the terrorist massacres that Hamas perpetrated on October 7: Those Israelis deserved to die, according to this perverse leftist worldview, because all Israelis are complicit in the “oppression” of Palestinians. My friend Marty Seiff’s book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East, is a solid rebuttal of the Palestinian victimhood myth, but the Left doesn’t care about facts. They’re just trying to provoke a lynch-mob mentality, and rely upon the ignorance of their followers, who are too lazy to discover the truth for themselves, and instead regurgitate whatever pro-Hamas propaganda they are fed.

Excuse me for bringing up the Gaza war, but you see that the people who tell us Israel is guilty of “genocide” are the same people who think Americans have nothing to be grateful for at Thanksgiving.

Well, I’m grateful for gluten, among other things, and nobody’s going to make me feel guilty for enjoying today’s feast.

The first English colonies in America were founded during the reign of King James I, the Scots-born great-great-grandson of Henry Tudor. The Jamestown settlement was named in honor of the king, whereas the Virginia colony was named in honor of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth, who never married and thus was known as “the virgin queen.” It is a source of some amusement to me that those “social justice” activists who complain about Confederate memorials seem to have no problem with place names that honor British monarchs. If you ever visit Alexandria, Virginia, you’ll notice King Street, Queen Street, etc., and none of the liberals who claim to venerate “democracy” seem to have any qualms about these historical tributes to British royalty. But I digress . . .

The English came late to the colonial enterprise in the New World. Beginning with the voyages of Christopher Columbus, the Spanish led the way, first in the Caribbean islands and later in the mainland of Central and South America. Mexico was conquered by Cortez in 1521, and by 1532 Pizarro conquered the Incas in Peru, all of these conquests preceding by many decades the first English colonies in North America. These Spanish conquests, however, were sequels to the beginning of the Age of Exploration. In the second volume of his History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Winston Churchill writes about how the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople set this age in motion:

The destruction of the Byzantine Empire and the Turkish occupation of Asia Minor imperilled the land route to the East. The road which had nourished the towns and cities of the Mediterranean and founded the fortunes and the greatness of the Genoese and the Venetians was now barred. . . .
Portugal was the first to discover a new path. Helped by English Crusaders, she had achieved her independence in the twelfth century, gradually expelled the Moors from her mainland, and now reached out to the African coastline. Prince Henry the Navigator, grandson of John of Gaunt, had initiated a number of enterprises. Exploring began from Lisbon. All through the later fifteenth century Portuguese mariners had been pushing down the west coast of Africa, seeing for gold and slaves, slowly extending the bounds of the known world, till, in 1487, Bartholomew Diaz rounded the great promontory that marked the end of the African continent. He called it “the Cape of Storms,” but the King of Portugal with true insight renamed it “the Cape of Good Hope.” The hope was justified; in 1498 Vasco da Gama dropped anchor in the harbour of Calicut; the sea-route was open to the wealth of India and the Farther East.

Notice how African slaves merit just a passing reference in Churchill’s account of these Portuguese explorations in the 1400s. The whole point of the enterprise, after all, was to find some way to reach Asia by sea, after the Muslim conquest of Constantinople had “barred” the overland route to the Far East. The first African slaves were brought back to Europe from these expeditions in the 1450s by Portuguese mariners who, sailing up the Gambia River in search of a route to Asia, hadn’t found the fabled wealth of the East, but had found natives who were willing to exchange their slaves for trade goods. All of this activity was in response to the loss of Constantinople and, as Churchill remarks, Portugal itself had spent decades fighting to escape the Moorish Islamic conquest.

When I was a schoolboy, we learned about the history of the Age of Exploration, and I recall the names of Diaz and de Gama as answers on multiple-choice questions in fifth-grade history class. Do they still teach this kind of history in schools? Are young people imbued with the sense of this historical era as one of great adventures and rivalries between European powers? The Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the French — all of them were competitors in this colonial game, and the English didn’t make their entry until quite late. Decades before the English founded their colonies in Virginia and Massachusetts, for example, Jean Ribault had sought to establish French colonies, first building a fort on the South Carolina coast, and then getting into a disastrous fight with the Spanish in Florida. Growing up in Georgia, I was taught that one of the main reasons this colony was founded was to create a buffer between the Spanish in Florida and the English colonies in the Carolinas.

