Author: Kevin

Going to Blogorado!

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I attended Blogorado for the first time in 2017.  I missed it in 2018 due to my illness.  I tried as hard as I could to make it to the 2019 gathering, but that effort ended in disaster when I managed to blow up the engine in my truck, stranding me in Las Vegas, NM.  That was the most expensive vacation (that wasn’t) I’ve ever experienced in my life.  I could’ve taken my wife to Tahiti for what that ended up costing.

Blogorado 2020 is this weekend.  I leave tomorrow.  I’ve never needed a vacation this badly in my life.

I’m taking the T-shirts I had made for last year:  

That’s “the most photographed barn in Colorado.”  It’s gone, now, but not forgotten.

Them’s Fightin’ Words (Quote of the Day – Glenn Reynolds Edition)

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 I have said repeatedly that some time beginning in the 1960’s the Left’s infiltration of education, media and politics kicked into high gear.  A few years later, they had control of all three.  That was the period when the Right stopped being their “loyal opposition” and became “The Enemy.”  Opposition to Leftist ideology and policy wasn’t from ignorance or misunderstanding, not because those on the Right were too stupid to understand (though that was part of it), it was because the Right was evil.  Only an evil person could oppose such obviously correct thought.

What do you do with evil? 

You don’t debate with evil. You don’t negotiate with evil.  You certainly don’t compromise with evil.

You placate evil while you look around for a rock sufficient to bash its head in.  You DESTROY evil.

We’re past the placation stage.

The Left has been “Othering” the Right for at least the last forty years, basically since Reagan was elected.  The evidence is everywhere.  Here’s an example:

There’s lots more.  Andy Ngo, Aaron Danielson, Bernell Trammell, Adam Haner, and many others have been the recipients of the tolerance, caring and acceptance of the Left, and I imagine that after November 3 there will be a whole lot more.  

Today at Instapundit was this post by Stephen Green comparing 2020 America to 1917 Russia, but Prof. Reynolds tacked on the QotD:

I don’t think it’s 1917. But in 1917, it’s obvious in retrospect that the only moral and practical thing to do was to kill Bolsheviks, starting at the top. An unparalleled human tragedy could have been prevented, had the Czarists, or the Mensheviks, been willing to act appropriately.

Tough History Coming, Part XX

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In re: The Left’s response to the Trumps testing positive for COVID-19, Charles Krauthammer, 2002: “To understand the workings of American politics you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”

You do not debate with evil. You do not negotiate with evil. You do not compromise with evil.  You do not tolerate evil. You destroy evil. It’s a religious crusade.

The Right is “The Other.”

I’m reading Evan Sayet’s new book The Woke Supremacy. In it he relates the story of Jimmy Fallon as host of the Tonight Show having a guest on the September 15, 2016 episode:

“Fallon, whose show was number one in the ratings at the time, did what late-night talk show hosts do in a normal society and booked one of the biggest names and most entertaining guests he could find. He then did what late-night talk show hosts do by being engaging, fun and funny. Fallon was warm and welcoming as he treated his guest in exactly the fashion he’d treated all of his other guests, and in the style that had made him number one in late-night in the first place.

“The trouble was that the guest was Donald Trump.

“By the next morning, Variety, one of the two uber-powerful trade magazines for the entertainment industry, came out with a hit piece that set the tone and let all of Hollywood know what the Powers-That-Be in the (Woke) Supremacy expected them to do.

…

“The word most often used by (Fallon’s) attackers for the “wrong” he had committed was that, by treating Trump in the way the TV show host treated any and all other people, Fallon had served to ‘humanize’ the Other.” 

The Trumps aren’t human to the Left. No one who isn’t Progressive is.

This will not end well.

Read This

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 Professor Angelo Codevilla is generally worth your time, and this essay is no exception:  Revolution 2020.  Excerpt:

Progressivism’s foundational proposition—that the American way of life suffers from excessive freedom and insufficient latitude for experts to lead each into doing what is best for all—is the intellectual basis of the oligarchy’s ever-increasing size, wealth, and power. The theme that the USA was ill-conceived in 1776-89 and must be re-conceived has resounded from Woodrow Wilson’s Congressional Government (1885) to the campaigns of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Barack Obama, and Joseph Biden: “listen to the scientists!” The criticism’s main point has been constant: America’s original conception validated the people’s right to live as they please, and made it hard to marshal them for Progressive purposes.

But the Progressive critique adds a moral basis: the American people’s indulgence of their preferences—private ease and comfort, focus on families, religious observance, patriotism—has made for every secular sin imaginable: racism, sexism, greed, etc. Because most Americans are racist, sexist, un-appreciative of real virtue or refinement (these are somehow rolled together), because these Americans resist knuckling under to their betters, America is a sick society that needs to be punished and to have its noxious freedoms reformed.

Two Years Ago on This Day…

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 …late in the evening, I was rolled into surgery at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona where a stranger’s liver was transplanted into my (dying) body.

I did not expect to wake up after surgery.  If I had not had the surgery, I doubt I’d have woken up on the 24th. 

Living in the future is amazing.

There is No “Good” in Government

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A couple of days ago I was taken to task by someone whose opinion I generally respect, even when we disagree.  It was over voting.  Let me quote the two relevant passages:

When there are two wrong choices, and at least one right choice, it doesn’t matter to me if nearly everyone else is making the wrong choice. I’m not the boss of them. I have to answer to my own conscience, not peer pressure.

And

In voting R or D, you are *voting* for evil.

Let’s unpack this.

In the first quotation it is apparent that the act of voting is not considered evil.  That voting one’s conscience is righteous and good, even if it’s tilting at windmills, but voting for one of the two parties that’s actually going to win is EVIL.

It’s my understanding that the Spoonerite wing of the anarcho-capitalists consider voting itself to be an act of evil, and to my thinking they’re right.

Government is evil. Government is the concentration of power over others into the hands of a few.  Governments have the power to do things – and get away with them – that individual citizens would go to jail for (or be strung up for).  Government is not good.  Government cannot love you.  Government cannot care about you.  Government is going to be some group of assholes interested in having their hands on the levers of that power.  But Government is a necessary evil, because without it – despite the fantasies of the anarchists – someone is going to have the power of life-and-death over you, against which you will have little to no recourse.

Our Democratic Republic was designed to limit the reach of that power as much as practicable.  Two-plus centuries of entropy has eroded many of the protections initially installed, but it’s still the best we’ve got. In our system of government as it stands today, we have a two-party system.  The parties have changed over time (I certainly hope they both do again in the near future), but one of those two established parties will have its hands on the levers this go-around.  Yes, both R and D are evil, no question, but one’s going to win.  Voting “Other” no matter how much it assuages your conscience will have no effect – and voting is STILL EVIL, regardless of who you vote for.  You’re voting to put that person in a position of power over others.  (Which may explain why the majority of eligible voters stay home.)

“What if they gave a war and nobody came?” someone once asked.  “Well, then the war would come to you!” was the reply.  What happens if you vote your conscience?  You get one of the other two anyway.  This is not to discourage votes of conscience, absolutely not.  It’s to discourage feelings of moral superiority over those of us with a different worldview.