History gives meaning to our lives. If we study this history, we understand that the success of the English colonies in America was by no means certain, and that the colonists who survived the many dangers of those early years had reasons for their “thanksgiving to Almighty God.” (Perhaps not least of which, they didn’t have to eat gluten-free bread.) The specifically Christian nature of their belief ought to be acknowledged, and while some may scoff at such beliefs, I myself don’t doubt that God’s help was necessary to the success of these colonies that have since grown to become the United States of America.

Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him, all creatures here below;
Praise Him above, ye heav’nly host;
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Category: History

‘Progressives’ Become Hitler Youth Targeting the ‘Zionist War Machine’

Posted on | November 22, 2023 | Comments Off on ‘Progressives’ Become Hitler Youth Targeting the ‘Zionist War Machine’

Nineteen-year-old Calla Walsh was already notorious before Monday’s ~~protest~~ violent attack against a Jewish business in New Hampshire:

Protesters voicing support for Palestine were arrested in connection with vandalism Monday at Elbit Systems of America, a defense contractor in Merrimack, police said.
Three people were arrested on several charges, including riot.
Police before 8 a.m. were called to 220 Daniel Webster Highway for reports of protestors blocking the driveway and multiple people believed to be on the roof.
The fire department also was sent for a report of smoke coming from the roof.
Police found protesters blocking the driveway voicing support for Palestine, according to Merrimack police.
They eventually vacated the roadway and allowed officers to access the property.
Officers discovered the front of the building had been spray painted with red paint, windows had been smashed, and at least one of the main lobby doors had been locked shut via a bicycle anti-theft device, police said.
Officers also confirmed that at least three people accessed the roof. They were charged with riot, sabotage, criminal mischief, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.
Arrested were Sophie Marika Ross, 22, of Housatonic, Mass.; Calla Mairead Walsh, 19, of Cambridge, Mass., and Bridget Irene Shergalis, 27 of Dayville, Conn., according to police
Police said the smoke was caused by an incendiary device similar to ones later located on one of the suspects. Officers on the roof found more spray painting, smashed skylights and damage to HVAC equipment.
The three were held on preventive detention and will be arraigned in the Hillsborough County Superior Court – South at 1 p.m. Tuesday, authorities said.
The FBI is working to determine who else might have been involved.
Elbit Systems of America is a wholly owned subsidiary of Elbit Systems Ltd., which is headquartered in Haifa, Israel. . . .
Gov. Chris Sununu condemned the attack.
“The antisemitism, hate, and significant damage protesters brought to Elbit America’s campus this morning has no place in our state and will not be tolerated,” he said. “I am confident law enforcement will work to bring those responsible for this vile act of hate to swift justice. The people of New Hampshire stand with Israel and with Elbit Systems of America.”

It’s a 21st-century Kristallnacht, and the perpetrators are “voicing support for Palestine,” to borrow the media’s euphemistic language. At least WMUR-TV did some actual reporting:

The protesters in front of the building identified themselves to News 9 as a group called Palestine Action U.S. They posted a photo on social media stating that their goal is to dismantle Elbit Systems and what they referred to as the “Zionist war machine.”
“We’re a direct-action network targeting Elbit Systems, their U.S. chapter specifically,” said Fergie Chambers, of Palestine Action U.S. “They are Israel’s largest weapons supplier. Eighty-five percent of the drones being used in Gaza right now are produced by this company. This location here in Merrimack, New Hampshire, produces display systems for fighter jets.”

Say hello to James “Fergie” Chambers:

The 38-year-old cop-hater is the decadent heir of a media fortune, “the first-born son of James Cox Chambers, the co-owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks with a net worth of $5.65 billion.” What happened to him? Well, his grandmother was good friends with Jane Fonda back in the day. And as for the notorious Calla Walsh . . .

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Calla Walsh in 2020

When she was in high school, Walsh became an organizer for the reelection campaign of Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, who faced a Democratic primary challenge from Joe Kennedy III. Somehow — it’s rather mysterious — Walsh and other left-wing youth were persuaded that Markey was a “progressive” hero (when, in fact, he’s a nondescript party hack) and believed that the young Kennedy was some kind of “right wing” menace. If anything, Calla Walsh’s role as a teenage leader of the “Markeyverse” illustrates just how naïve young leftists can be, but since then, she’s gone on to become a fixture in radical activism. And by “radical activism,” of course, I mean, Iran-sponsored Jew-hating:

In December 2022, a coalition of 28 organizations asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement over its extensive links to terrorist groups. Of particular concern was the BDS movement’s links to a mysterious “Mapping Project” that published an apparent hit list of targets linked to the U.S. government, Israel, and the Jewish community.
An investigative report by the Zachor Legal Institute exposed the Mapping Project’s links to supporters of terrorists, the BDS movement and, in all likelihood, the government of Iran.
The Mapping Project’s content makes it clear that its anonymous creators’ intention is to inspire violent attacks on the listed sites. The project’s website states, “Our goal in pursuing this collective mapping was to reveal the local entities and networks that enact devastation, so we can dismantle them. Every entity has an address, every network can be disrupted.” . . .
The project openly supports Palestinian terrorists, putting to rest any notion that the Mapping Project is merely a provocative academic exercise. “Glory to the martyrs! Free Palestine from the River to the Sea! Free All Political Prisoners!” the website proclaims in a statement expressing solidarity with Palestinian terrorists seeking the destruction of Israel. . . .
The identities of the project’s creators remain murky. However, one name has been reportedly linked to the project: Calla Walsh, a member of BDS Boston, Democratic Socialists of America and, as of April 2022, Office Manager for Massachusetts Peace Action. An investigation by the Canary Mission found four tweets by Walsh that idolized the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group.
Walsh says she’s simply a promoter of the Mapping Project and denies having worked on it. However, Al-Jazeera reported that she “participated” in it and, in an apparent slip of the tongue, referred to the project as “we” in a tweet. She’s also implied that she knows the authors of the project who, she says, “have been working on it for years.” . . .
The common denominator among the groups that appear closest to the Mapping Project is support for the Iran-backed PFLP terrorist group.
The first PFLP connection comes through BDS Boston, whose Twitter account was the first to report the project’s debut. As mentioned, BDS Boston member Calla Walsh posts pro-PFLP material. . . .

So, they’re making a list of Jews, and putting them on a map, and they’re doing this while supporting an Iran-backed terrorist group. Move along. Nothing to see here. Just “young people who are taking an interest in peace and social justice,” as Jamie Raskin might say.

Category: Israel, New Hampshire, Progressivism, Terrorism

In The Mailbox: 11.21.23

Posted on | November 22, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.21.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Going down to Las Vegas for a VA appointment, coming back on Thanksgiving after an early dinner there. Posting may be erratic over the next few days.
Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda est.

OVER THE TRANSOM
357 Magnum: LAPD Revoked His Carry Permit Because He “Yelled” At Cops
EBL: Treadstone, also, Wild Turkey Day
Twitchy: Iowahawk Mocks Pro-Palestinian Vandals, BBC Claims Real Victims Of The Black Death Were,,,Black Women? and CNN Triggered By “New Victory In Global Rise Of Far-Right Politics”
Louder With Crowder: Dude swings on a group of Marines outside a nightclub; gets hit with fists, pavement, and instant regret, Scarborough Loses His Mind, Claims Trump Will “Execute” Anyone “He Is Allowed To” If Reelected, and “You nutters”: Bystander goes on must-watch rant on how those climate protesters blocking traffic suck at life
Vox Popoli: She’s Far from the Only One, Ideology is Rhetoric, The Global Economy is Dead, The Invasion of Britain, and Word Counts
Flappr: The First Thanksgiving – Good Thing? Bad Thing?

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: How Many Heretic Cardinals will it Take?
American Greatness: Dinner with a Dictator: When American Business Leaders Support the Enemy
American Thinker: First They Came for the Smokers
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Dominatrix News
Babalu Blog: Cuban political prisoner from July 11 protests dies from lack of medical care, The Western left’s idolization of Hamas and Che Guevara, and The Castro dictatorship bids farewell to the visiting ‘diaspora’ in Cuba for investment opportunities
BattleSwarm: Video Of More Of That Voter Fraud That Doesn’t Exist
Behind The Black: Musk Says Next Starship/Superheavy test launch could happen in only 3 to 4 weeks, India now plans robotic lunar sample return mission, Rocket engine startup Ursa Major enters solid-rocket motor business, North Korea announces it will attempt orbital launch of spy satellite this week, and Will libertarian Javier Milei actually be able to institute his revolution in Argentina?
Cafe Hayek: Opposition to Progressivism Isn’t the Equivalent of Trumpism
CDR Salamander: How do you pull a merchant fleet out of a hat?
Da Tech Guy: It’s Amazing How the Narrative From a Reporter Can Change, A Primer on Real Life Pt One: I’m Old Enough to Remember When This Was Real Life 101, and A Mideast Thanksgiving
Don Surber: Make a fun movie, gals
Gates Of Vienna: A MAGA Moment for Argentina
The Geller Report: Elon Musk and X Files ‘Thermonuclear Lawsuit’ Against Far-left Media Matters Hate Machine, also, “They Came To Slaughter Us”: Machete Armed Migrant Mob Attacks Teenagers at Village Hall Dance in France, ONE DEAD, SEVERAL STABBED
Hogewash: Panning Across M83 with MIRI, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Sagittarius C, The Difference a Year Can Make, and A Civil Rights Victory
Hollywood In Toto: Kevin Hart, Theo Von Say the Obvious About President Biden, Why Do Conservatives Like Star Trek? andJulianna Margulies Made One MASSIVE Mistake in USA Today Op-Ed
The Lid: Biden Claims ‘Wartime Powers’ Lets Him Ban Gas Stoves, Heaters To Combat Climate Change Hypothesis
Legal Insurrection: Three Radicals Arrested for Allegedly Damaging, Setting Fire to Israeli-Owned Factory in New Hampshire, Israel Agrees To Trade 150 Imprisoned Terrorists For 50 of 240 Hostages, Plus Multi-Day Ceasefire, LA Times Op-Ed: This Thanksgiving, Honor Turkeys By Not Eating Them, ‘Faithful Catholic Colleges’ See Increase in Enrollment, University of Arizona Suspends Two Profs Over Israel/Hamas Comments, and Iowa Board of Regents Votes to Eliminate Most Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Programs
Nebraska Energy Observer: Stumbling upon
Outkick: Florida State Might’ve Lost Jordan Travis, But The Seminoles Still Have A Legitimate Shot At Winning A CFP Title Behind Tate Rodemaker, LSU’s Kim Mulkey Clarifies What Angel Reese Suspension Is For Somewhat, But She Still Doesn’t Get It, Dan Le Batard Joins HBO Max, After Calling Streamer Low Quality ‘Crap’, Paul Finebaum Goes After Lincoln Riley: ‘Don’t Know If I’ve Seen A Worse Coaching Job’, Deion Sanders Supports Player Ripping The Team As Selfish, and Michele Tafoya Reveals Truth Behind NBC Exit, Slams Insanity Of Transgender Athletes
Power Line: Thought for the day, The Bonfire of Biden’s Vanities, and Winsom Newsom’s Kamala Word Salad Recipe
Shark Tank: Wassermann-Schultz Calls For National Antisemitism Strategy
Shot In The Dark: Submitted Without Comment, also, The GULAG On The Hudson
The Political Hat: Organs For Interspecies Transplants: Could Genetically Engineered Catgirls Be Not Far Behind?
This Ain’t Hell: Tuesday twinks, Liberty Call Austin Texas, Covid Troops to Sue for Billions, and Teen receives two-year sentence for veteran’s death
Victory Girls: John Kirby Schools Reporters On “Genocide Joe” Nickname
Volokh Conspiracy: Settlement and Apology as to Restriction on Holding “God Bless the Homeless Vets” Sign by City Hall
Watts Up With That: Claim: High Cost Green Policies will Reduce the Drug Epidemic, California Aims to Force Adoption of Electric Trucks, But 19 States Sue to Block, and Beijing’s Coal Boom Is Here to Stay
The Federalist: When Formula One Flamed Out In Vegas, Fans Got Badly Burned, 3 Of The Trans People Eulogized By Biden Admin Died Attacking Innocent Strangers, Elon Musk Should Sue Media Matters Into Oblivion, Transportation Safety Board Proposes Dystopian Technology To Limit Your Speed While Driving, Barack Obama Is Still Forcing His Unwanted ‘Change’ On America, Election Integrity Groups Pressure Wisconsin Republicans To Squash ‘Devastating’ Ranked-Choice Voting Bills, and Court: Unless Congress Clears Up The Voting Rights Act, Only The AG Can Enforce Section 2
Mark Steyn: Le Grand Décivilisation

Amazon Warehouse Deals
Black Friday Deals

Category: Linkagery

Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues

Posted on | November 21, 2023 | Comments Off on Damn Right I’ve Got The Blues

by Smitty

What could motivate me to get a blue check on ~~Twitter~~X?

Elon Musk Just Detonated His ‘Thermonuclear’ Lawsuit
The shark food doesn’t come cheap, but if Musk is successful, this might prove as important a move as buying Twitter.

Godspeed, Elon.

Category: Uncategorized

‘Young People … Taking an Interest in Peace and Social Justice’

Posted on | November 21, 2023 | 3 Comments

We now have a new synonym for rioters, coined by Maryland Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin, to describe the pro-Hamas mob that attacked the Democratic National Committee headquarters in D.C. last week:

Jake Tapper, CNN: But I want to ask you about the video this week of the pro-Palestinian protest outside the DNC that turned violent, outside the Democratic headquarters. . . . At another rally just down the street from here at Union Station, crowds were chanting: “From the river to the sea. Long live the intifada.”
What do you make of this, as a Jewish American, a proud progressive, a Democrat? There’s antisemitism in the Democratic Party these days.
Raskin: Well, I mean, there’s antisemitism everywhere these days, as we were discussing with Elon Musk.
Tapper: Yes.
Raskin: And, I mean, we’re talking about a problem that goes back thousands of years, obviously. I was very disappointed to see what happened over at the DNC the other day. I mean, I’m glad that there are young people who are taking an interest in peace and social justice. And those people, I encourage. But for those who are somehow tempted to engage in pushing and shoving, like Kevin McCarthy in Congress, but doing it outside, I’m totally opposed to that. They should study the history of nonviolent movements in America, like the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the LGBTQ movement, the environmental movement, that have been the great civilizing movements of our time and of American history that have transformed things.
And that does work better than violence.

What’s interesting here is Raskin’s automatic reflex response — deflection and “whataboutism” — to point fingers at Elon Musk or Kevin McCarthy, when the question asked was about Democrats supporting Hamas. Keep in mind that Raskin was one of the top inquisitors on the J6 “insurrection” committee. He’s in favor of sending Republicans to federal prison for years, if they cause trouble, but when a left-wing mob riots at the DNC, these are merely “young people who are taking an interest in peace and social justice” in whom he is “disappointed.”

Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin: "I was very disappointed to see what happened over at the DNC the other day. I mean, I'm glad that there are young people that are taking an interest in peace and social justice…" pic.twitter.com/Dil6WeKe0b

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 19, 2023

If you expected Jake Tapper to push back against Raskin’s evasion, you’d be — what was that phrase? — very disappointed.

Category: Democrats, Media Bias

In The Mailbox: 11.20.23

Posted on | November 21, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 11.20.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Silicon Valley et Hamas delenda est.
OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Ethnic Cleansing in the Middle East and North Africa, Libertarian Javier Milei Wins in Argentina, Promises to cut bloated Argentine bureaucracy and government , and Rosalynn Carter, RIP
Twitchy: Here’s a Feel-Good Video Of Israel Blowing Up A Building, Things Get Awkward For Rabbis Holding Ceasefire Rally With Rashida Tlaib, and IT’S HAPPENING – Elon Musk Files Suit Against Media Matters
Louder With Crowder: Suck It, Patriarchy – Woman Beats Two Men To Win Miss Universe Pageant, Of course, the director of Disney’s “The Marvels” is blaming her movie tanking on you being a sexist bigot, and Male captain of girls high school volleyball team reportedly booed after asking opponent: “Did my penis distract you?”
Vox Popoli: Pizzagate Was Always Real, Mailvox: Why GRRM Can’t Finish ASOIAF, Go Ahead, Make Your List, The Inflation is Real, and Orcposting+
Draw & Talk: You Have 42 Days Left! Do Something About It!
Gab: Embracing AI – A Revolutionary Tool For Kingdom Development

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: The “Judeo-Christian” Kill Shot
American Conservative: Armenia: The Forgotten Conflict, also, (Who Dies for) Peace in Ukraine?
American Greatness: Can We Save our Universities? Comer Accuses Biden White House of Obstructing Oversight Investigations, and Flirtation With Evil Will Not End Well for Leftists
American Thinker: Who is Pulling the Puppet Strings? Who Are the Real Climate Change Deniers? So — It Wasn’t the Sidewalk After All, Follow the Science — Except for Sex and Gender, and America on the Edge of the Cliff
Animal Magnetism: Goodbye, Blue Monday
Babalu Blog: Cuban dictatorship shows support for Hamas terrorists, lights up Plaza of the Revolution with Palestinian flag, Reports from Cuba: Faced with alarming shortage of rice, Cuban authorities want to prepare idle land, Cuba’s Jewish community again rejects the Castro dictatorship’s anti-Israel stance, Rural retreat for Castro family and other Cuban elites exposed on social media, and As Nicaragua withdraws from OAS, State Dept. denounces dictatorship’s ‘egregious human rights abuses’
BattleSwarm: Texas House To School Choice: Drop Dead, Washington State vs. Gator’s Guns, and T-Rex Terror 1, Big Brother 0
Behind The Black: SpaceX successfully launches Superheavy and Starship, SaxaVord spaceport on Shetland Islands experiencing funding/regulatory problems, SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites, Webb: Needles scattered near the center of the Milky Way, Musk: Starship/Superheavy launchpad essentially undamaged after launch, and Jan 6th tapes prove Biden prosecutors knowingly falsified the charges that caused Matthew Perna to kill himself
Cafe Hayek: Expression Affects Third Parties
CDR Salamander: So, Red Sea Pirates It Is
Chicago Boyz: Worthwhile Reading & Viewing
Da Tech Guy: The Seven Faces You will Encounter in Debate, online and off and how to deal with them, What happened to caring about babies? Five Fast Thoughts Under the Fedora, and Review: The Kinks the Journey Part 1 and 2
Don Surber: Don’t anoint Milei just yet
First Street Journal: Western civilization has been a great boon to the entire world, even if the “decolonizers” hate it!
Gates Of Vienna: The Leaning Tower of Jihad, “It Will Be a Massacre of Millions of People”, Pickpockettes on the Paris Metro, and Let the Migrants Stay — Kill the Geezers Instead!
The Geller Report: Newly Released January 6th Bombshell Footage: “We Need to Investigate the J6 Committee,” “Police Facilitated January 6th”, New J6 Footage Shows Capitol Police Incited Riot By Firing Munitions Into Peaceful Crowd, and THEY’RE ALL IN ON IT
Hogewash: An Edge of the Cygnus Loop, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, The Orion Spacecraft Looks Back At Home, and A Fond Memory
Hollywood In Toto: Andrew Klavan Battled Sensitivity Readers to Bring Death to Life, Fall of Minneapolis Exposes the Media, Democrats and the Truth, Marvels Plummets up to 80 Percent in Box Office Nightmare, and Morgan Wallen Rocks Billboard Awards, Media Hardest Hit
The Lid: Nov. 19, 1863: Lincoln Delivers Greatest Presidential Speech Ever At Gettysburg, PA, also, Why Hamas Can Rightly Be Compared To Nazis: The Similarities Are Undeniable
Legal Insurrection: Anti-Israel Protesters Conquer And Occupy U. Michigan Administration Building, Wake Forest U. Prof Resigns After Defending Hamas Attack on Music Festival in Israel, Poll Shows Chicago Democrats Have Soured on Woke Mayor Brandon Johnson Just Six Months In, Wellesley High School in Massachusetts Cancels ‘USA Day’ Fearing it’s too Politicized, FBI and CDC Slammed for “Dropping the Ball” on Illegal California Biolab Run by Chinese, Notre Dame Students Hold Prayer Vigil to Protest Campus Drag Show, and Elon Musk (X Corp fka Twitter) Sues Media Matters, Alleges MM “Systematically Manipulated the X User Experience to Defame X”
Nebraska Energy Observer: Saturday – just for you, Thanksgiving Sunday, and Letters from the Front
Outkick: Here Comes Dolly! Peyton Manning Escorts Dolly Parton Onto The Field For ‘Rocky Top’ Performance At Tennessee-Georgia Game, Getting Juicier: Former LSU Stars Weigh In On Ongoing Angel Reese-Kim Mulkey Drama, Auburn Pays New Mexico State A Ridiculous Amount Of Money To Get Embarrassed At Home In Shocking Upset, Jerry Jones Announces Jimmy Johnson Will Enter Cowboys Ring Of Honor, Michigan Changes Tone Regarding Jim Harbaugh, Portending Lack Of Institutional Control Could Be Future Problem, Could The Dodgers Add Shohei Ohtani AND Mike Trout? and Dan Mullen Trolls Lincoln Riley As USC Gets Blown Out By UCLA
Power Line: Are EVs a Doomed Technology? Why There Can Never Be a Two-State Solution, American classic, and The last line of defense
Shark Tank: State Rep Fine Responds To Anti-Israel Sentiments On Local Media
Shot In The Dark: Don’t Cry For Milei Argentina, Righteous Battle,
This Ain’t Hell: Alexander Vindman’s brother to run for Congress, Army: About those COVID discharges, Goodbye Sara… we all loved you so, A tale of two successful…ships, sorta, and The U.S. Navy is requesting to increase its accidental whale collision limit
Transterrestrial Musings: On The Road Again
Victory Girls: Democrats Flip Out After January 6 Footage Is Released To Public, Mike Lee Calls For Investigation Into J6 Committee, and Cardi B Smokes NYC Mayor Eric Adams Over Budget Cuts
Volokh Conspiracy: Colorado Court Rules Trump Engaged in Insurrection, but Cannot Be Disqualified Under Section Three Because the President is not an “Officer of the United States”
Watts Up With That: WaPo Clauser Climate Crisis Damage Control: “There is a skeptical streak in the physics community…”, How Green Billionaires Groom the Public into Accepting Unworkable Net Zero Policies, Five Years Ago Today: California Governor: “In Less than Five Years, Even the Worst Skeptics Will Be Believers”, and A Look at California’s Landmark Climate Reporting Laws
The Federalist: Someone Please Rescue Miss USA From Her Lame Globalist Costume, Ranked-Choice Voting Advocates Are Forced To Lie About ‘Fairness’ To Get Voters On Board, We Are Just Scratching The Surface Of The Secrets Behind DEI, Pope Francis’ Removal Of Conservative Texas Bishop Exposes More Cracks In The Vatican’s New Agenda, Rage Over Charissa Thompson’s Fabrications Should Extend To All Corporate Media Liars, Thanks To Bidenflation, The Cost Of Your Family’s Thanksgiving Meal Is Still Outrageously High, and Conservative Guerrilla Marketing Like The ‘Big Based Book Sale’ Is How We Fight Leftist Gatekeepers
Mark Steyn: Rumours of War: Guadalcanal Diary and the Combat Movie, Roses of Picardy, If Ye Break Faith with Us who Die, and If at First You Don’t Succeed, Trial Trial Again

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Category: Linkagery

But Is It ‘Actual Truth’?

Posted on | November 20, 2023 | 1 Comment

Over the weekend, I saw a lot of headlines about Elon Musk endorsing or promoting an “antisemitic conspiracy theory,” e.g.:

Advertisers Flee X as Outcry
Over Musk’s Endorsement
of Antisemitic Post Grows
— New York Times

Antisemitism was rising online.
Then Elon Musk’s X supercharged it.
— Washington Post

Ron DeSantis refuses
to condemn Elon Musk’s endorsement
of antisemitic conspiracy theory
— USA Today

The problem here is that these news reports do not include the full context — which is why I’ve posted the screenshots above — so that readers can evaluate these accusations for themselves. Before condemning someone as an anti-Semite, we ought to first look closely at the proffered evidence. What happened was that Charles Weber, a self-described Jewish conservative, issued a defiant message to “cowards hiding behind the anonymity of the internet and posting ‘Hitler was right,'” telling them to “say it to our faces.” The account @breakingbaht then responded to Weber’s message with a hasty post (typos suggest haste) saying that “Jewish communities” have (a) “pushed . . . dialectical hatred against whites” and (b) supported “hordes of minorities . . . flooding [western] countries.” It was by replying to @breakingbaht with his “actual truth” endorsement that Musk is alleged to have promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But there are several questions here.

First of all, how did the message from @breakingbaht come to Musk’s attention? Was the owner of The Social Media Platform Formerly Known as Twitter actually following the @breakingbaht account? Or did he see the message from someone else’s RT? This matters, because if @breakingbaht can be fairly described as an anti-Semite, what does Musk’s response say about the kinds of accounts he follows? But then again, I haven’t researched the @breakingbaht account enough to know whether he is generally anti-Jewish, or if this particular message was a one-off. He seems to be reacting to the “hordes” of immigrants participating in anti-Israel protests — an observable fact, especially in Europe — and connecting this to the alleged role of Jews in promoting both mass immigration and “dialectical hatred against whites.”

Well, are these accusations true? Is it true that, generally, “Jewish communities” support an open-borders policy that has brought “hordes of minorities” into Western countries in recent years? And is it also true that “Jewish communities” have promoted “hatred against whites”? On that latter count, I suppose @breakingbaht could be referring to what is called “critical race theory,” and readers may investigate for themselves whether Jews have generally supported or opposed this kind of “dialectical hatred.” As for the position of “Jewish communities” on immigration enforcement, again, readers can research this question on their own. However, no one can deny that certain Jewish individuals and organizations have actively opposed efforts to restrict immigration. Furthermore, exit-poll data show Jewish voters in the United States supporting Democrats over Republicans by more than a 2-to-1 margin, a fact which might attract your attention, if you consider Democrats to be the anti-white open-borders party (as perhaps you should).

So where is the antisemitism here? And where is the “conspiracy theory”? Well, on the first count, there are lots of non-Jewish people on the Left who support the harmful ideas and policies criticized by @breakingbaht, so why single out “Jewish communities”? Ah, but recall what prompted this message from @breakingbaht — Charles Weber’s complaint about anonymous “cowards” posting “Hitler was right” message online. If these anonymous Jew-haters are mainly part of the immigrant “horde,” then the actual argument being made is: Jews should stop supporting open-borders policies, which are ultimately harmful to Jews.

That is not antisemitism, but I will not be so disingenuous as to pretend I don’t know why people are concerned about what @breakingbaht posted (and Musk’s agreement with it). The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 was perpetrated by a man whose motive involved the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization whose spokesman said: “As far as the migrant caravan goes, we are actively advocating for asylum seekers.”

This in turn involves what’s called “The Great Replacement,” taking its name from the title of a book by French author Renaud Camus. The problem with describing this as a “conspiracy theory” is that when you look at the facts — the impact of immigration on demographic trends — it’s hard to deny that something like this is actually happening.

You don’t have to be an anti-Semite to be concerned about the real consequences of mass immigration, and there are plenty of Jews (including many of my personal acquaintances) who are every bit as “right-wing” on this issue as any conservative Republican. Some on the Left have taken to denouncing anyone and everyone who opposes an open-borders policy as a Jew-hating conspiracy theorist, which is just as wrong in its own way as the Pittsburgh gunman’s obsession with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. There are all kinds of groups — including Quakers and Catholics and mainstream Protestants — who are part of the open-borders lobby (not to mention the Chamber of Commerce), so why the obsession with Jews? But meanwhile . . .

Why was CNN demanding that Ron DeSantis denounce Elon Musk over this? As I’ve pointed out, there are issues involved which could be cited in defense of Elon Musk’s “actual truth” message, and it is a crude over-simplication to describe Musk as having endorsed an “antisemitic conspiracy theory” and then demand that everybody denounce him.

This is why people don’t trust the media. They’re always running around looking for some kind of bogus “scandal” like this about anyone remotely conservative, and then demanding that Republican politicians denounce the targeted person. You never see them doing things like this to Democrats. Liberals get away with saying all kinds of crazy stuff, without CNN ever demanding that Democrats denounce their craziness.

Category: Israel, Racism

Rule Five Sunday: Meanwhile, In The Mountains

Posted on | November 20, 2023 | 4 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

It’s been cold enough here that if this young lady was posing like this, she would have sliced her top open with her nipples. Pic courtesy of Rule 5 Texan on X.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas esse delendam.